Listen to Jennifer Anna speak about Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does an independent conservation organization use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript
Henrik de Gyor 0:00 This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Jennifer Anna. Jennifer, how are you?
Jennifer Anna 0:08 I’m great. Thank you for having me.
Henrik de Gyor 0:11 Jennifer, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer Anna 0:14 Right now, I’m serving as the Digital Asset Manager for World Wildlife Fund. And my responsibilities actually encompass several different roles ranging from, say, contract manager, librarian, photo editor to product owner, so kind of a jack of all trades, if you will. And throughout my, I guess, 10 plus year career, I would say that the majority of my roles have been as product owner in some capacity.
Henrik de Gyor 0:52 Jennifer, how does an independent conservation organization use Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer Anna 0:57 So our Digital Asset Management platform is accessible by our entire network. We are a network of approximately 100 offices spanning from Columbia to Myanmar to US to UK. And at this point in time, our library is of photography and video that tells the story of the work that WWF or World Wildlife Fund does. So the way that we work, the DAM team are very small, but I’ll say DAM team works might be a little bit different than how maybe other DAM teams work, in that, we tend to be kind of involved with the full pre-production to kind of post-production processes as well as like the DAM processes of ingestion, cataloging, and distribution.
Jennifer Anna 2:08 What our library contains is the commissions, the trips that we send photographers, or filmmakers out into the field, again, to sort of tell the story of World Wildlife Fund’s work. So we actually have commissioned shoots in the library. We also have staff photography, because a lot of our colleagues are working in program science. And so they’re actually out in the field. And part of their research work is to actually document it. So we also have staff photography, in the system as well. Another thing that we have, to a lesser extent, are what we called camera traps. And this is the way that our science folk capture the actions of animals to sort of understand better how we can help conserve their landscapes, and also kind of like, yeah, conserve their landscapes conserve wildlife. So those are sort of and then we also, of course, have licensed images from stock agencies like nature picture library, we used to license from National Geographic or National Geographic Creative, even though they’re I think they’re no longer licensing. So it’s kind of those like, I think four or five buckets of imagery that we’re kind of pulling in from a global network.
Jennifer Anna 3:39 There’s different sort of like talents and expertise across the network, the DAM team, and also certain production teams across the network, kind of assist with different processes. And that can be helping with the contract process to make sure that we’re getting the right deliverables from our photographers and filmmakers to kind of helping with the editing process when those assets have been delivered, creating B roll packages, and then of course, and then the processes of actually getting them into the hive or which we call our DAM the hive and getting them distributed. So again, it’s a little bit different in that our DAM work actually extends sort of beyond the management of the DAM into said, like contract processes working with photographers and filmmakers, doing edits, and again, like getting them to the system and then getting them distributed. And the way that our DAM is actually used, for the most part, our DAM is accessible by again, our entire network. If you have a WWF employee, you have access to our DAM so we have approximately 4000 users And so, again, our DAM may be a bit different in that it’s not just utilized by marketing and communications teams across a network. Program staff use it. Science staff use it. Our accounting teams probably use it for if they’re working on something. So it’s very far reaching like our DAM definitely serves our users sort of beyond the marketing and tech teams at WWF.
Henrik de Gyor 5:34 Jennifer, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer Anna 5:39 So let’s start with successes. I think what I’ve seen in my time in DAM is that we’ve been rethinking DAM as part of a larger marketing technology ecosystem, which I think that’s been a very positive step for the industry. I think we are thinking about DAM more holistically. And understanding they are programs requiring long term management versus standalone platforms or products, which was more the philosophy when I got started, as I said over 10 years ago, I think we understand more now. I think the industry understands more now that it’s a kind of a people first, technology second initiative, and that it can take a village to make these Digital Asset Management platforms run. And I think that’s all very positive.
Jennifer Anna 6:45 That said, DAM program still continue to be undervalued and misunderstood by companies, and therefore, I think they’re still being under resourced. I see large companies, fully resourcing their CMS, their CRM, their social media departments, and other marketing comms tech platforms with teams and budgets. But then they only employ one person to manage all the aspects of the DAM platform. And just to reiterate, these DAM programs take a village to succeed. So I would really like to see the industry help companies set these programs, and the people required to manage them up to succeed.
Henrik de Gyor 7:36 Jennifer, what advice we’d like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Jennifer Anna 7:42 I would say a few things, I would say learn about the larger marketing communications technology ecosystem, and approach DAM holistically as part of a larger system of processes and people. I would also say you need to be prepared to speak to different stakeholders in their own language about DAM. Change management is a big part of making a DAM program succeed.
Jennifer Anna 8:20 That said, I would also say it’s important to set boundaries and expectations. Many DAM jobs, depending on what they are, are actually several jobs in one and you will need to be able to educate your stakeholders about what is possible. Many times when you are coming into a new workplace, you will be the expert. No one else in the organization or company will understand DAM the way that you do. And then I would say the final thing is with that said, know that you don’t need to know everything. Technology changes so fast that we are just really running along with it.
Henrik de Gyor 9:08 Well, thanks, Jennifer.
Jennifer Anna 9:09 Thank you so much. This is really a pleasure.
Henrik de Gyor interviews Alan Gottlieb about Digital Asset Management
(duration 8:43)
Questions asked:
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does a nonprofit environmental organization use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people who aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor (00:00):
This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Alan Gottlieb. Alan, how are you?
Alan Gottlieb (00:08):
I’m doing well, Henrik. How are you?
Henrik de Gyor (00:10):
Good. Alan, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (00:14):
So I’m the Digital Asset Manager at a national environmental nonprofit. I maintain and develop a DAM system that serves upwards of 600 users at our headquarters in New York and in Washington and at state and local offices across the country. I’m something of a one-man-band. I’m currently doing much of the ingest, description and creating rules and standards as I move ahead of with development of the system while also identifying new content providers and monitoring users on the system.
Henrik de Gyor (00:50):
Alan, how does a nonprofit environmental organization use Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (00:55):
So, on the downstream side, our contact team includes photography from the DAM to illustrate stories in our beautiful magazine and our websites and with reports that we share with the public. We’re a nonprofit, so we also use assets for fundraising and marketing. And we use assets for communication. Communications with media organizations and on social and we also have a large outreach and education component to our organization. So educators use these assets to help create public programs. On the upstream side, our organization runs a popular nationwide wildlife photo contest for amateurs and professionals and contestants who enter photos may as part of their of their entry grant just rights to reproduce their images to further our mission. The photography from that yearly contest is at the core of the wildlife photography on our DAM. And many people use those assets and you know, our efforts. We also maintain an ever expanding collection of creative photography shot by our photo department staff and network photographers. They shoot activities and events across the country, conservation efforts, legislative initiatives and local programs or citizen science events. Also scientists may do field work and contribute photography that documents that.
Henrik de Gyor (02:33):
Alan, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (02:38):
So when I arrived at the organization, the DAM was about two years old and it was still in a pretty early stage of development. People who knew about it were using it. It was, you know, clearly meeting a need for high quality, interesting wildlife photography, but not everyone in the network was aware of the DAMs existance and if so, how it could work for them? Also, you know, initial metadata profile had been set up, but largely abandoned, you know, say for one important searchable field. There were really no controlled vocabularies, just backlog of assets and there was really no file naming convention either. So, since then I’ve worked to establish basic DAM design and good practices, you know, establishing workflows, creating system rules and governance structures and improving security and establishing, controlled vocabularies. You know, because there was a lack of metadata fields.
Alan Gottlieb (03:46):
A search wasn’t very flexible and people were getting, you know, I thought very incomplete search results. So as an interim solution, identify the info that we wanted to maintain and, you know, use a free text keyword fields to answer those values. And finally, now I’m in the midst of making more permanent changes by establishing metadata profile, finalizing controlled vocabularies and developing rights metadata. And you know, I think establishing this should make a lot of things easier, including, you know, ingest and just further stabilizing description. Oh. So I think managing rights on our systems is a challenge. And one I’m also tackling now, less than half of the photography on the DAM was shot by employees, is work for hire or is otherwise owned by us. The rest of the photography was a shot by some combination of contestants, freelance photographers on assignment and other employees. That is, you know, people who still own their work and also the rights that we requested from contestants change somewhat from year to year early on.
Alan Gottlieb (05:05):
So we have a big variety of rights situations that we’re trying to grapple with. And I’m in the midst of setting up rights metadata fields so we can maintain a self service model where users can understand that at glance, I hope, how they can use the assets at least for, you know, various editorial uses. And in the more complex uses usage situations, we’re going to have users come to us and request permission. I’m trying to get a bead on all our upstream content producers and media, you know, and that’s a challenge maybe in part because we have a kind of a nod, entirely centralized structure. Our DAM is administered in the photo department so we have that large amount of content being driven by our shooters. But we have shooters and videographers among our communications people and social media people and scientists may have content that our national local users would find useful.
Alan Gottlieb (06:09):
And identifying those people I think is also a work in progress for me. Our organization is also not entirely centralized for a historic reasons. I think I just mentioned that for example, our local chapters and there are a lot of them are each independent nonprofit organizations themselves and though the national organization support salmon, we coordinate so well. There was initially strong adoption by the people who knew about it. Making more people in these chapters aware of us in what we offer is a challenge and we’re using internal newsletters and web pages to make our presence known. And there’s been some word of mouth growth. Also. New initiatives brought us new users and, and between us, between it all, we’ve tripled the number of users or almost tripled the number of users and doubled the downloads on the system. And the time that I’ve been there.
Alan Gottlieb (07:09):
And I think a last challenge that we’re grappling with is trying to understand how people in the organization are using the system. What are they downloading? What are they doing with those files? Once downloaded, our vendor gives us a robust audit trail so we can understand a lot of what a search for viewed and downloaded and who’s doing it, but creating reports, consolidate this information to give us a broader understanding of subject use is another current initiative. Also conducting user interviews to bolster our understanding of what’s being done downstream.
Henrik de Gyor (07:51):
Alan, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people who aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Alan Gottlieb (07:57):
Well, I’d say if you’re coming out of library school, library world, working a basic cataloging internship in the library or museum, be it with digital media, but also analog media. I think that’s really very helpful. Also, if you’re on a system, understand your users. Use system statistics, interview people, do outreach. Find those people who are using your DAM, you know, and let them give you information about what’s happening.
Henrik de Gyor (08:32):
Thanks Alan. For more on this, visit anotherdampodcast.com. Do you have any comments or questions? Please feel free to email me at
Henrik de Gyor (00:00):
This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Alan Gottlieb. Alan, how are you?
Alan Gottlieb (00:08):
I’m doing well, Henrik. How are you?
Henrik de Gyor (00:10):
Good. Alan, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (00:14):
So I’m the Digital Asset Manager at a national environmental nonprofit. I maintain and develop a DAM system that serves upwards of 600 users at our headquarters in New York and in Washington and at state and local offices across the country. I’m something of a one-man-band. I’m currently doing much of the ingest, description and creating rules and standards as I move ahead of with development of the system while also identifying new content providers and monitoring users on the system.
Henrik de Gyor (00:50):
Alan, how does a nonprofit environmental organization use Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (00:55):
So, on the downstream side, our contact team includes photography from the DAM to illustrate stories in our beautiful magazine and our websites and with reports that we share with the public. We’re a nonprofit, so we also use assets for fundraising and marketing. And we use assets for communication. Communications with media organizations and on social and we also have a large outreach and education component to our organization. So educators use these assets to help create public programs. On the upstream side, our organization runs a popular nationwide wildlife photo contest for amateurs and professionals and contestants who enter photos may as part of their of their entry grant just rights to reproduce their images to further our mission. The photography from that yearly contest is at the core of the wildlife photography on our DAM. And many people use those assets and you know, our efforts. We also maintain an ever expanding collection of creative photography shot by our photo department staff and network photographers. They shoot activities and events across the country, conservation efforts, legislative initiatives and local programs or citizen science events. Also scientists may do field work and contribute photography that documents that.
Henrik de Gyor (02:33):
Alan, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Alan Gottlieb (02:38):
So when I arrived at the organization, the DAM was about two years old and it was still in a pretty early stage of development. People who knew about it were using it. It was, you know, clearly meeting a need for high quality, interesting wildlife photography, but not everyone in the network was aware of the DAMs existance and if so, how it could work for them? Also, you know, initial metadata profile had been set up, but largely abandoned, you know, say for one important searchable field. There were really no controlled vocabularies, just backlog of assets and there was really no file naming convention either. So, since then I’ve worked to establish basic DAM design and good practices, you know, establishing workflows, creating system rules and governance structures and improving security and establishing, controlled vocabularies. You know, because there was a lack of metadata fields.
Alan Gottlieb (03:46):
A search wasn’t very flexible and people were getting, you know, I thought very incomplete search results. So as an interim solution, identify the info that we wanted to maintain and, you know, use a free text keyword fields to answer those values. And finally, now I’m in the midst of making more permanent changes by establishing metadata profile, finalizing controlled vocabularies and developing rights metadata. And you know, I think establishing this should make a lot of things easier, including, you know, ingest and just further stabilizing description. Oh. So I think managing rights on our systems is a challenge. And one I’m also tackling now, less than half of the photography on the DAM was shot by employees, is work for hire or is otherwise owned by us. The rest of the photography was a shot by some combination of contestants, freelance photographers on assignment and other employees. That is, you know, people who still own their work and also the rights that we requested from contestants change somewhat from year to year early on.
Alan Gottlieb (05:05):
So we have a big variety of rights situations that we’re trying to grapple with. And I’m in the midst of setting up rights metadata fields so we can maintain a self service model where users can understand that at glance, I hope, how they can use the assets at least for, you know, various editorial uses. And in the more complex uses usage situations, we’re going to have users come to us and request permission. I’m trying to get a bead on all our upstream content producers and media, you know, and that’s a challenge maybe in part because we have a kind of a nod, entirely centralized structure. Our DAM is administered in the photo department so we have that large amount of content being driven by our shooters. But we have shooters and videographers among our communications people and social media people and scientists may have content that our national local users would find useful.
Alan Gottlieb (06:09):
And identifying those people I think is also a work in progress for me. Our organization is also not entirely centralized for historic reasons. I think I just mentioned that for example, our local chapters and there are a lot of them are each independent nonprofit organizations themselves and though the national organization support salmon, we coordinate so well. There was initially strong adoption by the people who knew about it. Making more people in these chapters aware of us in what we offer is a challenge and we’re using internal newsletters and web pages to make our presence known. And there’s been some word of mouth growth. Also. New initiatives brought us new users and, and between us, between it all, we’ve tripled the number of users or almost tripled the number of users and doubled the downloads on the system. And the time that I’ve been there.
Alan Gottlieb (07:09):
And I think a last challenge that we’re grappling with is trying to understand how people in the organization are using the system. What are they downloading? What are they doing with those files? Once downloaded, our vendor gives us a robust audit trail so we can understand a lot of what a search for viewed and downloaded and who’s doing it, but creating reports, consolidate this information to give us a broader understanding of subject use is another current initiative. Also conducting user interviews to bolster our understanding of what’s being done downstream.
Henrik de Gyor (07:51):
Alan, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people who aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Alan Gottlieb (07:57):
Well, I’d say if you’re coming out of library school, library world, working a basic cataloging internship in the library or museum, be it with digital media, but also analog media. I think that’s really very helpful. Also, if you’re on a system, understand your users. Use system statistics, interview people, do outreach. Find those people who are using your DAM, you know, and let them give you information about what’s happening.
Listen to Meredith Reese talk about Digital Asset Management
Transcript:
Henrik: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I am speaking with Meredith Reese.
Meredith, how are you?
Meredith: I’m good, thanks for having me.
Henrik: Meredith, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Meredith: I’m the Digital Asset Manager for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. I’ve been here for now just about a year. We implemented a brand new DAM right when I started and it’s been fantastic so far.
Henrik: Meredith, how does one of the world’s top orchestras use Digital Asset Management?
Meredith: They use it for just about everything you can think of. I personally sit in the archives department where I’m responsible for preserving all LA Phil historical records and serving requests both internally within the association and for outside users. But we also maintain a complete audio and video archive for our orchestra members to review. So we’re currently using our Digital Asset Management system, not just for historical purposes and research of all types of assets, but also for the orchestra themselves, which makes us pretty unique as far as orchestras go. And then we also support all of the affiliate groups that help out the orchestra. And we’re a nonprofit organization, I should mention. So we have a lot of volunteers, but we do have a full-time staff within the association that is responsible for all the administration of the LA Phil, planning the season, executing the season. So we have a full-time production staff who works directly with the orchestra and our music directors.
Meredith: We have a full artistic planning staff who actually programs the seasons and we have a marketing team within who does both digital and physical marketing. And really all of those groups are constantly creating assets all the time. And they’ve seen all their assets grow just within the last five years. And also as part of the archives, we manage a museum. We managed the Hollywood Bowl Museum at the Hollywood Bowl. The LA Phil has two homes. We have the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA, designed by Frank Gehry. And then we have the Hollywood Bowl. There is a lot of history to that performance as well. That’s not just, you know, classical music, but, all the pop programming that we do throughout the year. So we’re responsible for exhibiting in that space. At the Hollywood Bowl Museum and then we have a couple of spaces in the Walt Disney concert hall as well. So all of the assets that are being created by the organization are being used and shared and reused on a regular basis. It’s actually surprising that they didn’t have the Digital Asset Management system until now.
Henrik: Meredith, What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Meredith: In general or here at the Phil[harmonic]?
Henrik: Either. Or both.
Meredith: Either? I would say here at the Phil, it’s been, We’re a small nonprofit on team, but we’re still people who work within those silos. That’s actually been quite surprising to me that there’s not more interaction or collaboration the teams, but that’s starting to change the culture. Starting to be more open, more transparent its definitely, our programming is a lot more dynamic. It’s not just your traditional classical shows anymore. There’s constant overlap. When our music director, Gustavo Dudamel performed elsewhere, also conducts other orchestras, but as well as his collaborations that he does here at the Walt Disney concert hall or at the [Hollywood] Bowl. And so it’s really gotten, people into more of the spirit of collaboration, but they still have a hard grasp on their assets. You know, who owns what, who can see what, who can share. And as they start to get more use of digital asset management system and we’re used to being able to search those assets, they realize first of all that metadata is really important.
Meredith: Making their stuff searchable and, especially information around rights, how they can use these assets, how they can reuse these assets. They’re starting to get more comfortable with that process and the silos are starting to break down little by little. We haven’t definitely a new collaborative spirit around here, but it’s just starting. I think we’re just barely scratching the surface and our DAM tool really does sit as the tool to help that along. So my challenge is really change management challenges, making sure that people are comfortable with the system that’s working for them as well as, how we can innovate later on. That’s I mean innovation is a huge challenge with DAM in general, but it’s something that I believe strongly in, you know, that we have to keep, you know, making this tool better and better and meet the needs, not just why we got the tool in the first place, which was really just to solve the influx of digital assets that are here, the association, but really think about, you know, what are we going to be dealing with in the future?
Meredith: What type of assets are we going to be seeing from both a technological standpoint and being able to describe them with good metadata and being able just to share them with the best way to share our information. We’re going to be seeing a lot more audio and video content is my guess and we’re going to be seeing a lot more data around that content. That’s going to be really important and we’re also going to have to open our doors to the general public. We’ve got a lot of demand to make audio recordings available to researchers and just music enthusiasts. So we’ll see if we can meet that demand too. That’s on the horizon. Launching a DAM system that the musicians could access as a pretty big success that just happen. So having a team of orchestra, you know, full-time world-class musicians that rarely really interact with the administrative folks and now they’re working in one system is pretty amazing. That definitely has broken down the two biggest silos here in the association and that took a lot of planning just to roll that out, to configure it correctly. I mean, streaming audio from a DAM system. Our DAM is off the shelf. You know we have a software as a service model. So technologically it wasn’t that challenging, but getting people comfortable, training them, making sure that it would meet the needs and that it was compliant with our union contracts and how we treat the musicians. How musicians treat restoration was really, really important. And we’ve got more on the horizon. Another big plan that we’re rolling out is a project management tool to sit within our DAM that will help the marketing group, basically, bring assets in and organize them and share them in a more streamlined way. And it’s also gonna help with scheduling our entire orchestra season.
Meredith: I come from the entertainment industry and so I’m used to TV seasons and film schedules and tentpole projects. And so working with an orchestra, it’s really all about the concert season for that year. And LA Phil is demanding, we have two seasons, we have the winter season and the summer season at the Bowl. And so being able to schedule that and make sure everybody’s slotted in the right space is a day to day. yeah, it’s just taxing on so many people. So we’re trying to move those processes internally and really associate them to all of the content that people are making along with the performances. Our whole taxonomy, if I can dive into the metadata kind of Geeky side of what I do is based off of performances. We have a hierarchy that’s based on the season. And then the locations that are venues and then the performance dates and then all of the works associated to that date.
Meredith: And we work directly with our music librarians who actually prepare the music for every single performance that the orchestra does. And then we have guest artists come in and that has its own challenges too. Yeah, it’s all built on the back of how the season is scheduled. So we really needed a system that would address that. And so we’re calling it project management, but really it’s project management and plus scheduling plus asset wrangling plus work in progress collaboration all under one system. It’s going to give our users that one stop shopping experience that I think most people are looking for
Henrik: Meredith, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Meredith: I would say just get as much experience as you possibly can and don’t be afraid to take risks and don’t be afraid to try new things and all of your failures are going to be just as valuable learning opportunities as your successes. My past experience definitely taught me that. And so I entered in the LA Phil. I was, you know, just about prepared for anything. And so it’s been nice that I haven’t, you know, had to have as many struggles in previous places and the adoption process has been really, really smooth so far, but I would definitely inspire people to keep at it and be persistent and try new things and dive into your metadata and your data models and really understand them. I think the biggest skills I’m seeing for DAM professionals, you know, are really those that match a data scientist, you know, the analyzing and the ability to, you really get down to good, you know, data model building and good taxonomy structures and, you know, really rich metadata and how that’s mapped, how that all fits together. But then being able to, you know, explain that to all your general users. And I think that’s the biggest skill someone can bring to DAM today.
Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Alex Cabal. Alex, how are you?
Alex Cabal: Doing well, thank you.
Henrik de Gyor: Alex, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Alex Cabal: So here at Make-A-Wish America, this is several years ago, we did not have anything at all. We just had a bunch of network drives. No labeling system, naming system of any kind. And so we were looking for a solution, specifically for our creative services department, but in doing so, we thought bigger. We are the national office for Make-A-Wish, so we thought we should probably find something that was an enterprise-wide solution. So we began a search, we narrowed it down, we selected our vendor, I’ve been a part of that entire process. So, and then once we’ve selected that vendor and implemented it. I’m also responsible for the administration and so that the upkeep basically.
Henrik de Gyor: Alex, how does an organization that grants the wish of critically ill children use Digital Asset Management?
Alex Cabal: Let me take a step back if I may. Just kind of describe how Make-A-Wish is setup. So I’m with Make-A-Wish America. We are the national office and we provide the structure and the guidance for all of our chapters of which there are 62 across the nation and our territories. The chapters are the ones that actually grant the wishes, so they’re the ones that hire the photographers, videographers. They write the stories for their local websites and such, and they’re the ones that gather all of the assets. At the national office, we have a bunch of designers and they’re the ones creating the collateral, you know, for a lot of our national campaigns, our national sponsors, etc. and they’re the ones that are actually looking for all of these assets. Since we do not grant the wishes ourselves, we rely on what the chapters provide to us and so we needed a mechanism for the chapters to get those assets to us.
And so our DAM system is a part of that. And so what happens is that the wishes are granted. Pictures are taken. The privacy of the wish kids is vital for us. So we’re big into publicity releases, restrictions, that kind of thing. So we structured our DAM system to include all of that information and to allow for attachments of those specific documents so we could see what our restrictions are in addition to all of the assets. The national office and Make-A-Wish in general, we are storytellers basically. We grant wishes for all of these kids across the country and we tell the stories behind those wishes. Not only do they include the wish kids, they also include the volunteers. Many volunteer at the chapter and they’re actually critical for the execution of these wishes. So they work hand in hand with the chapter, with the wish kids themselves, the families, etc.
But these volunteers also include limo drivers, maybe local carpenters, airport greeters, folks like that. So they’re all part of the storytelling. So in the past, we had a reporting style where we would take a story of a kid and you know, if the kid’s wish was to go skiing, we just kind of report what happened. But now we’re taking into account the perspectives of all of the folks involved with the wish. So that might be siblings, that might be the parents of the wish kid, that might be the limo driver or the truck driver or maybe it’s that person working at the ski shop and the example I just gave. So we’re looking at all those different perspectives because they all have a story to tell and when they tell those stories that it affects other people in their sphere and in their community.
So we’re reaching out and just trying to gather as much content and different points of view because everyone has a very specific take on things and we think that it’s very important to share that with the community at large. And then also there’s the donors. So we have donors, they [donate] $5, $10, etc. But we have a lot of also high-level donors where they donate thousands of dollars. So we’re also trying to capture what motivates them. And so a lot of these donors, they might have a relative, a neighbor, a friend that needs a wish. And so that drives them to help out and to be committed to the Make-A-Wish cause. So again, we try to capture those stories as well.
Henrik de Gyor: Alex, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Alex Cabal: With regard to struggles and Make-A-Wish America so I am a party of one and that is very similar to other companies were both for-profit and nonprofit where they might have a DAM department, but that probably constitutes one person, maybe two if they’re lucky. So I’m not any different in that regard. I think where I am different is that I have two major responsibilities with my position and DAM is the lesser of the two. I’m also responsible for our chapter website platform. It’s the platform that powers not only wish.org, which is the national website, but all of our chapter websites and so that takes up the majority of my time and I try to spend as much time as I can with DAM. I’m different than other DAM administrators and that I specifically don’t look at all of the content per se. I just make sure that the systems are running. I trust that the folks at the chapter, that they’re able to use the system and that we have the metadata structure and all the field setup in a way that they can effectively use the system in that the folks at the national office who are looking for these assets that they can get into the system and find what they’re looking for and use it.
So I’m kind of…I’m in the mix, but I’m not a heavy user. I just make sure everything works. And on our side, not only do our designers look for these assets because they’re looking for brochures, they are looking for signs or looking to create signs. Our social media team also uses the system because they’re always looking for new assets to share with our different constituents and so those are the two primary folks that use the system on a daily basis. Part of our struggles, and this kind of goes to how we are set up, we a federated system, so each of our 62 chapters are their own private 501(c)(3)s [nonprofit organization]. So yes, they are a part of the Make-A-Wish family, but they also have a, a certain level of independence from the national office so they can pretty much do their own thing within certain guidelines, of course. As part of that, you know, a lot of the chapters run a lean staff and some chapters might have like two people. You might run into another chapter where there might be 32 people and so it all varies and the person responsible at the chapter for accessing and utilizing this DAM system may also differ. In one chapter, it might be a marketing person. In another, it could be a communications person or in another, it could be a development or a finance person. So there are no steadfast rules. It just kind of…for each chapter the situation is a little different and more often than not, whoever is the more tech-savvy person is probably the person that gets saddled with the DAM responsibilities. So you know, because of that and because at a chapter, they are running lean. They wear multiple hats. They’re basically trying to get through the day, first and foremost for them is to make sure that wishes happen and they also have large events to which are big fundraising opportunities, so they’re trying to make sure that those two things go without a hitch. More often than not, working with a DAM is even though it’s a necessary function, it kinda gets pushed by the wayside a little bit and to be quite honest and that that’s been a big struggle and you combine that with the size of the chapters and the general lack of resources that nonprofits typically have. That’s kind of the meat of where we run into some issues.
Then there’s also the whole taxonomy thing. I come from the school where the more information there is, the better it is and try to be as specific as you can. What we’re finding out is that maybe that’s not the case. And I think in attending the past two DAM conferences in New York, in hearing feedback from other folks, they’re saying the same thing. And that being too specific could be a challenge. And that perhaps taking a step back and trying to be a little bit more vague in your categories or maybe all-encompassing would be a better idea. So I have to take a look at that and that’s one of the things that I’m doing this Summer is taking a look at our current DAM system and how it is set up with the metadata and all the taxonomy and trying to reconfigure that so that going into the Fall we’ve got a more streamlined version and it’ll help the adoption rate for those folks that yeah, they’re, they need to use the DAM system, but they might feel a little intimidated or it’s a little too cumbersome. Anything that I can do on my end to streamline that and to make it simpler for them, then I need to be doing that. So that’s a lot of the struggles that we typically have.
With successes, one of the cool things that we do is we use our DAM system as a collection vehicle for our annual calendar. So basically, we put a call out to chapters and we asked them to send us with stories and pictures of wish, kids they’d like to see profiled in our annual calendar. We probably get around 30 of those submissions each year. And so from that pool, our creative services team looks at all of those and then they determine which 12 kids get selected for the calendar. So we did a lot of excitement with that. We’re actually thinking of attaching some kind of reward system for folks that use the DAM system and to, you know, that gives us access to pictures for the submission.
So if we select one of their kids to be in the calendar, we make them some kind of an award. So that’s something that we’re thinking about and I think we’ll probably do this year. We also use our DAM as a collection mechanism for some of our large campaigns are Macy’s Believe campaign is one of our bigger ones, which occurs towards the holiday season of the year. And so we use that to gather images for the different Macy’s Believe events that occur across the chapters. So those have worked well. We’ve also connected our DAM to what we call our design studio, and that is basically a marketing portal, so if a chapter in its simplest form, if they want to order business cards with their logo, they can on a larger scale. If they wanted to create a sign for, let’s say a subway or a brochure or something like that. Basically, that system connects to the DAM and then they can pull hig- res images that belongs to their chapter and then they can utilize those.
We also allow for a sharing option so that chapters can share their assets with other chapters. Currently, by default, everything is based on a per chapter use, so our Arizona chapter of can only see Arizona content. Hudson Valley can only see Hudson Valley, etc. However, we do give each chapter the option on a per item basis to share those items. We have some chapters that are very eager to share because they collect great assets and they know some other chapters struggle with that, so they do what they can to make those available so that the enterprise as a whole can benefit. So those are some of the success stories that we’ve had with our DAM.
Henrik de Gyor: And what advice would like to share with DAM professionals and people are aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Alex Cabal: So with DAM professionals, if there’s anyone looking to select a DAM system that does not currently have one, my advice would be to get your IT team involved in the selection process and the planning and how the IT team will need to understand how this will work with their current infrastructure, you know, especially with permissions, if you deal with single sign-on, there are a lot of considerations there. So it’s important that IT is involved in that entire selection process more often than not they have a process in place for selecting vendors and all of that kind of stuff. So they’re very useful in the vetting process for that. It’s also important to sell the importance of a DAM if you don’t currently have one. I think most leadership probably don’t understand. They probably think, “oh, we can get a bunch of storage, a bunch of external drives, etc. It shouldn’t be that big of a problem” So you have to sell the key benefits of whatever system you’re looking at and how that could potentially benefit your organization and I would also advise to look further on down the road. Not in the immediate sense where, okay, in the short term you have storage, but in the long term, what does this mean? Are there other systems that you currently employ that may benefit from tapping into your DAM? So that’s something to look at too, and if you can find a connection that makes sense between those systems and if there’s a technology that exists that allows your DAM to connect with like Salesforce, for example, then that becomes a little bit of an easier sell. Another piece of advice for taxonomy, spent a lot of time figuring out what makes sense for the organization. What might make sense to the DAM administrator might not make sense to other folks. And I’m learning that by experience and so get those other parties in the room who are going to be the heavy users? Who are going to be the ones that are actually downloading? What are the types of terms that they’re going to be looking for? and that should help guide you in how you create the taxonomy for all, all of that information.
For aspiring professionals, a taxonomy and that was something that I didn’t think was going to be that big of a deal. I kind of took it for granted, but in actually going through the pains of realizing that what makes sense in my head doesn’t necessarily make sense in others heads. It’s a really good idea to understand how things are categorized. What makes sense. Be open to taking in input from other folks that probably organize differently than you. So that’s a big deal. For the students out there, if there are like library sciences, that probably will be a big help. I think the DAM community as a whole… this to me, and I’m relatively new to this, but this seems like an up and coming thing. I mean, this is what I’m gathering from the conferences that I’ve attended recently and talking with other folks… those of us that are in this community realized the importance of it. Those of us outside of it, although they might be touched by it, they don’t quite get it, and so it’s kind of our job to show the importance and how this can help benefit the organization. So take the time to learn about the taxonomy. If you’re a student, check into library sciences or organization, that’s a big thing. Networking, that’s a big deal. You’ll find other folks that with similar interests or are in similar situations and you could probably get some good advice from them and if you’re serious about becoming a DAM professional, don’t be surprised if you are going to be the only one doing that at whatever company you land at and it might be like that for a while. My gut is that even though people are starting to see or companies are starting to see the importance of this is might not be the highest priority for a lot of companies. So it might be a slow growth type of thing within just become familiar with the different systems that are out there and what’s available. So if you do land somewhere, you’re able to have some information. You may not be an expert in that particular system, but it’s not like you’re completely starting from scratch.
Henrik de Gyor: Well, thanks Alex.
Alex Cabal: Yeah, you’re welcome.
Henrik de Gyor: For more on this, visit Another DAM Podcast for over 200 episodes like this. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 