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Another DAM Podcast interview with Ulla de Stricker on Digital Asset Management

Ulla de Stricker discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • You recently co-authored a book titled “The Information and Knowledge Professional’s Career Handbook” along with co-author Jill Hurst-Wahl. I believe Digital Asset Management could be categorized under the umbrella of Information Management. What inspired you to write this book?
  • What is so different about careers in the field of Information and Knowledge Professionals than any other?
  • Is this book just for beginners entering this career path?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management (DAM). I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Ulla de
Stricker. Ulla, how are you?
Ulla de Stricker: [0:11] Fine. Thank you very much.
Henrik: [0:13] Ulla, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Ulla: [0:16] As a consultant I’m involved in everything my clients care about
when it comes to information and knowledge management broadly defined.
Information objects of all kinds, including DAMs of course, are an element in any organization strategy for support to knowledge workers, and I strive to point my clients to the options available and to advise them about the ramifications of those options.
Henrik: [0:40] You recently coauthored a book titled “The Information and
Knowledge Professional’s Career Handbook” along with coauthor Jill Hurst-
Wahl, which I interviewed in the past. I believe Digital Asset Management could be categorized under the umbrella of information management. What inspired you to write this book?
Ulla: [0:58] Jill and I are what you might call “natural mentors.” We’ve always ended up in situations where we discuss career matters with our colleagues and our students in particular. So without being able to pinpoint the exact moment, we did get to a point where we arrived at this collective insight, “Why don’t we just write it all down?” So we set about distilling our answers to the many questions we’ve heard over the years.

[1:26] Our intention was to capture general advice in one place so that potentially our individual conversations with readers could be more personal and focused. But primarily, however, we wanted to give
our colleagues and particularly new entrants to the profession a heads up about all the things you need to think about in your career but never had a chance to focus on in graduate school.
[1:53] Speaking for myself, I certainly discovered that technical skills are only one part of the tool kit we need. I learned the hard way about organizational politics, about being the boss, about interpersonal dynamics, and so on and so on. So you might say the book actually addresses practitioners in a lot of professions. We felt comfortable though speaking to colleagues in those fields where we have personally built our reputations.
[2:21] We’d love to see the book become a graduation gift and a bible for
younger colleagues. That way our suggestions can travel a lot further afield than through personal interactions in meetings and workshops.
Henrik: [2:35] Excellent. So what is so different about careers in the field of
information management professionals than any other?
Ulla: [2:45] I’m so glad you asked it. First, I want to stress how exciting it is to see all the many new opportunities out there for graduates of iSchools. I think we’re still only scratching the surface, and there’s a lot of outreach still to do to orient managers about how the skills of iSchool graduates apply across a vast spectrum of organizational functions. [3:08] But I always encourage those looking for a career to check out the information profession. You and I, Henrik, know it isn’t true, contrary to widespread opinion, that the Internet has reduced the need for professionals who know their way around information management. That said, I need to be honest about what I call the opacity of our profession.
[3:31] You can’t imagine the number of times I’ve heard my colleagues comment on the surprising amount of explaining they found themselves having to do. Sometimes we commiserate among ourselves that perhaps we ought to have considered pharmacy or some other field where clients understand immediately what we do without any further explanation.
[3:51] As an illustration, nobody with a sick pet is in any doubt about the need for or value of a veterinarian, and no one with a leaky roof questions the need for and value of a roofer. Yes, police officers, transport truck drivers, the road repair crews, etc, etc, do not have to explain why they should exist. But we information professionals do.
[4:19] A major factor is the conundrum I’ll never solve that we deal largely in intangibles. We can’t prove that we are adding dollars to the bottom line or that we’re saving lives. So our costs could look like reasonable candidates for cuts when managers are under pressure to slash their budgets. We can convince those managers it’s prudent to equip knowledge workers with authoritative information, and it’s prudent to safeguard corporate memory and so on.
[4:50] But we cannot get away from the fact that information services are, by  their nature, labor intensive and expensive. Before the first customer can find an answer to a question or find an information object, there’s content to pay for, staff to pay for, IT infrastructure to put in place, and so on. It’s understandable to me when a senior executive asks bluntly, “What am I getting for that six or seven-figure line item called the Corporate Information Center?”
[5:21] I’m sure your DAM colleagues recognize the challenge. The bottom line for this nurse is that in our professions practitioners must always be ready to justify their worth. It’s for that reason that one of the chapters in the book deals with crafting business cases.
Henrik: [5:39] So, is this book just for beginners entering this career path?
Ulla: [5:43] Certainly, Jill and I did intend the book for graduate students and recent graduates, but we speak equally to mid-career professionals who may be asking themselves, “What’s next?” We advocate an attitude of personal control.
Oh, yes. It’s true. A new graduate may take that first job because the bills have to be paid. But throughout our working lives every one of us are making choices and plans for the future. [6:10] So that’s why we emphasize in one chapter the need for every single professional to ascertain what’s a group cultural fit and, then to orchestrate choices and activities toward that fit. By “fit,” I mean that, as one example, some of us are naturally happy in environments where others might not be so happy. Just consider the difference between hospitals, law firms, schools, nonprofits, and private sector companies in terms of how it feels to work there.
[6:40] As another example. We’re all unique in terms of the degree of structure and control we like to have at work, the pace we’re comfortable with, whether we like to deal with people, or whether we prefer to work independently, and so on. So, other chapters deal with universal topics, such as developing a professional brand, getting paid what we’re worth, coping with stress, mentoring others. So indeed the book is meant for our colleagues at any stage of their careers.
Henrik: [7:12] What advice would you like to share with DAM professional and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Ulla: [7:17] Let me stress again the positive news that in the future, information professionals including the DAMs will be evermore necessary to managing the explosions of digital content. The opportunities keep growing, and I’ll just throw in here, that in the last couple of weeks alone a major consulting firm in Toronto announced several new knowledge management decisions. [7:43] One little challenge does exist. It’s that in the past, we may not have focused sufficiently on marketing our skills, so we do have some competition from IT professionals as an example. So my advice focuses on marketing. My advice is that a successful career depends on developing a solid conviction about our own value and on perfecting the delivery of the explanation of it.
[8:09] I say become a walking business case. Get good at linking your activity to corporate outcomes. Estimate, for example, how much time you save other employees through your work, and then calculate the value to the organization from freeing up that time. Never mind about risk reduction and other intangible benefits. Speak about how you contribute to the overall performance of the organization you work for and use the language stakeholders understand.
[8:39] In other words become a career long advocate for good information practices.
Does that make sense, Henrik?
Henrik: [8:46] Definitely. Well, thanks Ulla. Thanks to also your publisher,
Chandos, who is giving us a complimentary copy. For the first time on this
podcast series we’re able to give away a copy of the book. The book is again
“The Information and Knowledge Professionals Career Handbook” by Jill Hurst-Wahl and Ulla de Stricker. [9:08] The contest between the date of the release of this podcast through the month of August 2011, if you subscribed to Another DAM Blog, that’s AnotherDAMblog.com and AnotherDAMpodcast.com, you
will be entered in the contest immediately. If you are drawn at the end of the month, the winner from that will get a free copy of the new book. Thank you so much, Ulla.
Ulla: [9:36] Well, thank you. It is indeed generous of the publisher to work with us in this way, and I can’t wait to virtually shake the hand of the winner.
Henrik: [9:45] If you would like more information about Digital Asset
Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com.

Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, Blubrry, iTunes, and the Tech Podcast Network.
Thanks again.

Announcing the first book drawing for this podcast series…

The one winner of this drawing will receive one free copy of “The Information and Knowledge Professional’s Career Handbook” co-authored by Jill Hurst-Wahl and Ulla de Stricker. To enter the book drawing, simply subscribe to both Another DAM podcast and Another DAM blog by email on each of these websites between August 4, 2011 and August 31, 2011. The winner will be picked from the pool of email subscribers of both Another DAM podcast and Another DAM blog together. The drawing will occur on the first week of September 2011 with a third party drawing the name of the winner. The winner will be announced on Another DAM podcast and Another DAM blog. If you are already an email subscriber to both Another DAM podcast and Another DAM blog, you are automatically entered in this book drawing. The winner will be contacted directly by email for their contact details to ship the book. The book will be shipped directly from the publisher. Good luck to all.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Linda Tadic on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Are there any grants available for Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Linda Tadic. Linda,
how are you?
Linda Tadic: [0:09] I’m doing great, Henrik. How are you doing?
Henrik: [0:11] Good. Linda, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Linda: [0:15] ; Well, it’s funny, how I’ve come to this might be a little untypical
from how others have. My background is really as a film, video, television, and
audio archivist starting back in the mid ‘80’s when everything was analogue. As
we all know everything has now shifted from analogue to digital. [0:31] I would
say basically all the positions and work I have been doing since 2000 have been
digital related. All of those jobs, once you have digital files, you have to deal
with managing those files from before creation to archiving.
[0:45] Basically I’ve been involved with Digital Asset Management from manager
of the Digital Asset Management system, implementing systems, using archival
preservation workflows through the Digital Asset Management system. So
pretty much mainly for more hands-on implementation, I’ve been involved with
Digital Asset Management.
Henrik: [1:08] Great. Linda, are there any grants available for Digital Asset
Management?
Linda: [1:14] Well, grants are a little bit tough. Just by the nature of using the
word ‘grants,’ usually that means that the applicant organization must be a nonprofit,
an organization, or an educational, or a cultural heritage institution, because
funders give grants again to nonprofit organizations. [1:31] So thinking in
terms from the educational institution world, those types of organizations don’t
really consider Digital Asset Management at all. When I look at Digital Asset
Management or think about that term, I’m thinking about you’re actually using
a system for the whole life cycle of that digital asset, from creation again all the
way through archiving, and there could be some workflow into creating that
digital asset.
[2:00] What these educational institutes are thinking about though are more like
digital repositories or content management systems. So the grants that they
are receiving and applying for are more to receive grants for digital repositories.
The difference there is whether the repository is accepting digital assets
that have reached the end of their creation period. They are already completed.
They’re done. There is metadata, and those are just uploaded into the
repository.
Henrik: [2:25] I see.
Linda: [2:26] So then what the organizations are also doing, because this is the
funding world has been very interested in developing further is working with
open source tools. For example, some of the open source digital repository applications
that you might hear out there like Fedora, D Space. Those are two of
the major open source repositories. [2:48] Those are also very complex to implement.
Essentially what’s happening is these nonprofit educational institutions,
they must become software developers themselves.
Henrik: [2:59] When you mentioned that they have to become the developers
themselves, is it because a lack of support for those in comparison to other vendors
that may give that type of support?
Linda: [3:11] Well, it’s because they have to become software developer
whether they hire staff to work on it or they already have internal talent that can
work with the programming that’s involved. [3:23] What is happening because
once you go open source, you then you’re basically building this tool yourself or
you’re hiring someone to build it for you, then you own the code.
[3:33] In contrast to going out and finding a vendor and provide what you need
and then perhaps doing some customization to suit your purposes.
[3:41] What people are finding though, is ironically, here they’re thinking open
source would be less expensive than going through a vendor but they’re finding
it’s pretty much it’s either more expensive to do it open source because then
you must have the staff in order to keep it going and developing it further.
Henrik: [3:55] Sure, and supporting it, I guess.
Linda: [3:59] Yeah, so it’s either the same cost or it could be even more expensive
to go the open source route. However, what is appealing to these organizations
and institutions is that they’re then not dependent on a vendor who then
might go out of business. They have this digital management system or a digital
repositories which they have no further support.
Henrik: [4:18] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to be DAM professionals?
Linda: [4:22] Well, there are two areas that are so key for whether somebody
is already working in the field or somebody who wants to become a DAM professional.
That’s metadata and preservation. [4:34] Metadata, we here so much
about already. I think that as preservation becomes key within Digital Asset
Management systems, which I think is really in the near future, this is going to be
a crucial area of growth in the field.
[4:49] You have to have far more discrete metadata in order to track these digital
preservations actions, which must be done for your digital assets to survive in
the coming years.
[5:01] Metadata, I think that the training in metadata has to go beyond just
saying, “OK , we want to have these fields.” You can’t just use basic keywords
searching any longer, especially when you have thousands of items
and you have perhaps, different working states of files and different preservations
actions.
[5:18] I think that people should start studying metadata, more not just knowing
what the standards are what is the type of metadata that really you should
be tracking.
[5:25] The descript of the technical preservation metadata but importantly along
with that is why does that have to be captured. Just throwing around the terms
of the words, but understanding the concepts behind it.
Henrik: [5:37] Makes a lot of sense.
Linda: [5:38] Yeah, and the preservation part of it also, as I mentioned that with digital assets you have to keep preserving them. Preservation doesn’t mean
keep backing them and putting them on LTO tape on servers but you have to
keep checking those files and make sure there isn’t any bit lost.
[5:53] As they are moved from one media to another and also there could be perhaps file
formats that are becoming obsolete. We’re all used to video tape becoming
obsolete. Every format can become obsolete.
[6:05] Now it’s digital files that are becoming obsolete. You have to track all of
this information in your digital management system so that you can migrate
even that file format forward. Not just the media that file is sitting on.
[6:17] The only way you do that is to actually have that data in your DAM so you
can just manage all of those preservations actions.
Henrik: [6:25] Would you recommend a specific time frame to do that checking
on a regular basis? Let’s say you’ve archived a whole bunch of files with XL
formats, how often would someone check their file formats to make sure they’re
still current and usable?
Linda: [6:39] The way and how they can check their file formats to see if they’re,
they would have to look at digital file format registries and really research those
because if in your database in your DAM you can easily search for how many
assets do we have that are in format X because now you’re learning that oops,
format X is no longer going to, it’s a proprietary format. [7:03] It is no longer
being supported. Perhaps we better check all those files and then consider
should we migrate them forward so we can use them in the future.
[7:12] That is just something that is constant. You just, as a Digital Asset
Manager, you have to be aware of what file formats are becoming obsolete in
your database will help you do that and manage those files.
[7:24] As far as moving them to new media then whether it’s LTO tape or even
checking them sitting on servers is the, pretty much what archivists are considering
is every three to five years, you have to check those files and make sure
they are still valid and to checksums are still valid.
[7:41] That there’s no bit loss especially with larger files, if you’re working with
moving image files with large video files you’re absolutely, it is essential to check
those files. Because the larger the file is, the more bits that can be lost. If you
have some bits that are corrupted then that can perhaps corrupt your entire file.
Henrik: [8:00] It makes a lot of sense. Check your check sums whatever check
sum you happen to be using like MD5, or whatever and then also making
sure that before you sense that or get rid of a piece of software across your
organization that can read file format X, make sure that you have something else
that can read it or transfer it into another file format. Is that far to say?
Linda: [8:22] Right, yes and what many archivist need to do especially if they’re
working with proprietary file formats, is that they are saving the environment in
which those files can be read or rendered. [8:35] That means saving all of the operating
systems that that file can be rendered in. It’s not only saving the assets,
but again, saving the environment in which that asset can be read.
Henrik: [8:46] It makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much, Linda.
Linda: [8:48] You’re very welcome and thank you.
Henrik: [8:50] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Anthony Allen on Digital Asset Management

Anthony Allen discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a training and development organization use a DAM?
  • What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Anthony Allen.
Anthony, how are you?
Anthony Allen: [0:10] I’m doing great. Thank you very much for
having me today.
Henrik: [0:13] Not a problem. Anthony, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Anthony: [0:18] I’m the Director of Digital Media for The American Society for
Training and Development. It always helps to explain a company or an audience
before diving into the finer points of Digital Asset Management. ASTD is an
association for trainers. We train trainers. [0:43] We’ve been in business for about
60 years. We have about 45,000 members. We are a nonprofit, a mission driven
publisher, but still very much care about the bottom line. We consider ourselves
a small publisher. We publish books, magazines, pamphlets, smaller 28 or 30
page books.
[1:11] We also have a very heavy practice for video. The video and media production
is specifically geared to our conferences. We have a small 1500 person
conference in January and a large 8000 person conference in June.
[1:30] We record most of the material there, so we produce hundreds and hundreds
of hours of conference content every year as well, so there are thousands
of assets in our digital library for PowerPoints sent to audio and live, full frame
video production for the conferences.
[1:55] I was brought on to ASTD, that’s how I refer to the company, about three
years ago to basically take care of the content management, Digital Asset
Management, tagging, XML. I’ve delved full force into that realm.
[2:15] When I came to ASTD there was really quite a shock. I had come from
the video world, and I was a producer at Discovery Channel. Video, they were
making TV basically the same way for decades. The taxonomy and the metadata
based publishing search within libraries for video assets are actually quite
mature. Lucky me.
[2:46] I had actually then moved on to ASTD, and I came to a publishing house
in an industry that had no taxonomy. The content is also highly contextual,
meaning that search is very, very difficult with training content. The reason is
because it’s the exact opposite of medical content. If you search for basal cell
carcinoma in a medical directory, you’re going to get information about basal
cell carcinoma.
[3:17] Training content, on the other hand, is very contextual, and trainers
argue about the definitions. I was at a shock, at a loss for where to start, when
I started my job as a content manager. With ASTD over the past three years,
what we’ve done is we’ve developed a taxonomy for the training industry that
I’m now going out into other content production houses for training content and
trying to get them to adopt the training taxonomy.
[3:53] It’s a very, very large initiative for us. I’ve also made some large technology
purchases for the content management benefit of all of the content production
departments within ASTD. We have an XML based content management
system, an XML based metadata workflow publishing engine. We also have a
part of ASTD that goes and takes our content, which is at the very, very end of
the print cycle, PDFs, and then converts that content into XML.
[4:36] Then it is tagged according to our taxonomy. It is tagged according to the
DITA XML standard, and then it is put into a repository. Afterwards, we have,
basically, what I call a workflow expansion framework that allows us to build new
workflows to get new formats out into the publishing world, make money with
ePub, make money with other formats as well.
[5:07] That gives us a scope of how I’m involved with Digital Asset Management.
It really was from zero to now I would say that we have a lot of our internal production
workflow practices matured. Now we’re squarely looking at the future
as far as getting this content out and creating new and exciting applications that
leverage the metadata. The word of the day and the phrase for the future is
really metadata based publishing for ASTD.
Henrik: [5:43] Why does a training and development organization use a DAM
specifically? What is the end goal?
Anthony: [5:50] There are two things here, there’s ASTD, the small publisher,
but then there’s also ASTD, the representative and quasi governing body for
training and development organizations, of which our members are trainers
within organizations. They are independent consultants who are brought in to
large companies like IBM, to give sexual harassment training, leadership training,
and so on. [6:23] We also represent the vendors in this space. Those vendors
can include other small publishers of training content. It can include technology
companies that produce learning management systems, and it can also
be other companies that create training content. A hot topic right now is education
modules, education component, so smaller building blocks of content.
[6:50] I’ll tackle the first part first, ASTD as the publisher of content. We don’t
really do anything different than any other small publishing house does. Tongue
in cheek I say, “We look at what the big boys are doing and we try to mimic it.”
[7:10] There are a couple of things that are going on here. Companies like
O’Reilly, very hot in the digital publishing space, are setting the expectation of
digital formats. When you buy an EPUB or an eBook from O’Reilly you actually
get .apk, .mobi, EPUB, and now even DAISY , which is…
Henrik: [7:36] You get multiple formats. You get multiple formats, right? You get
to choose or all of the above?
Anthony: [7:42] Yes, it allows you to really feel confident that you are going to
be able to use this on your devices, which is, on the TV side, TV anywhere was
something that kind of happened a while ago. Then the digital rights locker,
which NeuStar is trying to get off the ground, is another one of those, “Let’s get
to the promise land of, “I buy this movie, I buy this TV show, and I get to view it
on all my devices.” It’s, again, metadata based, digital sites management. [8:17]
But ASTD isn’t doing anything different than other small publishers in saying,
“We need to look at what the big boys are doing and mimic it.” There are definitely
business reasons for doing that.
[8:30] As far as the O’Reilly example goes, we need to meet the expectations of
our customers. Those expectations are not being set by us, they’re being set by
other companies like O’Reilly. They’re doing a really good job of making those
expectations harder and harder to attain.
[8:47] We have to keep up with each new search experience, with the great
search experience that somebody has at Google, with each great business
model that the newspapers make up. Smaller people, smaller publishers like
ASTD have got to keep up with that or we look further and further behind.
[9:06] Now, the other part of the piece is stuff like Amazon. This, again, speaks to
the first part of ASTD as a small publisher. Amazon is great because, as ASTD is
a commercial publisher we have lots of our stuff up on Amazon, but the taxonomy
that governs Amazon is completely meaningless for trainers.
[9:29] One of our big, hit books is called, “Telling Ain’t Training.” One of the four
ways it’s listed metadata-wise is under psychology and counseling. Now, no
trainer is going to go to psychology and counseling to find training content.
[9:47] Amazon is great in that it sends way more traffic to our book than we ever
could, but from a business perspective they take a huge cut. The training taxonomy
metadata based publishing and better categories on our stores that are
more meaningful for our audience, is going to allow us to sell more on our own
website, which is where we keep most of the profits.
[10:16] Building my P and L for my boss and saying, “Hey, we need to invest
$255,075,000 in this new technology,” part of that P and L, that business justification
is driving traffic back to our site where we don’t have to depend on other
sites like Amazon, where they take a huge cut of the book.
Henrik: [10:37] Just to clarify, P and L, you mean profit and loss?
Anthony: [10:40] Yeah, exactly. As a business owner, I have to go to my boss,
beg for money and he says, “Anthony, why?”
Henrik: [10:48] Prove your cause.
Anthony: [10:49] Exactly. The other part of your question was “Why does a
training and development organization use the DAM?” [10:57] The big part of
training and technology, where those two things meet are in what I call actually,
what everybody calls Learning Management Systems.
[11:10] Learning Management Systems are things, like Blackboard is a big LMS.
[11:17] Those systems are where a student can start a class and the learning
management systems take the student through the class and mark off with
metadata what has been completed, what the scores are.
[11:31] It takes all of that data and sends it to the teacher for verification, it marks
off what classes they’ve taken.
[11:39] The other thing that it does is it can match learning objectives and content
to industry metadata standards like SCORM, one of them for the education
industry.
[11:52] That kind of flow of data and process, the whole eLearning industry
would not have been born had it not been for Digital Asset Management.
[12:09] All of the video clips that people play as part of their class, moving things
around from this folder to that other folder, being able to create new classes
and training sessions, new educational sessions that are built off of learning
blocks from other training classes, being able to customize courses, none of that
stuff would happen without a Digital Asset Management.
[12:35] If you look at the rise of Blackboard, Blackboard is now an incredibly profitable
company. They did their IPO. I look at Rosetta Stone and they’re used to a
Digital Asset Management.
[12:47] I look at Audible.com, it was there with their audio versions of books.
These are all companies that have found incredible amounts of success by leveraging
Digital Asset Management and selling better to their customers, meeting
their customer’s expectations.
[13:05] Quicker time to market, better product, it’s all through the leveraging of
technology.
Henrik: [13:12] Anthony, what advice would you like to give to DAM professionals
or people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Anthony: [13:20] There’s a place in the US called, Silicon Valley and there happens
to be thousands of web startups there. [13:28] A lot of web startups start
with a problem statement. What problem are you trying to fix and how does
your web startup fix that problem?
[13:38] I would recommend to anybody that wants to become a DAM professional
to figure out what problems there are and then create a solution
that’s DAM specific. Start with a problem statement you can start at your
own company.
[13:55] No matter what the company, what the entity, there’s probably a process
that’s at risk for falling apart because of ill management. There’s probably a process
that could use a dose of technology.
[14:12] These kinds of problems that can be fixed with a proper process is ripe
for a Digital Asset Management system.
[14:22] There’s so much sense of media even non-media companies because
of the rise of media and consumable media on the web, consider themselves,
“Part-time media companies.”
[14:37] Digital Asset Management then comes into play for seemingly unrelated
industries and companies. For anybody aspiring to get into the DAM, Digital
Asset Management field, start with a problem.
[14:52] Look at your company and say, “Wow, this really is a problem.” Then,
think, “How can this problem be fixed with Digital Asset Management?”
[15:03] I encourage people to go out and meet other people in the Digital Asset
Management field, go up to them. Find them on LinkedIn and go up to them at
a meetup.
[15:15] Pose your problem to them and say, “My company has this issue, how
would you fix it?” You never know what that Digital Asset Management professor
may give to you.
[15:30] If you go to your boss with that, that boss will see you as “This person is
trying to fix problems, trying to help, trying to leverage technology.” You make
far about a whole new job description for yourself in the process.
[15:41] That’s where I would start, with a problem statement.
Henrik: [15:45] Thank you, Anthony. For more on Digital Asset Management,
log onto anotherdamblog.com, thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Seth Earley on Digital Asset Management

Seth Earley discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does taxonomy relate to Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to give to DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Seth Earley. Seth,
how are you?
Seth Earley: [0:09] I am terrific. Thank you for having me.
Henrik: [0:11] Great. Seth, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Seth: [0:15] Well, I’ll tell you. We have been doing work with Digital Asset
Management for probably the entire 15 years that I’ve been doing this kind of
work. I’ve been involved in content management, in document management, in
knowledge management for that period of time. Throughout the entire career,
we’ve always had to deal with nontextual assets. We’ve always had to deal with
some rich media. [0:40] I remember at the beginning when we were doing work
with Lotus Notes. The first time you could drop an image into a rich text field, I
was like, “Wow. This is so amazingly cool. I cannot believe you can drop a picture
into a rich text field.” Ever since then we’ve been dealing with digital assets
and Digital Asset Management Systems.
Henrik: [1:02] Excellent. Seth, how does taxonomy relate to Digital Asset
Management?
Seth: [1:13] You can infer something about text assets. You can derive something.
You can do text mining. There are is-ness and about-ness inherently
within the content. [1:20] When you build an index, when you’re doing search,
you’re searching text assets by inferring something about the nature of the
content. You can create a forward index by looking at the words in a document.
You invert that index, which gives you the pointers to specific documents
based on the words. And then, that’s derived metadata about the text, about
the document.
[1:43] You don’t have that ability to do that with any kind of Digital Asset
Management, with digital assets, with rich media, with images. There’s no inherent
is-ness or about-ness, so, of course, we have to use metadata.
[1:56] The way we look at metadata and taxonomy, taxonomy is really the way
of beginning to organize your metadata. We don’t look at taxonomy in a very
narrow sense of navigation. We look at taxonomy from a perspective of classification
and overall information architecture.
[2:15] When we start looking at taxonomy, we want to begin thinking about the
types of fields and the ways that we can start to tag the assets with metadata.
Then we want to populate those fields with reference data, with the drop downs,
with the controlled vocabularies, with the lists and attributes.
[2:36] Taxonomies are considered to be hierarchical in nature. We can certainly
have hierarchical lists of controlled values, but there’s all sorts of different ways
of looking at information architecture that references taxonomies. Taxonomies
are the overall organizing principles around your metadata fields.
[2:58] Of course, whenever you think about metadata, if you have a large list of
attributes or a large list of values, you have to break those up for human consumption.
We can only deal with fairly short lists, maybe 5, 10, or maybe 15
items. If you start to get into lists that are 100 terms long or 200 terms or 500
terms, how do you deal with that? Well, you have to break it up. That’s where
you have to use hierarchies.
[3:25] You can even think of metadata fields as the top-level terms of your hierarchy.
A doc type will be a top-level term of a hierarchy. Maybe an asset type
would be a top-level term, or maybe a channel, a region, a language, or any of
those other types of attributes. Those can all be considered top-level terms of
the taxonomy. Really, all of the metadata is an expression of the taxonomy.
Henrik: [4:01] Makes complete sense. Seth, what advice would you give to DAM
professionals or people aspiring to be DAM professionals?
Seth: [4:12] Well, I think the best advice that I can give would be to get experience,
even with projects that are nonprofit organizations or organizations
that don’t have a lot of money, so that you can build your skills. Get a broad
understanding of information architecture, including things like wire frame development,
metadata schemas, and taxonomy development. [4:41] Look at the
semantics of your structures, and try to understand a little bit about library
science. Library science is the core foundation for all of these organizing principles.
I heard someone recently say that a Digital Asset Management system is a
Metadata Management System that does fancy things. I totally agree with that.
[5:04] You really do need to understand metadata structures and metadata schemas,
and understand things like Dublin Core. Look at the different ways that you
can organize those assets using various types of technologies. Look at how the
various technologies leverage organizing principles and leverage information
architecture.
[5:28] I would get some very practical experience, though. Find a nonprofit organization
that doesn’t have a lot of resources, that would like to get your elbow
grease and your hard work to help them fix a system or help them organize their
assets. That’s a great way to build your resume.
[5:50] If you’re more experienced, definitely broaden your expertise by looking
at some training in library science and metadata schemas. Have a good, broad
understanding of the technologies.
Henrik: [6:04] Great idea. Well, thanks, Seth.
Seth: [6:07] Thank you.
Henrik: [6:08] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.

Related Articles

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today