Another DAM Podcast

Audio about Digital Asset Management

Category Archives: Project Management


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Another DAM Podcast interview with Jane Glicksman on Digital Asset Management

Jane Glicksman discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does an organization focused on the film industry use Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Jane Glicksman.
Jane, how are you?
Jane Glicksman: [0:10] I am very well. How about yourself?
Henrik: [0:12] Great. Jane, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Jane: [0:16] I manage the day-to-day operations of our DAM, which currently
contains about 75,000 rare films, stills and portraits, film posters, drawings and
other photographs documenting the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1927 to
the present. [0:32] I developed our metadata schema and data input guidelines.
In addition to overseeing all cataloging, I train the users to troubleshoot and
assist in finding and retrieving assets, and work on the ongoing development of
the digital repository.
[0:49] Right now, actually, we are doing quite a bit of troubleshooting, because
we are trying to install some hot fixes, and there is a lot of testing and QA in
managing of day-to-day DAMs. I oversaw the initial implementation of our DAM
in 2005 and have gone through two upgrades and a complete system migration
in 2009.
Henrik: [1:11] How does an organization focused on the film industry use Digital
Asset Management?
Jane: [1:17] The Academy is an honorary membership organization dedicated to
the advancement of the Art and Science of Motion Pictures. Our DAM supports
the Academy’s mission to preserve the history of motion pictures and to educate
the public about the art and science of moviemaking and also to inspire
film makers and the public through educational programs. [1:38] Our DAM provides
the content for screenings and exhibitions, lecture series, and other programs,
the website, and internally, for publicity and marketing, and of course,
the Academy Awards show. DAM is also available to film scholars, publishers,
students, and to the general public at our public access stations in the Margaret
Herrick Library.
Henrik: [2:00] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Jane: [2:05] I would say hone your project management skills. Develop your
good listening skills and understand and expect that your DAM will evolve as it
becomes more integrated into different business areas in your institution and
anticipate the needs of your users, whose interaction will most definitely evolve
as well. [2:26] You’ll find that, at least I did anyway, in addition to project management
skills and an understanding of metadata, you’ll need to successfully
enlist others to foster collaboration between teams to improve systems and to
demonstrate the value of DAM.
[2:41] Socializing and maintaining DAM and providing value is an ongoing process.
It’s incumbent upon anybody whose managing DAM to really understand
the technology of the product. You may not be an engineer or a programmer,
but I think that you really should understand how things work and how they’re
structured so that you can, first of all, choose a vendor that best suits your requirements
and also to manage the expectations of your users.
[3:09] People want everything. They want a system to do everything in the world,
and you are really there to manage their expectations and yet, provide as much
value as you can. Understanding every vendor has its limitations, every system
has its limitations, but knowing going in will at least allow you to develop something
that best suits your particular institution.
[3:35] I always hear about people talking about metadata, metadata search and
I think that’s really important, understanding your business and not trying to,
when it comes to metadata, force a schema on your business. You really have to
understand and be flexible.
[3:53] Also, be prepared to change things. If you are already using DAM, I think
you’ll find, as time goes by, that your needs change, your workflows change, and
hopefully that you’ll be flexible enough to meet those challenges, and hopefully
your vendor will be able to facilitate that.
Henrik: [4:12] Thanks, Jane.
Jane: [4:13] You’re very welcome.
Henrik: [4:15] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments of questions,
please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Tracy Guza on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • What are the biggest challenges for dealing with creative assets in a DAM system?
  • What advice would you like to share with 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 Tracy Guza. Tracy,
how are you?
Tracy Guza: [0:11] I’m very good. How are you?
Henrik: [0:12] Good. Tracy, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Tracy: [0:16] Currently I work at Corbis. Corbis Images is a stock photo and
various other creative types of format company, and I am part of a small internal
team in editorial photography that creates custom content for a client of ours. I
manage their Digital Asset Management system.
Henrik: [0:41] What are the biggest challenges for dealing with creative assets
in a Digital Asset Management system?
Tracy: [0:45] Well, currently my challenges are somewhat different than previously.
I have worked in Digital Asset Management for some time at a variety
of advertising agencies. I’m pretty used to creative users and how they search.
One of the things I’ve found, over the years, is that the way that a library or
information professional might consider keywording items is not necessarily
the way that an art director or a designer would search for the items. [1:20] It’s
really helpful, as in any case, to do some kind of user analysis to figure out and
to know your clientele, to figure out how your user base is searching for things.
And how to intuitively keyword things and create a vocabulary that’s tailored to
the users, more so than a 100 percent kosher library science management thesaurus
or vocabulary. While structure is lovely and consistency is great and one
of the reasons that a vocabulary is important, that vocabulary can be flexible
and it can be tailored to your users.
[1:57] One of the other huge issues that comes up a lot in creative agencies
is the licensing and rights associated with different creative assets. Whether
they’re images, video clips or audio clips. Usually, especially with stock images,
when an image is purchased, it is purchased for a particular usage if it’s a rights
managed image. That usage can be very specific. It can be something as specific
as, “We’re buying this image once, for three months, for 10 publications in
North America, with a print run up to a million.”
[2:34] If that is not communicated jointly, with the asset, in a way that users can
see and notice, there can be some legal ramifications and infringement can
occur. One of the things that’s important is to look at whatever DAM system is
being used and figure out how you can best flag images or assets that have particular
restrictions. Is there a way to create permissions only for certain users?
[3:04] Is there a way to create an HTML popup that wants people that, “Hey, this
image has some particular restrictions to it. If you’re not using it for X, Y and Z,
you shouldn’t be using it.” Because generally, the users, especially in a creative
agency, aren’t legal professionals. Nor do they have regular access to legal
professionals. But they can get a company in a lot of trouble by using things that
they’re not supposed to use.
[3:35] Often times, especially in the stock industry, the fees for infringing on use
or using something that you haven’t licensed properly, are much higher than
the costs for just licensing the image properly and using it correctly. That’s a
big thing.
Henrik: [3:52] So rights management and permissions management, as far
as licensing and permissions for the use of any asset. That’s a very key thing
to reduce liability as much as possible, as far as appropriate use of assets.
Great point.
Tracy: [4:07] Yes. And what can be challenging is not only educating the users
that licensing restrictions exist. But also helping them, by using the system to
the best of your ability to make it easy for them to discover what the rights are
that are associated with the asset. It shouldn’t be hidden in 64 metadata fields.
It should be easy for them to find out.
Henrik: [4:30] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Tracy: [4:34] It’s interesting. The way that I got into this, originally, was working
at a particular advertising agency. I was doing a lot of project management and
production kinds of things. I was very familiar with the clients and with the workflow
in creative services. So I was asked to do, as a consultant, a freelance project
to organize all of the client assets at the agency. At that time, the workflow
was changing. [5:04] It was right when you were able to buy like four terabytes of
storage really cheap. Suddenly, everybody could use super huge, high-resolution
images.
[5:24] So we had literally file cabinets full of CDs. This is how crazy it was.
Where those images were the high-resolution images that corresponded to the
low-resolution images on the server. No one [laughs] had any way to match anything
up or find anything.
[5:42] So the company purchased a very basic DAM product, and I was asked
to actually put everything in there for the first time. It changed our workflow. It
changed how people needed to use things. I realized at the time, this was about
six or seven years ago, how much I still needed to know.
[6:03] I created a vocabulary on the fly and realized that I needed to know a lot
more about metadata and tried to figure out ways to customize the search fields
and so forth so that we could get a prompt when an image license was about
to expire and stuff like that. I was a little over my head, so what I did was I went
back to library [laughs] school.
[6:27] I got an MLIS , and I found that that program really helped to fill out for me
all of my questions about different kinds of technology, backend database programming
stuff as well as the very basics of SRS [?] vocabulary development and
a lot about metadata. So my advice is not only to network, which is a wonderful
thing, but also to figure out what kind of additional education you may need.
[6:57] There’s something to be said for being in an organization and realizing
that maybe you have the aptitude to organize their assets. There’s another thing
to be said for making sure that you actually can back that up a little bit with
some tangible courses, workshops, or whatever form they take. It really helped
me to formalize the way that I think about how I work on DAM now.
[7:24] That’s my advice, and it seems to be a very much growing field as the
amount of digital assets grows. Certainly companies finally realize the value in
retrieval and the cost effectiveness of allowing people self-service access to
DAM systems. There’s more and more of a need for DAM professionals.
Henrik: [7:43] Very true. Did you want to share your blog with the audience
as well?
Tracy: [7:48] Oh, I would love to. It’s modlibrarian.posterous.com. https://modlibrarian.wordpress.com/
Henrik: [7:55] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics log
onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. 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?

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Alex Struminger on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a DAM need a Project Manager?
  • 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. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Alex Struminger.
Alex, how are you?
Alex Struminger: [0:10] Henrik, good to be with you.
Henrik: [0:12] Great. Alex, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Alex: [0:17] Henrik, let me answer that first by telling you about the Digital Asset
Management project I’ve been working on, which is with the United Nations
Children’s Fund, UNICEF. In this particular project, I am acting as a project manager
and, in some ways, as a facilitator. [0:38] UNICEF uses a number of different
kinds of digital assets, and they’re managed by different groups. Video is a big
part of what our group is doing. That’s something that has spawned a lot of
change in Digital Asset Management over the last couple of years because of
the large file sizes and the increased bandwidth and storage needs for video.
[1:07] We also have more traditional assets. We have branding assets with logos,
stationary and a lot of those kinds of things. We have publications assets,
photos and that kind of thing.
[1:21] By far and largest is the video, and we use the DAM in a couple of ways.
We use it as an archiving system. We use it for providing access to the archive
of video and other assets. We also use it as a distribution system probably more
than anything else.
[1:46] We put the videos up there. The group that owns the assets, manages the
assets and the systems puts it up there. Then, the global organization is able to
access those.
[1:56] That’s probably the biggest use we find for the DAM, is just getting those
assets into one central place, letting people know they’re there, and then using
it as a distribution vehicle for getting the videos to all of the end users.
Henrik: [2:12] Excellent. Why does a DAM need a project manager?
Alex: [2:16] That’s a great question, Henrik. I would say that many people would
agree that most technology platforms, at least in their design, implementation
and roll out, are going to need some project management. [2:31] If nothing else
to sort out the resources, schedules, budgets and things like that, and keep
everything on track.
[2:40] What I find is that there’s another part of project management that comes
much more into play with these technology platforms with lots of users. That’s
why I mentioned that I’m a project manager and, in some sense, a facilitator.
[2:59] There’s a social aspect to DAM as there is to any network technology
platform, whether it’s lots of end users all connected by wires and other means
of communication, emails, instant messaging, telephone lines. All working together.
The biggest hurdles project managers talk about are risk and risk aversion.
I like to talk to you more about ensuring success.
[3:31] The success of a project is not, simply, to get it designed and implemented
on the technical side, and then rolled out to the user base. Unless
people, actually, use it, you’re not going to see success.
[3:48] In some sense, to use a military analogy, you might talk about the difference
between a “shock and awe” campaign. We can roll out SharePoint on a
Friday, and when people show up to work on Monday, that’s not going to make
them SharePoint users. You may accomplish the same thing that “shock and
awe” accomplishes which is you could, probably, befuddle them.
[4:10] It’s more a little bit like counterinsurgency. We’re wanting to win hearts
and minds so there’s a social aspect. You want to put down your big guns and
put on your social scientist hat. Say, “OK . Let’s try to understand the culture in
the organization.
[4:27] Who are the people, who are the influencers in the network? Who’s going
to driver adoption? How are we going to get people to adopt this system into
their workflow?”
[4:37] Hopefully, we’ll show a lot of value for it which is a good driver for adoption.
Word of mouth and having people influence other people to change the
way they’re doing things, today, to use a new system tomorrow is the thing
that’s most likely to drive success.
Henrik: [4:56] Excellent.
Alex: [4:57] We talked a little about socializing the technology. Adding the
people in the process and showing value as part of the project management
formula, rather than simply rolling out the technology and saying, “Here you go.
You may not have realized you wanted this, but here it is.”
Henrik: [5:18] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Alex: [5:23] I think the best advice I could give, based on this experience, is
think a lot about that socializing process. The success of the project is definitely
going to be driven by people’s adoption. [5:40] You want to identify those key
influencers. You want to start with a group of stakeholders who are motivated.
People who are willing to accept and get involved in the project early.
[5:53] If you can get them involved as early as possible, even if the identification
of the system and the vendor so they feel a sense of investment with it, then
you’ll have a much more loyal group of people working with you going forward.
Then build it.
[6:07] I always advocate going slowly. Not a big “shock and awe” campaign but
starting in the social systems with the groups that you can convert and win over,
and building on that bit-by-bit is a much more sustainable approach. That’s a
big part of what I would say.
[6:29] The other thing that I would bring up which has less to do with project
management but I think something that in DAM systems is particularly important,
is information architecture, taxonomy, and the metadata that drives
the system.
[6:46] Make sure that you get the specialists on board, at least from the design
and roll out phase, to get those things right. I think that will provide the support
on the back end that will help show the value of you’re trying to win those
hearts and minds out in the company and in the field.
Henrik: [7:02] Excellent. Thanks Alex.
Alex: [7:05] Henrik, it’s been a pleasure to be with you.
Henrik: [7:07] For more on Digital Asset Management log on to
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.

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

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Mary Yurkovic on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • When you have many different photographers using different digital cameras, is there a preferred standard format for digital photographs you would recommend?
  • 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 am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Mary Yurkovic.
Mary, how are you?
Mary Yurkovic: [0:10] I am fine, Henrik. Thanks for having me on your podcast
today.
Henrik: [0:14] No problem. Mary, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Mary: [0:17] I’m a consultant and adviser to organizations struggling with
Digital Asset Management and how Digital Asset Management works within
their organization. Additionally, one of my ongoing projects is working with
Createasphere in educating the community, similar to Another DAM Blog. [0:36]
We’re really trying to educate the community face-to-face and bring some problems
and issues that we have in this space to the forefront, and working with
vendors in this space and service providers in this space to help us come up
with some great solutions.
Henrik: [0:53] When you have many different photographers using different
digital cameras by different manufacturers, you may have experience with this,
is there a preferred standard format for digital photographs that you would
recommend?
Mary: [1:09] That’s a good question. Getting creatives to decide upon one
standard or even come to a common ground can always be very challenging.
Sometimes you have political issues to deal with, and sometimes you’ll have
a lack of understanding or knowledge of file format. [1:28] Whatever the case
may be, it’s extremely important if not critical is to have some sort of standard.
The standard that I think I’ve seen work fast with some of the organizations I’ve
worked with is the DNG format.
Henrik: [1:43] So instead of using the RAW formats that vary actually amongst
all the different camera manufacturers for the most part, you’re recommending
DNG or the Digital Negative format from Adobe?
Mary: [1:53] Yes. There may be a few steps you have to take to get to it, but the
goal is to preserve as much of the camera data and as much color information
as possible from the very beginning. [2:10] As I said, whatever the file format
you’re using, just pick a standard. I think it’s much easier with digital photography,
then it is with video. So within your organization that should be easier.
Henrik: [2:27] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Mary: [2:33] My advice for future Digital Asset Management professionals and
current Digital Asset Management professionals is to learn as many aspects as
you can about the Digital Asset Management arena, whether it’s project management,
library science, categorizing your data, digital work flows. [2:57] Learn
about video and how to deal with audio files and formats, document management,
rights management, storage, digital preservation. There are many, many
more areas too, but learn as much as you can about the other areas.
[3:17] Another very important area to consider for Digital Asset Management
professionals is to consider the human factor and how change management
affects implementing a Digital Asset Management project or process and how
humans interact with assets themselves.
[3:38] Whatever area you chose to focus on, just keep an open mind and explore
some of the adjacent areas and the adjacent technologies. For the future Digital
Asset Management professionals, this is a really, really exciting time. We’re
starting to see some really great technology improve and prove itself to organizations
and see the real potential with our digital data and digital assets.
[4:07] We’re really at the beginning of what can really happen with Digital Asset
Management and adjacent technology. I think the future for it is going to be
very exciting and challenging and rewarding. At the same time, especially when
you see what’s happening with some of the search and speech recognition,
there are improving techniques for preserving physical content.
[4:39] I think all of that is very exciting, and we’re really just starting to touch
upon the surface of that. Digital Asset Management and Digital Asset
Management community itself, how we deal with Digital Asset Management on
a day to day base just in our personal lives with iTunes, Pandora, go to YouTube
and look up a silly video to make you laugh, those are all forms of Digital Asset
Management.
[5:07] As I said, this is really only a fraction of how we use Digital Asset
Management on a day to day basis. For many organizations Digital Asset
Management seems to be mission critical, not just leaving it up to the technology
department to implement and let them steer this and leaving it upon them
to do upgrades and to look at the next capability. Or leaving it up to them or
getting frustrated because it hasn’t achieved its ROI status yet.
[5:40] Some of the trends, as I said, I’m seeing, is indeed many of these organizations
are making Digital Asset Management a vital mission in the way they do
their business. Which, to the delight of many of the future DAMsters, is taking
it a step further to do even more, automate work flow, the rights process, the
speech recognition, the better search capabilities. The list goes on.
[6:06] There’s so many additional capabilities of Digital Asset Management.
What’s really exciting is the really good ones, we haven’t even thought of yet.
It’s the next DAMsters who will be thinking of that for us.
Henrik: [6:20] Great. Well, thank you, Mary.
Mary: [6:22] Thank you for having me.
Henrik: [6:24] No problem. 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, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

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