How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does a media company 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 Clayton Dutton.
Clayton, how are you? Clayton Dutton: [0:10] I’m fine today, thank you for having me on the show. Henrik: [0:12] You’re welcome. Clayton, how are you involved with Digital
Asset Management? Clayton: [0:16] Well, at Discovery Channel we have moved over the past few
years into almost a purely file based working environment. We still have a few
processes to migrate into file based workflows, but as such, we’ve really migrated
our entire way of doing business from a physical asset methodology
more to file based methodology. [0:36] Specifically dealing with the incoming
deliverables, file based receipt of material, both camera masters and program
originals in a file based manner, as well as sending those files out of our facility. Henrik: [0:51] Great. How does a media company such as yours use the DAM? Clayton: [0:55] Well, for us it’s about knowing where our content is and being
able to expose it to as many people, and as wide an area, as we possibly can.
That obviously requires a lot of moving pieces, specifically bandwidth, that you
get files in and out of a facility. That bandwidth’s not going to do you any good
if you don’t know what you have, and where it is, and how to expose it. [1:17]
Digital Asset Management and Discovery’s viewpoint is really about that. It’s
about making sure we know where everything is, what it’s named, as much information
as we can find about it through the metadata, and provide that information,
and push that information out to the user community so that they have to
mine for information, to try to expose as much as we can to them.
[1:40] That allows us then to be in really good communication, and collaborate in
a much larger than the isolated workflows of the past. Henrik: [1:51] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Clayton: [1:56] Those of you looking to get into the Digital Asset Management
field, I’d say you’re…Congratulations. You are definitely future-proofing yourself.
Digital Asset Management is exploding right now, not in just television, but in
all businesses throughout the world. [2:12] Knowledge and information is power,
so to have that information, to understand as much as you can about specific
assets, whether it’s secret intelligence, or video files, or audio files, or tax records,
it’s extremely important.
[2:30] As information becomes more digital, as an entire way of doing business,
it’s really important that people are able to find information, key information,
about their job and about their company’s products as quickly as possible.
[2:44] The traditional lines of library storage and cataloging and things like that
are all being turned upside down. Adding fresh young minds into the field, it’s
a really exciting field right now. Those on the vendor side, I would recommend
keep looking to work with other solutions.
[3:04] Really advanced web methods or API set that you can publish out to other
technology providers and solutions providers really helps position your product
to be out in the forefront. Henrik: [3:16] Excellent. Thank you, Clayton. Clayton: [3:19] It’s been my pleasure. Henrik: [3:20] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
What advice would you give to DAM Professionals or people aspiring to be a DAM Professional?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Heather Hedden.
Heather, how are you? Heather Hedden: [0:09] Fine, thanks. Thanks for inviting me. Henrik: [0:12] Heather, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Heather: [0:15] Actually I’m a taxonomist. That’s closely related. I create taxonomies
which are usually structured sets of terms used for metadata to tag or
classify content item. The content can be digital assets or text documents. I’m
involved in more than just Digital Asset Management as I see it. [0:36] I originally
got into the field from a background of indexing with a company that has now
become Cengage Learning, indexes, reference materials for libraries, magazine
and newspaper articles, pamphlets, maps, charts, and images too. I’ve worked
as a taxonomist in both full-time positions and as a consultant or contractor. I’m
in between jobs at the moment.
[1:03] My most recent job was as the taxonomy manager in a wind energy company
based in Boston. There I developed a better nested folder for the hierarchical
classification of content to better support browsing. I also developed
taxonomies with numerous synonyms for auto classification of content to better
support search.
[1:24] A third taxonomy project included metadata for manually tagging content
was also in the plans. Although many documents there were text files, they also
had CAD drawings, topographical maps, PowerPoint presentations, and image
files such as many photos of wind farm locations and wind turbines.
[1:46] The taxonomy covered lots of terms dealing with all these different documents,
technical, legal, financial, covering all areas of the business. I’ve also
been involved in developing policies or guidelines for tagging or classifying
content with a taxonomy which is an important component of taxonomy work. Henrik: [2:07] Heather, you recently wrote a book called “The Accidental Taxonomist.” What inspired you to write this book? Heather: [2:12] I’m glad you asked. I also teach a continuing education workshop.
It’s a five week workshop through Simmons College Graduate School
of Library and Information Science. It’s an introduction to taxonomy. I’ve been
doing that for a couple of years. [2:27] I got an inquiry if I would teach a second,
more advanced class. I just got to thinking about how much work that would be
because it’s ongoing every other month or something. Since I had accumulated
some other written materials and giving presentations, I thought maybe it would
better to put this all into a book that would serve both those at an introductory
level and at a more advanced level if you had a lot of material together.
[2:54] As a backup I had also been doing kind of freelance side work back to the
book indexing, writing indexes to nonfiction books. I’ve been reading a lot of
different nonfiction books, some of them professional books. I thought, “Well,
maybe I could write a book too.”
[3:11] I consider my background pretty comprehensive in both that I created
taxonomies used by human manual indexers, taggers, and those for auto classifications.
I’ve also created taxonomies for more commercial, published content
and those that are for internal enterprise content.
[3:34] With that kind of broad background I felt pretty qualified to write a book
on this. Some people have written book that are more narrow just for enterprise
taxonomy. When I looked around, there really wasn’t that much out there just on
taxonomy today.
[3:52] There’s another book that’s more on knowledge management or some
that are focused on controlled vocabularies more for wide learning focus areas.
It was a need that needed filling. Henrik: [4:05] Heather, is there a website where you can get more information
about this? Heather: [4:09] Oh yes. It’s www.accidentaltaxonomist.com which has a lot of
information about the book, the table of contents, the index, the introduction,
forward. It also has all the websites mentioned throughout the book, the URLs,
and they are hyperlinked. You can actually get a lot of information that I have in
my book without reading it, although I hope you do. Readers can go do that. Henrik: [4:41] What advice would you give to DAM professionals or people aspiring
to be a DAM professional? Heather: [4:47] Considering I’m a little bit on the sidelines of the DAM profession
myself being a taxonomist, I do see similarities there and I recommend this
for people going into taxonomy as well or other fields such as content management.
[5:01] It involves having more of a broader skill set and experience,
so combining a DAM background with, perhaps, taxonomy management or
content management experience or also indexing background that I have had
or experience with maybe search technologies or more of a technology background
and perhaps a subject area expertise, so something to some specialty
area to distinguish one’s self.
[5:38] Also, I think people should be open to any industry. You might think of
maybe traditional media based industries, but all kinds of companies, all kinds
of industries now have a growing core list of different types of assets. I never
thought I’d end up in the wind energy industry. Keep your eyes open to anything
and network a lot. Henrik: [6:04] Great idea. Thanks, Heather. Heather: [6:07] OK , you’re welcome. It was nice to talk to you. Henrik: [6:10] No problem. For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
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.
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.
[0:07] Today we’re speaking with Jill Hurst-Wahl. Jill, how are you? Jill Hurst-Wahl: [0:10] I’m good. Henrik: [0:12] Jill, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Jill: [0:16] Well, I don’t actually do Digital Asset Management. But in my workshops
and in my blogging and in my teaching, I try to make people aware of
the need to think long-term. Not to just focus on the short-term health of their
digital assets, but to think about which digital assets they might want to have
access to long-term. Then how they’re going to make those things accessible in
the long-term. Henrik: [0:52] Makes sense. You teach at Syracuse University’s School of
Information Studies. What is different about what you teach there? Jill: [1:00] I think many of the library science programs have very similar curriculum
because of the American Library’s Association accreditation. But the
iSchools are all different, and Syracuse University has an iSchool, School for
Information Studies. We have six degree programs. [1:25] I think what makes us
a bit different is our, not only being library science, but also our classes around
information management and telecommunications and network management.
[1:38] We think more, perhaps, about the management of information, which
includes what’s going to happen to it long-term. In library science, or library and
information science, that thinking comes in the digital libraries area.
[2:08] But you would get, perhaps, similar and different thinking about the topic
from students and their information management program who are future information
managers, not necessarily working in the library archive or museum, but
working in businesses throughout the world. Henrik: [2:27] Makes sense. You have a popular blog. Tell us more about this. Jill: [2:32] I have a blog called “Digitization 101,” started in 2004, and started
as a way to make people aware of what I do and my thinking around digitization.
[2:48] I do consulting, helping people get their digitization programs off the
ground. Often times, just helping them with their planning process, but helping
them sometimes acquire equipment, think about actual process, implement,
find vendors, find whatever they need to get their projects up and going, their
programs up and going. Because these are not short-term events.
[3:18] The blog was started as a way of letting more people know about what
I do and what I think. Over the years, it’s become something I’m really known
for, having this blog that talks about digitization. I talk about all aspects of
digitization.
[3:38] The name “Digitization 101,” if you’re in college, a 101 class is really basic.
But the blog has gone beyond being just talking about basic digitization and
talking about the things that we’re all focused on in digitizing and making sure
that our digital assets are available long-term.
[4:04] I’ve got, I don’t remember how many blog posts. I think over 2,000
blog posts at this point. I used to blog once a day. Because I now teach full-
time, I don’t blog as frequently. But a new series that I’ve started is Way Back
Wednesdays. A way of kind of resurfacing things that are in the archives of
“Digitization 101” that are still relevant and making people aware of those older
blog posts. Trying to keep those older blog posts alive just the way we try to
keep our other digital assets alive. Henrik: [4:48] Smart. What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals
and people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Jill: [4:56] Well, I think for the people that aspiring to be DAM professionals, and
by the way, I love the acronym DAM. Henrik: [5:04] Me too. Jill: [laughter] [5:05] For people aspiring to be a DAM professional is to think
about how to talk about it in ways that don’t necessarily use the words Digital
Asset Management. I think that’s true about digitization, too. In our field, we
tend to rely on jargon. Words are very meaningful to us, not so meaningful to
other people. [5:38] I think, especially if you’re trying to get organizations to
understand how to keep their information alive for the long term, we need to
talk about it in ways that make sense to them. Talk about the value of their information
over the long term. Why they would want, in five, ten years, have access
to information that they’re creating today and then how they would insure that
their information or the data is available for five, 10 years.
[6:17] Using stories to get our points across, but doing it in a way that doesn’t
rely on our terminology as DAM professionals. But the terminology of our organizations,
our users, our colleagues, now whoever it is that we’re trying to persuade
that they need to do something now to insure the life of their information
in the future. Henrik: [6:45] Well, thank you, Jill. [6:46] For more about Digital Asset
Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 