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Another DAM Podcast interview with David Klee on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does the broadcasting organization 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: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Dave Klee. Dave, how are you?

Dave Klee: [0:09] I’m doing well, Henrik. How are you?

Henrik: [0:10] Good. Dave, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Dave: [0:14] Well, I actually read one of your earlier blog postings about making your elevator pitch, so I’ll give you mine so far. I’m a systems engineer, working in media asset management at NBC, so most of what I do focuses around organizing video files for NBC News. [0:30] Whenever you see old footage that shows of up of, maybe, a politician saying something contradictory, or some major event that’s happened in the past, I work on the systems that help people within the company find that stuff and put it into stories that they’re working on for the news. [0:45] As you can imagine, those systems are pretty big and complicated, so they need a lot of attention, and I work on a team that helps support them and figure out how to make them work better.

Henrik: [0:53] How does a broadcasting organization use Digital Asset Management?

Dave: [0:56] Well, there are a lot of uses within NBC, and I’ll only speak to the ones I know about. There are some things on the distribution side, obviously, that I don’t work with very much. People when we’re done making a TV show or a program, we’ll ship it off to someone else, and usually in many different formats, and a variety of different ways, so we have systems to facilitate that. [1:17] Also, when making TV programming, we’re working a lot with collateral material or things that would support that programming, so you might have graphic design for a website, or DVD material, or a billboard, or an advertisement. We have systems that help facilitate that, that I don’t work with very much. [1:33] What I do is really work with NBC News, and when I say, “News,” I mean “Nightly News,” anything that happens on MSNBC, the cable channel, the “Today Show,” and then some of our longer shows, the news magazines like “Dateline” and “Rock Center with Brian Williams.” [1:49] In these systems, there are really two major things we’re looking to accomplish with Digital Asset Management. First and foremost, it’s to enable daily editorial workflow, to let people get through the day, and also to build a longterm catalog and archive. I can briefly talk about what those mean, and I think it’s very interesting, because there are some tensions between those. [2:11] First of all, for a daily editorial workflow, it’s a big place, so there are a lot of people working on a lot of different things, as you can imagine, and we need systems that can tie people together, to allow them to collaborate, and share information, and share core footage, underlying what they’re working on. [2:30] A lot of times, things will end up being used across our different platforms. We might have a story that’s developing throughout the day on the cable channel that will incorporate a small piece with the nightly news, or we might have a small piece on the nightly news that ends up becoming a larger piece on one of the news magazine shows like Rock Center. [2:49] We need systems that help people work together, share footage, and we have producers working with editors. Sometimes, we have multiple video editors working on the same project. We just need systems that really facilitate that workflow and get people working together. [3:05] On the other side of things, we’re working on a long-term catalog and archive. Like, I’d imagine many broadcast organizations, we started with a lot of footage on film. Over time, this footage on film got migrated to videotape. Over time, the old videotapes got migrated to new videotapes. Now, we’re taking these videotapes and starting to put them into a centralized system, a centralized repository so that people can find them in the future. [3:36] As we’re doing that, we’re working on cleaning up the metadata because over time, metadata entry was done by many different people and manipulated in many different ways when things moved from one system to the other as you can imagine. There’s a lot of metadata cleanup that’s done during this process. [3:54] Then, there’s new footage, too, that’s constantly coming in. A lot of the new stuff that comes into the building comes in on satellite feeds from all over the world, and so we need some people who are sitting there adding metadata and cataloging things that are coming in in real time. [4:08] This footage is used both in future programming and sometimes, it’s sold to other people because one of the things we can do is license this footage. We need to keep track of rights and what we own and what we’re able sell to other people so when people are making other documentaries or TV shows or films, they may come to us looking for footage. [4:31] I think these two different things, the long-term cataloging and the short-term workflow, are really interesting because they have such different needs. I think there are really a few key conflicts or tensions that we have to think about and work on when we’re trying to support these systems and when we’re trying to fix them and build new ones. [4:54] One of the main ones is accessibility versus security. For daily workflow, we really want assets to be as accessible as possible. We want people to be able to get whatever they might need to get their job done, but in the long-term, you generally want to carefully want to manage your permission structure and make sure that people only get access to the stuff that they should have access to and prevent people from doing things that might be bad like accidentally deleting assets or changing metadata when they shouldn’t. [5:25] If you think about it in terms of a physical place, a building with doors, for the daily workflow, you might really want everyone to have the doors open and people just get wherever they need to go. But, for this long-term archive, you want carefully give out keys and carefully control which keys open which doors, so people only get access to the stuff that is appropriate. [5:47] That’s a real tension. Another big one is speed versus safety. For the daily workflow, you want people to get access to things as quickly as possible, and you want that to be a seamless process. We need systems that are fast enough to be able to grab something while it’s recording, put it into a project, and then ship it off to be played back on the news. [6:09] But that process flies in the face of building systems that are extra safe, because the safer systems aren’t necessarily the fastest systems. When you have a long-term archive, if you really want it to be safe, you want to put things on the safest media you can, but often the safest media is the slowest. [6:26] Another big tension for us is flexibility versus reliability, or maybe flexibility versus consistency. A lot of different people in the building, and you want to allow people to work the ways that they work best so that they can get their jobs done. That means you need to be flexible in daily workflows, but at the same time you really want to produce consistent results for this archive. You want metadata that’s full and complete, and you want things to be very consistent for the long term. [6:54] That’s a big tension for us. The last one I’ll mention is usability versus quality. Ideally, and this is very true for video files, you want the highest possible quality video file in your archive, but there’s a price to that. The highest quality video files not only can be very big, which makes your system much more expensive, because you have to build in extra storage and extra bandwidth to accommodate such big files. [7:22] It can also be complicated when you’re dealing with the highest quality files, because often these are original files that came right out of a camera, and many different cameras use many different types of video files. The video world is very fragmented when it comes to types of video. If you put the original video file, which is arguably the highest quality, into your archive, you may be dealing with a file format that doesn’t exist in a few years, or a file format that’s very complicated to get into the system that want to use it in. [7:55] You end up with these very complicated workflows that make the system less usable. By streamlining a system on just a few codecs, a few types of video, and making them compressed or standardized in a certain way, it can make the system much easier to use, much easier to build. But that’s a real tension that we’re always trying to figure out, because the archival aspect demands quality, and the workflow aspect really demands usability. [8:25] These tensions, I’d imagine, are in a lot of different technologies, but I think they’re just amplified in a big broadcast news environment, because there’s a huge difference between how the fastest system would perform and the safest system. Small choices you make in different types of video formats would demand a whole different type of architecture. [8:45] Really, we need, for the broadcast world, systems that can serve both masters. We need a short-term fast and flexible workflow enabling tool, and we need a long-term, secure, high quality, centralized repository. Both those things need to happen, and I think that provides some interesting challenges and some opportunities.

Henrik: [9:05] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Dave: [9:09] For people who are DAM professionals, I’ve actually listened to some of your other podcasts, I wouldn’t necessarily purport to have any advice to offer them. I’ve gotten some useful tips from the ones I’ve listened to. But, for people looking to get into it, or looking in from the outside, I can tell you there are a few things that have really helped organize my thinking around Digital Asset Management since I’ve gotten into it. [9:31] One of them is about these choices that you have to make, and understanding that Digital Asset Management, once you really get into it, I think is about making some tough choices, often between two different things that are right, but they can’t both be right at the same time. Successful organizations are the ones that, at the outset, do a lot of self-analysis, really look at what the organization needs and wants, and take times to discuss these tradeoffs, because not only does that help you build a better system, but I think that helps you build consensus and set expectations about what your DAM will do and what it won’t do well. [10:12] The second thing is, as a technologist, I’m constantly trying to remind myself that technology doesn’t always have all the answers for us. Those answers are really within the organization or within workflows. [10:26] Rather than just adopting whatever new technology comes out and then trying to force that into the workflow for the users, I think it’s a much more powerful way to work when you centralize on your workflows, how people want to work and how your organization wants to be. Let that drive your technological decisions. [10:46] Then, I think those technologies can really fall into place. You make those decisions from a place of much more power. [10:54] The final thing I might share is that I really believe Digital Asset Management is a journey, not a destination, per se. There are a lot of vendors that I think will encourage this big bang idea of you buy something off the shelf, you implement it and you put all your stuff inside. Bang, your assets are managed, problem is solved. [11:16] I think the more you do things with Digital Asset Management, the more you realize that’s not the case. It’s an ongoing process. Even once you’ve got a very good system in place, over time it’s going to need to adapt to new people, to new workflows, new technologies, new ideas. A good system is going to do that for a very long time, and that’s OK .

Once I stopped looking at Digital Asset Management as a problem that could be solved and started looking at it as a process that could be managed, that really helped me, not only make some better decisions, but set some better expectations within the organization and help build systems that just made more sense.

[11:37] Once I stopped looking at Digital Asset Management as a problem that could be solved and started looking at it as a process that could be managed, that really helped me, not only make some better decisions, but set some better expectations within the organization and help build systems that just made more sense. [11:57] For people starting out or looking at this process, I think those are some things that have helped me ground my thinking.

Henrik: [12:04] Well, thanks, Dave.

Dave: [12:05] Thank you. It has been a pleasure.

Henrik: [12:06] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Joel Warwick on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How long does it take to implement Digital Asset Management within an organization?
  • Why does it take this long to get it working within the organization? What is involved?
  • 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 Joel Warwick. Joel,
how are you?
Joel Warwick: [0:09] I’m good, and how are you?
Henrik: [0:11] I’m good. Joel, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Joel: [0:14] I’ve been consulting in this field for almost 10 years now. Primarily,
I’ve done most of my work with end-use firms, firms that are implementing DAM
in one way or another. I’ve also done some work for the technology vendors,
both in DAM and in the auxiliary space, helping them with their strategy. [0:32]
Especially as the proliferation of SAAS-based services have come out there,
DAM vendors have had a challenge figuring out how to meet the needs of hosted type
implementations while still serving firms that are looking for the on site,
enterprise implementation.
Henrik: [0:49] How long does it take to implement Digital Asset Management
within an organization?
Joel: [0:53] That’s a loaded question. It depends on how you look at what
implementation means. If we’re just talking about implementing the software,
some organizations, it can happen in a few weeks. [1:06] I would argue when I
talk about implementation, the goal that I propose with my clients is, “When are
you going to actually be able to take advantage of new and improved business
processes?”
[1:20] What I mean by that is, “Why do we implement enterprise systems in the
first place?” It’s not because of some feature or function that they have. It’s because
we want to change our business processes in some way that benefits us,
whether it’s cost savings or lighting up a new revenue channel, what have you.
[1:36] In order to change those business processes, there are a lot of other
pieces, other than just implementing the software. Most of my work has been
helping clients through that. That takes a lot longer than just implementing the
software and training users on it.
[1:53] There are a lot of pieces that really have very little to do with the software.
These are issues of what I call “operational design,” which is a big catchall that
covers everything from organizational alignment, to detailed workflow planning.
[2:09] It really depends on the size and complexity of the organization. I would
argue that you’re looking at, at a minimum, a few months to be up and running,
where you say, “We used to do it this way. Now we do it this other way, with the
benefit of this new technology.”
[2:27] The technology itself doesn’t make that change happen. That’s a misconception
that a lot of people fall into. Even after doing this for a long time, I still
tend to fall into that, too. It’s so attractive to think, “We get this thing installed,
then we’ll be able to do this, this new way and it’s going to be great.”…
[2:45] Unfortunately, that change has to be programmatically implemented.
There’s a lot of upfront work that has to happen before the software actually
gets implemented. In some organizations, honestly, it takes years.
[2:59] That’s not to say that they don’t get benefit earlier on. They might get
benefit after three months or six months. But, the real change that they’re looking
for, and the ROI that they’re looking for when they decide to implement
DAM, may be a couple years out.
Henrik: [3:15] Why does it take this long to get it working within an organization?
What’s involved?
Joel: [3:23] When I talk about operational design…I’ve presented about this
quite a bit, as you know, and written articles about it as well. I’ll throw out some
components that are what people, especially an IT group, wouldn’t typically
think of as part of an enterprise system implementation. [3:41] Things like standards,
workflow design, digital rights models, organizational alignment, all the
capture and migration that have to go on, capturing assets and migrating them
from existing systems. Also, the appropriate scoping can be a real challenge in
figuring out, “What content are we going to put in this thing? What users and
what workflows are going to be included?”
[4:06] People oftentimes don’t have that much patience, especially executive
sponsors. You want to show value right up front, so you want to try to figure out,
“What content do we get in this thing now?” and, “What workflows do we light
up using this new system that are going to show some benefit, but at the same
time isn’t everything under the sun?”
[4:25] That’s how most organizations look at this. They go, “We’re going to throw
everything in here and we’re going to use it for everything.” Unfortunately,
you can’t do that all at once. Just the disruption it would cause makes business
impossible. Staging it appropriately by getting the right user and asset scope,
that’s an exercise in and of itself.
[4:44] In terms of where a lot of the time is, I would actually say that the organizational
alignment piece is the trickiest piece. That can be for a number of reasons.
It could be because you have an organization that’s very fragmented, and
you have groups that have been fairly autonomous up until this point.
[5:03] The model is, “We’re all going to start sharing stuff. We’ll be able to reuse
content.” If those groups aren’t already oriented towards that type kind of work,
there’s going to be a challenge redesigning those business processes.
[5:16] Sometimes it’s not political, at all. It’s just that the groups don’t know that
much about each other, or they’re sharing very little content and there’s an
expectation that that’s going to change overnight. We know how organizations
are. It doesn’t matter what the change is, that type of fundamental operational
change isn’t going to happen overnight.
[5:35] But the most important piece is actually having people working on that
specific problem, going in and understanding the workflows of both groups,
looking at where they interact, designing those interaction points and in particular
the standards, the policies, and the practices that have to change.
[5:51] Just to give you a very specific example, a lot of times let’s say that there’s
a print group, some kind of print publications, whether it’s marketing or publishing,
and there’s the web group. They say, “Why doesn’t the web group have
access to all the images that the print group has? They might as well. We’ll
figure out the rights issues and whatnot.”
[6:13] But the thing is, the web group has not been acquiring their content.
Suddenly, they’re being told, “You have to go look at the print group’s images
first before you go off and buy your other images.” What’s the policy going to
be? This is where you could get into a political issue. Even if it’s not political, you
still could just get into an issue of, “This isn’t the right content for us.”
[6:33] Someone actually has to do an assessment of whether that policy is going
to work. Then, once you’ve established it, there’s the actual enforcement of the
policies. Is this going to be a really hard rule where they really can’t go off and
buy new images as they have been? Or is it going to be more flexible as they
figure out how to do it? It’s just one specific example, but you can imagine in a
lot of organizations that that’s not a minor issue.
[6:59] Because it can get political, it involves people in those organizations at
more senior levels than just what you would look at normally for an implementation.
The head of the business unit, the print business unit for instance, probably
has to talk to the head of the web operations or the online unit to figure out
where that balance is going to be.
[7:20] That’s one of the reasons that involving the right people upfront in getting
that organizational support is really, really important because when you’re
way down the road in a project and you’re trying to figure out the metadata
model so you can get the system turned on in two months, that’s not the time
to run into that snag and say, “Uh-oh. We have to involve all these more senior
people” because you know what happens then.
[7:42] It goes into a bucket of conflict resolution. The solution that comes out of
it may not be the best one for the system or for the operations. It may just be
that someone’s trying to put out this fire so to speak. So getting them engaged
upfront is really important.
Henrik: [7:57] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Joel: [8:00] I think the challenges right now is that the space is so fragmented
and complex, even in nature. When people say “digital media,” that’s all over
the map right now. I think that’s the real trick, is to understand the space, who
the players are both in terms of the technology but also firms that can help
organizations whether it’s consulting firms or system integration firms or a professional
services group from the vendors themselves. [8:29] Then, understanding
how to leverage those without just dumping tons and tons of money into it
because that model just doesn’t work anymore. The big consulting firms come
in and say, “We’re going to hang out with you for two years, and it’s going to
cost $2 million.” Nobody has budgets for that kind of thing anymore, which is
probably all for the better.
[8:47] There are a lot of opportunities for people that have some experience like
yourself, managing content operations if you want to call it that, or digital media
services organizations to go out again to help other firms if that’s what they’re
looking to do.
Henrik: [9:01] Thanks, Joel. For more on Digital Asset Management log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with John Dougherty on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How do you figure out the business value of Digital Asset Management for your organization?
  • 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 John Dougherty.
John, how are you?
John Dougherty: [0:09] Hi, Henrik. Nice to be with you today.
Henrik: [0:11] You, too. John, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
John: [0:15] I’ve been involved for a number of years. I was part of the original
committee that our CEO convened to do a top bottom assessment of our technology.
Helped by an outside company, DPCI, we did that. We decided that
one of the things that we needed to do is to acquire an enterprise-wide DAM.
[0:33] Then I was put in charge of the workgroup task with choosing the DAM
technology. We ended up choosing North Plains TeleScope, which we then piloted
in 2006, and went ahead and implemented in 2007. I was in charge of the
implementation in change management teams, and finally in charge of ongoing
operations. This was also part of my responsibility for Content Management
Systems in general.
Henrik: [0:55] How do you figure out the business value of Digital Asset
Management for your organization?
John: [1:00] Henrik, I’m so glad that you put that in terms of business value and
not ROI , because I think a lot of organizations rush to the ROI , stepping over
qualitative advantages. In my opinion, you start with the qualitative advantages,
and then you conclude with the quantitative advantages. [1:17] You figure out
how a DAM can improve the organization. How it can strengthen it. How it can
add core competency. Eventually, what you end up with is lots of different avenues
for savings. But, I think if you lead with that, it makes a mistake, because
then the focus is, “How many jobs are we going to save?”
[1:36] The translation to the people you’re trying to implement DAM with is,
“How many people can we get rid of?” I think that’s not where you want to be
when you’re assessing the value of a DAM.
[1:45] In terms of discovering value, I’m a very big proponent of leading with use
cases. I think that working out with each business unit, and each part of each
business unit. A set of use cases, a story, if you want, on how this DAM is going
to be used.
[2:02] How are you, exactly, going to achieve something that that group wants
to achieve, whether it’s authentication opportunity, or greater flexibility in their
workflow. Whatever their goal is, how are you going to actually use the DAM
to do that?
[2:17] I think by leading with use cases, it really keeps you grounded in reality. It
keeps you focused on service to the people that you’re talking with. The beauty
of it is that half your implementation and half your change management is done
before you’ve even purchased the system.
[2:34] I think leading with use cases really help to uncover business value, to document
that well, and to make sure that you, in fact, are able to realize it.
Henrik: [2:43] Once you have those business cases, is there some kind of way of
measuring that value?
John: [2:48] Certainly. There’s a lot of different ways to measure value. One
way you can certainly do it is in terms of greater efficiency that you’ve achieved.
Operations that may have taken a long time, you’re able to quantify that you’re
post DAM or even in the middle of a pilot, that you’re able to achieve certain
savings in terms of efficiency. [3:11] I would argue also for getting the people
with whom you develop the use cases to assign a value, both quantitative and
qualitative, to the achievement of the use cases. How well you achieve the use
case then starts to have a monetary value and a quantitative value.
[3:29] Independently of that, I think you also need to have the active participation
of the finance team in having models that will satisfy them that are otherwise
being achieved. That may cut across the use cases in the sense that it
provides a reality check on the model that you use going into it. I think that for
each organization, how you do that independent analysis is going to be somewhat
different, but it’s going to be based certainly on measurable outputs.
Henrik: [4:04] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
John: [4:09] First of all, if you’re part of the team that’s choosing a DAM, I would
say one thing is focus on key features. Don’t just create a huge long laundry
list of 752 features that you think are going to be in there. Because you quickly
get lost among the forest even if you do a careful job of vetting those features,
weighing them, and giving them importance. Too large a list will just muddy
the waters in my opinion and certainly, in the use cases I talked about. [4:44]
I think for choosing, a really good thing to do is when you’ve concluded on a
system and you’ve worked out a deal with a vendor, possibly an implementation
partner and possibly others that will be involved in the process, draft a simple
statement. Have the team draft a simple statement that says, “This is what we
think we are buying. This is what the DAM that we are purchasing includes in
plain language.” Because that’s a reality check that the vendor can use and
everyone involved can use to basically say, “Is our understanding the correct
understanding?”
[5:27] What I’ve found is when you do that, what sometimes pops out of there
is that there are misunderstandings. Things that are optional that you’re assuming
that are not, and things that have not been accounted for in the plan that
people assume have been accounted for.
[5:41] Other advice I’d say, be honest with yourself. It’s very easy to delude
yourself with wishful thinking if you’re trying to sell something, if you’re trying to
make a case for something. If you’re relentlessly honest with yourself and let the
evidence lead.
[5:59] So if you have a hunch, if you think you know something, try to find the
best available source, either qualitative or quantitative. That may be people
that really know that subject matter or a body of information that you can get
at that, will substantiate your hunch. Just don’t give into wishful thinking. Don’t
delude yourself.
[6:19] I’d say respect the expertise of others. Often, DAM projects are led by
information technology, and properly so. But there’s going to be a lot of people
whose expertise is needed who may not know the right terms or the right
frameworks or think about it in the most sophisticated way. But you have to respect
their expertise because not only will their expertise be needed, but you’ll
miss things if you don’t make sure that you encompass that expertise.
[6:49] Something I wish I had done more in the implementation that I did is look
for bright spots. There’s going to be groups that just take to it really well, that
they’re off and running. You can really leverage those bright spots.
[7:04] When you get a bright spot, figure out why it’s a bright spot. Why does
that work? What is it particularly that is successful about that? Then use that to
bring up the success rate in the rest of the tasks that you’ve got.
[7:21] I think focusing steadily on what improves your colleagues’ lives, aesthetics
and convenience matter. You wouldn’t want to condemn someone to live in a
terrible apartment. The DAM that you’re putting in is going to be part of their
lives, and it needs to be a welcomed part of their lives. I think a steady focus on
what improves your colleagues’ lives is a great thing.
[7:49] Then, lastly, I would say be prepared to do a two-year overhaul. Almost
all DAMs have significant problems in their first implementation. Be ready to do
a top-down review. Then attack those faults and build that into your plan that
you’re going to need an overhaul in two years.
Henrik: [8:10] Thanks, John.
John: [8:11] All right, Henrik. Thank you.
Henrik: [8:13] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.

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 Michelle Jouan on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does a worldwide entertainment company use Digital Asset Management?
  • You recently started another DAM meetup group in your area. Tell us more about this.
  • 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 Michelle Jouan.
Michelle, how are you?
Michelle Jouan: [0:11] I’m fine, thanks. How are you?
Henrik: [0:13] Good. Michelle, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Michelle: [0:16] I am the Digital Asset Manager for one of the online departments
of a global entertainment company, and I’m based in London. Like a
lot of other Digital Asset Managers, I stumbled into the field through a background
in photography, and digital imaging, and managing databases, and all
kinds of computer geekery. [0:35] These are skills that I acquired independently,
which suddenly made sense when I saw my first job listing for Digital Asset
Management. The first job that I got in Digital Asset Management, about 10
years ago, was working for a motion picture company as an image archivist.
Since then, I’ve been known as a digital librarian, and now, actually, a Digital
Asset Manager, so the field is progressing a little bit.
[0:57] I’ve been lucky enough to find positions in companies that recognize the
value of Digital Asset Management, and the benefit of having asset managers
that can bring their expertise to improving workflows, because I get the feeling
that a lot of companies that buy asset management systems expect their asset
troubles to just disappear magically.
[1:15] The thing is that these complex systems, they aren’t just merely software.
They’re systems, and without someone to manage them after implementation, I
think they’re much more likely to fail.
[1:27] That’s not to say that every company, or every team, might have the resources
or vision to employ someone solely for this purpose, or that managing
digital management asset systems is something that can’t be learned by your
current staff, but if you’re investing potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars,
or pounds in my case, in digital management asset systems, you’d be really wise
to bring in a professional to get the most out of your investment.
Henrik: [1:51] How does a worldwide entertainment company use
Digital Asset Management?
Michelle: [1:55] Well, my company has more than 30 asset systems, globally actually,
company wide, but this is in the context of a company that has more than
100,000 employees. There are all kinds of digital workflows to manage, and 30
asset systems seems in line with what we need at this point, but all of our departments
operate essentially as different companies. [2:23] One of my biggest
challenges when I started working here was to learn how the company worked
as a whole, and to understand where assets were created and how they were
distributed, but the great thing about being at a company of this size is that
there’s lots of other Digital Asset Managers.
[2:37] It’s been really a joy to connect with them and learn from all of their experiences,
because if you work at a really big company, don’t forget how important
internal networking can be. There’s a wealth of knowledge out there, and you
can tap into that.
Henrik: [2:50] Michelle, you recently started a Meetup group in London. Tell us
more about this.
Michelle: [2:55] Well, after attending a few Henry Stewart DAM Europe conferences,
I really enjoyed meeting up once yearly to talk with other Digital Asset
Managers and basically talk shop with people whose eyes don’t glaze over when
you mention Digital Asset Management. So, kind of following in the lead of the
other meet up groups in New York, D.C., and Los Angeles, I thought it would
be a really good idea to get London Digital Asset Management professionals
together and talk on a regular basis. [3:24] If you’re in the U.K., please search
for London DAM on meetup.com or follow our Twitter account @LondonDAM
with no space.
Henrik: [3:33] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Michelle: [3:37] Well, if you’re already a DAM professional, I’d say just be nosy,
be curious, and learn about business processes, and seek allies within your
company and in the professional community. Get a better understanding of
user experience design, service design. There are lots of other fields that are
complimentary to Digital Asset Management that can help you in your role.
[4:00] Also, don’t be afraid to talk to the software developers and other asset
managers. We’re really lucky to be living in an age where the Internet allows you
to easily connect with others who are really far away, so make the most of that.
[4:13] If you’re aspiring to become a DAM professional, I’d say ask yourself, do
you spend your Saturday nights organizing your iTunes catalog or rearranging
your Google+ circles, does the thought of downloading and editing holiday
photos give you a spark of excitement. If so, find yourself a job in Digital Asset
Management right away.
Henrik: [4:31] Well, thanks, Michelle.
Michelle: [4:32] Thank you very much.
Henrik: [4:33] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.

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