Another DAM Podcast

Audio about Digital Asset Management

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Romney Whitehead on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does a broadcast media organization use Digital Asset Management?
  • You are going to be a graduate of the MADAM program at King’s College of London. Is this Master’s Program preparing you for the working world of 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 Romney Whitehead.
Romney, how are you?
Romney Whitehead: [0:10] I’m very well, thank you, and thank you for
inviting me.
Henrik: [0:12] No problem. Romney, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Romney: [0:17] I began in Digital Asset Management about 10 years ago at
BBC Worldwide. Within there, I was working in the magazines division, focused
on brand management and distribution of magazines globally. My team was
involved in uploading of the assets, rights management, metadata management,
and then distribution of the assets within BBC Worldwide itself, and then
globally out to 53 territories to our licensees and syndication partners. [0:48]
Recently, in the last month, in fact, I’ve joined NET-A-PORTER GROUP. That’s
made up of NET-A-PORTER , MR PORTER , and THE OUTNET. They’re an online
luxury fashion retailer. We’re at the stage there where we’re choosing a solution,
at the moment, to manage a very extensive range of assets, from product photography
to video to print and online magazines, and TV outputs as well. Very
interesting times.
Henrik: [1:22] Excellent. How does a broadcast media organization use Digital
Asset Management?
Romney: [1:29] In my experience, probably looking at it in two ways, one from
the comment workflows, and then probably from a preservation point of view.
From the workflow perspective, what a DAM solution offers a media company
is the ability to manage the content from the point that it’s created to the point
where it goes out to the consumer. [1:55] You could have the ingestion of content
immediately into a system. You could have multiple editing suites dealing
with that content. You can then have the input of the photography unit, if they’re
sending out stills or they’re sending out merchandise related to a particular
show or a product. Then moving through the life cycle through to the points
where that content goes out to a third party broadcaster or to a consumer.
[2:23] Then from the preservation point of view, especially from the point of view
of public broadcasting, what DAM offers is the ability to preserve their content
but also go back through their archives, perhaps finding a back catalogue of
content there. Some of it may be in technology which is obsolete if it’s been
produced over a very, very long period of time.
[2:50] If they’ve got a DAM system, then they’ve got the ability to go back and
retrieve that content. Preserve it at the same time, and then offer new outputs
to consumers. And also, historical value, massive historical value, especially for
broadcasters that have been running for 60 or 70 years.
[3:12] I think a DAM solution, in that sense, means that they never need to lose
material ever again. Whereas in the past it’s, obviously, been stored in dusty
cupboards and left to really not be looked after, unfortunately.
Henrik: [3:27] Romney, you were going to be a graduate of the MADAM
Program, if I understand correctly, at King’s College of London. Is this Master’s
program helping you to prepare for the working world of Digital Asset
Management?
Romney: [3:40] I have to say I’m keeping my fingers crossed that everything
goes well for September when I finish my dissertation. Working in the world
of DAM for so many years, you could almost have that thought, “What else is
there to learn?” [3:55] But I’m a great believer in that there’s always something to
learn, especially if you’re approaching a subject from a particular point of view. If
you’re in the commercial world or if you’re in preservation or library or cultural or
heritage, there’s always something to learn from another area.
[4:12] Where this course has been very beneficial, I have to say, is I’ve come
from a commercial background. What I’ve learned from it is the best practices
that certain other areas have, areas like archive or societies, are really very, very
useful for the commercial world.
[4:31] Things like having extremely in-depth metadata, something which isn’t just
focused on your business but is actually focused on a larger scale to allow an
interoperability between what you have and what other libraries have, or what
other institutions have. Things like Linked Data for, first of all, the semantic web,
which has been a long time coming but is really starting to accelerate now.
[4:57] Preservation strategies, which in the commercial world, I feel preservation
is a bit of an afterthought. But actually, it can prove hugely valuable because
you may have content which is sitting in your archives, or sitting in your DAM
system. Nobody knows what somebody is going to want in 20 or 30 years’ time.
Henrik: [5:20] True.
Romney: [5:21] Rather than just ignoring it, as I feel some commercial institutions
may well do, because it’s costly to keep all that data and to manage all
that data, there needs to be some kind of preservation strategy there which will
allow that content to be opened up in the future if it needs to be, if somebody
wants it. [5:42] I think during the degree, I’ve been very reassured that with every
class and module that I’ve taken, there really was a direct link with what I did on
a day-to-day basis, and what I do on a day-to-day basis. It’s certainly refreshed
my view of the DAM world, and it’s given me some good ideas to take forward.
[6:02] It’s very nice also to have a recognized qualification within DAM, because
I’ve not really seen something out there. You can have people who’ve worked in
this field for a long time, and I can say to people what I do when they look at me
as though I have two heads.
Henrik: [chuckles] [6:17]
Romney: [6:19] So, it’s nice to be able to say, “Oh, there is this here.” But the
fact that my mother will tease me for being a MADAM, and perhaps I will be at
the end. And that’s perhaps illegal in some countries.
Henrik: [laughs] [6:30]
Romney: [6:32] But I would most certainly recommend the course, and the
college and the staff have been wonderful. I think it’s really opened my eyes, I’d
have to say. It’s been very, very good.
Henrik: [6:43] Excellent. And, just to clarify, we’re speaking of the MADAM
program, which stands for the Master in the Arts of Digital Asset Management
Program at King’s College of London, correct?
Romney: [6:50] Yes. [laughs] That’s great, please.
Henrik: [6:55] Not any other madams, necessarily.
Romney: [6:56] Yes, it doesn’t lead to anything else.
Henrik: [laughs] [6:58] Best of luck with that.
Romney: [7:01] Thank you.
Henrik: [7:02] Let me ask you the last question, of course. What advice would
you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM
professionals?
Romney: [7:10] Well, one would hope that current DAM professionals know
what they’re doing, so I would not profess to be so omnipotent to be able to
give advice to them. But I think people who want to get into the field perhaps
don’t understand what it’s about. It’s a great field to be in, because it involves
a massive range of knowledge and lots of challenges as well. [7:34] As a DAM
manager, I think you need to know what every department in the company
that you’re working in is doing, because DAM will touch every department in
some way. Maybe extensively, it may be very small. Because of that, I think
the key part of DAM is not necessarily the technical solution, but the ability to
communicate.
[7:57] You need to empathize with people. You need to be able to sit down with
an individual and ask them what their pain points are, and understand them. Be
able to reassure them that you know what they’re talking about, and that whatever
solution you’re putting in place is actually going to help them.
[8:15] You have to give people something tangible, because every individual will
use a system differently. So you can’t build a system for one set of users, and
you cannot focus on one set of users, either. You’re not building the system for
just a CEO who wants to save money, or for the clerk who wants to save time in
filing things. You’re building it for everybody in between as well.
[8:38] So, I think the ability to manage people and their expectations, their fear
of change, what their daily stresses are, will make you a good Digital Asset
Manager. The ability to communicate, I think that’s what you need to always
keep in mind, always.
Henrik: [8:53] Excellent. Did you want to share your blog that you have as well?
Romney: [laughs] [8:58] My blog, which I’ve been very remiss at keeping up, but
it’s damitall.WordPress.com
Henrik: [9:08] Excellent. There’s a link to that on my blog at
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thank you so much, Romney.
Romney: [9:15] Thank you very much.
Henrik: [9:16] For more on Digital Asset Management, you can log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com.

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

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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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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 Matt Shanley on Digital Asset Management

Matt Shanley discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a museum use Digital Asset Management?
  • What were the drivers for getting 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 am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Matt Shanley. Matt,
how are you?
Matt Shanley: [0:09] Very well, and yourself?
Henrik: [0:10] Good. Matt, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Matt: [0:14] I am the Digital Asset Manager for the Photography Department of
the American Museum of Natural History. They brought me on in 2006 to develop
a photography workflow that would stand savvy. [0:30] Basically, what they
were doing at the time is just taking everything they shot, burning it to a CD or
DVD, and putting it into a binder, and keeping an Excel spreadsheet of what
CDs were where. As you might imagine, that quickly became unmanageable.
[0:44] So when they hired me in 2006, it was a priority for them to have me redesign
their workflow and then research what hardware and software we would
need to get a Digital Asset Management system that was going to be usable
and scalable to the amount of assets that we would eventually accumulate.
[1:06] We decided to go with an Apple Xserve with a 10.5 TB X RAID, and we
decided to use Extensis Portfolio as our DAM. That has a MySQL back end with
a portfolio governing the front end.
[1:25] We started cataloging from 2006 on and then I redesigned the workflow
of the photographers to use Lightroom. It was embedding copyright metadata
on import.
[1:39] We came up with a standardized file naming and folder naming protocols
that were DAM savvy. Basically just formalized the workflow, because the photographers
were pretty much just doing their own thing and there was no real
organization to it. Had to standardize what they were doing in the workflow that
they used.
[2:05] From the time it left the camera and went onto the computer, data preservation
protocols were put in place so that things would get backed up onto
the server, so that if their local hard drive ever crashed, they would at least have
unretouched backups of everything, etc., etc.
[2:23] Then, I have to, when they finish a job, they move it to an area on the
server that I know that they’re done with that job. Then I move it over into the
portfolio sys, catalog it in portfolio. That’s how we do it.
Henrik: [2:43] Why does a museum use Digital Asset Management?
Matt: [2:45] I would say that while we are a museum photography department
we are actually a division of the communications department. We do all of the
press photography, anything that goes out to the press, advertising, marketing,
all of that stuff. We document all of the educational events that happen here.
We documents all of the development events that happen here. [3:12] What
we don’t do is we don’t, for the most part, photograph the collections for the
purposes of cataloging the specimens and artifacts that we have. That’s up to
the scientific department themselves. What museums would probably use it for
would be actually like a collections resource, management. But that is not what
this department does.
Henrik: [3:35] What were the drivers for getting a DAM?
Matt: [3:39] The bottleneck that was happening where it was just taking too
long for photo requests to be fulfilled. Once we got up over a couple hundred
thousand images, that system of burning stuff to CD and DVD became unwieldy.
It was just taking too long. Anything that wasn’t done recently it would
take someone doing much research and going through DVDs and the Excel
spreadsheet. [4:13] There was no controlled vocabulary as far as search and
keywords and stuff like that. It was just a mess. It made it very, very hard to
find things. We needed a centralized storage system that was well organized.
Keywords needed to be standardized with a controlled vocabulary. Once we did
that, it turned image requests from taking days to minutes. It was a huge efficiency
boost for us.
Henrik: [4:45] I bet. Are any of these requests you get paid requests?
Matt: [4:49] Yes. Our business development department and our museum
library both deal with requests coming in mostly from education book publishers.
We do get some of what I would call commercial requests, but it’s mostly in
the educational realm. [5:04] I don’t know how much they’re actually charging for
this stuff, but we’ll get a call. “Do you have a picture of an Apatosaurus thigh or
something like that, a thigh bone?” We’ll look through the collections and see
what we have. We’ve been shooting a mix of digital and film since around 1998.
I think by 2000 or 2002 we were shooting exclusively digital. Considering that
the museum has been here since about 1875 or so, the bulk of our collections
are shot on film.
[5:44] When we went digital the museum library did not have the manpower or
the technical expertise to handle and archive our photos, which is what, back in
the film days, we did. We always turned everything over to the library and they
would put them into the photo archive. When we went digital there was nothing
they could do with the stuff and we did what everybody did, just burn everything
to CD and DVD and store it that way. It was really the only economically
feasible solution at the time.
[6:23] But, like I said, once we got up over a couple hundred thousand assets
it was not working. Sometime in 2007 this new DAM system went online. I’ve
cataloged approximately 328,000 assets. At any given moment there’s about
100,000 assets that I haven’t gotten to yet.
[6:53] That legacy system, we had all of those CDs and DVDs copied onto the
server over a period of time and tried to clean it up as much as we could with
the limited manpower that we have available to be spending time doing that.
That’s somewhere around 210,000 assets in the legacy system.
[7:17] It’s never going to get smaller. We keep everything. So, pushing a million
assets total in no time. We have to make sure that are hardware and software
stay scalable to handling those kind of numbers.
Henrik: [7:33] Wow. Great. What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals
and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Matt: [7:39] I sort of tripped and fell into it. My background is photography.
It was my photography background that got me hired into this photography
department. Photography, digitally driven photography or organization, Digital
Asset Management is a necessity just like having an IT guy to keep your computers
working is a necessity. [8:09] I would say Higher Education is definitely the
way to go. I had to learn it from scratch, kind of on the job, on the fly. There’s
definitely a market for it out there. Anybody who deals with digital content has
to keep it organized because if you can’ find it then it’s like not having it.
[8:38] I think it’s a growing field. As more digital content is created better solutions,
on a larger scale, are going to become available. I think, even if you get
an education in it now, people who work in this field are going to have to get
reeducated in it multiple times over the course of their career. I think the technology
is going to keep changing at a rate that if you want to stay competitive
you’re going to have to keep up with it.
Henrik: [9:06] Never stop learning.
Matt: [9:07] Yeah.
Henrik: [9:08] Good point. Great. Thanks, Matt.
Matt: [9:11] Thank you. I enjoyed talking to you.
Henrik: [9:14] Me too. For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.

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