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Another DAM Podcast interview with Douglas Hegley on Digital Asset Management

Douglas Hegley discusses Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Douglas Hegley. Douglas, how are you?

Douglas Hegley:  [0:10] I’m good, thank you.

Henrik:  [0:11] Douglas, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Douglas:  [0:14] Currently, I sit at the executive leadership level in a major fine art museum in the Twin Cities. I would be the ultimate decision maker. The Digital Asset Management systems would be operated underneath my responsibility.

Henrik:  [0:27] Douglas, how does a fine art museum use Digital Asset Management?

Douglas:  [0:31] What’s interesting, I think, what might be a misnomer for some people, the Digital Asset Management in an art museum is actually a business driver like it is in any business. Art museums have art objects. Those objects themselves have data records for them, and those are kept in a different system.

[0:47] But we do need a Digital Asset Management system for keeping photographs of those objects, and often there will be many of those. Various angles, raking lights. Sometimes x‑ray, other spectrometer those kinds of things, as well as images of people and parties and the history of the institution. It goes on and on and on.

[1:06] I would say at this point that museums are still sticking mostly with still images in terms of Digital Asset Management. We haven’t fully embraced media asset management. We’re producing videos and that production is accelerating. I don’t think we’ve really faced some of the struggles we’re going to have, similar to the ones we had with digital photography 5 or 10 years ago.

Henrik:  [1:27] What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?

Douglas:  [1:31] There are many. One of the biggest challenges for us as an industry is that our metadata models are not mature. There are many different standards for the way that you would record what is in that picture. The built‑in metadata is easy enough ‑‑ date and file sizes and everything else.

[1:53] For us, since it’s often object centered photography so we’ve taken that three‑dimensional sculpture, we’ve taken it to the photo studio, lighting it, shooting it.

[2:02] How do you attach that asset to the record that’s in a different system that describes that object? We struggle with moving data back and forth, mirroring data, coming up with better methods of attaching the digital assets themselves to all of the other kinds of content that we have about an art object.

[2:22] Then, I think for us, being non‑profits, being small, being very tight funding models, affording a fancy Digital Asset Management system is a bit of a struggle. Then the first foray into digital photography that museums took beginning about 10 years ago, we had a tendency to over buy. We would be sold very fancy Digital Asset Management systems that could do lots and lots of wonderful things.

[2:48] None of which we ever took advantage of.

[2:49] We kept paying the fee every year, and throwing the assets in, and struggling with metadata models. Not really making much progress. The success is that when I worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art the photo studio went digital. Within about a year, they had amassed an enormous closetful of CDs.

[3:09] How do we go back and find those images that we shot a year ago? If there’s a success that’s clear it’s in the capacity to locate, download, relocate, reshoot when necessary the assets that are actually needed. It’s not a manual process anymore. We can have multiple users log into a system, find the image you’re looking for.

Henrik:  [3:25] You can more rapidly search, find, use, reuse, repurpose.

Douglas:  [3:30] I think that was a clear business win. I also think it’s aged a little bit. That win really took place…at the Met it probably took place about 2003, 2004. I’m currently at the MIA. They had a system that’s about the same age. The systems are, in essence, aging because they’re becoming full of assets, and because the metadata model, as I mentioned before, is really not mature or specific enough.

[3:54] Really not mature or specific enough. We have issues with overflow of result set. People go in and they search on something like “Rembrandt.” They’ll get thousands of returns. Many of which are place‑holder records. They are old black and white study photographs. It’s not clear which one I’m supposed to use for my marketing campaign.

[4:15] I go and start asking my friends. Now we’ve blown it out of the water. The reason they have an asset management system is so that anybody, even with a cursory knowledge of what they’re looking for, should be able to come in and get what they need.

Henrik:  [4:28] True. Let’s use that example of searching for Rembrandt and you get documents and records, and then maybe some photos of the Rembrandts that you may have. Can’t you filter down to, say, “paintings of” from the thousand records for the sake of argument?

Douglas:  [4:41] Again, when you over buy a system of course that functionality is there. Users need a lot of training to understand how to use it.

Henrik:  [4:49] Add that information in all fairness.

Douglas:  [4:50] Right, exactly. The only keyword on the photograph is Rembrandt. I should say the photograph on maybe 700 photographs. There isn’t a really good mature metadata model. Now, maybe the photographers remember because they know that only Charles would be shooting the master image. He shot those paintings about in 2007.

Henrik:  [5:12] At high resolution blah, blah, blah with the proper lighting.

Douglas:  [5:14] They can go in the system and they can say, “I only need things shot by Charles. I want them 2007. I want them only the TIFFs.” They can get that for you.

Henrik:  [5:22] To your point, you can search for the TIFF, or you can search for the file type, meaning, “I don’t want a .doc of Rembrandt’s about the insurance record, or the transfer record, or the purchase record or whatever. I want the TIFF or the raw file or the JPEG or whatever.”

Douglas:  [5:39] Although, to be clear, we’re not currently in the DAMs that we have storing any .docs. They could, I suppose. We’re not doing that.

Henrik:  [5:45] Or PDF, for that matter?

Douglas:  [5:46] There may be a few PDFs. That’s not really the core business case right now. The core use is still images, high res, primarily objects. Secondarily, events, people, activities of a museum being recorded.

[6:02] We also have an archive dating back 130 years, but it’s a physical archive. A few of those things get digitized now and then because there’s some need for them in a publication or something, so some of those things in there. Right now, it’s mostly just still image.

Henrik:  [6:19] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals, and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Douglas:  [6:23] It’s a really good question. First of all, I don’t consider myself the world’s expert on answering this question. I would say that in the museum arena, which is the arena I know best, museums are in need of people to come into our world and help us adapt best practices, help understand how businesses are running in this way.

[6:48] One of the core differences, in a way, is that we’re all looking at Digital Asset Management systems as if they are at their core set up to be persistent electronic archives. We’re not a for‑profit vendor who is creating products for which there are seasons and catalogues and websites to be made, and campaigns to be run, advertising, marketing, press, everything else, and then a year later it’s all new products. It doesn’t matter what happens to the photos of the shoes from last year.

[7:18] For us, every time we take a photo, there are a number of things. First of all, I’d say it’s a fine work of art. You’ve moved it from its safe storage space into a photo studio. Any time you move something that old and that fragile, you’re damaging it. Maybe it’s not obvious, but you have micro‑fractures, or you’re exposing it to different atmospheric conditions, or different lighting conditions, whatever it may be. You’re actually not doing good by the artwork.

[7:46] I don’t mean to belabor that point, because people are very professional and very careful. Accidents almost never happen, but it’s still a fact that it’s a risk. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to move this work of art into a studio, light it, shoot it, let’s do it at the absolute most professional, highest resolution that we can.

[8:07] Let’s get as many angles. Let’s get as many types of spectral photographs that we can manage right now so that we put that wonderful and rare and unique object back into its secure storage space and don’t touch it again for years.

[8:20] What we’re doing is we’re capturing these incredible photographs, but we’re amateur in then what we do next. We have a very professional production process, followed by a very amateur archival metadata process.

Henrik:  [8:36] Does the workflow fall off? Is that your point?

Douglas:  [8:39] Workflow falls off a little bit. The folks who are doing it are probably the photographers themselves, and/or relatively junior people, probably not a strong metadata library background. I don’t mean to single anyone out. There are certainly people there who are skilled. If any of them were to leave their positions, it’d be hard to replace them.

[8:58] It’s specialist knowledge. Even with that specialist knowledge, what’s missing then is some real world experience of having run this kind of system, where it’s a really rapid fire production environment.

Henrik:  [9:10] You’re embedding the information, to your point. That may be missing because most photographers don’t like adding metadata to their files. There’s a lot of value to finding it again if they add a lot more than just the word Rembrandt, to your point earlier.

Douglas:  [9:24] You’re right. There’s been talk here at the Henry Stewart DAM New York about having workflows that would capture data that would then automatically become metadata. That’s terrific. There you get subject and photographer assigned, and all these other kinds of things that can happen automatically.

[9:41] In the use cases that we’re seeing, though, whether it’s internal. In the internal, you would have content creators, writers, editors, people working with the press, marketing, whatever it may be. They don’t think in those more academic, scholarly ways. They want the hero image of “Lucretia” by Rembrandt, and they want to be able to get it right now because they’re on the phone with someone who wants to do a story.

[10:03] We need keywording in a very…

Henrik:  [10:07] Consistent way?

Douglas:  [10:08] It’s consistent, but it’s also natural language. We have keywording that says things like in the acrylic on canvas.

Henrik:  [10:18] Which you probably have a few.

Douglas:  [10:19] Yeah. Oil on canvas, oil on copper, terracotta, these kinds of things, which are very important and they are the fact.

Henrik:  [10:26] Yes, the medium.

Douglas:  [10:27] When your press agent is on the phone with a reporter from the New York Times, they don’t go to the system and type in terracotta.

[10:34] They are on the phone, they’re talking, they’re trying to type to try to type things like clay, pot, Africa, bead work and you do desperately trying to find the image, like, “I am trying to find it for you right now, Mr. such and such.”

[10:47] Because we don’t have that piece in there, it makes the system of much less use to them. So instead what they’re doing is emailing somebody, like a photographer, their friend, saying, “What do you have that pot for Africa with the beads?” They’re like, “Oh yeah, sure” and so two people get involved in the work when it really should just be one.

Henrik:  [11:03] It is really tied to, in part, institutional knowledge.

Douglas:  [11:06] Here is what I want, because I am not a Digital Asset Management worker, expert, it is not my training, but if you had an organization that was constantly feeding stories to the press. So whatever that may be, there must be folks out there who do sports photography, something like that.

[11:28] They got to be uploading those things quickly, they got to be tagging them with the kinds of words that sportswriters are going to use, like “World Series Game 3” and you better have it or no one is going to use your images.

[11:36] We don’t have that discipline, is a weird word for it because it is kind of lightweight, but it’s so absolutely necessary to make the asset findable across a much broader swath of people.

[11:49] If I were to tie it back to some of the strategies that we’ve been talking about in the art museum world anyways that we have been in an industry that for 150 years has been in the kind of, if you build it, they will come mode.

[12:04] We’re great, we’re fancy, everyone should come. If you’re not coming, there’s something wrong with you.

[12:10] This was the old model, the old elite model in having an art museum. What you’re seeing art museums do in the last, I don’t know, 10 years, maybe a little bit more and say, “No, no, no, no. Look, this is important. Art education being gutted in this country, creative thinking gutted, innovation gutted.”

[12:27] You can’t get this kind of stuff in school anymore. You should come to a museum. That makes museums need to be more engaging, more embracing of different points of view.

[12:38] Instead of saying to someone, “Welcome to the museum, you must be very proud to be here,” we have to say, “Welcome to the museum, we are really glad you are here. How can we help you have an experience that you will never forget?”

Henrik:  [12:49] To your point, even with DAM, it needs to be more accessible. Once they are more accessible, then people can obain it. Hypothetically in the virtual museum sense, I’ve worked with some that are doing that piecemeal. That’s the future challenge, I assume, with some.

Douglas:  [13:07] That’s the tactical implementation of a philosophical point. Let’s say our PR marketing hire a couple of young social media folks. They want to throw together a Tumblr site or a Pinterest or Instagram. They want to grab some photos from the collection.

[13:23] They go into the system and start saying like, “Give me an exciting photo that shows women having fun.” The system doesn’t have anything like that in there. It has like Matisse “Bathers,” but that is not what a 28‑year‑old social media manager is looking for.

[13:38] I know we’re a little bit, I’m beating the horse to death here, a little bit, but it is a metadata model is less about this sort of deep scholarly academic information and more about, “Hey, guys, what exactly do we have here?”

Henrik:  [13:49] That could be controlled but that could be a taxonomy, because of those events, to your point earlier, happened regularly in the kinds of activities that happen in the museum, because there’s only so many things that will happen in a museum.

Douglas:  [laughs] [14:00] There is a lot of things that will happen in the museum.

Henrik:  [14:01] That are permissible in a museum.

[14:02] [laughter]

Henrik:  [14:05] If it’s a fundraiser, or…

Douglas:  [14:08] It is funny, we’re beholden to our own approach when I worked at the Metropolitan. There were years when there were almost 20,000 events on the event calendar in 365 days.

[14:18] Now I am at a smaller regional museum, but the number of events still is in the thousands for year. Now that’s counting things like tours and school groups coming in, but each of these things happen and we are slaves to our own success in this way. We do not want to stop doing all of that.

[14:36] It is a little overwhelming, there’s photography of all a lot of it that nobody can find and that is the whole point of having a DAM in the first place.

Henrik:  [14:44] Thank you, Douglas.

Douglas:  [14:45] Thank you.

Henrik:  [14:46] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to anotherdamblog.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

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

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today


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Another DAM Podcast interview with Tobias Blanke on Digital Asset Management

Tobias Blanke discusses Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  [0:01] This is Another DAM podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today, I am speaking with Tobias Blanke.

Tobias, how are you?

Tobias Blanke:  [0:10] I’m all right. How are you Henrik?

Henrik:  [0:12] Great. Tobias, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Tobias:  [0:16] I am the current director of the MA in Digital Asset and Media Management at King’s College, London. As far as we can see, this is still the only full postgraduate qualification directly related to this field [of Digital Asset and Media Management].

[0:33] There are, of course, a lot of individual modules, but not a full MA in the course. We have been running this MA now for three years and it has become very successful. We are very pleased with it, I myself, I’m a senior lecturer in this department the MA is running, that’s about the equivalent in the US of an Associate Professor.

[0:53] My research is mainly on data infrastructures, media industries, and this kind of things. What we are particularly proud of is how we are able to translate our own research into this degree. This is how I became initially involved in digital asset management.

[1:11] What I find most fascinating by interacting with all these students who come from various industries and other nations to us to study the degree is to learn how far and wide-reaching the impact of this seemingly small field has become. This is also one of the reasons why I wrote a book, which I guess you’re going to talk about today, Henrik.

Henrik:  [1:33] Of course. To clarify, MA is the Master’s?

Tobias:  [1:36] Yes, it’s a Master’s degree. It’s a post-credit qualification, so after your BA. I think you have the same in the US, only that yours is two years, and we have a one year MA here in London.

Henrik:  [1:45] You recently wrote a book titled “The Ecosystem of Digital Assets: Crowds and Clouds.” Tell us more about what inspired you to write this.

Tobias:  [1:55] The title changed slightly. It’s now called “Digital Asset Ecosystems: Rethinking crowds and clouds”

[2:02] This is a direct reflection of what I said earlier about the interaction I have with my students and other fellow members of the academic staff here, about the development of the field of digital asset management and digital media management.

[2:17] I think we quite soon noticed that there is, of course, already quite a lot of discussion on, I would call this now, the traditional application domains of digital media management and digital asset management, which are often about organizing digital assets in an organization… organizing them in such a way that you can retrieve them efficiently, and so on.

[2:39] But there’s also, I think, if you come from it from the perspective like myself, which is slightly more computational, and also more in relation to what we would call Internet studies and these fields if you come from these fields to Digital Asset Management.

[2:54] Then, you notice, actually, the importance that digital content has not just in a single organization, but to bring together various organizations across the Internet, across the globe, and integrate their workflows of working together around the digital content they produce and consume together.

[3:15] That was the original intention when I wrote the book. The book has four chapters. The first one is the background and introduction chapter. The second one, which discusses these kinds of general perspectives on the evolution of digital assets, and also introduces the concepts of digital ecosystems, which is also quite hotly debated recently.

[3:39] It is one of those concepts where you don’t really exactly can define what it is about. But it basically describes how businesses and other organizations bring together their data, tools, and services, but also, the people that work for them and with them into a kind of integrated environment on the Internet.

[4:01] That then led to the subtitle of this book, which was called “Crowds and Clouds”, where we basically see how ecosystems are constituted by crowds, so the people who work with an organization and around an organization. And they work with this organization using platforms or clouds to produce and consume digital assets. This was the background section, where I discuss these kinds of concepts and the evolution of Digital Asset Management.

[4:28] Then, there is further sections discussing the technologies and methodologies, that really describe the kind of evolution of this platform I was just describing, and analyze that for also its future potential.

[4:42] Then, there is something that is very important to us, if you also work in a public sector, about how open or closed the ecosystems are around these digital assets. Anyone who’s ever used, let’s say, the Apple iCloud will know what I’m talking about.

[4:57] There’s challenges of sharing certain types of content. And this is, of course, an indication of the kind of business model that Apple, for instance, wants to develop around its digital content. Then, I also have, finally, two chapters which discuss “Big Data”, which is, of course, a big topic in the field.

[5:16] Then, also the kind of wider economic and society implications. What are actually these global workflows that I mentioned earlier? And how do they link together around this digital content? And how do these crowds and clouds integrate with each other.

[5:33] I’m particularly interested, at the very end, to discuss a kind of new idea for digital asset values, which is related to so-called network value, which is something that I describe as you become something else on the Internet that nobody else can do without anymore.

[5:53] The standard example for me is always Google Maps. You always wonder why Google has published this freely and openly. But, of course, we recently found out that by publishing this freely and openly, they generated a lot of network value for these maps or assets that they have, because really most all applications on the Internet now run on these maps.

[6:19] This is really to say what I tried to do. I tried to think a little bit about the assumption that digital asset management has a much wider application domain than, maybe, certain traditional ideas about it, and I wanted to write this book mainly to really practically lay down what my own research agenda for this kind of field would be.

Henrik:  [6:41] If you read the show notes, there will be a giveaway of Tobias’ new book. Take a look at anotherdampodcast.com for more information. Tobias, what are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?

Tobias:  [6:53] That’s, of course, a great question and a grand challenge to answer. I could talk about technologies, and also methodologies, and also business applications, but, of course, one of my primary interests in this field is the development of educational frameworks for it. I still think it’s quite a challenge for us.

[7:12] I don’t know how you feel about this in your professional practice, Henrik, but it’s quite a challenge for us to make organizations and businesses understand the kind of educational background, the skills, and so on digital asset and media managers need.

[7:30] Also, we have to learn this, because, of course, there’s a wide range in different ways of applying digital media now in the world. We find it interesting, but also really challenging to actually define exactly the kind of skills and professional qualifications that a digital asset manager needs.

[7:49] I think it lies somewhere between some kind of very lightweight computing understanding, so that you can talk to developers, at least. They then go on, of course, to deeper business knowledge around digital content. Then, of course, into the more established fields that one might immediately associate with this, which are more related to information science like metadata and those kind of questions.

[8:14] Now, the greatest success of Digital Asset Management is in a way, I think, the things I already mentioned in my last answer. The importance that people feel about the value of digital content in all kinds of digital industries. I think to say we can really see how this knowledge and understanding is now taking hold of many industries if you just look around here in London, which is, of course, a global hub for these digital industries.

[8:44] The challenges are related to making organizations and companies understand what kind of qualifications and skills are needed based on the success we already had, in a way, and making them understand how important digital content and the curation and preservation and the making use of the digital content in other forms really has become.

Henrik:  [9:06] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Tobias:  [9:11] I think it’s a great job to get into. [laughs] My first advice would be try it. I’m not sure whether you need at an entry-level necessarily professional qualification like we offer. Or, even a degree. But, I guess, you will find out soon that it helps you to advance to the more advanced levels.

[9:29] The real, to say, advantage of becoming, I think, a DAM professional, if you want to become one, is that you really sit at the heart of the operations of a digital organization in the 21st century. You really sit there where the content is produced and consumed, where the data is exchanged, and so on.

[9:51] If you are already a DAM professional, I think you should, that doesn’t mean that you have to study here, you should think hard whether it is enough what you have already learned through the practice that you’ve done, and whether you not need some kind of more education.

[10:08] I can only say that, for myself, who considers himself also to be, in a way, a DAM professional. Only through the interactions with all our students and the other people that we met from the wonderful DAM community, which is a global, great family.

[10:24] We have really learned to say how much is involved in this field, and I think it’s really important that DAM professionals keep learning that too. In my experience, highly advisable that you try and stay up‑to‑date in whatever form, with the developments in this field.

Henrik:  [10:42] There is a fair amount of education out there, or even enrichment, to your point.

Tobias:  [10:46] It’s really, Henrik, I don’t know how you feel about it. It’s a field that is evolving very fast, but you also need to stay up‑to‑date with the field, however that might work.

[10:56] You can visit the conferences. You can visit the wonderful blog of Henrik. You can read even more academic publications like The Journal of Media Management and all these kinds of things. I think that is not to say that you have to go back to school or university, but it’s really important I think, in all digital fields that you try to constantly change your self and evolve.

Henrik:  [11:18] Great point. Of course there’s plenty of new books out there, about Digital Asset Management, including the one you’ve written.

Tobias:  [11:25] We’re also going to publish another one, which you can interview us in about half‑a‑year, about more the theory and practice of the general background of Digital Asset Management.

Henrik:  [11:33] Fantastic. Thank you so much, Tobias.

Tobias:  [11:35] It was nice meeting you, Henrik.

Henrik:  [11:36] For more information on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com.

Another DAM podcast is available on iTunes and AudioBoom. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

Book Giveaway

You see, there is a benefit to reading the transcripts found in this podcast series. We are giving away one free copy of Tobias Blanke’s new book titled Digital Asset Ecosystems: Rethinking crowds and clouds. To enter this book giveway, email the podcast host with a one-paragraph summary on what this book is about (from the transcript above) by no later than August 24, 2014. A random drawing of the email submissions will award one lucky winner free book. The book will come directly from the author. You could even ask for the book to be autographed and personalized from the author himself, Tobias Blanke.

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

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today


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Another DAM Podcast interview with Philip Grossman on Digital Asset Management

Philip Grossman discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  •  How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  •  How does an organization focused on the weather use Digital Asset Management?
  • What are the biggest challenges and successes with 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 Philip Grossman. Philip, how are you?
Philip Grossman:  [0:10] I’m doing good.
Henrik:  [0:12] Philip, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Philip:  [0:15] Well I’m the Senior Director of Content Acquisition and Management at The Weather Channel. My job and role entails managing and overseeing all of the technologies that support all the assets internally to the organization.
[0:28] I’m responsible for all the equipment that helps see the physical assets come in, the video and audio and stills come in, get processed, get stored. Enable the editors to access them, to do their magic and assist in pushing the assets out the other side whether that be live broadcast to television or to digital, or mobile, or to the web.
Henrik:  [0:48] How does an organization focused on the weather use Digital Asset Management?
Philip:  [0:52] In our world we have both television, so we are one of the largest and one of the most distributed television networks in United States, over 100 million households. We also have one of the most widely download applications, the weather.com app, as well as our weather.com website. Through all of those we are an asset‑centric organization, obviously video and stills.
[1:15] In our world we have 22 hours of live programming per day roughly that we fill with digital assets, whether that be things we create ourselves, long‑form programming that comes in from third parties, or in some cases what we call user‑generated content, people in the field who have a passion for weather who send us video and still images.
Henrik:  [1:36] What are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital Asset Management?
Philip:  [1:40] Biggest challenges is just that the diversity of the assets themselves. We jokingly say that I have two states. I have stuff that needs to come in and become our house format, and then our house format that has to go out to h.264 for distribution. One of the biggest challenges is just to be able to manage the vast array of formats that come in, and normalize them so they can then process through.
[2:05] Not only do we have formats, then we also have the wonderful hi‑def versus standard def, 16:9 verse 4:3. In order to enable our teams to work efficiently we’ve go to overcome those issues. This is probably one of biggest challenges. Then the second is rights management. For us because we have the combination of material we create ourselves, as well as material provided to us by third parties or end users, we have to be able to manage when this content can be used.
[2:32] Some of it can be used on television. Some of it can’t be used on television, some on the web, but some on television and the web, but only on the web for four days, on television for 14 days. It took an intricate rights management process, which again goes back to the asset itself. At the end of the day, it’s the Metadata, it’s all in the assets.
[2:48] That’s probably one of the other challenges. For us, success is being able to increase the sheer velocity of material we’re able to bring in as raw material to allow our editors and producers to create interesting material out of.
Henrik:  [3:03] What advice would you like to share it with, DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Philip:  [3:08] I’d say probably the best piece of advice is start small. When I say small, I mean start at the core asset itself. It’s an object. That’s where you should build and move your processes around.
[3:20] You could say, “Well we just do video.” OK. start with the video as an object or as an asset, and then start to identify what kind of video do you have? When you have SD and HD, all of a sudden your object model becomes larger. That’s really the key to any asset management system. The joke is how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
[3:37] Same concept, start small, understand the objects that you have to manage, and then some that you can build your rules and metadata and everything else around, and the system will become complex on its own. If you start by trying to boil the ocean and figure out I need it to do this, I need it to do that, you’re never going to make it happen.
[3:54] Start with the asset itself. Figure out all the metadata that goes around that asset, then that metadata in of itself helps determine what you’ll be able to do with it. Say, “I got to be able to make sure that it doesn’t play on the web.” Then that has to be a field that says, “I’m not allowed to play on the web.” That sort of drives the model and workflows.
[4:13] Almost every automated workflow today is based around the metadata that you have with your assets. Those are probably the two biggest keys I would say in creating a system. Try to build things that have what we would refer to as level of abstraction. If I build one, giant, massive system, the larger that system gets the more difficult it becomes to make changes to that system or the inertia required to make changes to that system.
[4:37] If you build highly flexible, light‑weight components, that do one specific thing, or two specific things, then you string them together through what we call level of abstraction, you build a much more flexible system that allows you to grow. Right now we’re in a hi‑def world, two years from now we may be a 4K world, and three years from now maybe an 8K world.
[4:57] If you build a system that’s what you’re doing today, it’s not going to be future proofed by building things are abstracted and that’s what we call service orientation, or service‑orient architecture that allows you to build much more flexible systems.
[5:10] Think of it, Legos. Build a lot of little Lego blocks that you can reassemble anyway you want. If you try to build one giant Lego, it’s an inflexible model.
Henrik:  [5:19] Good points. Well thanks, Philip.
Philip:  [5:21] Yep. Thank you.
Henrik:  [5:23] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto anotherdamblog.com. This podcast is available on Audioboom and iTunes. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Jennifer Neumann on Digital Asset Management

Jennifer Neumann discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen with DAM?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management.
I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Jennifer Neumann. Jennifer,
how are you?
Jennifer Neumann: [0:09] I’m doing fine. Thank you for inviting me to come on
your show, Henrik.
Henrik: [0:13] Jennifer, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer: [0:16] That’s actually a story that goes a long time back, to the early
‘90s, when the company I cofounded initially produced scanning software. It
was just after about half a year of selling scanning software, which helped a lot
of people create digital images. I was swamped with requests for building a
system that would then allow them to manage and access these thousands of
images created, in an efficient way. [0:44] Basically, I took that opportunity and
Digital Asset Management back then was actually just called an image database.
It’s had its incarnations since then, as you probably know, first being called
media asset management and then, ultimately, Digital Asset Management, It
evolved quite quickly, and we had a lot of customer demand. The solutions, ours
and competitors’ solutions, grew in very different directions at the same time,
supporting, of course, much more than images. The thing that I really like there
is that, from the beginning, it showed there is tremendous need for DAM, even
though it might not always be obvious how it should be best addressed.
Henrik: [1:24] What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen
with Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer: [1:28] To follow up on what I just said, to put some figures out to
describe what I call success there. Over the years that we sold Digital Asset
Management, my company alone sold over 10,000 server solutions. We can only
estimate, but we bundled with many, if not most, of the biggest software vendors
out there. We probably reached about a million customers on the single
user side. It just endorses that Digital Asset Management has a clear demand
from the market. It might still struggle though fulfilling that demand and meeting
customer demand with clear cut offerings. [2:12] The challenges side are
actually both. They can be frustrating, definitely, for the customer. They can also
be frustrating for the vendor. What I think is important to look at is the topdown
view on the whole Digital Asset Management market. The one thing that I
recognized for a long time and still recognize is that Digital Asset Management
is still not as established as many other server solutions.
[2:37] Take, for example, the fact that every solution today is a web based
solution almost. Everybody would understand immediately. Everybody would
understand immediately and intuitively what a web server is. If you just mentioned
to a customer that has web based solutions, well, you should also install
a DAM server, you, more than often, still have to explain a lot in detail what the
DAM server would exactly do and what not to and how it would tie in with the
other servers.
[3:04] I think a situation that would help the success of DAM solutions would be
that there is more clarity on what it exactly addresses and what actually also
would be required to build an integrated solution and therefore, basically, any
effort like the efforts that you’re undertaking with your blog and your podcast,
extremely valuable.
Henrik: [3:25] Thank you. DAM is not the end all, be all. It is just one component
of many integral things that an organization may need.
Jennifer: [3:32] Yeah, well, just to reiterate, and I think it’s very important to get
this point across is this, it would be great if we would have the whole industry
of Digital Asset Management. If we had a sentence that would be, a one line
sentence, that would get across what DAM does. Another way to describe it, for
instance, and it’s something that also should actually finally happen, and I know
from reading your blog that you have also pushed in that direction, is there
is no clear-cut job descriptions out there for the people that work with DAM.
My experiences that, more than often, DAM is something that just comes up.
[4:08] I just had a case myself. An old friend of mine from San Francisco asked
me if I could recommend a DAM system for real estate company that needs to
take photographs of all the houses in a certain region. The typical approach
is, of course, not that they take this as a serious project from the beginning,
the customer, of course. It’s easy to understand we’ll try to get something
easy to install, little money, and is definitely not project manager from the beginning
assigned or even a product owner to call it that, but all these things
should happen.
[4:39] It should be clear on how a DAM project gets executed. While there’s
nothing wrong with starting a project small and grow the solution with integration
into other systems over time, it still should be clear from the beginning,
what the alternative routes would be that this DAM solution could be taken.
Henrik: [4:58] It is a phased approach, at least how it should be taken because
it often grows and often they pick a solution now that’s the cheapest possible
upfront. Then they outgrow it and then they have to do it all over again for a
medium sized solution. As the organization grows, they may even need a larger
solution. Of course, the price point changes and the features and integration
points change as well.
Jennifer: [5:23] One implementation that was I involved with personally and
I think it’s a really good example of how these things sometimes can be very
pinpointed. Another friend of mine who runs Germany’s largest independent
Apple dealership chain had the same need. Came up to me and said, “Jennifer,
can you help us? We are implementing a new eshop.” [5:47] Here’s another
one of those clearly defined. Or actually, people perceive it as clearly defined
solutions, right? You know you sell online. There’s an eshop that needs to be
implemented. It happened to be that that open source solution that they were
taking and extending manually was. And lots of programming had no strong capabilities
for managing images plus it’s not just managing the image. It’s a very
simple yet it is a workflow effect that they draw their products from all kinds of
vendors and then the metadata is not much, but it has to be entered in a standard
way for each of the products so that they know which vendor provides the
product to the dealer chain.
[6:32] The only thing that needed to really happen in regard to managing the
images themselves was that something in the middle that he thought was a
DAM system should automatically generate the five different resolutions for
best and best performing display of the products on the eshop and on the
website. That’s the whole workflow, but it means that you have to tie together,
first of all, in the graphics department somebody works with Adobe Photoshop
naturally and then there’s this thing in the middle and magically all these images
appear at the eshop.
[7:05] I don’t want to give the solution even away, what technology we used
in the middle of the year but this is, for me, the most important point. From
the beginning there’s clarity on what the workflow will be like and then you
have a high chance for success. Again, it’s not really relevant what we used
in the middle for converting images and forwarding metadata to the eshop,
but it was extremely important that we had an agreed upon plan on what was
going to be done and buy in even from the graphic designer, which starts the
whole process.
Henrik: [7:40] I agree. There’s a lot of components in the middle. There’s a perceived
end result. That should be very clear, as well as the workflow. But often
the end result is forgotten as the process goes along, which is a challenge with
many organizations I’ve seen.
Jennifer: [7:56] I still have a feeling that there is not enough clarity, also, on
what it takes to be a DAM system integration person. From experience, I can
tell that many of the people that put Digital Asset Management service in have
basically system integration staff with the company themselves. [8:17] But even
with the biggest ones, and I hope you’ll forgive me for not mentioning names,
but even they sometimes struggle to have enough qualified staff in the different
regions. I think that is definitely a field that still needs to be improved on to have
not just at least one capable person but considering that many of these solutions
are based on very different platforms, bet it .NET or Java or even different
operating systems.
[8:45] We need to find a way that there’s more talent in the market that understands
what they’re doing and maybe the analogy there, again, is if you talk
about Microsoft business then it is very clear cut. There’s someone that installed
your SharePoint server. If authentication isn’t working then it’s automatically
clear. You turn around and call the active directory guy. This is the kind of job
description that I’m talking about.
Henrik: [9:09] Those are missing from the industry because it’s all scattered
right now and there has not been a lot of consolidation even though there are
standardization bodies out there, I have not seen that coming out of them yet,
even though I have pushed for it. [9:22] I watch the job market every single day,
as far as seeing how organizations are advertising the needs for Digital Asset
Management so I understand their needs. But the standardization of the job
descriptions are not there and often they don’t know what they’re looking for.
Jennifer: [9:38] Yeah. I totally agree.
Henrik: [9:40] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to be DAM professionals?
Jennifer: [9:45] I think that it’s just important to recognize that the same basic
skills are absolutely valuable, and they have been even before the digital age.
What I think of as…I just talked about that woman in the graphics department
for that German Apple dealer chain, she’s a very reliable, consistently working,
very detailed oriented person. I still, even though people might have different
viewpoints on what accountants do and what librarians do. But their qualities
that they have to do reliable work is just, those are basic skills that are very
important and help a lot to build a successful DAM installation. [10:32] But of
course, too, there is quite some learning involved. The systems are quite different
in how they’re used. It would be great if there was also, I mean, maybe, what
I would call soft standards. But what I see is that it’s basically down to people
accepting a job in the DAM area and then they will learn the system that is in
place with the company.
[10:56] Unfortunately, there is no standardized education at this point, but again,
through the help of your blog and other sites that I’ve seen, the DAM Foundation,
also, is a movement that I think is great. Everything in that direction that
helps, basically, detailed use skills will be helpful.
[11:14] It’s always, I mean, if there’s nothing there yet that tells you exactly what
to do, and I think this is also something you’ve mentioned before me and
others, too. I think the biggest right now is there should be more user groups
out there and there should be more events where people can talk to each other,
definitely. This is why I like user groups over conventions. Not everybody has the
chance to travel to New York for a show or Vegas or whatever. If there’s a way to
found more user groups around the DAM space, that I think will be helping the
end users a lot.
[11:46] Typically, people focus, of course, on the users and I can throw it back in
the mix, the technical folks there, too. I mean, DAM solutions do not normally
get instigated or started by the CIO or by the CTO. It isn’t normally, or in most
cases, there’s a pragmatic need for it, but I think it would be good, also, to find
a way to have more organized education towards the DAM technical folks.
[12:17] The last point, the last group that often gets forgotten from me is the
vendors. I think, there, too, I could basically criticize myself, you all, so, having
been involved in this industry for a long time, I think the vendors all should get
together more constructively and to try to build, maybe, standards, even, or
help build the perception of the whole market.
[12:42] Maybe a silly example or analogy there would be, if you look at how the
car manufacturers do it, I mean, they actually, I know this for a fact, they, at the
top level, but even at the engineering level, they meet at forums and groups
and discuss things and trends in the industry. That way, I think they’re helping
themselves to build a more consistent picture of what their market is about.
[13:05] If the vendors, and here’s another example of what’s already happening
even though it might not even be successful, is, even Microsoft, which is one of
the elephants, and the elephants normally are not the first to move, but agreed
to integrate a new standard called OASIS CMIS. CMIS stands for content management
interoperability services. Terrible acronym, of course. It simply means
that there should be a way through web services, in this case, how two systems
can synchronize data between them. Which is a great problem for DAM systems,
right? Because not all metadata necessarily has to live or will live in the
DAM server. If there is a content management system in the server mixed and
there will be some metadata, too. Maybe even the taxonomy is on the content
management server.
[13:56] If the DAM vendors work stronger and more successfully towards defining
how these interfaces work, I think then, they would also have less work to do,.
Because I know for a fact that it takes a vendor a lot of work, one by one, all of
them, to integrate with all the usual suspects, to start with Adobe products and
whatever else.
Henrik: [14:16] Great points. Great advice for the DAM vendors out there, and
solution providers.
Jennifer: [14:21] Yeah, just an encouragement. I mentioned your blog before.
I really think what you’re doing is absolutely great. Keep this going, it’s very
important.
Henrik: [14:32] Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Jennifer: [14:33] You’re welcome.
Henrik: [14:35] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom
and iTunes. [14:43] If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to
email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

Related Articles

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

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today