How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Why does an information and media organization use a DAM?
What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Abby DeMillo. Abby,
how are you? Abby DeMillo: [0:10] I’m fine. How are you doing today? Henrik: [0:12] Good. Abby, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Abby: [0:17] At the McGraw Hill companies, we view Digital Asset Management
as one component of what we call the digital supply chain. We’re not looking at
Digital Asset Management purely as an archival tool or as a brand management
tool. We’re looking at it as really a component of our content delivery ecosystem
so to speak. [0:48] It’s very much integrated in with our Content Management
Systems, our delivery platforms, our enrichment tools, so on and so forth. It is a
key component, but we look at it as a component of that whole chain. Henrik: [1:03] Great. Just to reiterate, why does an information and media organization
use a DAM? Abby: [1:10] We use it to help deliver content. Digital Asset Management
through the years has grown and matured, and the technology has matured as
well, to really offer more than just the storage and delivery out of rich media
assets. [1:30] It still does that. It still does that very, very well. I highly recommend
any company that has branding, marketing assets, rich media assets,
or any object related content to really invest in a repository, invest in a Digital
Asset Management. That is the best way to keep track of your master assets.
[1:54] B to B business are using it really in terms of delivering out and reusing
those components. You can supply a B-to-B site and web channel delivery of
content without a Digital Asset Management. It is completely possible to do
that, but you’ll find that you’ll be wasting a lot of infrastructure.
[2:20] Your technology footprint will be greater, because you will not have control
of your parent and child assets. The value to B-to-B business is to really keep…
you’ve heard of master data management. There’s not an acronym for this but
it’s really keeping track of your master rich media assets and delivering versions
of those assets.
[2:45] Rather than keeping the same asset in 100 different places, you keep it in
one place and deliver out renderings of that same asset. It saves a lot of money.
It saves in operations. It saves in human processes, business processes. That’s
why B to B businesses are very interested still in this technology. Henrik: [3:08] It makes a lot of sense. Abby: [3:09] It sure does. Henrik: [3:10] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals or
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Abby: [3:15] For people aspiring to become DAM professionals, you can go to
school in library sciences. You can go to school and get your degrees in taxonomies
and all of these great things today. Don’t think of it as a siloed discipline.
[3:32] You can’t really today think of Digital Asset Management without thinking
of the related fields and the related technologies that help deliver content
including enrichment, which we haven’t really touched on. In other words, creating
metadata structures, and taxonomy structures that deliver that content and
make it reusable in a number of different systems, delivery platforms, and the
ability to transform those assets into a number of different channels.
[4:03] Be able to, if you’re holding video assets, because Digital Asset
Management today you can hold video assets or flash assets. Are you planning
on transcoding those internally and delivering them out? Or are you planning on
really just holding the end product in your depository?
[4:21] No matter where you work those are the types of questions that will be
asked of you. If you are aspiring to become a Digital Asset Management professional,
don’t think of it truly as an archival tool. Think of it really part of that
whole ecosystem. You really have to have an understanding, at least at a high
level, of how those other systems play into this. Henrik: [4:46] Great. Thank you, Abby. Abby: [4:48] You’re welcome. Henrik: [4:50] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Why does a training and development organization use a DAM?
What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Anthony Allen.
Anthony, how are you? Anthony Allen: [0:10] I’m doing great. Thank you very much for
having me today. Henrik: [0:13] Not a problem. Anthony, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Anthony: [0:18] I’m the Director of Digital Media for The American Society for
Training and Development. It always helps to explain a company or an audience
before diving into the finer points of Digital Asset Management. ASTD is an
association for trainers. We train trainers. [0:43] We’ve been in business for about
60 years. We have about 45,000 members. We are a nonprofit, a mission driven
publisher, but still very much care about the bottom line. We consider ourselves
a small publisher. We publish books, magazines, pamphlets, smaller 28 or 30
page books.
[1:11] We also have a very heavy practice for video. The video and media production
is specifically geared to our conferences. We have a small 1500 person
conference in January and a large 8000 person conference in June.
[1:30] We record most of the material there, so we produce hundreds and hundreds
of hours of conference content every year as well, so there are thousands
of assets in our digital library for PowerPoints sent to audio and live, full frame
video production for the conferences.
[1:55] I was brought on to ASTD, that’s how I refer to the company, about three
years ago to basically take care of the content management, Digital Asset
Management, tagging, XML. I’ve delved full force into that realm.
[2:15] When I came to ASTD there was really quite a shock. I had come from
the video world, and I was a producer at Discovery Channel. Video, they were
making TV basically the same way for decades. The taxonomy and the metadata
based publishing search within libraries for video assets are actually quite
mature. Lucky me.
[2:46] I had actually then moved on to ASTD, and I came to a publishing house
in an industry that had no taxonomy. The content is also highly contextual,
meaning that search is very, very difficult with training content. The reason is
because it’s the exact opposite of medical content. If you search for basal cell
carcinoma in a medical directory, you’re going to get information about basal
cell carcinoma.
[3:17] Training content, on the other hand, is very contextual, and trainers
argue about the definitions. I was at a shock, at a loss for where to start, when
I started my job as a content manager. With ASTD over the past three years,
what we’ve done is we’ve developed a taxonomy for the training industry that
I’m now going out into other content production houses for training content and
trying to get them to adopt the training taxonomy.
[3:53] It’s a very, very large initiative for us. I’ve also made some large technology
purchases for the content management benefit of all of the content production
departments within ASTD. We have an XML based content management
system, an XML based metadata workflow publishing engine. We also have a
part of ASTD that goes and takes our content, which is at the very, very end of
the print cycle, PDFs, and then converts that content into XML.
[4:36] Then it is tagged according to our taxonomy. It is tagged according to the
DITA XML standard, and then it is put into a repository. Afterwards, we have,
basically, what I call a workflow expansion framework that allows us to build new
workflows to get new formats out into the publishing world, make money with
ePub, make money with other formats as well.
[5:07] That gives us a scope of how I’m involved with Digital Asset Management.
It really was from zero to now I would say that we have a lot of our internal production
workflow practices matured. Now we’re squarely looking at the future
as far as getting this content out and creating new and exciting applications that
leverage the metadata. The word of the day and the phrase for the future is
really metadata based publishing for ASTD. Henrik: [5:43] Why does a training and development organization use a DAM
specifically? What is the end goal? Anthony: [5:50] There are two things here, there’s ASTD, the small publisher,
but then there’s also ASTD, the representative and quasi governing body for
training and development organizations, of which our members are trainers
within organizations. They are independent consultants who are brought in to
large companies like IBM, to give sexual harassment training, leadership training,
and so on. [6:23] We also represent the vendors in this space. Those vendors
can include other small publishers of training content. It can include technology
companies that produce learning management systems, and it can also
be other companies that create training content. A hot topic right now is education
modules, education component, so smaller building blocks of content.
[6:50] I’ll tackle the first part first, ASTD as the publisher of content. We don’t
really do anything different than any other small publishing house does. Tongue
in cheek I say, “We look at what the big boys are doing and we try to mimic it.”
[7:10] There are a couple of things that are going on here. Companies like
O’Reilly, very hot in the digital publishing space, are setting the expectation of
digital formats. When you buy an EPUB or an eBook from O’Reilly you actually
get .apk, .mobi, EPUB, and now even DAISY , which is… Henrik: [7:36] You get multiple formats. You get multiple formats, right? You get
to choose or all of the above? Anthony: [7:42] Yes, it allows you to really feel confident that you are going to
be able to use this on your devices, which is, on the TV side, TV anywhere was
something that kind of happened a while ago. Then the digital rights locker,
which NeuStar is trying to get off the ground, is another one of those, “Let’s get
to the promise land of, “I buy this movie, I buy this TV show, and I get to view it
on all my devices.” It’s, again, metadata based, digital sites management. [8:17]
But ASTD isn’t doing anything different than other small publishers in saying,
“We need to look at what the big boys are doing and mimic it.” There are definitely
business reasons for doing that.
[8:30] As far as the O’Reilly example goes, we need to meet the expectations of
our customers. Those expectations are not being set by us, they’re being set by
other companies like O’Reilly. They’re doing a really good job of making those
expectations harder and harder to attain.
[8:47] We have to keep up with each new search experience, with the great
search experience that somebody has at Google, with each great business
model that the newspapers make up. Smaller people, smaller publishers like
ASTD have got to keep up with that or we look further and further behind.
[9:06] Now, the other part of the piece is stuff like Amazon. This, again, speaks to
the first part of ASTD as a small publisher. Amazon is great because, as ASTD is
a commercial publisher we have lots of our stuff up on Amazon, but the taxonomy
that governs Amazon is completely meaningless for trainers.
[9:29] One of our big, hit books is called, “Telling Ain’t Training.” One of the four
ways it’s listed metadata-wise is under psychology and counseling. Now, no
trainer is going to go to psychology and counseling to find training content.
[9:47] Amazon is great in that it sends way more traffic to our book than we ever
could, but from a business perspective they take a huge cut. The training taxonomy
metadata based publishing and better categories on our stores that are
more meaningful for our audience, is going to allow us to sell more on our own
website, which is where we keep most of the profits.
[10:16] Building my P and L for my boss and saying, “Hey, we need to invest
$255,075,000 in this new technology,” part of that P and L, that business justification
is driving traffic back to our site where we don’t have to depend on other
sites like Amazon, where they take a huge cut of the book. Henrik: [10:37] Just to clarify, P and L, you mean profit and loss? Anthony: [10:40] Yeah, exactly. As a business owner, I have to go to my boss,
beg for money and he says, “Anthony, why?” Henrik: [10:48] Prove your cause. Anthony: [10:49] Exactly. The other part of your question was “Why does a
training and development organization use the DAM?” [10:57] The big part of
training and technology, where those two things meet are in what I call actually,
what everybody calls Learning Management Systems.
[11:10] Learning Management Systems are things, like Blackboard is a big LMS.
[11:17] Those systems are where a student can start a class and the learning
management systems take the student through the class and mark off with
metadata what has been completed, what the scores are.
[11:31] It takes all of that data and sends it to the teacher for verification, it marks
off what classes they’ve taken.
[11:39] The other thing that it does is it can match learning objectives and content
to industry metadata standards like SCORM, one of them for the education
industry.
[11:52] That kind of flow of data and process, the whole eLearning industry
would not have been born had it not been for Digital Asset Management.
[12:09] All of the video clips that people play as part of their class, moving things
around from this folder to that other folder, being able to create new classes
and training sessions, new educational sessions that are built off of learning
blocks from other training classes, being able to customize courses, none of that
stuff would happen without a Digital Asset Management.
[12:35] If you look at the rise of Blackboard, Blackboard is now an incredibly profitable
company. They did their IPO. I look at Rosetta Stone and they’re used to a
Digital Asset Management.
[12:47] I look at Audible.com, it was there with their audio versions of books.
These are all companies that have found incredible amounts of success by leveraging
Digital Asset Management and selling better to their customers, meeting
their customer’s expectations.
[13:05] Quicker time to market, better product, it’s all through the leveraging of
technology. Henrik: [13:12] Anthony, what advice would you like to give to DAM professionals
or people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Anthony: [13:20] There’s a place in the US called, Silicon Valley and there happens
to be thousands of web startups there. [13:28] A lot of web startups start
with a problem statement. What problem are you trying to fix and how does
your web startup fix that problem?
[13:38] I would recommend to anybody that wants to become a DAM professional
to figure out what problems there are and then create a solution
that’s DAM specific. Start with a problem statement you can start at your
own company.
[13:55] No matter what the company, what the entity, there’s probably a process
that’s at risk for falling apart because of ill management. There’s probably a process
that could use a dose of technology.
[14:12] These kinds of problems that can be fixed with a proper process is ripe
for a Digital Asset Management system.
[14:22] There’s so much sense of media even non-media companies because
of the rise of media and consumable media on the web, consider themselves,
“Part-time media companies.”
[14:37] Digital Asset Management then comes into play for seemingly unrelated
industries and companies. For anybody aspiring to get into the DAM, Digital
Asset Management field, start with a problem.
[14:52] Look at your company and say, “Wow, this really is a problem.” Then,
think, “How can this problem be fixed with Digital Asset Management?”
[15:03] I encourage people to go out and meet other people in the Digital Asset
Management field, go up to them. Find them on LinkedIn and go up to them at
a meetup.
[15:15] Pose your problem to them and say, “My company has this issue, how
would you fix it?” You never know what that Digital Asset Management professor
may give to you.
[15:30] If you go to your boss with that, that boss will see you as “This person is
trying to fix problems, trying to help, trying to leverage technology.” You make
far about a whole new job description for yourself in the process.
[15:41] That’s where I would start, with a problem statement. Henrik: [15:45] Thank you, Anthony. For more on Digital Asset Management,
log onto anotherdamblog.com, thanks again.
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor.
[0:07] Today we’re speaking with Jill Hurst-Wahl. Jill, how are you? Jill Hurst-Wahl: [0:10] I’m good. Henrik: [0:12] Jill, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Jill: [0:16] Well, I don’t actually do Digital Asset Management. But in my workshops
and in my blogging and in my teaching, I try to make people aware of
the need to think long-term. Not to just focus on the short-term health of their
digital assets, but to think about which digital assets they might want to have
access to long-term. Then how they’re going to make those things accessible in
the long-term. Henrik: [0:52] Makes sense. You teach at Syracuse University’s School of
Information Studies. What is different about what you teach there? Jill: [1:00] I think many of the library science programs have very similar curriculum
because of the American Library’s Association accreditation. But the
iSchools are all different, and Syracuse University has an iSchool, School for
Information Studies. We have six degree programs. [1:25] I think what makes us
a bit different is our, not only being library science, but also our classes around
information management and telecommunications and network management.
[1:38] We think more, perhaps, about the management of information, which
includes what’s going to happen to it long-term. In library science, or library and
information science, that thinking comes in the digital libraries area.
[2:08] But you would get, perhaps, similar and different thinking about the topic
from students and their information management program who are future information
managers, not necessarily working in the library archive or museum, but
working in businesses throughout the world. Henrik: [2:27] Makes sense. You have a popular blog. Tell us more about this. Jill: [2:32] I have a blog called “Digitization 101,” started in 2004, and started
as a way to make people aware of what I do and my thinking around digitization.
[2:48] I do consulting, helping people get their digitization programs off the
ground. Often times, just helping them with their planning process, but helping
them sometimes acquire equipment, think about actual process, implement,
find vendors, find whatever they need to get their projects up and going, their
programs up and going. Because these are not short-term events.
[3:18] The blog was started as a way of letting more people know about what
I do and what I think. Over the years, it’s become something I’m really known
for, having this blog that talks about digitization. I talk about all aspects of
digitization.
[3:38] The name “Digitization 101,” if you’re in college, a 101 class is really basic.
But the blog has gone beyond being just talking about basic digitization and
talking about the things that we’re all focused on in digitizing and making sure
that our digital assets are available long-term.
[4:04] I’ve got, I don’t remember how many blog posts. I think over 2,000
blog posts at this point. I used to blog once a day. Because I now teach full-
time, I don’t blog as frequently. But a new series that I’ve started is Way Back
Wednesdays. A way of kind of resurfacing things that are in the archives of
“Digitization 101” that are still relevant and making people aware of those older
blog posts. Trying to keep those older blog posts alive just the way we try to
keep our other digital assets alive. Henrik: [4:48] Smart. What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals
and people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Jill: [4:56] Well, I think for the people that aspiring to be DAM professionals, and
by the way, I love the acronym DAM. Henrik: [5:04] Me too. Jill: [laughter] [5:05] For people aspiring to be a DAM professional is to think
about how to talk about it in ways that don’t necessarily use the words Digital
Asset Management. I think that’s true about digitization, too. In our field, we
tend to rely on jargon. Words are very meaningful to us, not so meaningful to
other people. [5:38] I think, especially if you’re trying to get organizations to
understand how to keep their information alive for the long term, we need to
talk about it in ways that make sense to them. Talk about the value of their information
over the long term. Why they would want, in five, ten years, have access
to information that they’re creating today and then how they would insure that
their information or the data is available for five, 10 years.
[6:17] Using stories to get our points across, but doing it in a way that doesn’t
rely on our terminology as DAM professionals. But the terminology of our organizations,
our users, our colleagues, now whoever it is that we’re trying to persuade
that they need to do something now to insure the life of their information
in the future. Henrik: [6:45] Well, thank you, Jill. [6:46] For more about Digital Asset
Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Why does a jewelry company use a DAM?
What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Julie Maher. Julie,
how are you? Julie Maher: [0:09] Doing great, how are you doing? Henrik: [0:13] Good. Julie, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Julie: [0:15] I’ve been involved with Digital Asset Management for over 10 years.
I first started at Ralph Lauren. A little bit of background, I’ve always been very
interested in photography and the preservation of those types of assets. Digital
Asset Management happened to be something that I naturally fell into. It was
the natural next step for me. [0:39] At Ralph Lauren, they have an extremely
extensive collection of photographic assets, video assets and they were at the
point where everyone in the art department was keeping the same types of
images on different servers. It was really clogging up their space. It got to a
point where we really just needed to clean everything out and put it into one
system that the entire company could access. Henrik: [1:10] Makes sense. Julie: [1:14] Yeah, we started building this DAM system. It was highly customizable.
A company like Ralph Lauren is not going to have anything straightforward.
They’re very lifestyle driven, so you can’t just search for photographs by a
photographer. It has to be by thoroughbred, Nantucket, things like that as well
as searching as by location, photographer, model, season, year, that type of
thing. [1:42] It was extra special, because that’s really their whole thing. And also,
at Ralph Lauren, as in fashion in general, is very cyclical. A collection from the
80s will return and be very popular, and you need to pull those assets again as
inspiration for a new collection.
[2:00] It’s a huge, huge database. They had about 750,000 assets when I left in
2006. They were adding approximately 60,000 assets a year. It’s massive. I was
in the corporate archives department. My boss and I, Pat Christman, who had
been with the company since the very beginning, she was more like the company
historian, we worked with this team for this.
[2:30] We had a very rigorous schedule. We’d meet weekly. We really built up a
beautiful, beautiful system. I love it. To this day people always comment about
it. Anybody who has interacted with that system knows that it’s very fine tuned
and it works really well.
[2:49] Yeah, that was my entre into the Digital Asset Management world. From
there, I’ve worked with the NFL. I worked with them last year for their youth division.
They needed to organize their assets. It seems to be a problem in these
art departments where people download these high res assets and keep them
on their individual servers or desktops. It starts clogging up the system again.
[3:23] Companies are starting to realize that they need one place for these
assets to stay so they’re easily accessible but, again, not everywhere all over the
company. You know things start to happen. Was this the final approved one? Is
it cropped correctly? You don’t have that information in a simple file sitting on
your desktop. Do you know what I mean? It hasn’t gone through all the stages
of approval. Henrik: [3:48] So, there’s centralization basically? Julie: [3:51] Yeah, definitely. I basically work with luxury brands. My other job
that I do is I produce fashion videos. Now I’m starting to work with those clients
who have all these video assets and photographic assets, and they have no idea
what to do with them. [4:11] It just amazes me, maybe because I’ve been doing
this for 10 years it’s not shocking, but it just really surprises me that people don’t
have things more in order. They’re starting to catch on and realize that this is a
very vital part of their business, which is good. This area with the fashion sector,
luxury brands, it’s really totally booming right now. Henrik: [4:42] Julie, why would a jewelry company, for example, use a DAM? Julie: [4:47] Currently I am consulting at the second largest jewelry company
in the country, not the world actually. A jewelry company is like any other company
that has assets. In this particular case there is a jewelry designer for this
company that is pushing this project. [5:12] She herself realizes how valuable it
is to have her assets organized and located in one place. They’re preserved.
They’re getting digitized at very high resolution. They’re going to be preserved.
Everything is going to go to cold storage. Her actual physical assets are going
to be protected.
[5:32] I really saw the jewelry company as any company like a Ralph Lauren or
a NFL. It’s not even about the industry. It’s about preserving your assets and
making sure everything is taken care of. I could do this in any industry.
[5:50] I tell people all the time, “Yes, I work in a luxury brand sector, but I could
be doing this for anyone who has that need.” It’s a major, major need. This is
a great project that I’m working on now, because the company is 100 percent
behind it.
[6:09] We have a very nice budget, which you also often don’t get with these
projects because it’s so new on the scene, it seems. Again, as with Ralph Lauren,
the team I’m managing, we have a very rigorous schedule.
[6:29] We meet every Wednesday, and on Thursdays we action everything that
we talked about on Wednesday so it gives the team that is actually building out
the system five days to get it going. It’s a very, very strict schedule. Everybody is
totally committed to it.
[6:46] I think that’s what makes it work and makes a DAM system really effective,
if you’ve got a team that’s just as passionate as you are, knows the end goal,
knows what it’s going to look like and can see what it’s going to look like.
[7:00] Again, it’s highly customizable. We can just bring this right into the PR
department and use it for exactly what we need. What’s very exciting about this
project is that there are other modules that have already been developed within
the company, but they did it backwards.
[7:19] They uploaded photos first, and then they attached some data and everything
else. We’re doing it like the old school way. We are building it up nice and
slowly, very clean. Then we’re going to add assets. This is now going to serve as
the model for the rest of the company going forward.
[7:35] They have a very, very nice, clean system. It’s going to work perfectly. It’s
going to totally be across the company. It’s going to be one large system with
all these different modules, and it’s very, very nice. Henrik: [7:52] Julie, what advice would you like to give to DAM professionals or
people aspiring to become a DAM professional? Julie: [8:00] I thought about this a little bit. I said I worked in fashion for a long
time, luxury brands. I feel that the DAM community is very inviting. I don’t feel
like it’s a very competitive group. People are always sharing ideas and going to
each other. [8:18] I think that’s really key in this industry, not to be afraid to contact
your colleagues and talk about things. Chances are they’ve already been
through it, and they can give you some pointers. I go to these Meetups, and I
meet these fantastic people.
[8:36] You keep in touch, and you come across some situation, like I met someone
last week and I’m going to contact them about these video assets I’m working
on for this current collection. I just think you should be really open and not
be very competitive about that type of thing.
[8:53] I know a lot of industries are competitive, but I feel like this is a knowledge
sharing group, and it’s just natural to want to talk about, discuss, and
share information. Do you know what I mean? It’s one of those industries that
work that way.
[9:06] For the aspiring professional, I just feel like you should go to these meetups.
Go to these networking events. I hear so many people say they don’t want
to go. They’re shy or whatever. But it’s like this is one group of people who are
so passionate about what they do that somebody is going to talk to you.
[9:30] That fear of social anxiety that people experience when going to these
events, people shouldn’t even worry about that. I find that younger people I run
into don’t want to do these things. I’m like, “It’s the best thing going. Are you
kidding me? I meet people every time I go. I meet wonderful people.” You just
expand your network. Henrik: [9:51] Thanks, Julie. Julie: [9:53] You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure. Henrik: [9:54] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 