How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Do you believe the field of Digital Asset Management will continue to grow? Why or why not?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals or people aspiring to be DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, we’re speaking with Theresa Regli.
[0:08] Theresa, how are you? Theresa Regli: [0:09] I’m great. How are you? Henrik: [0:10] Good. Thanks. Theresa: [0:12] Good. Henrik: [0:12] Theresa, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Theresa: [0:17] I’m involved in a couple of different ways. My principal involvement,
really, is as an analyst. I work for an analyst and research firm that’s called
The Real Story Group. [0:30] And we publish, basically, product and vendor
evaluation reports and essentially evaluate different technologies on the market.
It’s kind of like a “Consumer Reports” sort of thing. I am the Digital Asset
Management lead analyst for the company.
[0:48] I also do some consulting, and I help people learn about Digital Asset
Management and pick Digital Asset Management products based on what’s
most appropriate for them.
[1:00] That’s my main two-pronged association with the DAM world. Henrik: [1:06] Excellent. Do you believe that the field of Digital Asset
Management will continue to grow? Why or why not? Theresa: [1:13] That’s an interesting question. I think the field of Digital Asset
Management and the discipline of Digital Asset Management is something that
is growing and will continue to grow, because the number of assets we have
is really continuing to grow, the number of images, video, audio, etc. All those
things are constantly getting bigger and bigger, and there’s more and more
of them, and we need people and technology to manage them. So I definitely
think that is going to increase and the people involved will continue to increase.
[1:46] Interestingly, the technology, or the vendors that are selling the technology,
aren’t really growing, I think, at the same pace as the number of assets and
the amount of work that needs to get done. I think there’s sort of a gap that
is existing between the number of things to be managed and the speed with
which vendors are able to address it. I think that’s a little bit slower than the
actual field is growing.
[2:15] Yes, I think it’s going to continue to grow. I just think there’s different parts
of it that are growing at different paces, really. Henrik: [2:20] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals or
people aspiring to be a DAM professional? Theresa: [2:27] Well, I think, of course, the number one thing that I would share,
just because it’s my particular bailiwick and it’s my particular area of expertise, is
just to make an effort to understand Digital Asset Management technology and
how it really works. [2:45] It’s not that that’s the panacea to all the problems to,
or all the challenges that are involved with, solving Digital Asset Management.
But I think there’s a lot of very general approaches to Digital Asset Management
that don’t consider the technology enough, and the details of the technology,
and how that could potentially change things or make them more efficient. Also,
how they, in some cases, might make things more difficult, and require different
sorts of human tasks that are different from the ones they have now.
[3:23] I just think in general, just learning about the technology, how it really
works, what the different components are, how it’s successful in certain organizations
and maybe why it fails in other organizations, I think, is really important
for DAM professionals, whether you’re already one or whether you’re aspiring
to be one.
[3:41] Also, just to make sure that you’re out there and you’re also meeting and
talking with other people who work in the industry. I think that’s important,
regardless of what industry that you’re in, but in particular, with Digital Asset
Management, we have various events, and there’s lots of places online where
we can learn about it, too.
[3:57] Those are really my two main pieces of advice. Henrik: [4:01] Excellent. Well, thank you, Theresa. Theresa: [4:03] Yeah. Henrik: [4:03] For more on this, log onto anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
You are the Conference Chair to Henry Stewart DAM Conferences. How have you seen Digital Asset Management change in the past several years?
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 David Lipsey. David, how are you?
David Lipsey: [0:11] Good, Henrik. Thanks for asking and thanks for the opportunity to join you.
Henrik: [0:14] David, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
David: [0:19] I had the chance to be involved in Digital Asset Management before the phrase even existed. I was able to become a part of one of the foundational software companies, Artesia Technologies, which grew out of work that I was doing with many other people at its precursor company at Thomson, the publisher. [0:47] We were looking at what now seems like the quaint and carriage trade idea of repurposing editorial assets to go from textbooks or the technical reference materials from Thomson into CDs which could be distributed largely for reference publishing. Of course, out of this…Let’s call it something…Out of this spaghetti grew the DNA of the concept of create once and use many. We weren’t able to grab the words “content management.” They had become used for web-facing applications. But we did come up with, in some sort of aggregation and a bit asystematic [1:33] with the phrase “Digital Asset Management.” [1:37] The first companies I had the chance to with, Henrik, that were involved with this were a company that’s local to you and I, “The Washington Post,” as well as General Motors, one of the largest corporations in the world that has an extraordinary archive of images and thousands of hours of video that they were looking to put to better work for GM and reduce the cost of finding that material. [2:01] I’ve continued through my career, back from this early wandering into what was then an uncharted map of, “Let’s become Digital Asset Management,” through several years with Artesia, which was acquisitioned by OpenText. In subsequent roles as an industry principle for media and entertainment for SAP, then with FTI Consulting, also in the media and entertainment practice. [2:31] My concerns go across the entire spectrum of the content industries, whether it’s for text or image, for audio, for video, or for other kinds of files where, again, creating once and using again can bring value to organizations, to companies, to universities, museums, etc.
Henrik: [2:54] You’re the conference chair of Henry Stewart DAM conferences, how have you seen Digital Asset Management change in the past several years?
David: [3:03] It would be interesting to plot this and do word maps or kind of idea clusters. They are fun to reflect on. I think as you and I have talked about, and as you’ve been good about presenting it at Henry Stewart, there are now actually job descriptions about, jobs which are entitled Digital Asset Manager. [3:29] I think that, in and of itself, indicates how DAM is becoming much more of an enterprise application. I believe there’s a large transition that we’re seeing occurring right now, where we have… There’s some kind of almost sweet irony in that this application, which collapses silos between content types, a PowerPoint, a Word document, an image, a video, an audio file, has been siloed itself into many departmental applications in the businesses or organizations where DAM had been deployed. [4:09] I think, Henrik, that we’re seeing a recognition that DAM is an enterprise resource application, much the way that payroll is. Payroll could vary if there are exempt or nonexempt employees. Payroll could certainly vary if they’re union or non-union employees, with the complexities of the workflows of that very specialized compensation methodologies that have to be deployed. [4:36] DAM itself, I think, is moving from something that happened in various departments, which had the original budgets for this, to an enterprise application. To tie this to your question, I think we’re seeing that in the caliber of Digital Asset Management installations that many companies are kind enough to share at the Henry Stewart Conferences. [5:03] For example, we now will have, this year, the third or fourth maturing presentation of the application that goes across Warner Brothers and its allied organizations at Turner and CNN, which supports not only across business lines, across asset types. But now, I don’t know how many millions of assets are managed in that application. That’s a statement we just simply could not have made earlier on in several years of Henry Stewart Conferences. [5:36] I think the fact that there are emerging models for what disposition means and HR policies for hiring. There is a recognition that DAM needs to be a centralized application and that we now see, across lines of business, repositories that number in the millions of assets and are just a part of everyday life indicates some of the maturing of this field.
Henrik: [6:01] That’s true. What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
David: [6:07] I think attending the conferences that are available is a great idea. I think the chance to understand that we’re only still, in so many ways, at the beginning of this field. Yes, the more mature vendors have been around for a dozen years or so, from the late ‘90s to here we are in late 2010. That the demands on the content and the fundability of content are something that we’re still seeing very early on. [6:43] I was in a meeting last week where I heard one of the large repurposers of content in the sports industry talk about that they currently service 106 separate digital handheld devices. This is October of 2010 when there’s only the iPad and only a nominal amount of Android smartphones. [7:08] Just imagine, Henrik, a year from now the demand on content. And not only from industries where publishing is both a noun and a verb our friends in the book business or the movie business or TV and magazine publishing. But imagine a year from now that the demand on content from CPG [Consumer Package Goods] companies and from other manufacturers that have marketing initiatives will have exquisite tablet devices that their content can be used on. [7:39] I’m saying this as a note to encourage them to become involved in the Digital Asset Management space and understanding that it’s a very wide-open field for someone who wants to become a DAM professional. [7:57] I also think that someone wanting to get involved in digital liquidity within the company that they’re applying for may encounter some resistance in more entrenched departmental behaviors or operations. Nothing unusual. It’s just that the VPs or department managers may have been working with certain workflows for a long time and someone coming into the field, especially someone who is… [8:31] There’s Schwinn Bicycle involved in iPhone and digital wheels, if you will, is going to be, maybe, much more comfortable than the people that are working for in terms of content sharing, content liquidity, and content repurposing. [8:50] I guess that would be something that probably both of us would give as a word of caution to someone entering the field, that someone’s comfort with living in the connected world may be encountering a department that’s not as digitally integrated and not as connected within its own organization. Some education, some patience, and some very private eye-rolling may be a good approach to encountering that. [9:20] Does that make sense?
Henrik: [9:21] Yes, and there’s likely many of those.
David: [9:23] Yeah, I think so. I think it’s one of the things that it’s both exciting. It can also be very frustrating for…I don’t want to say a generation before. Newer employees who are used to just lightning-fast content sharing and have not encountered the fact that it took, what was it, 20 years to clear the DVD of the first season of “Saturday Night Live” because of the complexities of the rights situation. [9:57] I think that another one of the challenges is that it makes, with the technology that provides for rapid worldwide ease of access to assets, that the distance rights systems and governance systems have not nearly kept pace with this. [10:15] Rights clearance and rights permissioning, and, in addition, the pricing models are far from mature about this. We’re sitting here in this conversation on the cusp of “The New York Times” having an interesting transition coming up with paywall with metered access to free content. Magazines, finding a new wealth of opportunity on subscription-based and display advertising-based revenue from tablets that didn’t exist a year ago.
Henrik: [10:51] Like “Wired”…
David: [10:54] Absolutely. We’re only seeing a handful of tablet-based magazines to talk about. It could be easy to come into a job and just assume everything’s been figured out about the economics of digital content and the rights that are “the crazy aunt in the basement,” [laughs] use that phrase or “the crazy uncle in the basement.” [11:22] We have a long ways to go on the econometrics of digital contentment and on the ease with which rights are, at this point, permitted because much more maturity is occurring in the negotiation stage than previously.
Henrik: [11:39] Thank you, David.
David: [11:40] Henrik, it’s always a delight to spend time with you and appreciate your contributions to maturing the field. Look forward to talking to you again.
Henrik: [11:49] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does taxonomy relate to Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to give to DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Seth Earley. Seth,
how are you? Seth Earley: [0:09] I am terrific. Thank you for having me. Henrik: [0:11] Great. Seth, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Seth: [0:15] Well, I’ll tell you. We have been doing work with Digital Asset
Management for probably the entire 15 years that I’ve been doing this kind of
work. I’ve been involved in content management, in document management, in
knowledge management for that period of time. Throughout the entire career,
we’ve always had to deal with nontextual assets. We’ve always had to deal with
some rich media. [0:40] I remember at the beginning when we were doing work
with Lotus Notes. The first time you could drop an image into a rich text field, I
was like, “Wow. This is so amazingly cool. I cannot believe you can drop a picture
into a rich text field.” Ever since then we’ve been dealing with digital assets
and Digital Asset Management Systems. Henrik: [1:02] Excellent. Seth, how does taxonomy relate to Digital Asset
Management? Seth: [1:13] You can infer something about text assets. You can derive something.
You can do text mining. There are is-ness and about-ness inherently
within the content. [1:20] When you build an index, when you’re doing search,
you’re searching text assets by inferring something about the nature of the
content. You can create a forward index by looking at the words in a document.
You invert that index, which gives you the pointers to specific documents
based on the words. And then, that’s derived metadata about the text, about
the document.
[1:43] You don’t have that ability to do that with any kind of Digital Asset
Management, with digital assets, with rich media, with images. There’s no inherent
is-ness or about-ness, so, of course, we have to use metadata.
[1:56] The way we look at metadata and taxonomy, taxonomy is really the way
of beginning to organize your metadata. We don’t look at taxonomy in a very
narrow sense of navigation. We look at taxonomy from a perspective of classification
and overall information architecture.
[2:15] When we start looking at taxonomy, we want to begin thinking about the
types of fields and the ways that we can start to tag the assets with metadata.
Then we want to populate those fields with reference data, with the drop downs,
with the controlled vocabularies, with the lists and attributes.
[2:36] Taxonomies are considered to be hierarchical in nature. We can certainly
have hierarchical lists of controlled values, but there’s all sorts of different ways
of looking at information architecture that references taxonomies. Taxonomies
are the overall organizing principles around your metadata fields.
[2:58] Of course, whenever you think about metadata, if you have a large list of
attributes or a large list of values, you have to break those up for human consumption.
We can only deal with fairly short lists, maybe 5, 10, or maybe 15
items. If you start to get into lists that are 100 terms long or 200 terms or 500
terms, how do you deal with that? Well, you have to break it up. That’s where
you have to use hierarchies.
[3:25] You can even think of metadata fields as the top-level terms of your hierarchy.
A doc type will be a top-level term of a hierarchy. Maybe an asset type
would be a top-level term, or maybe a channel, a region, a language, or any of
those other types of attributes. Those can all be considered top-level terms of
the taxonomy. Really, all of the metadata is an expression of the taxonomy. Henrik: [4:01] Makes complete sense. Seth, what advice would you give to DAM
professionals or people aspiring to be DAM professionals? Seth: [4:12] Well, I think the best advice that I can give would be to get experience,
even with projects that are nonprofit organizations or organizations
that don’t have a lot of money, so that you can build your skills. Get a broad
understanding of information architecture, including things like wire frame development,
metadata schemas, and taxonomy development. [4:41] Look at the
semantics of your structures, and try to understand a little bit about library
science. Library science is the core foundation for all of these organizing principles.
I heard someone recently say that a Digital Asset Management system is a
Metadata Management System that does fancy things. I totally agree with that.
[5:04] You really do need to understand metadata structures and metadata schemas,
and understand things like Dublin Core. Look at the different ways that you
can organize those assets using various types of technologies. Look at how the
various technologies leverage organizing principles and leverage information
architecture.
[5:28] I would get some very practical experience, though. Find a nonprofit organization
that doesn’t have a lot of resources, that would like to get your elbow
grease and your hard work to help them fix a system or help them organize their
assets. That’s a great way to build your resume.
[5:50] If you’re more experienced, definitely broaden your expertise by looking
at some training in library science and metadata schemas. Have a good, broad
understanding of the technologies. Henrik: [6:04] Great idea. Well, thanks, Seth. Seth: [6:07] Thank you. Henrik: [6:08] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.
How do you deal the challenges of cultural heritage and DAM?
What advice would you have for DAM professionals or people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. My name is Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Jake
Nadal. Jake, how are you? Jacob Nadal: [0:11] Real well, Henrik. Thank you. Henrik: [0:12] Jake, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Jacob: [0:16] I am the Preservation Officer for the UCLA Library. I’ve been involved
with the whole digital library effort in some way or another for about a
decade now. Preservation officer, I might explain to you something about it as
two parts, in terms of Digital Asset Management. One of those is kind of trying
to get assets that are worth managing in the first place, and the other is making
sure that all those assets will maintain value. [0:45] They’ll still be usable from
one asset management system to another, that as we sometimes have a planning
horizon that stretches into decades and longer, until we expect that at a
certain point those assets will move from system to system.
[0:59] Both of them are sort of shepherding roles for our digital assets, our
digital material. And I think the thing that unites those is that we look to have
certain technical criteria, certain specifications and standards that we produce
content to. Of course, I work with a great team all across the UCLA library and
the UCLA system. We’re really a set of people with very specific technical competencies
for each step of the chain. Henrik: [1:26] Excellent. How do you deal with the challenges of cultural heritage
and DAM? Jacob: [1:33] There again, I think there are two parts here. One, and probably
the most interesting to our audience here, is the actual internal workflow. The
other part is really about what cultural heritage assets are and the particular mission
obligation that comes with that. [1:50] In our workflow, we’ve been talking a
lot about having a three part strategy. It might be better to say a three part test
for preservation activities at UCLA library. One is that we always try to have a
method for doing analysis or doing some information gathering about whatever
our problem is. That leads to a proposed treatment or a course of action. We try
not to act until we have some evidence.
[2:17] And all of that we try to have happen in house and have that be the bulk
of the work, just as a matter of good management. We want to, when we’ve
done out part, have it be more or less ready to go.
[2:30] And then, knowing that we will be either incomplete…We may have subject
expertise that we lack, which is usually the case. If we’re dealing with, say,
an old Armenian scroll and we’re creating a digital version of that, we may need
to talk to language and subject experts to figure out how that will be most
useful to its users.
[2:52] Sometimes that’s an area of technical concern. Very often, as we’re dealing
with, right now, a big topic for us is research data. Our scientists especially
produce enormous research data sets, and in the arts and humanities, it’s very
common now to use multiple sources of data, so there may be news video
feeds, there may be GIS information, and those may come together in a research
project.
[3:22] Very often, within the library itself, we have to manage that asset, or a
group of assets, but we need to look outside to a particular technical expert to
help guide us on the best way to do that. That second stage is sort of outside
review and approval, and then we always try to have a hedge, some strategy
in case things go wrong. Sometimes that’s as simple as just retaining a previous
version.
[3:49] Sometimes that’s retaining an alternate format, so video is an area right
now where we know what formats are good for use right now, but we’re very
much uncertain about what formats will be good for use and repurposing even
five years from now, and sometimes an alternate format is simply the authentic
artifact. We may scan a photo, and we may do a lot of work with that scanned
digital version, but, of course, we’re going to keep the original photo.
[4:20] Sometimes that’s identifying a third party provider that we can fall back
on. Especially as we work with publishers, we’re often licensing content to make
available to our users, so we do certain things to care for that content, but then
we will also arrange with that publisher and a third party.
[4:36] A group like Portico is an example, and the LOCKSS Project, or the
CLOCKSS Project. That stands for “Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe.” That’s a
group that operates out of Stanford. They both work with libraries and publishers
to be a third party archiving service, so there’s always a third group that can
provide access.
[4:55] We always try to have some sort of hedge, knowing that we’re kind of
planning for the future, and, of course, that planning for the future part is, in
some ways, the thing we do least, day to day.
[5:08] We have a job just like everybody else, but it’s part of what makes the job
so fantastic, that we’re building this collection, or record, or last resort, and, of
course, the materials we get to work with are incredible artifacts, this wonderful
digital versions of them, and now, increasingly, the born digital research projects
of some of the best and brightest.
[5:29] UCLA, of course, has got a got a pretty interesting community of people
creating digital assets here. Henrik: [5:35] Excellent. What advice would you have to give to DAM professionals
or people aspiring to become a DAM professional? Jacob: [5:41] I don’t know if you’re familiar with Tom Peterson, sort of a management
guru management consultant. He has this great catch phrase “Out read
the other guy.” [laughter] Jacob: [5:54] I find myself saying that a lot lately. My own engagement with the
DAM community comes from recognizing that the conversations I was having
with digital library folks and with preservation colleagues were very similar to
conversations I was encountering in this other community, this Digital Asset
Management community. [6:17] That’s a two way street. I would encourage
anyone in DAM, and especially people who have an interest in the cultural heritage
side of it, to look at your related professions. Look at both the customers
you serve as well as people who maybe share some of the same technical base
and technical infrastructure.
[6:38] Your photographers, your records managers. We’re all trying to do some
of the same things whether we call it library science, inventory management,
manufacturing. The people I find who are at the head of the game and are the
most interesting to work with are the people who can see what can be interpreted
or adapted to fit their means.
[7:03] In cultural heritage specifically there’s some more practical things, or more
immediate things. A number of Library Information Science programs now and
offering specializations in digital libraries and digital information.
[7:18] My alma mater, Indiana University, does a lot of work in this area. There’s a
program called DIGIN, DIGIN, at Arizona. I know Chapel Hill and Michigan more
and more. Of course, they’re all just trying to keep up with UCLA.
[laughter] Jacob: [7:36] All those programs are worth comparing and considering. Very
specifically in cultural heritage, it’s worth knowing that there’s a bias towards
open and or free software solutions. Henrik: [7:47] Makes sense. Jacob: [7:48] If you know that LAMP stack, LINUX, Apache, MySQL, PHP you’re
in really good shape in terms of tech skills. Of course, none of us are out from
under the shadow of Adobe. [8:01] Certainly in my sector a lot of the tools we
use day-to-day look a lot like the tools that are in use elsewhere. Henrik: [8:10] Of course. Jacob: [8:12] Or in XML. Henrik: [8:15] Yes, always important. Jacob: [8:16] If you’ve got XML, the rest comes pretty easily. Henrik: [8:19] True. Thanks Jake. Jacob: [8:21] My pleasure. I’m glad I could do this. Henrik: [8:23] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 