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Audio about Digital Asset Management

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Dave Ginsberg on Digital Asset Management

Dave Ginsberg discusses Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik De Gyor:  [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Dave Ginsberg.

[0:08] Dave, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Dave Ginsberg:  [0:12] I work with my IT and archive team to develop and implement our DAM strategies, so myself and the teams define what assets are managed using our tools and our metrics around what is considered successful for our DAM strategy.

[0:25] At the Institute, we have many decades of assets that have yet to have even been digitized, so we are currently working on how to do that quickly, yet cost‑effectively.

Henrik:  [0:35] Dave, how does a non‑profit organization, that actively advances the work of film‑makers and story‑tellers worldwide use digital asset management?

Dave:  [0:44] We have a two‑tiered approach to asset management. We track and manage our legacy non‑digital assets, and the system we use for our newly created elements, which includes over a hundred thousand plus photos taken at each festival, as well as lab programs and countless hours of panels, interviews, marketing pieces, dailies, and completed productions from our lab.

[1:06] We are also investigating how to take our extensive library, and put it up on the Web so our community can have full access to it. There’s some amazing historical photos and videos that I’m sure our audience and researchers alike would love to be able to access directly.

Henrik:  [1:20] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with digital asset management?

Dave:  [1:25] What is challenging about asset management is finding the resources, both financially and human to do it. It is so easy to just take a drive and throw it up on the shelf with materials packed on it, and that seems to be what everybody does these days.

[1:39] What’s hard is actually managing all of that in a normal way, and in a way that you can find things. It’s also very hard to make a case to spend money here, since there are always other priorities that seem to take precedence. However, once an organization makes the decision to have a plan around asset management, they’ll see a lot of wins.

[1:58] We have found that formally creating a group or archives department to manage the assets, as well as spending money on hardware and systems around digitization and management, we can now find materials in seconds to minutes that used to take days to weeks.

[2:13] What this all means is we can tell our story to the world better, and we can leverage our assets. We’re now exploring how to simplify access to our DAM system, so our entire staff can access our history, as well as direct Web access to the world. We think the potential here is enormous, since currently only a small number of people can access our huge library.

[2:33] One huge win we had installing our DAM, was we were able to automate our photo‑approval workflow for our January Park City Festival. Festival photos go through Adobe Bridge software, where we add metadata, and then on to our Levels Beyond DAM, and then are distributed by Box to our approvers.

[2:51] This is a process that used to take our team hours per day manually, and now it’s done automatically, in minutes.

Henrik:  [2:57] Dave, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Dave:  [3:02] Learn as much as you can about the technologies available, the vendors, and best practices. At Sundance, our archives team is composed of professionals with library science degrees, and that gives us a lot of amazing insights around metadata, which really is the Holy Grail around any asset management system. Without a good plan around capturing and tracking this information, your DAM will be useless.

Without a good plan around capturing and tracking this information, your DAM will be useless.

[3:25] The other thing to consider is that you need to keep up‑to‑date on what everybody in the industry is doing around asset management, so doing things like listening to this podcast, reading articles, going to conferences ‑‑ these are all things that will help you to stay up‑to‑date on the current workflows, and also give you a lot of insight into a lot of the newer practices that people are just starting to employ.

Henrik:  [3:47] Thanks, Dave. If you’d like to hear more from Dave Ginsberg, check out his podcast at elegantworkflow.com.

Henrik:  [3:55] For more on this and other digital asset management topics, go to anotherdamblog.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. For this podcast and 150 other podcast episodes, including transcripts of every interview, go to anotherdampodcast.com.

[4:15] Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Lauren Philson on Digital Asset Management

Lauren Philson discusses Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Lauren Philson.

Lauren, how are you?

Lauren Philson:  [0:11] I’m great, Henrik. Thanks for having me.

Henrik:  [0:13] Lauren, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Lauren:  [0:16] I am involved, typically, with the implementation of new technology in an organization or a company. A lot of that involves analyzing current processes and systems, and then working with the staff and individuals on optimizing those. Taking the organization through vendor selection, building out specs for integration and potential tools, and working with them in terms of change management.

[0:44] I currently am with The Rockefeller Foundation, working with them to upgrade their current system. In the past, I’ve worked in production environments and had a little bit of experience with broadcast as well. Varying ranges.

Henrik:  [1:00] How does one of America’s oldest private Foundations use Digital Asset Management?

Lauren:  [1:07] The Rockefeller Foundation, as you can imagine, has a very wide reach ‑‑ global organization. We have thousands of grant recipients and external partners that we are working with around the world.

[1:19] A lot of our media traffic centralizes around the acquisition of photography, video that’s coming in, and also making that content available for the creation with our external partners in terms of publication on the work that we’re doing.

[1:35] All of the media that we receive just represents a very, very small piece of a rather large puzzle that we are working on and solving some of the world’s biggest problems. For a 100‑year‑old foundation, Rockefeller is highly innovative and is committed to innovation as part of their mission and role.

[1:54] They really value inter‑connectivity. For that reason, they’re currently placing a huge emphasis on story telling that allows us to use media ‑‑ to use words ‑‑ to provide a context. Each of those little bits of the puzzle can later add up and demonstrate what the larger strides that we are making in these initiatives.

[2:16] There’s also the component of archiving and cultural preservation. Rockefeller has a very impressive archive center in upstate New York. We are not fully connected with them. There’s been a chasm as most organizations experience with DAM and with Digital in general.

[2:36] What we’re doing is working and laying the groundwork so that digital files that are important to history and are important to cultural preservation are able to be more easily routed to those archives.

Henrik:  [2:48] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Lauren:  [2:53] In general, with both of those ‑‑ the challenges and the successes ‑‑ have usually revolved around governance and user adoption. No matter what the end goal of an organization or a company is, we do see common threads of challenges that come up. Often times, I’ve seen DAM go from being a departmental solution to an enterprise solution, literally, overnight.

[3:15] Priorities change pretty rampantly. Managing expectations and being smart about how one scales and on boards. Just, in general, having a very positive campaign around the tool. Without the users, you can have the best metadata schema, you can have the fanciest tools and integration. you can spend a ton of money on top of one system, but without your users, you’re bound to have some issues.

[3:41] It’s really remarkable once you do have all the individuals that will be involved with the system in alignment how quickly you can see a project turn around in terms of success.

Henrik:  [3:53] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Lauren:  [3:59] Particularly for folks that are looking into Digital Asset Management and venturing into this field, my biggest piece of advice would be to tap into the community. I’ve never met a group of individuals that are more willing and helpful to share information and knowledge. The reason for that is that there is no single formula to solving the problems that come with DAM.

[4:22] It’s an ongoing and ever growing puzzle to solve for us. Tapping into that wealth of knowledge, building the network and being able to apply others’ experiences to your current situation is the most valuable tool that you can have.

Tapping into that wealth of knowledge, building the network and being able to apply others’ experiences to your current situation is the most valuable tool that you can have.

Henrik:  [4:37] Thanks, Lauren.

Lauren:  [4:38] Great!

Henrik:  [4:39] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. For this and 150 other podcast [episodes], go to AnotherDAMpodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions about Digital Asset Management, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com.

Thanks again.

[Note: Lauren Philson is one of the 55+ speakers at the Henry Stewart DAM Conference in New York City in May 2015.]

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts,  RadioPublic, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Carla Derck on Digital Asset Management

Carla Derck discusses Digital Asset Management

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 Carla Derck.

[0:09] Carla, how are you?

Carla Derck:  [0:10] I’m fine and you?

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

Carla:  [0:15] Until just recently, I didn’t realize that it was called Digital Asset Management. I’ve been involved with maintaining and cataloging our company’s photos, illustrations and artwork for probably over 15 years.

[0:32] It wasn’t until just recently, within the past may be two years, that we’ve started looking at a new solution because of our current solutions, we had several of them, were no longer adequate. It wasn’t until we started looking at a new solution that I became familiar with the terms Digital Asset Management.

Henrik:  [0:52] Why does the company that develops and produces mechanical pipe joining systems use Digital Asset Management?

Carla:  [0:59] Even though we sell our products through network of distributors, we don’t sell directly to the end users or to the public. We do have a very expensive line of products, probably over 600. They’re used in a variety of markets including fire protection, HVAC, mining, oil and gas, municipal. We generate close to 200 pieces of technical and sales literature.

[1:24] We maintain an extensive website. We support a team of over 500 people. All of these make use of assets in our DAM on a daily basis. As DAM systems continue to be developed, and we’re finding that they’re more affordable to smaller companies such as mine. It’s a great tool to use, to manage and catalog and control the thousands of photos and digital assets that are generated everyday.

[1:53] It’s so much easier now to generate content than it was say 20 years ago. There is a huge increase in what we receive on a daily basis. Even as a mechanical piping solutions company, we find that the need is there for a DAM.

Henrik:  [2:11] Carla, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with DAM?

Carla:  [2:15] Some of the biggest challenges is, first of all, convincing the company to agree that a DAM is a necessity. To demonstrate the value of it to the colleagues and to our vendors and to help them change their way of thinking and work processes, to make use of it.

[2:31] I found this is a common theme among their professionals. I don’t think we’re unusual in any way in some of the challenges that we face. Other challenges, in particular, are change management, getting people to think of a new way of using the solution. The DAM community has a ton of resources and information to help effect that change management and I found that extremely useful.

[2:55] Biggest success is yet to be realized, we are at the stage right now where we are starting to implement our new solutions. I have high hopes of the success of it by the end of this year. I want to be able to make all these assets accessible to colleagues.

[3:13] We have colleagues and vendors across the globe in China and Europe who have a terrible time trying to find things. A lot of it is stored on local folders and individual files, here at our headquarters. So my success will be measured on how easy it is for these colleagues in other parts of the world to locate and make use of our assets.

Henrik:  [3:34] That is a great measure. Carla, congratulations on being the first person to finish DAM Foundation’s new course on the “Introduction to Digital Asset Management.”

[3:44] What can you share about your experience with this online course?

Carla:  [3:48] I’ve been looking for an opportunity to expand my knowledge about Digital Asset Management for sometime. Particularly when we started looking for a new solution for the company, through the DAM Guru Program and other resources that I found online.

[4:04] I located the new course that the DAM Foundation was offering, and so I jumped on it immediately. It was exactly what I was looking for. I especially liked the idea that it was self-paced. That I could work on the financing the lessons at my own pace, without particular deadline in place. Because I am like most people, putting in a full-time job and then some things like…to be able to work at my own pace and to learn on my own time, was perfect for me.

[4:36] We didn’t have a chance to communicate with other participants in the program. One thing that I had mentioned to Elizabeth, the instructor of the course was that, it would be nice, may be in the future, to look at a possibility of a discussion board, that other participants in the course could contribute to and give us a chance to bounce ideas off of each other.

[4:57] I thought that would have been a nice idea to do. Hey, I’m looking forward to some future courses if they are available. I do intend to pursue them if they are. It was an excellent resource, and it really helped me to make a good decision on the vendor that we chose for DAM solution this year.

[5:13] It reinforced everything that I had learned online beforehand. It helped me to make good decisions on what we were looking for. It was absolutely perfect timing for me. I know a lot of the other participants, may not have felt the same way. For me, it provided exactly what I was doing and what I needed at the time.

Henrik:  [5:33] In full disclosure, I was involved in the creation of that course. Even though Elizabeth wrote most of the course, I was one of the editors of the material.

Carla:  [5:42] Yes, Elizabeth mentioned that to me. It was great, thank you very much. I appreciated it.

Henrik:  [5:47] Thank you for your feedback. Congratulations on being the first person to complete it.

[5:51] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Carla:  [5:56] I would say take advantage of the resources that are available through the DAM Foundation and the others [in the] DAM community. It seems that people in the field are excited and willing to share their knowledge and you can learn so much from them, definitely take advantage of that.

[6:14] Just to those who are already professionals, please continue to share your experiences and your knowledge with everybody. My only other advice would be to stay on top of the technology because it seems that it is changing rapidly.

Henrik:  [6:28] Thanks Carla.

Carla:  [6:30] Sure. Thank you.

Henrik:  [6:32] For more on this and other Digital Assets Management topics, go to anotherdamblog.com

For this podcast and 150 other podcast episodes including transcripts of our interviews, go to anotherdampodcast.com.

[6:48] If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me about anything regarding Digital Asset Management at anotherdamblog@gmail.com.

[6:56] Thanks again.

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts,  RadioPublic, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

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 Rubyliza Gaba on Digital Asset Management

Rubyliza Gaba discusses Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about digital asset management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Rubyliza Gaba. Rubyliza, how are you?

Rubyliza Gaba:  [0:11] I’m good, how are you doing?

Henrik:  [0:13] Great. Rubyliza, how are you involved with digital asset management?

Rubyliza:  [0:17] I am the Digital Asset Archivist at Fossil. Aside from ingesting images and checking out metadata integrity, I also do training and troubleshoot any issues our local and global users encounter.

Henrik:  [0:31] How does an American designer and manufacturer of clothing and accessories use digital asset management?

Rubyliza:  [0:37] Our DAM is used as a centralized archival repository. It houses all of Fossil’s final product images across multiple brands and product categories. Internally, it’s used by multiple departments, both locally and internationally via our regional offices.

[0:57] Actually, Fossil’s DAM is fairly young, only being launched in early 2014. So Pre‑DAM it was a bit of a challenge to locate images after they were worked on and finalized. Images were housed in multiple locations, including internal file shares and external FTP servers. We also have an archive system where images were actually burnt onto physical CDs and DVDs for archival purposes. Of course, this process was plagued with issues such as media being mislabeled, or maybe being checked out and never returned.

[1:32] Now that the DAM is in place, our users simply search for the images that they need, and they download them in the format that they require.

Henrik:  [1:42] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with DAM?

Rubyliza:  [1:45] I think the biggest challenge I’ve seen with the DAM system was change management. I can figure out system issues, but trying to introduce a new piece of technology to people, and convincing them that this system will actually help them was a bit tough.

[2:01] I completely understand that change is difficult sometimes. People are set in their own ways. They want to continue doing something that they’ve been doing for a while, because they know it works for them.

[2:13] When we were in the beginning stages of our implementation, we knew that user experience is the key to a successful DAM system. We wanted to make sure that our DAM would be easy for anyone to use, and in turn maybe ease any nervousness that they had for using a new system.

[2:32] What we did, my team and I, we set up meetings with our future users to discuss what they needed to be housed in the DAM, what functionality was required around that content, what pieces of metadata needed to be captured and how and when to capture it, and also the folder structure of the system.

[2:52] The final result is an interface that’s very sleek, and a search function that’s super simple to use. We found that with the proper training, users became more comfortable using our DAM.

[3:06] To us, user adoption is hugely important. We didn’t want to be to set in our own ways. We work with so many brands that are all individually unique. If something doesn’t work for a team, we’re always happy to discuss what needs to be done to provide the experience they expect from us.

[3:28] As for successes, I would have to say it’s knowing that people use our system. We’ve been getting pretty positive responses to it. Also, another success is seeing our user count grow. When we originally rolled out our DAM, it was only to a small group of users in our local offices. Now, our user number is in the thousands and span a global community.

[3:55] It’s really a great feeling to see something you’ve worked on so hard on it, just positively impact other people’s daily work processes. It’s been an amazing experience to be involved from day one, to be a part of the process and to watch our system grow into what it is today. It’s increased productivity across the board, and I really look forward to the future of our DAM.

Henrik:  [4:19] Excellent. Rubyliza, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Rubyliza:  [4:25] My advice is to network. That was the biggest advice given to me when I was in school. Networking is key, whether you are already a DAM professional or aspiring to be one. It’s always great to talk to others in our field. You can go to conferences, join organizations, and just meet each other face to face. We have a fantastic and supportive community out there, through my experiences.

[4:50] As for aspiring DAM professionals in school, I would get involved in volunteer work or internships. To me, you can have all the education in the world, but it’s that hands‑on training that helps. Also, it’s a good step towards building a network too. Also, work on that LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn, I think, is an amazing tool that not too many people are using, surprisingly.

“Always remember to be flexible.”

[5:15] Finally, remember when you do get the job, don’t get discouraged if you find yourself doing things that maybe aren’t always related to digital asset management. Always remember to be flexible.

Henrik:  [5:28] Great advice. Thanks, Rubyliza.

Rubyliza:  [5:30] Thank you. It was a pleasure to be a part of your podcast.

Henrik:  [5:33] For more on this and other digital asset management topics, log on to anotherdamblog.com. If you have any comments or questions about digital asset management, feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. For 150 other digital asset management podcast episodes, go to anotherdampodcast.com.

Thanks again.

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts,  RadioPublic, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

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