How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
You write a blog about DAM. How did you get involved with Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Ivan Mironchuk. Ivan,
how are you? Ivan Mironchuk: [0:10] Good, how are you? Henrik: [0:11] Good. Ivan, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Ivan: [0:14] I work for an integration company called DPCI. We are a firm that
specializes in implementing solutions around Digital Asset Management, web
content management, and editorial work flow solutions. We are one of those
shops that helps customers take advantage of all the different platforms that
they have within their organization. Henrik: [0:40] How is this involved with Digital Asset Management? Ivan: [0:45] One of our core competencies at DPCI is we’ve become a vendor
neutral integrator and interactive services solution around DAM. One thing that
we often find is that customers are looking for advice on what would be the
best solution for their organization that meets their requirements, their price
point, and also what’s going to service them down the line in the long run. [1:19]
One of the things that we like to write about at DPCI is just different things
that we find customers asking all the time in terms of DAM. What is a DAM?
What does metadata mean? What is taxonomy? How do I set up my rights and
permissions? How do I get the most from my assets to leverage across multiple
channels?
[1:44] Whenever we find that we’re getting a number of these questions from
multiple organizations, we think that it’s probably a topic that the wider community
would be interested in reading about. That’s where the blog topics
come from. Henrik: [2:03] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals or
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Ivan: [2:09] It starts out with understanding how to organize your own assets. If
you have a really messy desktop on your own computer and you don’t have any
filing system for your own files, then that’s probably a good indicator that you
might be cut out for being a DAM professional. I meet people that say that they
get started with just obsessively setting up folder hierarchies and organization
of assets on a traditional file system. Then I meet people that go further into it
and say, “I really love using Adobe Bridge, and I tag all of my assets with XMP
data. It really helps me find things on our local file system.” [3:00] Those are the
people that you try and shepherd and say, “There’s software out there, both
open source and proprietary solutions that can help with that on a much larger
scale than your simple file system based hierarchy.”
[3:21] I would say that to anyone that’s looking to become a DAM professional.
You’ve got to read some of the blogs that are out there. This one’s a good one,
Another DAM Blog . There are other blogs by the CMSWatch group or Real
Story and folks like ourselves. There are a number of different conferences that
are actually very helpful in learning about the DAM space, conferences like
Henry Stewart, the new Createasphere DAM focus.
[3:57] There’s starting to become a little bit more of an emergence of a digital
community around DAM. Where a few years ago there weren’t too many people
interested in DAM, or it seems like everyone was in the dark around other
people using DAM. Everyone felt like they were alone on an island where they
just had to deal with organizing and managing all these assets.
[4:24] Now we have groups on LinkedIn, and we have Meetup groups. We have
different blogs that we can communicate and interact with each other in. If you
just do a search on Twitter for Digital Asset Management, you’re going to see
hundreds of professionals, both vendors and users and integrators, all having a
conversation around what’s the best way to utilize the technology into solving
real problems within organizations and companies. Henrik: [4:59] Thank you, Ivan. Ivan: [5:00] Great. Henrik: [5:01] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does a health care provider use a DAM?
What is the difference between an organization that has a DAM where they sell their content versus just manage their content such as marketing material?
What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:03] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with David Price. David,
how are you? David Price: [0:10] I’m very good, thank you. Henrik: [0:12] David, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? David: [0:15] I am a applications manager at a healthcare provider. I work within
a marketing and sales group that manages a number of different Digital Asset
Management systems and workflow related project work. Henrik: [0:29] How does a healthcare provider use a DAM? David: [0:34] Well, this particular healthcare provider has a large marketing and
sales group. As with any company that has marketing and sales, we have a lot
of marketing and sales collateral. We have posters, brochures, fliers, booklets.
We have rich media. We have TV. We have radio. All of that content needs to
be managed. Henrik: [0:53] Makes sense. David, what is the difference between an organization
that has a DAM where they sell their content versus just manage their content,
so it’s just marketing material? David: [1:03] That’s a good question. One of the things that I’ve realized is that
is an important differentiator between DAM users largely because the people
that sell their content who typically are in the entertainment or media business,
TV, radio, music, etc., are much more concerned with the full work flow
process from start to finish because the DAM and the workflow management
and the product management cycle manage their end product. It’s their bread
and butter. Henrik: [1:37] Sure. David: [1:39] For that type of company, a DAM implementation is a much more
integral part of what they do if they’re a mature organization. For companies
that only use DAMs to manage marketing materials but don’t sell those materials,
it’s still important, but it’s not as important. [1:56] It’s more difficult to
directly tie it to the bottom line. It’s more difficult to measure the effectiveness
of your marketing materials because they don’t generate direct sales. They only
indirectly affect your sales. Henrik: [2:12] That makes sense. Sure, yeah. David: [2:13] That can actually be an impediment to purchasing, implementing,
and supporting DAM systems also. Each one has its pros and cons. Henrik: [2:25] Sure, I agree. One is certainly more vital than the other if you
actually want to deliver something to be seen and sold. David: [2:33] Right. Interestingly enough, one of the things that I learned
coming to shows like this and listening to all of the people that are in entertainment
and media is they develop a huge repository of older media that they
reuse and repurpose. [2:50] Often times, you watch TV. If a famous actor dies or
a movie re-released, they’ll go back and pull assets from 10, 20 years ago, repackage
them in some new format and you’ll see them again. Henrik: [3:07] Smart. David: [3:09] Our type of DAM user doesn’t do as much. Henrik: [3:12] Sure, that makes sense, but you can still reuse those marketing
materials. David: [3:14] Sure, we can, but we probably wouldn’t as much as… Henrik: [3:19] For a different campaign or… David: [3:20] Yeah, right. Henrik: [3:21] OK , fair. What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals
or people aspiring to become DAM professionals? David: [3:27] That’s a good question. I’d give aspiring DAM professionals the
advice to several things, first off, DAM is a discipline and not a tool. [3:39] Lots of
people who first get into Digital Asset Management think, “We’re going to go
out and buy this wonderful, cool new software, then life will be easy.”
[3:49] You’re chuckling because anyone who’s worked in practically any discipline
for some amount of time knows that a particular tool will do nothing if you
don’t have the business process and agreed upon structure and organizational
processes in place within the business to make it work and to utilize it to its best
advantage.
[4:13] Another statement that summarizes that is “Garbage in, garbage out,”
that’s the advice I’d give. Henrik: [4:19] Great. Well, thank you, David. David: [4:21] You’re welcome. Henrik: [4:22] For more on digital 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.
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.
Another DAM Podcast 