Based on the blog post from Another DAM blog,
Written and read by Henrik de Gyor
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Jeanette Ortiz Osorio discusses Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
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 Jeanette Ortiz Osorio. Jeanette, how are you?
Jeanette Ortiz Osorio: [0:10] I’m doing great. How are you, Henrik?
Henrik: [0:13] Great. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Jeanette: [0:17] I manage thousands of photos in a nonprofit organization. We
have a lot of photos dating back 120 years ago. We haven’t obviously had all of
them in there. We’re slowly adding and sharing photos through a Digital Asset
Management System.
Henrik: [0:38] How does a humanitarian organization use Digital Asset
Management?
Jeanette: [0:42] We use it to house a central repository, a central place, everyone
from internally or externally or anywhere around the world or any time zone
can access and repurpose the photos.
[0:57] Since we are nonprofit, we have to be very careful how we use our resources. We always want to be able to reuse them as much as we can. Our Data Asset Management System allows us to be able to have one place where you can find the photos.
[1:14] The photos are highly edited, meaning they are a selection of an assignment.
An average of one or two photos per hundred go in the Data Asset
Management System.
[1:27] We add information on every photo that will tell the user where the photo
comes from, the copyrights on the photos and the rights usage on the photos,
so that it will allow them to know that it’s OK for them to use it.
Henrik: [1:43] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Jeanette: [1:48] Advice for DAM professionals, I’m not so sure. But definitely for the ones who are aspiring to be DAM professionals, I would say one is start small. Start with small projects and then get to understand the whole concept of Data Asset Management System. Don’t focus so much on the software. Try to really think about the process of how you will ingest all of the assets.
[2:15] Then your audience, who’s going to use the Data Asset Management System and how they use it. Not everyone uses the DAM the same way or look for, in my case, the photos the same way.
[2:29] For example, graphic designers look for graphic elements in the photo,
and maybe other users will look for images by the specific photographer who
took it or a specific event. You have to design and think about how people are
going to look and find things in order to design that way.
[2:48] Do not focus so much on the software, but again, the process and how
your people are going to be using the system. Then you will tweak it, eventually, to try to make it as flexible as possible. Also, try to work with the standards that we have right now, in terms of IPTC standards and other standards, so you do not have to reinvent the wheel again and again.
Henrik: [3:12] Great points. Thanks, Jeanette.
Jeanette: [3:14] You are welcome. It was great talking to you.
Henrik: [3:17] Thank you. For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Related Articles
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Bjorn Pave discusses Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
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 Bjorn Pave. Bjorn,
how are you?
Bjorn Pave: [0:11] I’m good. How are you, Henrik?
Henrik: [0:12] Good. Bjorn, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Bjorn: [0:16] For us and for me, it began as a solution to a business problem.
We were looking how to distribute our assets globally. From there, it’s turned
into more of an interest for me, specifically, and some building of proficiency
in that area. It’s common for IT to be involved in Digital Asset Management and at Benefit,
our IT department plays a pretty close partnering role with the
business, so for us it was just to drive this project but also to fit this project in
with our business. [0:48] As for the basics, we are allied with our third phase of
this project. I’ve been less of a project manager these days. It’s become more
operational. I’ve become more of a strategic kind of partner with this project in
helping to progress and develop it and bring it to the next level.
Henrik: [1:05] How does an organization focused on cosmetics use Digital Asset
Management?
Bjorn: [1:10] Pretty much every company needs to be using some kind of DAM.
I mean, especially the ones that operate globally. Digital assets are everywhere.
Really, I don’t see much difference from a car company needing to distribute
assets than us, a cosmetics firm. [1:25] It’s about efficiency, when it comes down
to it. That said, we need to get our marketing materials out quickly to our marketing
teams around the world. We’re constantly under deadlines to do that.
We’re launching products and going to market quickly with products.
[1:42] To allow us to stay agile and efficient, we need some kind of thorough
system like that not as many companies would. Also, it goes without saying
that allowing those markets to find an easy way to search for those assets. Not
only the new ones to be able to find efficient the old material that they need to
find quickly.
[2:03] I’ll give you a quick example one of the big issues that we ran into for that
was just how to get these assets to the markets when they couldn’t find them
locally. They would send an email to San Francisco or go to our headquarters
and we would get the email from Taiwan, let’s say, the next day.
[2:22] We would reply to that email. Then, the next day after that, they would
have a blank or some method of gathering that asset. We’ve lost valuable time
there. Efficiency is just really important for us, in that sense, as well as most
companies.
Henrik: [2:38] What are the biggest challenges and successes the organization
has had with DAM?
Bjorn: [2:43] Which challenges that we’ve encountered? I’ll give you three main
ones that we came across. A big one was corporate buy in. I’ve seen their company
concerns. We’re owned by a larger firm that had a number of concerns.
Once we got it in place, it was managing expectations. Everybody wanted it.
People are clamoring to get to it. I’ll go back into those real briefly. [3:11] For the
corporate buy in, it was a challenge to get them to agree on spending money
outside of a budget cycle. We had a solution and we had problem to fix, but it
was nothing that we had planned far ahead. It came up that our current solution
wasn’t working, and we had a mandate from our CEO to go fix it.
[3:31] Getting the corporate buy in and getting that done and that leads into the
senior company concerns. We had to convince them that this was the right solution.
We were also faced with some other solutions that some of the other firms
in our group were using. That became quite a big sell project for our group.
[3:50] Managing the scope of it was key. We had a small pilot group that we
could roll out to. Now it’s turned into a much larger group. Now a lot of departments
are seeing an use for it. Managing those expectations is a challenge.
[4:06] As for our successes, I’m really pleased with the steering committee
packet we put together and the materials that they have at their disposal
through this project. Leveraging our vendor expertise was key. We partnered
with a great vendor. Cantor had professional services local to us, so it became
very easy for us to draw on those resources. They were a very close partner.
Their professional services team really helped us get to the next level with this.
[4:31] Finally for our successes, it was about celebrating the successes. We had
occasions to do so. The project came up during a global general managers’
meeting. All our global general managers were in San Francisco and complaining
about the lack of efficiency they were getting from our current solution,
which at the time was SharePoint. They wanted some other way of gathering
assets. That was the time that our CEO came to us.
[4:59] A year later we used that occasion to display what the solution was and
what we came up with. It was a great occasion to do so. Since then, we’ve had
other opportunities to tout our successes in that.
Henrik: [5:12] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Bjorn: [5:16] For me this goes back to a bit of what I talked about at
Createasphere this year and what I hoped to get across there was no road
map for how to get into this. What were some key areas that really helped bring
me up to speed and bring us up to speed? Well, there was the LinkedIn group
that’s out there. There is that Digital Asset Managers group on LinkedIn, which
I found was a great location for talent and resources. [5:40] Other ways would
be engaging in DAM communities, podcasts and blogs like yours, Henrik, and
conferences. Those are great ways to find expertise. Why not learn from the
best? Why not take the people who are best in the field and draw on their intelligence?
That’s what we did there.
[5:57] Like I was saying before, leveraging the vendor was really helpful. If you’re
in a position where you can get vendor referrals who you can go out and speak
to, DAM managers at other firms that are similar to yours maybe not exactly,
but similar that’s really a big help. That was a help for us.
[6:13] As for becoming a professional, learn the software. Learn what’s out there
as far as the software offerings. Taking some time and digging deep into those
offerings is helpful. Learning taxonomy and metadata. They all have the core
commonalities, each of the software packages. To learn those essentials is really
important to being a DAM manager.
Henrik: [6:38] Thanks, Bjorn. For more on this on other Digital Asset
Management topics, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast
is available on Audioboom, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If
you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at
AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.
Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?
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Carin Forman discusses Digital Asset Management
Here are the questions asked:
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Carin Forman.
Carin, how are you?
Carin Forman: [0:10] Good, how are you?
Henrik: [0:11] Good. Carin, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Carin: [0:14] I have been involved with Digital Asset Management for about
the last 18 years. Primarily, I was with the Discovery Communications Company
when we started Digital Asset Management application to ingest, access and
upload all of our assets, primarily for international use. [0:28] Through doing that,
it has grown where I then moved onto Sony Entertainment, where I worked with
them to build an online video repository that moved digital content for them for
video. More recently, for the last three years, I have been with HBO.
[0:43] For the first two and a half years I was with them as their director of Digital
Asset Management and the IT department, where I built and deployed IT
solution for my clients internally at HBO. In doing that, my primary client base
was the creative marketing team, where we housed and stored all of HBO’s
photography.
[1:00] Recently, about nine month ago, I moved over to the creative services
team, where I’m now the director of digital photo services and building Digital
Asset Management solutions with our IT department to enable a digital workflow,
a digital end-to-end for all of our photography and graphical content.
Henrik: [1:17] How does a premium television company use Digital Asset
Management?
Carin: [1:21] HBO has a lot of downstream channels, from our new premier news
solution called HBO GO to some our social linear and nonlinear platforms. We
put a lot of content out on Facebook, where people are chatting about our programming
content, and on other social nets. We do work with Fancast, Comcast
and those. [1:41] All of those mechanisms need access to our content, whether
it’s graphical content, logo content, photography content, poster art or video,
so HBO is looking at building central repositories to start to be able to digitally
distribute our content to these downstream applications, with the old adage of,
“Ingest once and use many.” Much of our photography goes out on multiple
platforms.
[2:04] By having a robust asset management system in which we can either
export content out or we can create a pull method for people to get content,
the goal is to build a “storefront,” for lack of better, so that we can start to use
that content and get it out into the marketplace. HBO primarily uses it to access
for marketing purposes, to promote. Wherever you see one our brand identities,
the goal is to house that content in such a way that it can be used in many
locations.
Henrik: [2:33] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Carin: [2:38] I think the only advice I would give is be patient. There are a lot
of new tools in the marketplace, researcher tools. [2:43] Understand your workflow,
understand what you’re trying to solve. Sometimes you can look at more
lightweight solutions, so I think the first advice I’d give a professional is, really
understand your workflows. Really understand the pain points and the business
challenges that you’re trying to solve, and really start small and then grow
from there.
[3:02] Put a proof of concept in place if you have the opportunity to do that,
really prove out with metrics utilization. An example of that with metrics and utilization
is if you need a tool, for example, for collaboration, figure out how much
you collaborate, how many parties are internal, how many parties are external,
where the content is. If you can justify your business case by starting off a small
use case and prove it out and make a larger scale deployment easy.
[3:29] The other thing is, I would say, one of the things that I’ve found have been
successful is really a top down approach, really trying to get a person who can
spearhead a task force or somebody at an executive leadership level, who can
really engage multiple people throughout the company.
[3:44] Any Digital Asset Management engagement has to involve your IT department,
the customers, which can be the consumers of the content, and usually
external third parties who you’re trying to get content to or get content from.
Anytime you can have a really, a project champion or a project spokesperson
that has the ability to harness the efforts of people across the company to mobilize
this type of an effort is very valuable.
Henrik: [4:10] Thanks, Carin.
Carin: [4:11] Thank you, Henrik.
Henrik: [4:12] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions,
please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Related Articles
Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.
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Another DAM Podcast