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Another DAM Podcast interview with Roger Howard on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does an entertainment software company use a DAM?
  • You recently started a Digital Asset Management meetup group in Southern California. Tell me more about this meetup group.
  • What advice would you like to give for 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 Roger Howard.
Roger, how are you?
Roger Howard: [0:09] I’m good. How are you today?
Henrik: [0:10] Roger, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Roger: [0:13] I’ve been involved on just about every level with Digital Asset
Management as a developer, as a systems administrator doing metadata taxonomy
design, designing work flow, building applications. I’ve gone through
vendor selections with about 10 different projects over the past 10 or 12 years.
Henrik: [0:32] Excellent. Roger, how does an entertainment software company
use DAM?
Roger: [0:37] Digital Asset Management means a lot of different things to a lot
of different people. In entertainment companies like video game developers, we
have Digital Asset Management systems involved in the production pipelines
for developing the actual games, the assets that go into the games, the source
code repository management. There is, of course, the marketing DAMs that
manage marketing assets, distribution for sales channels. [1:05] My involvement
is particularly focused on archiving valuable assets, so things like concept art,
and also in providing workflow applications for marketing, PR, and web teams.
Henrik: [1:22] You recently started a DAM Meetup group in Southern California,
along with Lilly. Tell me about this Meetup group.
Roger: [1:30] Well, inspired a couple of other groups around the country, we
thought that, given how dispersed people are in Southern California, but also
how many Southern Californians are involved, in one way or another, in Digital
Asset Management, it’d be a great opportunity to get people together in
person, maybe have a few drinks, talk, share war stories. [1:50] We just had our
first event, in fact, two days ago at the Henry Stewart conference in LA, the
night before the opening day, and it was fantastic. We had a lot of people. We
had maybe 20, 25 people show up. It was a good time, a couple of hours of
hanging out with colleagues, and we hope to keep repeating the event.
[2:11] We’re shooting for another event in maybe a month or two, after the beginning
of the year, and then we’re going to try to keep it going every two to
three months going forward.
Henrik: [2:21] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals, or
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Roger: [2:25] Well, I think it’s actually a great career. I think that there’s a lot
of different opportunities. There’s a lot of different roles people can play that
all are kind of lumped under DAM, but I think my best advice is to go after as
broad and diverse a set of skills as you can possibly manage for yourself, so
both communications and business skills, but also technical skills, I think, are
incredibly important in many DAM careers. [2:59] Myself, I have a very technical
background, but I also have a background in creative production. I’ve done a lot
of production management. Now working mostly on the administration, design,
development, planning aspects of Digital Asset Management systems, having
that background both in technical skills that allow me to work with developers
and IT folks but also having an understanding and background in creative production
and, to some extent, in the business issues around content production
and distribution.
[3:30] It really gives you a much better insight into why it is that people might
want to take advantage of what you have to offer. My advice is not to pigeon
hole yourself into a very limited set of skills. If you can build up a basic understanding
at least of database management, get some basic Sequel skills that are
incredibly handy. XML skills can be incredibly handy, basic scripting tools.
[3:58] So if you’re working in a primarily Mac oriented creative shop, learn a little
bit of Apple script, learn a bit of Python. Learn some web development skills so
you can at least do basic html, a little bit of Java script, a little bit of CSS .
[4:12] Ultimately I think the most important think you can do is spend time kind
of living and walking in other people’s shoes, the people whose jobs you touch
as a Digital Asset Management expert. If you work in a creative environment,
spend some time with the designers, with the artists, with the production managers
that you work with.
[4:33] Try to see if you can book time and work as an intern for a day or a week.
Likewise, if your Digital Asset Management system is heavy on cataloging and
data entry, spend time frequently as a cataloger in your environment so you
understand not only the application of the taxonomy and metadata models
that you develop but the limitations of the tools that may be frustrating your
users. Live and breathe and walk a few miles in your user’s shoes. That will go
a long way.
Henrik: [5:04] Great idea. Thank you, Roger.
Roger: [5:06] Thank you.
Henrik: [5:07] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Clayton Dutton on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does a media company use a DAM?
  • What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Clayton Dutton.
Clayton, how are you?
Clayton Dutton: [0:10] I’m fine today, thank you for having me on the show.
Henrik: [0:12] You’re welcome. Clayton, how are you involved with Digital
Asset Management?
Clayton: [0:16] Well, at Discovery Channel we have moved over the past few
years into almost a purely file based working environment. We still have a few
processes to migrate into file based workflows, but as such, we’ve really migrated
our entire way of doing business from a physical asset methodology
more to file based methodology. [0:36] Specifically dealing with the incoming
deliverables, file based receipt of material, both camera masters and program
originals in a file based manner, as well as sending those files out of our facility.
Henrik: [0:51] Great. How does a media company such as yours use the DAM?
Clayton: [0:55] Well, for us it’s about knowing where our content is and being
able to expose it to as many people, and as wide an area, as we possibly can.
That obviously requires a lot of moving pieces, specifically bandwidth, that you
get files in and out of a facility. That bandwidth’s not going to do you any good
if you don’t know what you have, and where it is, and how to expose it. [1:17]
Digital Asset Management and Discovery’s viewpoint is really about that. It’s
about making sure we know where everything is, what it’s named, as much information
as we can find about it through the metadata, and provide that information,
and push that information out to the user community so that they have to
mine for information, to try to expose as much as we can to them.
[1:40] That allows us then to be in really good communication, and collaborate in
a much larger than the isolated workflows of the past.
Henrik: [1:51] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Clayton: [1:56] Those of you looking to get into the Digital Asset Management
field, I’d say you’re…Congratulations. You are definitely future-proofing yourself.
Digital Asset Management is exploding right now, not in just television, but in
all businesses throughout the world. [2:12] Knowledge and information is power,
so to have that information, to understand as much as you can about specific
assets, whether it’s secret intelligence, or video files, or audio files, or tax records,
it’s extremely important.
[2:30] As information becomes more digital, as an entire way of doing business,
it’s really important that people are able to find information, key information,
about their job and about their company’s products as quickly as possible.
[2:44] The traditional lines of library storage and cataloging and things like that
are all being turned upside down. Adding fresh young minds into the field, it’s
a really exciting field right now. Those on the vendor side, I would recommend
keep looking to work with other solutions.
[3:04] Really advanced web methods or API set that you can publish out to other
technology providers and solutions providers really helps position your product
to be out in the forefront.
Henrik: [3:16] Excellent. Thank you, Clayton.
Clayton: [3:19] It’s been my pleasure.
Henrik: [3:20] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.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.

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 Ivan Mironchuk on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • 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.

Related Articles

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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Another DAM Podcast interview with Heather Hedden on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management (DAM)?
  • You recently wrote a book called The Accidental Taxonomist. What inspired you to write this book?
  • What advice would you give to DAM Professionals or people aspiring to be a DAM Professional?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Heather Hedden.
Heather, how are you?
Heather Hedden: [0:09] Fine, thanks. Thanks for inviting me.
Henrik: [0:12] Heather, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Heather: [0:15] Actually I’m a taxonomist. That’s closely related. I create taxonomies
which are usually structured sets of terms used for metadata to tag or
classify content item. The content can be digital assets or text documents. I’m
involved in more than just Digital Asset Management as I see it. [0:36] I originally
got into the field from a background of indexing with a company that has now
become Cengage Learning, indexes, reference materials for libraries, magazine
and newspaper articles, pamphlets, maps, charts, and images too. I’ve worked
as a taxonomist in both full-time positions and as a consultant or contractor. I’m
in between jobs at the moment.
[1:03] My most recent job was as the taxonomy manager in a wind energy company
based in Boston. There I developed a better nested folder for the hierarchical
classification of content to better support browsing. I also developed
taxonomies with numerous synonyms for auto classification of content to better
support search.
[1:24] A third taxonomy project included metadata for manually tagging content
was also in the plans. Although many documents there were text files, they also
had CAD drawings, topographical maps, PowerPoint presentations, and image
files such as many photos of wind farm locations and wind turbines.
[1:46] The taxonomy covered lots of terms dealing with all these different documents,
technical, legal, financial, covering all areas of the business. I’ve also
been involved in developing policies or guidelines for tagging or classifying
content with a taxonomy which is an important component of taxonomy work.
Henrik: [2:07] Heather, you recently wrote a book called “The Accidental Taxonomist.” What inspired you to write this book?
Heather: [2:12] I’m glad you asked. I also teach a continuing education workshop.
It’s a five week workshop through Simmons College Graduate School
of Library and Information Science. It’s an introduction to taxonomy. I’ve been
doing that for a couple of years. [2:27] I got an inquiry if I would teach a second,
more advanced class. I just got to thinking about how much work that would be
because it’s ongoing every other month or something. Since I had accumulated
some other written materials and giving presentations, I thought maybe it would
better to put this all into a book that would serve both those at an introductory
level and at a more advanced level if you had a lot of material together.
[2:54] As a backup I had also been doing kind of freelance side work back to the
book indexing, writing indexes to nonfiction books. I’ve been reading a lot of
different nonfiction books, some of them professional books. I thought, “Well,
maybe I could write a book too.”
[3:11] I consider my background pretty comprehensive in both that I created
taxonomies used by human manual indexers, taggers, and those for auto classifications.
I’ve also created taxonomies for more commercial, published content
and those that are for internal enterprise content.
[3:34] With that kind of broad background I felt pretty qualified to write a book
on this. Some people have written book that are more narrow just for enterprise
taxonomy. When I looked around, there really wasn’t that much out there just on
taxonomy today.
[3:52] There’s another book that’s more on knowledge management or some
that are focused on controlled vocabularies more for wide learning focus areas.
It was a need that needed filling.
Henrik: [4:05] Heather, is there a website where you can get more information
about this?
Heather: [4:09] Oh yes. It’s www.accidentaltaxonomist.com which has a lot of
information about the book, the table of contents, the index, the introduction,
forward. It also has all the websites mentioned throughout the book, the URLs,
and they are hyperlinked. You can actually get a lot of information that I have in
my book without reading it, although I hope you do. Readers can go do that.
Henrik: [4:41] What advice would you give to DAM professionals or people aspiring
to be a DAM professional?
Heather: [4:47] Considering I’m a little bit on the sidelines of the DAM profession
myself being a taxonomist, I do see similarities there and I recommend this
for people going into taxonomy as well or other fields such as content management.
[5:01] It involves having more of a broader skill set and experience,
so combining a DAM background with, perhaps, taxonomy management or
content management experience or also indexing background that I have had
or experience with maybe search technologies or more of a technology background
and perhaps a subject area expertise, so something to some specialty
area to distinguish one’s self.
[5:38] Also, I think people should be open to any industry. You might think of
maybe traditional media based industries, but all kinds of companies, all kinds
of industries now have a growing core list of different types of assets. I never
thought I’d end up in the wind energy industry. Keep your eyes open to anything
and network a lot.
Henrik: [6:04] Great idea. Thanks, Heather.
Heather: [6:07] OK , you’re welcome. It was nice to talk to you.
Henrik: [6:10] No problem. For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.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.

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today