Another DAM Podcast

Audio about Digital Asset Management

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Kyle Hufford on Digital Asset Management

Kyle Hufford discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How do you use the process of digital asset management before having a DAM system in place?
  • What advice would you like to share with 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 Kyle Hufford.
Kyle, how are you?

Kyle Hufford: [0:09] I’m doing great today.
Henrik: [0:11] Kyle, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Kyle: [0:13] I’ve been working with Quiksilver for a little over seven years now.
We’ve been working out our Digital Asset Management objective. It’s gone
through an interesting phase. I went from being the sole individual person responsible
for Digital Asset Management to actually building bit of a team. [0:30]
We’ve been building our systems. We’ve been through a phase of having a
fully functioning system to paring back and re-evaluating what we have. We’re in
the process of rolling out a new system, at this time, to manage all our product
images, our lifestyle images, and everything that goes around supporting our
business and sales of our products.
Henrik: [0:50] Kyle, how do you use the process of Digital Asset Management
before having a DAM system in place?
Kyle: [0:57] That’s a really good question. Initially, we had purchased an enterprise
level system, and we had rolled it out not understanding what Digital
Asset Management really was. It went along and worked great for about two to
three years. Then we actually pared back and removed the asset management
system from our workflow and identified a proper workflow before reintroducing
our asset management system. [1:26] The biggest challenge I think that
people have is, they think, “I’ll have a Digital Asset Management system. That’s
going to solve all my problems.” That’s not true. If you have a Digital Asset
Management system, you still have to have a proper workflow or process in
place in order to solve your problem.
[1:43] If your process is broken, Digital Asset Management is not going to solve
your process. Our biggest challenge is, we removed Digital Asset Management
from the process and identified where in the process we were having challenges,
and identified where we could actually optimize that process.
[1:59] Once that process was optimized, we then now are reintroducing the
Digital Asset Management system to individual workflows one piece at a time
and identifying that this is the proper workflow, this is where the assets need to
go, and this is how the images or assets need to be distributed.
Henrik: [2:15] If I understand correctly, you started with people. Then you developed
the process of Digital Asset Management, and then you introduced the
technology. Fair?
Kyle: [2:25] Yes, exactly. We learned over time. It wasn’t like that was our first
approach. Our first approach was, “Let’s throw an enterprise Digital Asset
Management system at it.” That didn’t work. We identified that there were challenges
in pieces, in broken processes, in workarounds, and then we pared back.
[2:44] As you said, we started with people and understood what the process was
and identified how we could better that process. Once we identified a proper
process, we could then support that with the proper technologies.
Henrik: [2:56] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Kyle: [3:00] I think the biggest part of being a Digital Asset Manager is it’s a
thankless job. But at the end of the day, when you’re able to go in and search
for something and find something and be able to have a repository where the
images are, that’s the biggest feeling of success. [3:18] I think being a DAM professional
is more than being a Digital Asset Manager. From my perspective, it’s
about the process and the workflow and identifying better ways to do business.
It’s not just knowing how to tag an image or tagging 100 images a day or 1,000
images a day. It’s being able to work in an organization where you can identify
challenges in the process, and you can work with the right individuals to fix that
process so that the assets that you’re producing are better assets and more
accurate assets.
Henrik: [3:50] Couldn’t agree more. Thanks, Kyle. [3:53] For more on Digital
Asset Management, 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, feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com.
Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with David Barron on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a organization focused on sporting goods use Digital Asset Management?
  • What is the big idea behind using master images in a DAM workflow?
  • What advice would you like to share with 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 Barron. David,
how are you?

David Barron: [0:10] Hey, Henrik. I’m doing great.

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

David: [0:16] I’ve been in production most of my career, since I got out of college
in 1989. I managed a service bureau for about three years in the early ‘90s,
which gave me most of my troubleshooting capabilities. Then I worked in advertising
and marketing throughout the rest of that 20 years, where I worked at
places like CAPS Digital and Leo Burnett. I worked at a HBO startup company.
[0:46] I worked at The Marketing Store, the Integer Group and SM Marketing,
and several other places that I started to do a little consulting with. I was a production
artist who also did photo retouching and design. But always doing tech
support, too. Probably because, as a Macintosh user, the IT departments don’t
always fully support the Macintosh platform. So there was always a lot of technical
stuff that had to go on.
[1:21] I started thinking about Digital Asset Management while I was working
at The Marketing Store and trying to get a system in there that would help
us to manage our digital assets. That’s where I fell in love with Digital Asset
Management, and all the capabilities that you can have with Digital Asset
Management. Although I was a production artist at that time, I had to assume
the role of a Digital Asset Manager and technologist.
[1:55] I started here at Wilson Sporting Goods, two years ago, as a Digital Asset
Management Consultant, for their Xinet system that they put in. I had purchased
the exact same system at The Marketing Store, five years prior. I started to
consult on that system because I had known it really well. After about a year of
being here, they hired me full time, where I administered the asset management
system. I can still consult the designers on best practices as I continue to oversee
things from the front end, all the way to the back end of the system.

Henrik: [2:42] Why does an organization focused on sporting goods use Digital
Asset Management?

David: [2:47] I would argue that every company that creates digital artwork and
videos needs some level of Digital Asset Management. Once you have one file,
you have the need for Digital Asset Management, and you have some level of
managing that. So much is being created digitally. At Wilson Sporting Goods,
they create a dizzying amount of graphics per year. Small, 20 some creative
services, employees crank out work like crazy, every day.

[3:22] We have our own staff photographer who’s been working tirelessly here for 27 years. Just taking product shots. There’s terabytes of data, images and tons of people who need them. So wrangling these assets for internal use alone could be considered valuable.
But there’s offices worldwide, partners and dealers that all want to have an
image of “The Duke”, or whatever product they’re trying to sell for their website,
for their own catalogs.

[4:02] Trying to find these assets and getting them the correct one, the one
that’s retouched and outlined or whatever, is a big challenge. So Digital Asset
Management is key here.

Henrik: [4:17] What is the big idea behind using master images in a
DAM workflow?

David: [4:24] The master image paradigm is one that I’ve been percolating in
my brain for several years now. While working at marketing agencies, the workflow
as always to see each job as a closed loop, a single entity. All the art created
for that one job remained in a links folder, in a job folder. Even if you were
working on several pieces with the same images, you’d often duplicate those
images into the links folder of the new job, in order to keep a collection of files
current for that single entity. [4:58] If a product or image changed at the 11th
hour, which never happens, I understand. You were up late replicating those
changes to all those separate folders and all those separate files, and derivatives.
The thought came, “Couldn’t we just keep an image library to link to,
instead of all this duplication?”

[5:19] It was always work that nobody wanted to do or had time to work on.
Even though, in the end, it would have saved time. So this master image idea
was born out of this frustration in production. The temptation to collect all
the images into a job folder is pretty strong, but when the files are linked to a
master image in the master image library, the benefits are pretty fierce.

[5:44] That image is what I heard called, at Henry Stuart New York this year, “The
single version of the truth.” The high resolution images come in or are shot,
and they’re tagged with metadata. They get outlined, retouched, and they go
into the master image library, nested into several folders of hierarchy. You might
have a football folder and inside of that, NFL footballs and leather footballs.
They get nested into this library, like digital shelves.

[6:19] So everybody knows where they are. We keep two of them, one for in
progress images and one for published images or files that are ready to go
to the general public. But there’s only one file that is current. So that changes
to that one file, happened on that one file. Any of the work that’s being used,
that’s all they have to do, update the image in that layout.

[6:47] That way, there is no migration at the end of the job, where we take all
those images and then file them accordingly, so that people can see the images
and grab the images from the latest catalog. They’re already there. There’s no
wondering whether or not, “Was it this image, or this one next to it that looks
similar, that was used in this catalog?”

[7:14] Because they’re linked, and the DAM system shows that link. The files are
tagged with the name in that catalog. It’s really been revolutionary when it’s
done properly. The one thing that really makes it work, because a lot of people
have said, “What if I have a Photoshop file that’s got several images composited
in there? I’ve got to make a new file. How do I track what files are being put in
that Photoshop file?”

[7:50] It’s really difficult. You can put it into metadata. I’m really encouraging
people, now with WCS platform, you can do a lot of compositing effects in
InDesign and Illustrator, for that matter. Although I’m sort of against doing any
page layout or major Photoshop compositing in Illustrator. But to do your compositing
within InDesign, it just makes everything so much easier.

[8:28] Because of the transparency effects that you can do, you don’t have to
be afraid of transparency. You just have to work a little bit differently, because
you’re not working with pixels in InDesign, but if you can do your composites in
InDesign, you still maintain that link to the master image. If you need to move
things around, it’s a lot easier to move things around in one program than it is to
have to go back into Photoshop, make those changes, and move it in.

[8:57] Then resizing, if you’re doing a banner for one person and an ad that has
to look the same, your resizes are a lot easier. You don’t have to worry about
making multiple file images. That’s been a challenge to get that through, but
when it’s done, and I’ve seen it done really well, with all kinds of things, like
reflections and drop shadows and set down shadows, color and vignettes, and
everything, all done in InDesign. The time savings alone are worth it. Just in
terms of versatility.

Henrik: [9:33] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

David: [9:39] I would say that if you’re aspiring to be in Digital Asset
Management, some people say that you need to be a student of library sciences.
Sadly, I don’t have that expertise. From my perspective, you really have
to know your users, more than the assets themselves. How they work, and the
needs and the skills of those users who are using the system more than library
sciences.

[10:12] Because you can easily put more than you need to into the
DAM system, or more than what the users need. That’s where your concentration
should be, is do your homework on who’s contributing to the workflow or
to the image library, and who needs to get the stuff out. Then you’ll have all the
answers you need.

Henrik: [10:40] Putting people first. That’s a great idea.

David: [10:41] Thanks.

Henrik: [10:43] Thanks, David.

David: [10:44] Henrik, it’s been a pleasure.

Henrik: [10:46] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. 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 Karuana Gatimu on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a footwear company use Digital Asset Management?
  • Is it about the technology or strategy when it comes to Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to share with 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 Karuana Gatimu.
Karuana, how are you?
Karuana Gatimu: [0:11] I’m excellent. Thank you for inviting me.
Henrik: [0:14] Karuana, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Karuana: [0:17] Digital Asset Management came into my life actually as an offshoot
of Enterprise Content Management. I’m an Enterprise Content Certified
Practitioner. I spent about 20 years in the business doing different sorts of
custom apps and helping organizations find their information. As I moved into
the video world and live events and doing web production and print, Digital
Asset Management was a logical offshoot of all of my history.
Henrik: [0:44] Excellent. Why does a footwear company use Digital Asset
Management?
Karuana: [0:49] Skechers USA, which is a global footwear company, needs
Digital Asset Management because we produce literally thousands of product
images. We have commercials. We have archive clips of conferences and events.
[1:02] A lot of content that we used to tell the story of our company, at different
times during the year. Being able to locate that information, put it together to
be able to create new content, and keep people getting to the information efficiently,
is really important to us.
Henrik: [1:19] Sounds like it. Karuana, is it about the technology or the strategy,
when it comes to Digital Asset Management?
Karuana: [1:24] You know that’s my favorite subject.
Henrik: [1:26] Of course.
Karuana: [1:27] I know that’s why you asked me that question. I really feel it is
about the strategy. Every day, I get about 50 vendor voice mails on my line at
work. They’re all telling me about how they can increase my revenue or give
me this wonderful piece of technology that I desperately need for my customer
experience. [1:48] At the end of the day, I’m in charge of knowing what the business
needs actually are. I think that for anybody in the DAM community, it’s very
important for us to be able to separate what are true services and features that
we need to deliver to the enterprise, and what is the fluff.
[2:05] Nobody can define that. A vendor can’t define that for you. A consultant
can help you. A research agency can help you but the vendors themselves, have
their own agenda. It’s very important that you plug those very worthwhile vendors
into your over reaching strategy.
[2:22] For a company like Skechers, for instance, because we don’t have a monetization
model, we’re not a broadcast network. Consequently, the information
and the services I’m trying to deliver are different than if I was A&E or HBO or
somebody like that.
[2:36] I think it’s really important that we have to know our own business. Devise
our strategy based on the needs of business and the evolution of our business
and partner with people out there in the partner ecosystem, that understand
those needs as we articulate them.
[2:53] I think in that, it really gives us a good foundation in which to continue to
build because it’s never done. The work is never done. There’s always more to
do. There’s always more services I can deliver, and the technology is evolving. If
you take a look at what’s happened recently over the last few years with social,
and how that’s changed marketing operations and the needs for assets and
what have you, we can anticipate that more of that is coming.
[3:17] So knowing our strategy is a really good thing.
Henrik: [3:20] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Karuana: [3:26] If you are an existing DAM professional, keep the faith. We’re
moving. Don’t lose your enthusiasm. This is an iterative process, and we just
have to keep moving forward. Because as more user generated content, corporate
generated content, and social generated content comes to us, it’s going to
become very important for us to build really well thought out systems. [3:50] So
if you’re already here, then stay. Because the people who are coming are going
to need our experience, strength and hope, as we move forward. I think that if
you’re interested into getting into Digital Asset Management, you have to think
about what you are really passionate about.
[4:07] Is it the technology side, in terms of for instance, database architecture or
technological implementations? Is it the strategy side, in terms of how Digital
[4:16] Asset Management affects business and can be used by business? Or is
it the marketing and creative side, or licensing in the sense of the monetization
and reuse and repurpose of creative content?
[4:28] I think it’s really important to know where you fall within the different layers
of DAM, and then develop your expertise as you move forward. It’s a great segment
to be in. It’s growing by leaps and bounds. There’s a tremendous amount
of exciting content, and vendors out there are doing unique things. It’s a real
great time to be involved in DAM.
Henrik: [4:49] Great. Thank you so much.
Karuana: [4:52] I appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me, and we will see
you later.
Henrik: [4:55] Great. For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is also available on Audioboom,
Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. 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 William Bitunjac on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a national chain of merchandise stores use Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with William Bitunjac.
William, how are you?
William Bitunjac: [0:09] Very good.
Henrik: [0:10] William, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
William: [0:12] At my company, I’m the Program Manager for all content management
tools for a large ecommerce program currently. I actually built the
Digital Asset Management content management strategy for our print marketing
lines prior to this, so converging on an enterprise view of content management
and Digital Asset Management. Picking apart the individual pieces, both
print and online individually, but now with an opportunity to look at converging
into single enterprise vision for it. Really, more heavily on the business side, in
terms of driving out strategy and then some of the delivery team responsibilities
as well.
Henrik: [0:52] Why does a national chain of merchandise stores use Digital
Asset Management?
William: [0:57] There’s a lot of numbers of reasons. Some of them are very similar.
It’s money savings. You only need to shoot a photo once, and you can reuse
it a lot of times. A lot of the reasons that have always been in the business case
for Digital Asset Management, not reshooting assets, photography that you’ve
lost, not spending time looking for things, some tighter control of brands, so
you’re only working on approved assets, approved content. [1:31] As I’ve looked
at it, beyond the initial benefits of creating libraries, centralization of knowledge,
and sharing, I’ve found incredible opportunity throughout automation. Tying
it with other content so some of the manual production work of getting assets
into layouts or to websites, managing workflows, managing approvals, the act
of centralizing assets and metadata has been an incredible benefit to further
automation.
[2:04] Getting the centralized library offers money savings on the business case
is giving tens of millions of dollars to the organization through asset reuse,
speed to market, and delivery of marketing materials. Instead of spending all of
your time trying to find the things that you need, creating new experiences has
become almost turnkey. The level of effort goes into creating incredible experiences,
not finding the materials that you need.
Henrik: [2:32] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
William: [2:37] My advice really comes from how I came to the position, into the
industry. I didn’t come as a career technologist. It really wasn’t my vision and my
dream to spend my entire life creating content management platforms. I was an
end user. I was a creative director. I was a photographer. I had a lot of passion
around knowledge management, but I was initially in a position to be one of the
beneficiaries of a system like these. [3:13] Staying close to your users, monitoring
what they’re using, keeping track of the strategic direction of the organization.
Again, the big benefit that I’ve seen has been turnkey generation of incredible
new experiences. If you know, strategy wise, where the business is going,
where the assets are coming from, you can actually turn your asset management
system into an innovation engine.
[3:38] In order to do that, you almost have to be less interested in the technology
and more interested in the business and the business users. The technology
becomes a tool to drive out people’s dreams. For me, my teams come from the
business, I spend my time with the business, and I have really, really, really, good
delivery partners who take care of the technology bits for me.
[4:01] Playing with the technology and learning about as many platforms as
possible is the second piece of advice. There are a lot of different ways to get
things done. The framework in most of the enterprise applications allows you a
lot of different ways to do things. If you know what’s in the toolbox, you can put
together just about any toy you want.
Henrik: [4:23] Thanks, William.
William: [4:25] Sure.
Henrik: [4:25] 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