How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does the world’s largest glass museum use Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Megan McGovern.
Megan, how are you? Megan McGovern: [0:09] I am very well, and yourself? Henrik: [0:10] Good. Megan, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Megan: [0:14] At the museum where I work, I am the system administrator for
our Digital Asset Management system. I set up templates and make all of the
configurations, and I was also involved in the purchasing, just not as a final
decision maker, but someone whose input was regarded. [0:29] I am also the
vendor liaison with our Digital Asset Management system. Past that, I am responsible
for assisting making policies regarding Digital Asset Management
practices what images are added to our system, what images might be weeded
out, retention schedules, things of that nature. I train all of the users on using
our system.
[0:49] Outside of my day-to-day work, I am the co-chair of the special interest
group for Digital Asset Management at MCN, which is the Museum Computer
Network. I’ve also spoken on panels in the MCN Conference, as well as the
AAM, which is the American Association of Museums Conference. Henrik: [1:07] How does the world’s largest glass museum use Digital Asset
Management? Megan: [1:11] We use Digital Asset Management all the time. It’s a very image
and video-centric world now, and we really saw the need, earlier in the 2000s,
to have a centralized location for our digital images. Silos are inefficient, so we
used Digital Asset Management as kind of our image library where, at a central
location, people, if they have a project, a lecture, a publication, an exhibition, or
just for reference, they can go to our system, search, and bring up the images
they need for their particular use. [1:40] We also have a direct feed between our
Digital Asset Management system and our website. Pictures that we store in our
system based on certain criteria, if they meet certain metadata values, they get
pushed out to the website and display to the whole world. It’s really a backbone
of our website along with our information and our various content management
systems with their databases.
[2:01] It’s really an important part of what we do, and we’re unique among museums
in that our asset management system doesn’t just have pictures of glass
objects as a glass museum, but we also have an extensive library, different
libraries on materials, design drawings, batch notebooks for recipes for making
glass, things like that.
[2:19] Then we also use our Digital Asset Management system for programs and
events photography. The VIPs visit, some millions visit our portraits of staff or
other people who come to lecture here, so we use it quite extensively. Henrik: [2:33] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Megan: [2:37] Probably the biggest thing I’ve learned working with Digital
Asset Management is, the field is really as much about people management and
change management as it is about asset management. Working with people to
set up preferences for the system and customizations. [2:53] Working change
managements, if you’re actually installing a new Digital Asset Management
system or one hasn’t existed before, getting input, having people trained and
feeling comfortable and feeling like they have a voice in how the system is
run, so that they’ll actually use it and the project will be a success. I think that’s
almost as important as knowing about metadata and download and technical
specifications for images.
[3:16] I also found that my library and information science background was very
helpful, knowing about the history of cataloging and the whys and wherefores,
how libraries set up information management in the era before computers. It
helps to see how information might be structured even for things that might
generally be considered unstructured information, like candid photos of children
making glass, things of that nature.
[3:39] That being said, I’ve also found that some IT knowledge is very useful,
especially, just a small background. Even a basic knowledge of SQL is sometimes
very useful in understanding how the back end of the Digital Asset
Management system, the database, works and operates.
[3:53] Past that, I would just say flexibility is key. The Digital Asset Management
system market, it seems to be always in flux and technology, as we all know, is
ever progressing and evolving. Being able to be flexible and change as times
change and the environment changes seems to be the key to success, at least in
my experience. Henrik: [4:13] Great advice. Thanks, Megan. Megan: [4:15] You’re very welcome. Henrik: [4:17] 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.
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.
Another DAM Podcast 