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Another DAM Podcast interview with Charles Cole on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does this organization use place holders for packaging?
  • Is there an incentive for getting that information in correctly in the beginning and actually delivering the assets on time?
  • What advice would you like to give for 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 Charles Cole.
Charles, how are you?
Charles Cole: [0:09] I am doing well, Henrik. Thanks for asking.
Henrik: [0:11] Great. Charles, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Charles: [0:15] Well, I manage Digital Asset Management at a film studio where
I handle mostly home entertainment assets, so for the marketing department
and creative aspects.
Henrik: [0:31] How does that organization use placeholders for packaging?
Charles: [0:38] Well, placeholders, it’s an interesting concept. First, I guess I’ll
explain the concept of placeholders. It’s a pretty interesting concept. Essentially
the way to upload traditional embarks is whoever is uploading the file will select
the file, and they’ll tag it with whatever metadata. That’s the traditional model.
[1:00] What placeholders does is leverages upstream work that has to take place,
say in a marketing system where somebody is essentially planning out the marketing
and says, “I need this asset to fulfill my marketing requirements.”
[1:18] They put in all the information they need into the marketing system, and
then what happens is a placeholder automatically gets created in our Digital
Asset Management system where it’s already pre-populated with all the metadata
that’s required. So now whoever is uploading needs to find that placeholder
and just drop the file in. What happens is it’s automatically tagged with
all the appropriate metadata, and can even be sent downstream based on what
the marketing system says.
[1:47] If they for instance say, “I’ll pick the print vendor,” who is going to actually
manufacture this asset, this physical asset, then as soon as the file gets uploaded,
it can then be tagged with all the appropriate metadata and automatically
be sent downstream to whatever company has been selected.
Another D 82 AM Podcast Transcribed
Henrik: [2:07] Just to clarify, this is basically creating metadata and putting a
placeholder for an asset that will be created in the near future because there is a
schedule for it.
Charles: [2:15] Exactly. It is dependent on you having a plan and knowing what
assets you need. It’s not for everybody. So in a trim or ad hoc environment, or
you don’t know what assets you need, then, yeah, it may not be as useful. It has
been extremely useful in our case where we have thousands of assets that need
to be created, Yeah, it’s been great.
Henrik: [2:39] Granted, there’s a time frame or schedule of when you create
those things for your organization, so you already know that packing needs to
be created for that individual project.
Charles: [2:51] Exactly. Maybe it’s better just to explain it. A marketing manager
for a given territory, say Romania or whatever territory, will go into the marketing
system and say, “I need this specific asset, on this specific date.” The marketing
manager will go in and say, “For this given territory, for this given title, I need
these particular assets to fulfill my marketing plan. I need them on this specific
date. I need them from this specific vendor.” [3:28] As soon as they assign that
date and assign that vendor, that’s when the placeholder gets generated in the
Digital Asset Management system. Now, rather than the vendor just uploading
that file and tagging it with the metadata at the time of upload manually, it’s
done automatically. So they go in.
[3:49] The onus is on them to search for that placeholder using all the correct
metadata. It’s that subtle shift has created a really great situation in terms of our
metadata is now 100 percent accurate, 100 percent complete vs. before, just
trying to twist somebody’s arm into entering all the metadata and entering it
correctly. This just seems to be a much better approach.
Henrik: [4:19] Is there an incentive for getting that information correct in the
beginning, and actually delivering the assets on time in respect?
Charles: [4:27] Yes, actually. If you are responsible as marketing, for putting
together a well-executed marketing plan, obviously the goal is to generate the
most revenue possible. If you want those assets to be created, you have to ask
for them. You have to go into the marketing system and say, “These are the
assets I need to execute.” [4:58] If you don’t do that, those assets will never be
created, and you’ll be viewed as having falling down on the job. “Why this product
created and released? Well, I didn’t ask for it.” There is definitely incentive
there. If you fall short of your revenue targets, that’s a direct asset to revenue
correlation there. You want to make sure that you get those configured and set
up, the marketing funds configured and set up, including the assets that you
need in the marketing system on time, and we take care of everything downstream.
Create that container, and then creative vendor will go in above the file.
Henrik: [5:44] That’s a good way to keep people accountable. What advice
would you like to give to DAM professionals are people aspiring to become
DAM professionals?
Charles: [5:52] I think the best advice I can give which it’s sort I guess you
could say generic advice for maybe getting a job in general in the field that you
want is just really do your research. Go in, and if there is a company that you
want to work for, and do all the research regarding that company in that industry
space, as well. Do your Google News searches, see what all the relevant
happenings have been. [6:22] From a Digital Asset Management perspective, I
would say just network, ask questions. Go out there, do your research and sign
up for industry events, sign up for conferences. There are a lot of well-respected
digital a few really well-known Digital Asset Management conferences that you
can just sign up for. Go and just sit. Get an idea of what the relevant topics are,
and just familiarize yourself with the industry terms.
[6:57] I think that will go a long way towards getting you where you want to go.
Henrik: [7:00] Thanks, Charles.
Charles: [7:01] Absolutely.
Henrik: [7:03] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thanks again.

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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.

Related Articles

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts,  RadioPublic, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

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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.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Julie Maher on Digital Asset Management

Julie Maher discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a jewelry 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 Julie Maher. Julie,
how are you?
Julie Maher: [0:09] Doing great, how are you doing?
Henrik: [0:13] Good. Julie, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Julie: [0:15] I’ve been involved with Digital Asset Management for over 10 years.
I first started at Ralph Lauren. A little bit of background, I’ve always been very
interested in photography and the preservation of those types of assets. Digital
Asset Management happened to be something that I naturally fell into. It was
the natural next step for me. [0:39] At Ralph Lauren, they have an extremely
extensive collection of photographic assets, video assets and they were at the
point where everyone in the art department was keeping the same types of
images on different servers. It was really clogging up their space. It got to a
point where we really just needed to clean everything out and put it into one
system that the entire company could access.
Henrik: [1:10] Makes sense.
Julie: [1:14] Yeah, we started building this DAM system. It was highly customizable.
A company like Ralph Lauren is not going to have anything straightforward.
They’re very lifestyle driven, so you can’t just search for photographs by a
photographer. It has to be by thoroughbred, Nantucket, things like that as well
as searching as by location, photographer, model, season, year, that type of
thing. [1:42] It was extra special, because that’s really their whole thing. And also,
at Ralph Lauren, as in fashion in general, is very cyclical. A collection from the
80s will return and be very popular, and you need to pull those assets again as
inspiration for a new collection.
[2:00] It’s a huge, huge database. They had about 750,000 assets when I left in
2006. They were adding approximately 60,000 assets a year. It’s massive. I was
in the corporate archives department. My boss and I, Pat Christman, who had
been with the company since the very beginning, she was more like the company
historian, we worked with this team for this.
[2:30] We had a very rigorous schedule. We’d meet weekly. We really built up a
beautiful, beautiful system. I love it. To this day people always comment about
it. Anybody who has interacted with that system knows that it’s very fine tuned
and it works really well.
[2:49] Yeah, that was my entre into the Digital Asset Management world. From
there, I’ve worked with the NFL. I worked with them last year for their youth division.
They needed to organize their assets. It seems to be a problem in these
art departments where people download these high res assets and keep them
on their individual servers or desktops. It starts clogging up the system again.
[3:23] Companies are starting to realize that they need one place for these
assets to stay so they’re easily accessible but, again, not everywhere all over the
company. You know things start to happen. Was this the final approved one? Is
it cropped correctly? You don’t have that information in a simple file sitting on
your desktop. Do you know what I mean? It hasn’t gone through all the stages
of approval.
Henrik: [3:48] So, there’s centralization basically?
Julie: [3:51] Yeah, definitely. I basically work with luxury brands. My other job
that I do is I produce fashion videos. Now I’m starting to work with those clients
who have all these video assets and photographic assets, and they have no idea
what to do with them. [4:11] It just amazes me, maybe because I’ve been doing
this for 10 years it’s not shocking, but it just really surprises me that people don’t
have things more in order. They’re starting to catch on and realize that this is a
very vital part of their business, which is good. This area with the fashion sector,
luxury brands, it’s really totally booming right now.
Henrik: [4:42] Julie, why would a jewelry company, for example, use a DAM?
Julie: [4:47] Currently I am consulting at the second largest jewelry company
in the country, not the world actually. A jewelry company is like any other company
that has assets. In this particular case there is a jewelry designer for this
company that is pushing this project. [5:12] She herself realizes how valuable it
is to have her assets organized and located in one place. They’re preserved.
They’re getting digitized at very high resolution. They’re going to be preserved.
Everything is going to go to cold storage. Her actual physical assets are going
to be protected.
[5:32] I really saw the jewelry company as any company like a Ralph Lauren or
a NFL. It’s not even about the industry. It’s about preserving your assets and
making sure everything is taken care of. I could do this in any industry.
[5:50] I tell people all the time, “Yes, I work in a luxury brand sector, but I could
be doing this for anyone who has that need.” It’s a major, major need. This is
a great project that I’m working on now, because the company is 100 percent
behind it.
[6:09] We have a very nice budget, which you also often don’t get with these
projects because it’s so new on the scene, it seems. Again, as with Ralph Lauren,
the team I’m managing, we have a very rigorous schedule.
[6:29] We meet every Wednesday, and on Thursdays we action everything that
we talked about on Wednesday so it gives the team that is actually building out
the system five days to get it going. It’s a very, very strict schedule. Everybody is
totally committed to it.
[6:46] I think that’s what makes it work and makes a DAM system really effective,
if you’ve got a team that’s just as passionate as you are, knows the end goal,
knows what it’s going to look like and can see what it’s going to look like.
[7:00] Again, it’s highly customizable. We can just bring this right into the PR
department and use it for exactly what we need. What’s very exciting about this
project is that there are other modules that have already been developed within
the company, but they did it backwards.
[7:19] They uploaded photos first, and then they attached some data and everything
else. We’re doing it like the old school way. We are building it up nice and
slowly, very clean. Then we’re going to add assets. This is now going to serve as
the model for the rest of the company going forward.
[7:35] They have a very, very nice, clean system. It’s going to work perfectly. It’s
going to totally be across the company. It’s going to be one large system with
all these different modules, and it’s very, very nice.
Henrik: [7:52] Julie, what advice would you like to give to DAM professionals or
people aspiring to become a DAM professional?
Julie: [8:00] I thought about this a little bit. I said I worked in fashion for a long
time, luxury brands. I feel that the DAM community is very inviting. I don’t feel
like it’s a very competitive group. People are always sharing ideas and going to
each other. [8:18] I think that’s really key in this industry, not to be afraid to contact
your colleagues and talk about things. Chances are they’ve already been
through it, and they can give you some pointers. I go to these Meetups, and I
meet these fantastic people.
[8:36] You keep in touch, and you come across some situation, like I met someone
last week and I’m going to contact them about these video assets I’m working
on for this current collection. I just think you should be really open and not
be very competitive about that type of thing.
[8:53] I know a lot of industries are competitive, but I feel like this is a knowledge
sharing group, and it’s just natural to want to talk about, discuss, and
share information. Do you know what I mean? It’s one of those industries that
work that way.
[9:06] For the aspiring professional, I just feel like you should go to these meetups.
Go to these networking events. I hear so many people say they don’t want
to go. They’re shy or whatever. But it’s like this is one group of people who are
so passionate about what they do that somebody is going to talk to you.
[9:30] That fear of social anxiety that people experience when going to these
events, people shouldn’t even worry about that. I find that younger people I run
into don’t want to do these things. I’m like, “It’s the best thing going. Are you
kidding me? I meet people every time I go. I meet wonderful people.” You just
expand your network.
Henrik: [9:51] Thanks, Julie.
Julie: [9:53] You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure.
Henrik: [9:54] 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