Another DAM Podcast

Audio about Digital Asset Management

Tag Archives: Henrik de Gyor


by

Another DAM Podcast interview with Jim Sippel on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a community church group 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: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Jim Sippel.
Jim [0:09] how are you?
Jim Sippel: [0:10] I’m good, how are you?
Henrik: [0:12] Good. Jim, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Jim: [0:16] The way I got involved with Digital Asset Management, I currently
work at Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago land area. We’re a very
large church, we’re one of the largest churches in the country. My role here is
managing and directing the post production and field production in video. I
don’t do the live production of video or for services, I actually am in the content
creation side. [0:44] When Digital Asset Management came to Willow Creek
about four years ago, it was through our IT department that was trying to resolve
a problem that they were having with a lot of people using, and you may
have talked about this on previous shows, having their own desktop DAMs.
Meaning that everybody was storing content that they were creating on their
own laptops, their own desktops, their own server folders.
[1:11] Our IT department realized that they were having a problem of they were
running out of space, they were having to purchase more server spaces, drives,
and maintenance and all that goes along with that cost.
[1:20] When they did their own internal audit, they realized that video was probably
the biggest culprit in absorbing all that storage and space. They approached
us, saying, “We’re going to purchase a Digital Asset Management system, and
it’s going to solve all your problems.
[1:37] Start putting everything on there and don’t put it on the network at all
because you’re killing us. Every time you transfer a video you slow down the
network, and storage, and so on and so forth.”
[1:48] We’re all like, “OK, what’s a DAM and why do we have to use this?” “Why?
Because we like this.”
[1:54] After the first year and a half of implementation, and I use that term
loosely because it was implemented, but nobody was using it. Out of frustration,
they came to me and said, “Jim, you seem to be a little more knowledgeable
than most on what Digital Asset Management is. Your department is the
one who’s using the most amount of IT services, so guess what. You’re going to
manage this and good luck with that.”
[2:24] With very little training or any kind of orientation, I wound up having to
be the guy to learn how to do Digital Asset Management. We’ve thrown this
around before. I became an accidental DAM manager because I had no previous
experience. It’s been quite a learning curve. [laughs]
[2:43] Getting involved with it is, first and foremost, I had to understand what our
business was at doing video and doing video within a church. Then, as it expanded
out I had to learn what other ministries were doing with media in general,
and how they were using it within the church.
[3:02] Just like any other business, our realization is we’re using a lot of digital
media. That all needs to get managed, especially when you’re trying to locate
things, whether it’s pictures, video images, stock images, music.
[3:20] A lot of people never, really had to think about, “How am I storing this,
and how do I find it, and how do others find it?” This is how I got involved
with it. It’s not that I was looking for it. It’s just kind of like I didn’t sit down
fast enough.
[laughter]
Henrik: [3:38] Why does a community church group use Digital Asset
Management?
Jim: [3:42] Again, just like other businesses, we have a lot of media content.
We produce hundreds of hours of video. We have hundreds, if not thousands,
of hours of live church services across over 50 ministries throughout our organization.
[4:01] Not all ministries have a live service, but they’ll request or create
content that’s either going to go into a teaching class, or they’ll use it on the
Internet or they will use it in the service itself. All of these, as with the rest of
society, we become more and more media savvy, more digital savvy. In creating
that content, it all needs to go someplace, obviously.
[4:29] When you look at the history of the church, they’ve been managing
content for thousands of years. From “Dead Sea Scrolls” to printing Bibles in
a Gutenberg press and trying to distribute that. It’s a natural phase for the
church to go from analog and physical asset management to Digital Asset
Management.
[4:53] Our asset is the message that we have in the church. That’s number one.
Then everything we create around it to support preaching that message naturally
fits. We need to store that and be smart about it and steward our resources
and our money well by being able to retrieve that information. Be able to make
it usable for other people.
[5:15] We may create a great video for a service and then one of our youth
ministries want to use it, but they don’t want to use all of it because they want
to create it for their age group. They may want to change some components
within that video like, maybe, they want to take the music out that we use and
put some better music in from their perspective. That’s an asset that needs to
go into that piece of content. Or they want to use graphics and, maybe, the
graphics for the old people church is not cool enough for their service. They can
create their own graphics and insert that into the core of that content.
[5:47] It’s, really, great to be able to have that ability to be able to go into a
centralized system, find those different assets that you can use to either make
a derivative of the original piece and make it work for your specific ministry or
business group. Then be able to take those assets that you create within your
own group and put that in a centralized location that other people can grab it
and use it for theirs.
[6:15] It also helps through all continuity throughout the different medias, too. If
we’re using something live in the service and then we decide we want to put it
up on the Internet or we want to use it in other distributions through publishing
or whatever, it’s like everybody can go to that one place and grab that specific
asset that’s important to that brand or whatever they’re trying to do. And be
able to incorporate that into the piece so that there’s continuity throughout the
different media that it may be in.
Henrik: [6:43] Jim, what advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Jim: [6:47] Well, for those that are in the predicament that I was in where it’s
you’re chosen to be the DAM manager, I think one of the things that the learning
that I’ve come away with is understanding it forces you to sit down and think
about what do you do just within your own group. What do you do? Why are
you doing it and what are you trying to do with it? [7:09] For me, it was a very
interesting exercise to go through to think about this is where we start, this is
where we end and here’s everything that’s involved in that process. Now, some
organizations are, probably, more thoughtful than we’ve been, but it really
helped identify a lot of things in terms of what happens to our videos. What are
all the elements that are going into that video? Then, what happens to the video
afterwards, and who needs it? What do they want to do with it?
[7:38] Going through that alone, really, helps to identify, I think, what you need in
a Digital Asset Management system. What are the different components do you
need? Do you need it to do a lot of different transcoding within itself or do you
have to buy an add-on or a bolt-on? Do you need a document management to
go along with that and how does it tie back to your specific digital assets?
[8:08] All these things I never thought about when I was creating video. We
would think about what’s our script, how are we shooting it and it goes into the
tape library until somebody asks for a copy. That’s how I’ve thought about it
most of the time. And obviously, did it succeed in the message?
[8:25] The next thing I learned through all this, is I had to build…Well it was twofold.
I had to be a salesman through this whole thing to get people to buy into
why would they want to take their work and put it into this centralized storage
system or repository? Instead of keeping it on their desktop where they can go
into their my docs and pull it up, or they can go into their thumb drives or external
hard drives and pull up that content or asset, immediately, and be able
to use it.
[8:55] Trying to cast that vision for…Well, you could add more value. The whole
point of an asset is to add value to it. The more you make it accessible to others
for use, the more value it creates. It’s like what Kevin Kelly talked about in one
of his books from “Wired” where the fax machine by itself has no value, but the
more fax machines there are in the world the more value there is. Obviously,
that dates us [laughs] because people, probably, don’t use fax. The same with
an asset if you think about that.
[9:30] With the sales, there also has to be trust. Again, if they’re able to look at a
tape on their shelf or look at a hard drive on their shelf, there’s the feeling like,
“OK . I have control over this and I know where it is.”
[9:43] Where it goes into a central repository it’s like you don’t see it. If people
are going to put it in there, they want to be able to get it back out like they do
with their desktop DAM. Because they can’t see that asset and they’re putting it
in that repository, they got to have that trust that they can find it quickly.
[10:00] Most people will browse. They want to click through however your repository
interface is set up, whether it’s a folder collection or it’s little widgets. But
they can get to it quickly just browsing.
[10:12] Or if you have the metadata, which is like learning about, what is metadata?
What is taxonomy? How do I? But if it’s offered search purposes that they
can put in keywords and be able to find again what they’re looking for quickly,
and have confidence that it’s there. Or they have confidence that whatever their
search, whatever search they create, it’s going to return to them quality assets.
[10:36] Because, again, you can use really broad strokes on metadata and you
can return 100 assets on a search that, really, are not relevant to what you’re
looking for. Or you can design metadata that, or descriptions of that asset, in
a way that’s going to return 10 to 20 high quality assets where it’s right there
on the first page. You don’t have to go through 20 pages to find what you’re
looking for.
[11:00] Just learning how to do that. What’s metadata? What makes quality
metadata? What’s taxonomy? How am I structuring all of this stuff? This is all
stuff I wish I would have known when this was put on me. Fortunately, through
this community and yourself, a lot of people out there that were blazing a trail
before me are very helpful in learning that structure.
[11:23] I think, the third component is learning, networking with others. You
realize, hey, I’m not the only one [laughs] that’s tried to figure this out. There’s
others, and just learning from each other. That’s been a huge help to me is like
being a part of various digital asset conferences, whether it’s LinkedIn groups,
or Another DAM Podcast or Another DAM Blog and other resources that are
out there.
[11:48] It’s great to be able to know you can go to…You meet people, and you
learn where this all is and you don’t have to build this all by yourself. Yeah,
networking is the third and, really, important component, too. There’s a whole
bunch of other things, but those are probably my top three.
[12:05] As far as aspiring, don’t know if I have too much advice [laughs] for aspiring
other than the same thing.
Henrik: [12:10] Great. Well, thanks, Jim.
Jim: [12:12] You’re welcome.
Henrik: [12:14] 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


by

Another DAM Podcast interview with Tony Gill on Digital Asset Management

Tony Gill discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • What challenges do you face using Digital Asset Management within a marketing organization?
  • What advice would you like to give to 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 Tony Gill. Tony,
how are you?
Tony Gill: [0:10] I’m good. Thanks Henrik. How are you?
Henrik: [0:12] Good. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Tony: [0:15] My job title is Global Director of Library Science and Information
Management. I work for an advertising agency that is part of one of the large
global advertising conglomerates. [0:28] We have a single client which is a very
large technology company. My role is theoretic quite general.
[0:35] In practice, I spend the vast bulk of my time running a large multi server
Digital Asset Management System that’s shared between us, our client, and
about a dozen of our sibling agencies within the same conglomerate, all working
on the same account.
[0:53] After defining the initial information architecture for the system such as the
metadata schemer and the control vocabularies, the folder hierarchy that we use
for storing the assets, asset ingest and work flow procedures.
[1:10] I now manage a team, a small team of Digital Asset Librarians who perform
the day-to-day act of managing the flow of assets throughout the system and
throughout their life cycle.
Henrik: [1:20] Great. Tony, what challenges do you face using Digital Asset
Management with a marketing organization?
Tony: [1:26] The challenges are many and varied. One of the biggest challenges
we face is just the sheer volume of assets coming into the system all the time
from a wide variety of different sources both from within our agency groups and
also from the client and from beyond. [1:43] We do have fairly well established
asset ingest procedures that require metadata to be provided with the assets.
But because there are always new users and new communities wanting to
upload assets to the system, it means there’s a constant need to keep training
people and keep bringing them up to speed on the ingest procedures. That’s
fairly challenging.
[2:05] Another factor of my job is that we have a very demanding client and
often times they will make requests to have assets organized for their particular
needs.
[2:18] Often, it’s down to me to say politely but firmly that we can’t do that because
the system has to meet the needs of a very, very broad user community.
We have something like 3,500 users on the system globally, at the moment.
[2:31] We can’t just reorganize areas of it for one group, or one individual’s requirements.
Sometimes I have to be able to politely and tactfully say, “No,” and
explain why we can’t change the structure of the system for individual user’s
needs because of the whole broad range of different user needs.
[2:55] Obviously, rights management is a perennial problem in this field. We have
to make sure we have detailed usage right information for anything where the
usage rights are not just straight forward global unlimited usage rights.
[3:13] Communicating that to people that are uploading assets is also sometimes
challenging because sometimes they haven’t even considered the usage rights.
[3:23] You have to end up doing a little mini tutorial about copyright and usage
rights and explaining why, as the publisher effectively of these assets, if we
publish them and we don’t have the correct usage rights, then we’re effectively
liable for copyright infringement even though we may have had no part in acquiring
these assets in the first place. Of course, that’s also a challenge.
[3:47] Then, the general symptom of working in the advertising industry is that
deadlines are always very short and often missed. People tend to wait until the
last minute and tend to get very anxious when we say that things are published
in a timely fashion.
[4:08] They often leave things to the last thing on a Friday night before they
upload them. We often find ourselves scrambling at the last minute to get the
stuff posted that’s urgently needed by teams all around the world right at the
last minute.
Henrik: [4:21] Sounds like a bunch of challenges there.
Tony: [4:23] Yeah.
Henrik: [4:27] What advice would you like to give DAM professionals or people
aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Tony: [4:33] From my part, if you want to come work on my team, you will need
a Library Science degree. That’s a graduate degree in Library and Information
Science. That’s a really good grounding in the kind of disciplines that are very
good in the Digital Assets Management field. [4:51] It teaches you the importance
of information architecture and information management. It teaches you
to be rigorous and to follow standards. It also teaches you an observance for
finickiness and attention to detail.
[5:05] In the job description that I wrote recently for the Digital Asset Librarians, I
said, “An almost obsessive attention to detail would be a useful attribute in any
of the successful candidates.”
[5:20] I tend to find that there are certain people that are drawn to the librarianship
role, and they also make very good digital managers. Those are the main
things that I can think of just off the top of my head.
Henrik: [5:31] Great. Thank you, Tony.
Tony: [5:33] You’re very welcome, Henrik. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.
Henrik: [5:36] Any time. For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to
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


by

Another DAM Podcast interview with Mary Yurkovic on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • When you have many different photographers using different digital cameras, is there a preferred standard format for digital photographs you would recommend?
  • 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 am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Mary Yurkovic.
Mary, how are you?
Mary Yurkovic: [0:10] I am fine, Henrik. Thanks for having me on your podcast
today.
Henrik: [0:14] No problem. Mary, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Mary: [0:17] I’m a consultant and adviser to organizations struggling with
Digital Asset Management and how Digital Asset Management works within
their organization. Additionally, one of my ongoing projects is working with
Createasphere in educating the community, similar to Another DAM Blog. [0:36]
We’re really trying to educate the community face-to-face and bring some problems
and issues that we have in this space to the forefront, and working with
vendors in this space and service providers in this space to help us come up
with some great solutions.
Henrik: [0:53] When you have many different photographers using different
digital cameras by different manufacturers, you may have experience with this,
is there a preferred standard format for digital photographs that you would
recommend?
Mary: [1:09] That’s a good question. Getting creatives to decide upon one
standard or even come to a common ground can always be very challenging.
Sometimes you have political issues to deal with, and sometimes you’ll have
a lack of understanding or knowledge of file format. [1:28] Whatever the case
may be, it’s extremely important if not critical is to have some sort of standard.
The standard that I think I’ve seen work fast with some of the organizations I’ve
worked with is the DNG format.
Henrik: [1:43] So instead of using the RAW formats that vary actually amongst
all the different camera manufacturers for the most part, you’re recommending
DNG or the Digital Negative format from Adobe?
Mary: [1:53] Yes. There may be a few steps you have to take to get to it, but the
goal is to preserve as much of the camera data and as much color information
as possible from the very beginning. [2:10] As I said, whatever the file format
you’re using, just pick a standard. I think it’s much easier with digital photography,
then it is with video. So within your organization that should be easier.
Henrik: [2:27] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Mary: [2:33] My advice for future Digital Asset Management professionals and
current Digital Asset Management professionals is to learn as many aspects as
you can about the Digital Asset Management arena, whether it’s project management,
library science, categorizing your data, digital work flows. [2:57] Learn
about video and how to deal with audio files and formats, document management,
rights management, storage, digital preservation. There are many, many
more areas too, but learn as much as you can about the other areas.
[3:17] Another very important area to consider for Digital Asset Management
professionals is to consider the human factor and how change management
affects implementing a Digital Asset Management project or process and how
humans interact with assets themselves.
[3:38] Whatever area you chose to focus on, just keep an open mind and explore
some of the adjacent areas and the adjacent technologies. For the future Digital
Asset Management professionals, this is a really, really exciting time. We’re
starting to see some really great technology improve and prove itself to organizations
and see the real potential with our digital data and digital assets.
[4:07] We’re really at the beginning of what can really happen with Digital Asset
Management and adjacent technology. I think the future for it is going to be
very exciting and challenging and rewarding. At the same time, especially when
you see what’s happening with some of the search and speech recognition,
there are improving techniques for preserving physical content.
[4:39] I think all of that is very exciting, and we’re really just starting to touch
upon the surface of that. Digital Asset Management and Digital Asset
Management community itself, how we deal with Digital Asset Management on
a day to day base just in our personal lives with iTunes, Pandora, go to YouTube
and look up a silly video to make you laugh, those are all forms of Digital Asset
Management.
[5:07] As I said, this is really only a fraction of how we use Digital Asset
Management on a day to day basis. For many organizations Digital Asset
Management seems to be mission critical, not just leaving it up to the technology
department to implement and let them steer this and leaving it upon them
to do upgrades and to look at the next capability. Or leaving it up to them or
getting frustrated because it hasn’t achieved its ROI status yet.
[5:40] Some of the trends, as I said, I’m seeing, is indeed many of these organizations
are making Digital Asset Management a vital mission in the way they do
their business. Which, to the delight of many of the future DAMsters, is taking
it a step further to do even more, automate work flow, the rights process, the
speech recognition, the better search capabilities. The list goes on.
[6:06] There’s so many additional capabilities of Digital Asset Management.
What’s really exciting is the really good ones, we haven’t even thought of yet.
It’s the next DAMsters who will be thinking of that for us.
Henrik: [6:20] Great. Well, thank you, Mary.
Mary: [6:22] Thank you for having me.
Henrik: [6:24] 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, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today


by 1 Comment

Another DAM Podcast interview with David Riecks on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • What is a Controlled Vocabulary and why is it important to DAM?
  • 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 am Henrik de Gyor. Today, we’re speaking with David Riecks.
David, how are you?
David Riecks: [0:09] I’m doing great. How are you doing?
Henrik: [0:11] David, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
David: [0:14] ; Well, I got involved early on. I wear many hats in this field. So,
first and foremost I am a photographer, so I create images. I have to find them
myself and manage them myself. As a result of that, I started way back in the
film era, in scanning film and things like that. [0:31] In the early ‘90s found myself
putting images into image database and learning that there were these things
like IPTC, which I had no idea what the acronym meant at that time, and based
upon some of my early work with that and my controlled vocabulary. So I ended
up getting involved in metadata standards work.
Henrik: [0:51] What do you refer to when you mean metadata standards? Can
you clarify that?
David: [0:57] Well, there are a whole number of them. When I’m explaining
it to photographers and designers, and people that are working with image
databases, if they ever use Photoshop, I say, “When you open up that file info
box in Photoshop,” which many of them are aware of, I say, “Do you think that’s
just a single standard?” It’s amazing how many people think it is. [1:20] Actually,
I guess it’s a great kudos to Adobe, because they manage to make it look so
seamless, but there’s actually four or five metadata standards that are being
implemented underneath the covers there. The primary one and the oldest
one for images is something called the International Press Telecommunications
Council or IPTC standard.
[1:41] It started out in the ‘90’s. It was an older binary form. Now it’s been morphed
into this XMP way of storing it. So now it’s called the IPTC Core, and
there’s even a newer version or a compendium or add-on to it, called the IPTC
Extension, and then you’ve got other things. The newest one is called PLUS,
which is the Picture License and Universal System.
[2:06] I’m involved with a number of thee working groups. I got involved with
something called IdeaAlliance early on, working on their DISC, Digital Image
Submission Criteria Working Group, and then got involved with this remapping
of the binary IPTC to IPTC Core, and also served with PLUS as well.
[2:28] I’m kind of right in the thick of metadata standards, and trying to basically
move those forward, so that you’ve got a place to put all the data in
your images.
[2:37] From a photographer’s standpoint, that was one thing I always found frustrating
was if there was some kind of information that should go with a file, but
there wasn’t a specific place to put it, then you’ve got to figure out another way
to store that data, either internally or externally. In the metadata standards if you
can get it incorporated so it’s part of the standard, then you don’t have to figure
out a kludgy way to get around it.
Henrik: [3:07] What is controlled vocabulary, and why is it important to DAM?
David: [3:10] Controlled vocabulary is a defined term it has to do with Digital
Asset Management. I also manage a website called Controlled Vocabulary. It’s
ControlledVocabulary.com, and there is lots of information about controlled
vocabularies examples, how to implement it, especially in an image database.
[3:30] From my standpoint, controlled vocabulary is all about making images discoverable.
What you want to do is make your database easier to search. There’s
many ways to describe concepts, and drawing all these terms together under
a single word or phrase makes it easier to search that. What that usually means
is you’ve also got to find other synonyms or other words that kind of mean the
same thing, and tie those to them.
[3:55] I work with a lot of photographers and one of the things that you could
easily ask them is ask them to find a specific image in their database. They can
do it in seconds. If you ask them, “Could you hand that database off to somebody
else and have them find it?” It would probably not happen, because they
have specific words that they have in mind.
[4:16] They see a certain kind of subject, and they may have very specific terms
that they use to describe those things. Other people may or may not be able
to use those same terms, or they may use a very, very specific term, but then
not use broader terms. For instance, they might use something like the word
‘dog.’ They might put ‘dog’ in as a keyword, but they might not put ‘pet’ or
even ‘animal.’
[4:45] Some people may be looking more generically. They may be looking for
an image of a dog or a cat outside, and don’t really care so much if it is a dog
or cat. They might search on ‘pet outside’ or ‘pet lawn,’ something like that, and
that image will never be found.
[5:04] If you’re putting your images out there, hoping that people will use them,
the first thing they have to do is be able to find them.
Henrik: [5:10] That was an example?
David: [5:11] Yeah.
Henrik: [5:12] If you want to try and sell them, that’s even more important.
David: [5:15] That’s one of the things that most people found … There’s a portal
called Alamy. One of the things early on with that was photographers would
complain, “Hey. Nobody’s buying my images,” and people would ask them,
“How many keywords do you have for it?” “I have three or four.” [5:32] Some
of the same people would go back and rework it, and get it up to where there
were 12 or 15 keywords per image, and then, all of a sudden, they started selling
because people were finding them.
Henrik: [5:45] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals or
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
David: [5:50] What I do for managing my own images, and what you do, or what
other people may do, where they’re managing very large entities are probably
a little bit different. But, the things I have learned, that I think are important are,
one, standards are important, if we didn’t already make that clear. [6:09] In addition
to standards, there is also the concept called interoperability. This can come
back to bite you if you’re not careful, because you may be doing something you
think is based on standards and doing it in a standard way. All of a sudden, you
move those images over to a different asset management program, and none of
your descriptions are showing up, or none of your keywords show up, or there
are parts of your data missing.
[6:37] A lot of that has to do with interoperability and testing to make sure that
things work this database reads your IPTC code the same as another one does.
Part of that is on the vendors, but part of that is also up to the DAM professionals,
because you’ve got to check that, test it, before you move stuff over.
[7:00] In addition, another thing that’s really important is preservation. If you’ve
spent the time to embed this information into your images, or your use enterprise
DAM, and write the information back to the image files, and then you
put those out there on social media sites, or share them with other people, it’s
important to know that information is going to still be there when you go back
to look for it.
[7:25] Some of the social media sites, people are probably familiar with
Facebook, but they may not be aware that when you upload an image to
Facebook, it makes a smaller version of it and removes all of your embedded
metadata, so there’s no access, no IPTC, no plus, no anything. If somebody
else downloads that image from Facebook, unless they made a note, where it
came from, they’re going to have no idea where it came from. That can lead
to problems.
Henrik: [7:55] It sounds like it.
David: [7:57] Yeah, and I’m a big advocate for doing your homework. I prefer
to do something once and be done with it, rather than to keep going back and
fixing it all the time, That just seems rather inefficient. The best way to do that, if
you’re probably a DAM professional, is to talk to the people that are using your
image database and find out how they’re using it, and figure out if there is a way
that you can teach them how to use it to make their lives easier. [8:28] It’s amazing.
With most databases, I find people, 9 times out of 10, will do a single word
search, just using the quick search. Many of them aren’t even aware that there
is an advanced search, or an advanced find. Once they learn that, I’m like, all of
a sudden making go from pages and pages of images that are not necessarily
pertinent to their search, and just weed them out and get it down to a very
small number that they can look through very quickly.
Henrik: [8:55] Thank you David.
David: [8:56] Thank you as well.
Henrik: [8:57] 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