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Another DAM Podcast interview with Ian Matzen about Digital Asset Management

 

Here are the questions asked:

How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Why is Digital Asset Management so complex?

What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:             00:00                This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Ian Matzen. Ian, how are you?

Ian Matzen:                  00:08                I’m well, thank you very much, Henrik.

Henrik de Gyor:             00:09                Ian, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Ian Matzen:                  00:14                I’ve been involved with Digital Asset Management for about six years professionally. Four of those years, I’ve been a remote Digital Asset Manager. I’m currently working as the Digital Asset Management Librarian with Wells Fargo. They have a Marketing Department and they have a Digital Asset Management system there. I’ve been helping with the system’s rollout and testing new features, training new groups, and setting up the system for those new groups. I’ve also been working on asset migration, workflow automation and spending a bit of time on user adoption. In my work there, I have been serving as a consultant. We had a DAM reporting project that involves data analysis and display… or working with that… Visualizing that data for us to understand that better. I’ve also been working on some projects involving record retention and various user adoption projects including a DAM gamification project that I’m currently rolling out.

Ian Matzen:                  01:24                Before that, I was the Digital Asset Manager at America’s Test Kitchen, which is a Boston-based publisher where I managed not only the Digital Asset Management system, but also their content management system and our workflow management system. I did a fair amount of metadata modeling for both the DAM and the CMS, Digital Asset Management system and the Content Management System. And one of the high points there is I built, designed and deployed an enterprise taxonomy and did a fair amount of automation, including asset ingest automation and digital rights management tagging automatically to digital assets for digital rights management tagging. I also did a bit of work on capturing raw data around system usage and analyzing that data to measure specifically the way that our users were reusing digital assets to show the value of the system.

Ian Matzen:                  02:24                Even before that my work was as a Digital Asset Technician for a Net-a-Porter. They are a London-based luxury brand online retailer. They have offices around the world. And there, I developed a controlled vocabularies for various groups. I configured the user interface and did a quality assurance during various upgrades.

Ian Matzen:                  02:45                But my work with digital assets really predates the six years I’ve been doing Digital Asset Management professionally. I’ve been working with digital assets ever since I took my first film editing class in university. I was part of the first class to really move away from the Moviola flatbed and into nonlinear editing. So, I’m really passionate about rich media, about audiovisual media workflows and technology especially as it relates to part of the creative process. For me, nothing’s really more exciting than helping art directors, designers, editors, and motion graphic artists and other artists create their work.

Ian Matzen:                  03:24                That was the case when I first started working at an advertising agency and remains so in my work at I’m Marketing Department at Wells Fargo.

Henrik de Gyor:             03:34                Ian, Why is Digital Asset Management so complex?

Ian Matzen:                  03:39                There are several different aspects that are complicated or complex about Digital Asset Management. I think the first that I can think of is the ever-expanding definition of what we mean by digital assets. And in most circles, when we think of or talk about digital assets, we think of audiovisual media including images, videos, animations and audio. However, more recently in some of the jobs that I’ve been in, we’ve added a lot, many more different types of files and formats for that list, including emails, text, HTML, even data are being managed by DAM Managers. So the question is, you know, should every type of visual file be supported by the DAM system?

Ian Matzen:                  04:22                Ideally, they should be, but not all of the DAM systems out there are created equal. And really, you mean what it comes down to is, is choosing the best option for the digital content you’re managing. For example, the Digital Asset Management system I worked with at America’s Test Kitchen worked very well with images, whereas the current system that I worked with at Wells Fargo worked very well with video. So when it comes down to, you know, finding the right system for the material that you’re managing.

Ian Matzen:                  04:53                Another aspect that adds to the complexity of Digital Asset Management is managing expectations. And that goes for users as well as the stakeholders and folks who you might report to. I think many users expect the Digital Asset Management system to behave in the same way that a search engine does. They might be similar, but the two are inherently different when it comes to search.

Ian Matzen:                  05:19                Content is index differently. For starters, search engines rely on inbound links and sitemap indexing. Whereas Enterprise search requires applying terms from a controlled vocabulary and the context, of course, is very different. Also, companies want to capitalize on their investment in a DAM system. And so they turned customizing the system to meet their business requirements rather than opting for another best of breed product. So in this way, companies unknowingly risk customizing themselves into a corner, making system upgrades and migration, very challenging if not prohibitively expensive. So before or enhancing the system, it’s a good idea to ask whether another reasonable, reasonably priced system might be a better option and seek out other customers of that system who have done some enhancements to the same system that you’re using. There are risks for either option, whether you want to customize or build out your current DAM solution or go with another system.

Ian Matzen:                  06:19                So a good project manager can help mitigate those risks. Finally, I think the other aspect that lends itself to the complexity is the accelerating pace of technology. Whether you know how to build an extension in Java, design a workflow automation using logic or having a solid understanding of what these are, I think it’s a good idea to at least be aware of them and have some idea of how to develop a software, how workflows can be put together and at least designed, because I think there are a lot of aspects to Digital Asset Management and the more you know, I think that the more valuable, the more helpful you’ll be in your work.

Henrik de Gyor:             07:00                Ian, What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Ian Matzen:                  07:07                I think one of the main challenges to Digital Asset Management is search. Search is dependent on metadata. Much of the metadata needs to be manually entered. Though some of it can be automatically appended to digital files or to the records within a DAM system. Really it comes down to users devoting the time to adding that descriptive information. it is challenging to get them to do that and even more so getting them to do it consistently and over time. That time never really ends because metadata must change to reflect new contexts and new users that are being onboarded. So I think that that is a challenge to managing digital assets. I think the other aspect that is challenging with Digital Asset Management is showing trust. And I think what I’ve seen with many of the systems that I’ve managed is that slow interfaces or slow experience, buggy systems. If there was poor UI or lack of transparency, they all had people’s view of that DAM system.

Ian Matzen:                  08:17                Their trust in that DAM system will be impacted by those aspects. So it’s much harder to win back that trust if people are experiencing one of those issues. So it’s important to, I do a lot of testing to ensure that the system is working. Quality assurance is a huge part of my job. And also to a certain extent doing a fair amount of examining the user interface and doing a UAT to ensure that the interface itself is making sense to them. And, of course, having some sort of way of tracking the digital assets through their life will end, have they been downloaded when they’ve been used in a layout perhaps if there are images. All that adds to the trust that the users have in the system.

Ian Matzen:                  09:05                Some of the successes that I’ve seen in Digital Asset Management have been that for one, Digital Asset Management is a bonafide profession. I think because we have conferences now there are many job postings that ask for Digital Asset Management professionals. I think that that is a win. I think it’s very important to acknowledge and acknowledge the work that you’ve done and that other writers and other folks who are in our industry, I think it’s that’s good. Also, I think another success is centralization, and I’m not just talking about having all of our assets in one system, but also consolidating the number of systems that are found at that various companies. I think, in a rather than having, you know, four or five different, systems, some of which might be system of records, some may not be. I think it’s important to acknowledge that being able to consolidate them, that the material, but also reduce the number of systems that are being used and paid for by companies is a success.

Ian Matzen:                  10:11                Another aspect or another success of Digital Asset Management is realizing workflow efficiencies. I think there’s an opportunity to renegotiate and redesign workflows. And I think that many of us working in this arena in Digital Asset Management would say that that’s something they spend a good deal of their time doing. Some examples are auto ingesting digital assets into the system. At America’s Test Kitchen, I set up a fully automated ingest. We went from doing a lot of the cataloging manually and would, you know, the folks who were consuming those digital assets had to wait for that material to be ingested before they could see and use that. Having that automated allowed people to access us those much quicker. The other aspect I think of automation is validating metadata at, again, America’s test kitchen, we found a way to actually go through and ensure that the metadata was there, that it existed.

Ian Matzen:                  11:13                Folks took the time to put it in, but also validating the name against a convention we had set up. And then finally there’s a way that you can do a fair amount of work auto-tagging material. The taxonomy, that I set up for America’s Test Kitchen. One of the aspects that I, or at least challenges that I faced was applying that taxonomy to our existing or legacy content. We had over 800,000 records. Having an enterprise taxonomy is a great accomplishment, but if you can’t go back and, and actually tag that material, it’s not going to have as much impact or value. So I did develop a means of auto-tagging or existing content through automation.

Ian Matzen:               11:59                So, the last success I wanted to mention was the increased value of digital assets. I think by having a digital asset sitting on your desktop, it may be the most wonderful, incredibly creative item, but if no one can see them… To see that asset, it’s not going to have as much value as it would if it was in a Digital Asset Management system where it can be found and reused. So I think access is a huge part of that equation. But I think ultimately our goal is to make digital assets findable and see that their value increase.

Henrik de Gyor:             12:35                Ian, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Ian Matzen:                  12:41                I would suggest that they would navigate to my blog. I have a blog called tameyourassets.com and I do a fair amount of blogging and writing and my intent is to share my knowledge and experience with others, especially best practices. So I hope that listeners would consider going to that URL. I think another aspect or another suggestion that I have is just know your DAM systems. It’s important to know what current systems there are both within the organization that might be a part of, but also, systems that are being offered by other vendors. It’s important to see what current and upcoming features they’re offering so that you could ask for those features for the current system that you’re using. I think another aspect of that is as partner with other system adopters or other people managing the DAM system, the same DAM system that you’re using to drive that vendor road map. So I think partnering and forming that network of system users and managers is very important. And then, also another aspect is education. I think it is very important to learn and master DAM best practices, to ask questions, learn from other practitioners, take online courses or even take courses at a local community college.

Ian Matzen:                  14:05                I think finding courses in library science or computer science or data analysis, will all help you at least to give you that understanding of what those aspects are that, you can talk with other folks in your organization to help manage digital assets. And then finally, I just wanted to mention, finding a mentor in the Digital Asset Management space. They don’t have to be necessarily someone with much more or any additional experience that you might have. It could be a peer, but the benefits of having a mentor would be to find some encouragement and support for your journey in the Digital Asset Management space. They can offer you honest advice and feedback, what you’re doing and how you’re managing digital assets, and then, of course, having a mentor is helpful to expand your professional network.

Henrik de Gyor:             14:57                Great. Well, thanks Ian.

Ian Matzen:                  14:59                You’re welcome. Thank you very much.

Henrik de Gyor:            15:01                For more on this, visit anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with James Chan on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why would an organization focused around Architecture and Planning 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: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with James Chan. James,
how are you?

James Chan: [0:08] I’m great. I’m very good. How are you?

Henrik: [0:11] Good. James, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?

James: [0:17] Firstly, I can tell you very quickly about what we do here at the
studio. We’re an architectural visualization studio. Very quickly, what that means
is that we create photorealistic images of architecture before it gets built. My
role in that is that I help the artists to produce their renderings. What happens
is that the artist will get a 3D model and do their wizardry on it, their 3D
thing, and render out a 2D image of the building. [0:46] That’s when the things
I do come into play. What they do then is, with the render, they bring it into
Photoshop and add 2D assets into that. Assets could be photographs of trees,
people, plants, you name it. Whatever you need to do in order to make the
image look photorealistic. Sometimes it’s a whole image, like a photograph of
the site where the building’s going to go, and they literally just drop the building
into that photograph.
[1:17] Other times, it’s a complete render. What they do then is just add elements,
like people and trees, into the image. What I do is I have to maintain a
library of these images, of these assets. It’s a quite crucial role within the studio.
Because time is money. To be able to produce high quality illustrations or
images that you need to be able to find exactly what you need and be able to
put it into the image straight away.
[1:43] The artist doesn’t want to waste their time looking for things. They just
want to do a quick keyword search, browse a folder or whatnot, within the asset
management system, and find exactly what they want straight away. Quite
often, we get some artists who work with other studios. They come in here, start
fresh and are absolutely overjoyed that they have a really nicely organized and
curated library of images they can just dig into and get what they need.

Henrik: [2:07] Why does an organization focused on architecture and planning
use Digital Asset Management, beyond what you just said?

James: [2:13] Architecture is a very visual discipline. Historically, designs for buildings have started off as sketches. Even current buildings, such as Renzo Piano’s The Shard of Glass which is a great big building being built in London.
It’s a very striking building. It is literally a shard of glass going into the sky. That
started out as a sketch on a napkin.

[2:36] From then, it was put into a CAD drawing. Then, we produced a photorealistic rendering from that. With architecture, they really do communicate in images. I know that in dedicated, proper architectural firms, they use asset management systems. Because that’s how they communicate with each other. They have drawings. They have site photography.

[2:57] They have model shots of models they made themselves. Architecture is
awash with images. It’s crucial for an architectural firm to be able to organize
all their images very effectively. For planning, they use images as well. But it’s
more of a 3D thing. They use a lot of 3D techniques to do their work. But again,
you have to find the images first. It’s really just about finding your images. If you
can’t find them, we all know, it’s not going to be much good to anyone.
[3:33] The artists are fantastic at producing great renderings and 3D files. But
they’re terrible when it comes to the metadata. That’s where I come in. If you
don’t have good metadata, it’s going to be a nightmare to find anything. I provide
the structure and then I also provide the oversight, to make sure things are
keyworded properly and named correctly and organized in a way that makes it
very easy to find it.
[3:57] Architects often are very creative people. Quite often, organization isn’t
necessarily part of the creative process. I know a lot of architects are very well
organized. But it’s quite common for them to lose their images and to have to
come back to us, to say, “We need those images you rendered for us three
years ago,” or whatever. “Because we’re going to have to make some amendments
to it.” Or, “Planning has come around again. We can’t find them anywhere.
Please send them to us.”
[4:24] We really are able to find the images in moments. Whenever we can do
that and we send it to them, they’re overjoyed. They can’t believe how quickly
we can pull out even ancient photographs in moments. It really does help our
client relations.

Henrik: [4:41] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

James: [4:45] With the DAM professionals, the two main things I’ve been thinking
about is, understand the users and understand the business needs and
problems. Because Digital Asset Management is really just about problem solving.
You have to understand the problem that exists. Quite often, people don’t
realize that there is a problem or that there’s a better way of doing things. Think
about how to make it as easy as possible.

[5:11] You do that by understanding everything about the business and how people interact with their assets. Also, once you understand that, you need to understand the technology. Once you have a good understanding of the technology, you can come up with solutions, creative solutions. It’s like Photoshop. The more you know about how to use Photoshop, the more ways you can fix a certain problem. You can do the same thing, address the same problem, in Photoshop, in one way, but in many different ways.

[5:47] In an individual situation, you might need a different technique. That’s the
same for Digital Asset Management, the same for metadata. You have to know
your technology inside out, in order to get the most out of it. There are my two
tips for the DAM professional. Also, another thing is, always look for the most
simple and elegant solution. That’s really hard to do. It’s easy to make a very
complicated solution to a problem.
[6:14] Anyone can do that. [laughs] It’s trying to find the most simple, elegant
solution that, when you actually come up with it, you wonder why you haven’t
come up with that 10 days before, or a month before, or a year before. When
you have that kind of a solution, that’s when you know you’ve hit on the gold
dust. Gold dust is simplicity in all Digital Asset Management things. Anything
that makes things more complicated, more time consuming, takes more time to
teach someone, then you really have to go back to the drawing board. Because
it’s a waste of effort.
[6:46] The effort should always go into finding the most simple, elegant solutions.
As for people who want to become Digital Asset Managers, how I came
into it was that I was working in a sports photography agency. We’d be processing,
in a team of 10 people, a thousand images or so. Whether it be live images,
coming in live from the football field, or taking the orders from the photographers,
when they have a couple of hundred photographers coming through.
[7:17] The way the images would flow from the photographer, through the production
department, into the archive and onto the website got me thinking
about workflow. That got me thinking onto Digital Asset Management. That’s
where I found Peter Krogh’s book. I can’t pronounce his surname.

Henrik: [7:34] Peter Krogh, yeah.

James: [7:36] That’s the one, The DAM Book. I found that book. That really
inspired me to look more and more into things. That’s how I got my current job.
I found problems which I found interesting. I wanted to find solutions to that. I
did some research. I discovered a whole field called Digital Asset Management.
It’s still a very young field. I got to where I am now just by being inquisitive and
trying to understand the problems other people or organizations might have
and try to think of ways I could solve them for them.

[8:09] Luckily, I found this job here at the studio where they literally did advertise the job as a job for a Digital Asset Manager. That was certainly easy for me to find this place. It was
a very nice fit. I went straight in there. I said some few key things, which were
metadata, control vocabulary, Digital Asset Management systems. I mentioned
a few blogs or a few people who talk about Digital Asset Management. I got the
job within the first 10 minutes.

[8:36] They’d been advertising the job for more than two months, and interviewed
over 30 or so people. I was the only person that actually understood the
job. It was a bit of a no-brainer for them, and it was a no-brainer for me. It was a
perfect match. To anyone who wants to become a Digital Asset Manager, they
have to do the research. Understand that you need to be a problem solver and
come up with creative solutions to problems.

[9:04] Also, I view my role as being a communicator between the technical side
of things and of the creative side of things. Often, the end users of Digital Asset
Management systems are creative people. Sometimes they don’t understand
technical things. So you really do need to be able to have the ability to translate
technical things into lay person speak. On that note, don’t worry if you come
across, for example on Twitter, I see a lot of people talking about pretty technical
things, things that go over the top of my head.
[9:40] It got me a little bit bothered, to think that maybe I’m at a very low level in
my career. But I got over that very quickly because I realized that you don’t need
to be an IT professional to work in Digital Asset Management. You just have to
know how the software works and can always learn. It’s a process of learning.
That’s why you have IT departments. [laughs] That’s why you have people who
are IT professionals.
[10:06] They don’t necessarily understand how the software or the technology
would work for the end user. That’s where you come in. You need to be the
translator between the IT professionals and the end users. Once you understand
how that works, you can find yourself in a very rewarding career. That’s
that. That’s me. That’s my rant. [laughs]

Henrik: [10:23] Excellent. Thanks, James. For more on this and other
Digital Asset Management topics, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com.
Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech
Podcast Network. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Romney Whitehead on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does a broadcast media organization use Digital Asset Management?
  • You are going to be a graduate of the MADAM program at King’s College of London. Is this Master’s Program preparing you for the working world of 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’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Romney Whitehead.
Romney, how are you?
Romney Whitehead: [0:10] I’m very well, thank you, and thank you for
inviting me.
Henrik: [0:12] No problem. Romney, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Romney: [0:17] I began in Digital Asset Management about 10 years ago at
BBC Worldwide. Within there, I was working in the magazines division, focused
on brand management and distribution of magazines globally. My team was
involved in uploading of the assets, rights management, metadata management,
and then distribution of the assets within BBC Worldwide itself, and then
globally out to 53 territories to our licensees and syndication partners. [0:48]
Recently, in the last month, in fact, I’ve joined NET-A-PORTER GROUP. That’s
made up of NET-A-PORTER , MR PORTER , and THE OUTNET. They’re an online
luxury fashion retailer. We’re at the stage there where we’re choosing a solution,
at the moment, to manage a very extensive range of assets, from product photography
to video to print and online magazines, and TV outputs as well. Very
interesting times.
Henrik: [1:22] Excellent. How does a broadcast media organization use Digital
Asset Management?
Romney: [1:29] In my experience, probably looking at it in two ways, one from
the comment workflows, and then probably from a preservation point of view.
From the workflow perspective, what a DAM solution offers a media company
is the ability to manage the content from the point that it’s created to the point
where it goes out to the consumer. [1:55] You could have the ingestion of content
immediately into a system. You could have multiple editing suites dealing
with that content. You can then have the input of the photography unit, if they’re
sending out stills or they’re sending out merchandise related to a particular
show or a product. Then moving through the life cycle through to the points
where that content goes out to a third party broadcaster or to a consumer.
[2:23] Then from the preservation point of view, especially from the point of view
of public broadcasting, what DAM offers is the ability to preserve their content
but also go back through their archives, perhaps finding a back catalogue of
content there. Some of it may be in technology which is obsolete if it’s been
produced over a very, very long period of time.
[2:50] If they’ve got a DAM system, then they’ve got the ability to go back and
retrieve that content. Preserve it at the same time, and then offer new outputs
to consumers. And also, historical value, massive historical value, especially for
broadcasters that have been running for 60 or 70 years.
[3:12] I think a DAM solution, in that sense, means that they never need to lose
material ever again. Whereas in the past it’s, obviously, been stored in dusty
cupboards and left to really not be looked after, unfortunately.
Henrik: [3:27] Romney, you were going to be a graduate of the MADAM
Program, if I understand correctly, at King’s College of London. Is this Master’s
program helping you to prepare for the working world of Digital Asset
Management?
Romney: [3:40] I have to say I’m keeping my fingers crossed that everything
goes well for September when I finish my dissertation. Working in the world
of DAM for so many years, you could almost have that thought, “What else is
there to learn?” [3:55] But I’m a great believer in that there’s always something to
learn, especially if you’re approaching a subject from a particular point of view. If
you’re in the commercial world or if you’re in preservation or library or cultural or
heritage, there’s always something to learn from another area.
[4:12] Where this course has been very beneficial, I have to say, is I’ve come
from a commercial background. What I’ve learned from it is the best practices
that certain other areas have, areas like archive or societies, are really very, very
useful for the commercial world.
[4:31] Things like having extremely in-depth metadata, something which isn’t just
focused on your business but is actually focused on a larger scale to allow an
interoperability between what you have and what other libraries have, or what
other institutions have. Things like Linked Data for, first of all, the semantic web,
which has been a long time coming but is really starting to accelerate now.
[4:57] Preservation strategies, which in the commercial world, I feel preservation
is a bit of an afterthought. But actually, it can prove hugely valuable because
you may have content which is sitting in your archives, or sitting in your DAM
system. Nobody knows what somebody is going to want in 20 or 30 years’ time.
Henrik: [5:20] True.
Romney: [5:21] Rather than just ignoring it, as I feel some commercial institutions
may well do, because it’s costly to keep all that data and to manage all
that data, there needs to be some kind of preservation strategy there which will
allow that content to be opened up in the future if it needs to be, if somebody
wants it. [5:42] I think during the degree, I’ve been very reassured that with every
class and module that I’ve taken, there really was a direct link with what I did on
a day-to-day basis, and what I do on a day-to-day basis. It’s certainly refreshed
my view of the DAM world, and it’s given me some good ideas to take forward.
[6:02] It’s very nice also to have a recognized qualification within DAM, because
I’ve not really seen something out there. You can have people who’ve worked in
this field for a long time, and I can say to people what I do when they look at me
as though I have two heads.
Henrik: [chuckles] [6:17]
Romney: [6:19] So, it’s nice to be able to say, “Oh, there is this here.” But the
fact that my mother will tease me for being a MADAM, and perhaps I will be at
the end. And that’s perhaps illegal in some countries.
Henrik: [laughs] [6:30]
Romney: [6:32] But I would most certainly recommend the course, and the
college and the staff have been wonderful. I think it’s really opened my eyes, I’d
have to say. It’s been very, very good.
Henrik: [6:43] Excellent. And, just to clarify, we’re speaking of the MADAM
program, which stands for the Master in the Arts of Digital Asset Management
Program at King’s College of London, correct?
Romney: [6:50] Yes. [laughs] That’s great, please.
Henrik: [6:55] Not any other madams, necessarily.
Romney: [6:56] Yes, it doesn’t lead to anything else.
Henrik: [laughs] [6:58] Best of luck with that.
Romney: [7:01] Thank you.
Henrik: [7:02] Let me ask you the last question, of course. What advice would
you like to give to DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM
professionals?
Romney: [7:10] Well, one would hope that current DAM professionals know
what they’re doing, so I would not profess to be so omnipotent to be able to
give advice to them. But I think people who want to get into the field perhaps
don’t understand what it’s about. It’s a great field to be in, because it involves
a massive range of knowledge and lots of challenges as well. [7:34] As a DAM
manager, I think you need to know what every department in the company
that you’re working in is doing, because DAM will touch every department in
some way. Maybe extensively, it may be very small. Because of that, I think
the key part of DAM is not necessarily the technical solution, but the ability to
communicate.
[7:57] You need to empathize with people. You need to be able to sit down with
an individual and ask them what their pain points are, and understand them. Be
able to reassure them that you know what they’re talking about, and that whatever
solution you’re putting in place is actually going to help them.
[8:15] You have to give people something tangible, because every individual will
use a system differently. So you can’t build a system for one set of users, and
you cannot focus on one set of users, either. You’re not building the system for
just a CEO who wants to save money, or for the clerk who wants to save time in
filing things. You’re building it for everybody in between as well.
[8:38] So, I think the ability to manage people and their expectations, their fear
of change, what their daily stresses are, will make you a good Digital Asset
Manager. The ability to communicate, I think that’s what you need to always
keep in mind, always.
Henrik: [8:53] Excellent. Did you want to share your blog that you have as well?
Romney: [laughs] [8:58] My blog, which I’ve been very remiss at keeping up, but
it’s damitall.WordPress.com
Henrik: [9:08] Excellent. There’s a link to that on my blog at
AnotherDAMblog.com. Thank you so much, Romney.
Romney: [9:15] Thank you very much.
Henrik: [9:16] For more on Digital Asset Management, you can log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com.

Another DAM Podcast is now available on Audioboom,
Blubrry, iTunes, and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.

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