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Another DAM Podcast interview with NYC DAM Meetup Organizers on Digital Asset Management

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 Chad Beer and Michael Hollitscher about NYC DAM, the New York Digital Asset Managers Meetup group. The world’s largest Meetup group about Digital Asset Management.

[0:18] Chad, you’re the founder of this Meetup. Tell us how it all started.

Chad Beer:  [0:23] I was working as a DAM manager in 2009. I was looking to move onto the next challenge, the next job. I needed to deepen my education about DAM. I needed to network and to get to know more people in DAM. I had gone to conferences and wasn’t finding the connections I wanted to find.

[0:47] I wasn’t connecting with people who were talking real nuts and bolts about their jobs and how they do it. I got connected to Meetup through a friend in an unrelated industry. I had gone to some other types of software Meetups and was amazed that there were no DAM Meetups.

[1:04] Out of frustration and out of wanting to get people to tell me about DAM, I thought, “I’m going to start a Meetup.” I saw Mike speak at a Henry Stewart conference. I liked his presentation. I liked how his thinking worked.

[1:18] I approached him after his talk and asked if I set up a Meetup about DAM, would he think that it’d be something that he would want to be involved in. He was very positive about the idea.

[1:27] That was the first piece of encouragement that I received that was outside of my own head. I just went online and started up the group.

[1:34] The first meeting we had was me, Mike, one other member, my boss and my boss’ boss. It was a tiny group. Mainly my bosses came because they wanted to see what the hell I was doing, using up a conference room in the evening, and also to wish me well.

[1:50] We started with a first meeting of five members. We talked about what the Meetup should be about. It was a very broad, kickoff Meetup.

[2:01] I love that Mike was there from the start, from before day one, really. Then, we just started winging it and setting up topics that we would find interesting. We were doing the presentations ourselves at first. It didn’t take long.

[2:15] As soon as we found somebody with some expertise and who was willing to talk, we started getting people who had shown up at the group to talk at the next one, and the next one, and the next one.

[2:23] It grew from there.

Henrik: Mike?

Michael Hollitscher:  [2:26] It’s funny because thinking about it, there was space for us to fit into in the beginning. We joked that going to Digital Asset Management conferences were the one or two times a year that you didn’t feel totally alone.

[2:43] You could actually network with people, really interface and compare notes with the people who are doing this job, which five years ago was something more of an obscure trade to be involved in.

[2:59] Now I think it’s become something that’s becoming more and more ubiquitous every day in terms of how to manage digital content. We were able to fill a niche that a lot of people didn’t even know was needed.

[3:14] What Chad was talking about, in terms of how we just winged it, it was a Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland “Let’s put on a show” thing. We did it a little guerilla style, hosting it at places of work that we worked at.

[3:29] The people we were involved with, seemed like it was a perfectly fine thing to do. We slowly built up our membership, trying to think of interesting topics.

[3:39] In the end, the thing that’s driven us forward and gotten us to the point of our relative popularity now is that we really wanted to talk about the things that are necessary, that were really critical to us in our daily work days.

[3:58] We wanted to make sure that people who were showing up were fully engaged and really understood the key issues that we were dealing with at the time. It’s pretty amazing to think that it’s gone on for five years at this point, that so much has changed in the landscape from a point where DAM was, like I said, at that point, emerging from a backwater to a critical part of doing business every day.

Chad:  [4:23] I had no global perspective when I started it, at all. I agree with Mike that we totally filled a niche that was not only ready to be filled, but there was an audience for it. We didn’t know this.

[4:35] I knew I was interested. I knew Mike was interested. I knew we had a common sensibility about metadata management. [laughs] So I knew we were aligned on a strategic level. That was it.

[4:46] We were very lucky, in a way. It was our timing and also our location. It’s possible for us to do this Meetup and have it as robust and ongoing as it is, because we’re in New York [City]. There’s a critical mass of not only people but professions that need DAM, so there’s a critical mass of DAM people in a small geographical area.

[5:09] We opened it up at what happened to be the right time in the practice’s maturity. If we had done it five years earlier, there wouldn’t have been enough people to talk about it or the issues wouldn’t have been codified enough to bring in an audience.

[5:25] I don’t think we would have known what the universal questions and problems were. There was a lot of luck and happenstance, timing and logistics, location.

Michael:  [5:33] Yeah and really sticking with it. It came from the fact that Chad and I both wanted some answers, or at least to have a discussion amongst our peers to figure out “How are you doing it? How are you actually getting this work done?” or “What are the hacks you have to do, not only from a technological standpoint but from a human standpoint of getting this kind of work done?”

[6:01] I think that’s the big thing. The emergent thought that has come out of the Meetups ‑‑ and Henrik, I know you’re a big proponent of this, too ‑‑ we always focus on the technology, but the longer you do this, the technology is the least interesting part of it after a while.

[6:18] It’s really, “How do you engage the human beings who have to use this technology?”

[6:24] One of the real things that we’ve brought to the table in general DAM discussion in the world is that you really have to talk about the people. You have to talk about how you enable people. The uniqueness of your organization has to really work with your end‑users and your stakeholders.

Chad:  [6:48] We did want to engage on those levels. In my mind at the time, the conferences weren’t very strong on those fronts.

[6:55] They’ve gotten a lot better. They’ve come down from preaching lofty best practices that aren’t really applicable to the day‑to‑day, and come down from vendor demos and things like that to more emphasis on use cases and more nitty‑gritty news you can use.

[7:10] That was not available much when we started this out, so we needed to talk to Mike’s point, not just about the human level of the work that we do and the hacks people do, but also nuts and bolts about how you get from point A to point B, how other professionals have done that.

[7:28] Also, not only did we want to facilitate presentations, we wanted to facilitate community and some interactions, some easy networking. The word “community” is really overused, but that’s what we were going for.

[7:43] Conferences only go so far with that, because they come at a pretty hefty cost. It costs a lot to go to a conference. We knew there were a bunch of people from small companies or independent contractors and certainly students or recent grads who were never going to go to conferences, that we’d never meet and interact with.

[8:03] The Meetup was a way to bring all those people together to missed people who also go to conferences. We felt that we were able to open doors up to a whole area of the DAM industry that couldn’t really get into the conferences, because they didn’t have the funding.

[8:18] That’s been a really valuable piece of it. Also, Mike brings up a really good point. This sticking with it was really critical. We’ve been doing it for five years.

[8:29] Mike and I have both been through job changes, and at some point or multiple points, we both hit a wall, where the demands of job or home life have been a lot to take on, and didn’t have the bandwidth to keep coming up with Meetup ideas.

[8:44] We were really glad that we had each other to bounce ideas off of and hand the baton back and forth to.

[8:49] This is where you come in, Henrik. When you joined us two years ago now, you added not only more bandwidth, but a new perspective, new contacts, a new perspective on the industry that not only helped us to keep going but helped enrich the content that we bring to the presentations every month.

[9:12] Can I ask you a question? Could you tell us about what it was like for you when you joined the Meetup, or how you decided you wanted to join the Meetup?

Henrik:  [9:19] I also had a job transition. I had a lot of time to spend in New York, thankfully. I’m a Virginia resident, so I commute to New York [City]…

[9:30] [laughter]

Henrik:  [9:32] …on a regular basis. I was thrilled to be engaged with a very thriving, literally, a community of Digital Asset Management professionals like yourselves and all the members. I only wanted to see that grow.

[9:45] As a content producer for my blog and podcasts, I know that content is king and if you produce good content, especially in person, people will come, especially if there’s networking involved before and after. We do that with the Meetups too.

[9:59] I wanted to hone that, focus on things that we hadn’t focused on and look at all the different topics that are out there. There’s plenty and there’s only more to come.

[10:09] You started this on July 20th, 2009, and we’re coming up to a milestone. We’ll be announcing our fifth anniversary at a very special place.

[10:19] I was really excited to come up with topics as often as I could, and the speakers whenever I could with your help, to get the community engaged and different parts of the community as far as who’s using it and how they’re using it, not just the technology.

[10:35] Obviously, the people, that comes first, then also the processes and information that are involved to one degree or another.

Chad:  [10:45] Probably the best thing I ever did after starting the Meetup was not trying to do it alone. I was never under the illusion that I could do it alone, or that that would be a good idea. This whole thing has been a real lesson to me in the value of collaboration. The more heads at the helm, the better.

[11:04] It helps, of course, that we are all like‑minded to a great degree. We all knew that about each other before we got involved. The Meetup is as strong as it is and still going because of everybody being involved ‑‑ not just us, all the members, too ‑‑ who also feed us some great ideas.

[11:21] Looking ahead, I would love it if there was more community involvement in at least getting ideas flowing and identifying people who could speak. I would love it to be a real soapbox for a lot of people in the DAM community.

Henrik:  [11:34] Getting more people engaged, whether it’s the organizers of the events, such as us, or the people who are hosting these events, because we’re always looking for great locations that can host 50 plus people. That’s typically how many we have on a regular basis.

[11:49] At the time of this recording, we have 680 members plus. We’ve doubled it from over a year ago, which is pretty amazing.

Chad:  [11:57] Speaking of locations, that brings up another economic issue. It’s the cost of locations. We’ve been challenged to find good locations because we have managed to keep our Meetup group vendor‑neutral.

[12:12] When we’ve been fortunate enough to get some sponsorship, mainly to fund video and the post video recording of some of the Meetups, the sponsors have been very hands‑off, just asking that we promote them with logos and credit, etc.

[12:27] Keeping some financial independence from any outside influence has been a limiting factor in that we have no budget for a lot of places that we could otherwise afford, but it’s also maintained a degree of integrity for our Meetup, and allowed us to steer our own ship.

[12:43] We can have whatever speakers we want, and we don’t have to worry about any conflict‑of‑interest from an economic perspective. I think that’s been huge.

Henrik:  [12:52] I agree.

Chad:  [12:53] I can’t believe it’s already five years.

Michael:  [12:55] We were so young once.

Henrik:  [12:58] I agree. [laughs]

Chad:  [13:01] We’ve all gone through job changes since getting involved in the Meetup. It’s funny. The Meetup evolves. We’re evolving as DAM professionals, and the industry’s evolving out from under and all around us at the same time.

Michael:  [13:12] It seemed like it was easier to do the first two years. I was in grad school. I was working a full time job, and also we were doing generally a Meetup a month at that point. I look back now, and I don’t know how I managed that.

[13:27] [laughter]

Chad:  [13:30] Same here.

Michael:  [13:31] It’s a greater challenge now. I’m challenged more in my work now. There’s more topics that we could cover. There’s probably more things to think about, but it’s not just about DAM anymore. It is about the whole content lifecycle. That’s maybe the more exciting stuff.

[13:54] Maybe where topics will evolve is more towards where DAM is an aspect of what we’re talking about. It’s really about the creative process. It’s about the process on the Web, about content determination, content access and analytics, all these sort of things where it’s like DAM is sitting at the bottom and feeding out.

[14:15] It’s really a question of how it ties into a lot of much larger issues. That’s what I’m interested in talking about. It’s just a question of how we put it all together.

Henrik:  [14:26] There’s going to be tons of that, as far as conversations and Meetups in the near future about that.

Michael:  [14:31] That’s what we have to figure out. [laughs] For those of you listening in, that’s something that us three have to sit down and figure out. What are we going to talk about?

[14:42] As Chad mentioned, that also comes from our user group too and some of the great people that we have who are de facto advisors at this point, or thought leaders who help influence our thinking, as well.

Chad:  [14:58] Not only has our work‑life situations become more complex, but the industry has gotten more complex. Our questions are more complex. When we started out, our questions about DAM were very simple.

[15:10] Now we’re thinking on a more complex level, fed by the work challenges that we’ve seen, but also the Meetups that we’ve seen other people present.

[15:23] I feel like the game’s gotten more complex. Reiterating Mike’s point, it’s no longer enough to just have one simple talk about metadata schemes, as one person did. That will be valuable, but man, there are so many more pressing issues now about file acceleration and system integrations. It’s a much more complicated world now. That makes the Meetups a little harder to plan, because you want to meet that raised bar.

Henrik:  [15:51] We raise the bar ourselves within the group by being one of the groups that video record all our panel discussions. We got sponsorship for that as we mentioned earlier, and they’re available on YouTube for free. Just search on YouTube for NYC DAM, and you’ll find them.

[16:07] NYC DAM is based in Manhattan. We meet in Manhattan, specifically. You can find the Meetup on http://meetup.com/NYCdigitalassetmanagers. We invite you to join if you have interest in Digital Asset Management.

Chad:  [16:22] Come and give us ideas. Share ideas, and share questions with us, because that’s where the next presentations come from.

Michael:  [16:28] Also, thanks for all your support. Because if nobody shows up, we can’t do it.

Henrik:  [16:33] It’s all about the numbers.

Chad:  [16:34] Exactly. That’s the community. It’s not us. We just provide a soapbox, but if nobody’s there to listen to whoever’s on it, then there’s no point.

Henrik:  [16:42] Thanks, guys.

Michael:  [16:43] Thank you.

Chad:  [16:44] Thank you.

Henrik:  [16:44] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to anotherdamblog.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.

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The People Aspects of Digital Asset Management: Part 2

In October 2013, I gave a presentation on ‘The People Aspects of Digital Asset Management (DAM)’ during the Createasphere DAM Conference in New York City. This presentation was audio recorded so it could be shared with you. Enjoy.

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking about the people aspects of Digital Asset Management. Here is part two of the Createasphere DAM conference presentation I gave in New York in October 2013. Enjoy.

[0:20] You may need a gatekeeper. Most people don’t consider that when they get a DAM. They think that it’s just technology, it’s just software. No, that’s wrong. It’s not just software, and it’s not just technology. It involves people, process, technology and information. If you don’t have all four working together, you don’t have a working DAM.

[0:43] The other thing that I’m going to throw in there is, are we the new Mechanical Turks? How many of you are familiar with the Mechanical Turks? Not just the service that’s available today, but the chess playing tool from many years ago, where there was actually a skilled chess player underneath and nobody knew how the system worked.

[1:04] It just had a… “robot”. Not really, underneath there was a human, someone who did all the work underneath. No one realized what was under there. We may be the new Mechanical Turks. Are we? DAM is not a game, so not really. It involves more skills than just chess and it takes far more patience than chess.

[1:31] People don’t understand DAM, and it takes often a lot of explanations. Everyone who’s worked in DAM long enough understands that they have to educate a lot of people in and around and across their organization, and whoever is going to touch their DAM. Make them understand why this is important for the organization, what value it serves to them, not just to me because I don’t count. It’s what the organization needs, and they need to be able to find their assets, otherwise you’re wasting money.

[2:09] Your DAM is only as good as its metadata and how well it’s been curated, and how well it’s cataloged to find those assets over and over again. There may be less reasons. You may have heard of others why we are not the Mechanical Turks, we may find it insulting. There’s a lot to consider in DAM, way too many acronyms and terms to consider and things to think about.

[2:36] Back to the who, there’s plenty of different roles to play within organizations that are involved with Digital Asset Management, at least when you’re starting out. These are all different roles that play a part, whether it’s temporary or permanent within your organization.

[2:54] A DAM shouldn’t be really stagnant. It should evolve with your organization, and the people should evolve too. That may take significant change management amongst all of you, and your organization itself. There may be resistance because [sarcastically] people love change, right? No, they usually don’t.

[3:16] One of the phenomena I’ve seen is, people are volunteered for DAM, or on rare occasions, people volunteer themselves to do DAM. Typically, they are volunteered and typically it’s not their core competency…what they were hired for.

[3:32] A designer or marketer or photographer or PM, they didn’t really sign up when they were first hired to do that. What is their passion and why would they stay through all this pain? Anyone who’s worked through DAM knows how much pain you have to go through to make people understand and show them the value, and explain it over and over and over again, and illustrate why this is important.

[4:02] You can show them the numbers, you can illustrate why it’s important to them, how it’s important to them, how they could use it themselves and how it could make their lives easier. They have to understand it themselves, otherwise you’re not going to win and you’ll keep on explaining it over and over and over again. Then, you’ll keep burning money until that issue is resolved.

[4:24] There’s often a lot of guidance, there’s a lot of training and it’s not just training once by a vendor and then they run away, but ongoing support has to exist for a DAM. Otherwise, you will not get the adoption, the user adoption of a system. You will stand up a system and it will be what’s called a ‘shelf baby’. How many of you are familiar with what a shelf baby means?

[4:44] Yes, it’s one of those systems that you pay lots of money, you put lots of care, lots of nurturing into it and then it just sits there and nobody uses it. That’s a big waste of money, right? It’s not a ‘check box’, you want the system to be used that’s why you invested in it. You want people to be able to find their assets. That’s an investment in time.

[5:05] If you are not tagging your assets and you are accumulating more and more every day, that means you have to tag those new assets almost every day, appropriately, so you can find that content within those assets. Not just, it’s a photo! How many photos do I have? 20,000. Well, I’ll just scroll endlessly.

[5:24] [laughter]

Henrik:  [5:25] Bad idea. That doesn’t scale, right? It’s not scalable. You’ll just continue scrolling endlessly. It doesn’t work. Some organizations think that works. No, it doesn’t. Those solutions often don’t scale either, so there’s a lot to do there.

[5:45] There’s also the question, do I need additional headcount? Well, it depends on the volume of assets that you have. If you have a set number of files and you upload them, and you never have more assets…

[5:58] [laughter]

Henrik:  [6:00] …maybe not, but if you accumulate on regular basis a small volume that it takes N number of people to tag and this is something that you have to measure. How long does it take someone to add the appropriate metadata so you can find it again?

[6:13] Your user groups, meaning the people who are actually going to use the system. Not the business people who are just going to pay for it and say, “OK, what business value is this bringing me? Why keep paying these $100,000 bills every year”? Or the IT people say, “It’s still up, go ahead and use it. It’s still working. No one’s touching it but it’s still working.” It’s often the creatives, right?

[6:37] It’s often the creatives that are creating more and more files, but they don’t like metadata. How many creatives are in the room? OK, a few. How many of you who are creatives love spreadsheets? OK.

[6:50] [laughter] Survival.

Henrik:  [6:53] Fair, fair, yes, so aside from the one…

[6:57] [laughter]

Henrik:  [7:02] …yes, sometimes you have to do what’s needed, right? A lot of creatives prefer to create files for some reason, because that’s what they were hired for and that’s their passion, right? Getting creatives to actually do that tagging work is next to very rare, to put it nicely, because they don’t want to.

[7:23] They don’t want to…they’ll pretend they can’t spell, they…

[7:28] [laughter]

Henrik:  [7:29] …won’t spell, they won’t use any instructions, they won’t read, they’ll pretend they can’t. I’ve seen it all, so DAM hiring is quite often the need. Your options are, learn what’s out there, there’s more and more resources now. One of the reasons I created my blog is because there wasn’t enough information in the user and administrator perspective of DAM. That’s why I started blogging, because there wasn’t enough information.

[8:00] There is more now, not enough, but there is more now. I blog on a very regular basis about what is needed by the DAM community, not just us, the users, but the vendors, and the readers are users and vendors and everyone else who kind of cares. There’s plenty out there to talk about and I’m not the only blogger, I recently did a talk with some other bloggers and there’ll be more.

[8:29] Bloggers are just one part of it. There are also websites like CMSWire, like the DAM Foundation, the DAM Coalition, a bunch of others that have information about DAM that is very useful, so read about it. Watch webinars from all the different vendors, not just your preferred one. Some of them are more useful than others, especially the ones that are less salesy.

[8:52] Network with others. In New York, we have the luxury of having the world’s largest [DAM] meetup group, which you’ll meet tonight, from 5:00 to 6:30. We have 570 members, 106 of them are coming tonight. I’m one of the co‑organizers, Michael in the back is another one. Chad, if he’s in the room is, is the founder.

[9:13] We doubled the size of our membership this year, so there’s plenty of networking available and we video record every session whenever we have a panel. So worldwide, even if you are not in New York or your schedule is busy, you have the availability to watch our videos and they’re on YouTube for free.

[9:33] Use consultants as necessary. I’m a DAM consultant, full disclosure.

[9:39] [laughter]

Henrik:  [9:40] …and there is DAM hiring. There are more and more DAM jobs, there’s about a hundred almost every day available. You go on indeed.com, on monster.com, dice.com, you can find DAM jobs and you can also post DAM jobs just make sure you know what you’re looking for. When I talk to recruiters, most of the time they don’t know anything beyond a req. Fix that.

[10:03] [laughter]

Henrik:  [10:04] Know what you’re looking for yourself. It takes people obviously. To do the research, to prioritize, to make the decisions, to analyze the information because the analysis isn’t done by a machine, to create processes and actually follow them, to hold those accountable, usually everybody, and to select the right system for your organization, and not to over‑complicate, but to simplify, and to do the DAM work…

[10:38] [laughter]

Henrik:  [10:39] …or to fail or to succeed. It’s up to you.

[10:44] Thank you for listening. For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics log on to anotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM podcast is available on AudioBoom and iTunes. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at anotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

Click here to revisit Part 1 of this presentation

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

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The People Aspects of Digital Asset Management: Part 1

In October 2013, I gave a presentation on The People Aspects of Digital Asset Management (DAM) during the Createasphere DAM Conference in New York City. This was audio recorded so the presentation could be shared with you. Enjoy.

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor, today I’m speaking about the people aspects of digital asset management. Here is a recording of the Createasphere DAM conference presentation that I gave in New York in 2013. Enjoy.

[0:19] I’m Henrik de Gyor. Some of you may know me. I recognize some of the faces.

[0:22] For those of you who don’t know me,  I am the Director of Digital Asset Management services. That means I am a consultant in the DAM space. I have been there for a few years.

[0:33] You may also know me as blogger at AnotherDAMblog.com and AnotherDAMpodcast.com. I did a few of those podcasts and blogs. Also authored a couple books and still working on others as well. I’m a regular speaker at Universities and lectures and conferences like this.

[0:51] Nominated DAMMY of the Year few times. Quick shot to the company I work for. We do a lot of all things aside from DAM. We are vendor neutral. We have offices all over the world.

This is the question that we ask everybody [What do you want to do with DAM?] because that is what you should be able to answer if you are going to get a DAM.

[1:11] It’s not just one of those check boxes where I need is a CRM, I need a DAM, I need a CMS. I don’t know what I am going to do with them, but I have to check that box. Couple of things that you want to remember is most organizations want to be able to search, find, use and then the thing most organizations forget about is you want to able to re‑use and repurpose those assets.

[1:33] In order to get other ROI, return on investments as much as possible on all of your assets. Or as many as you can, not just use it once, or archive at once. The other thing to keep in mind is that there is the asset and there is metadata. A lot of people forget about the information part. The metadata makes your asset searchable, otherwise they’re not.

[1:58] As you accumulate more and all of us are, you want be able you find them. Then you want to have accountability, meaning the people who are going to be doing all that information, adding the information, finding the information, delivering that information, and those assets together need to be accountable through use through groups and roles.

[2:17] Then the access, people who should be accessing those files and have the permission to do so. Those who can’t or shouldn’t, don’t, that’s the security part. Then the distribution download or delivery of those assets, because if you can’t deliver it to whatever platform you need it on.

[2:36] Why do you have a DAM? Is it manual? How much time do you want to spend? How many people do you want to do it with? The other things to keep in mind is you find a lot today and you will have a lot more tomorrow, about the four parts of DAM.

[2:51] There is four parts. You heard a lot about the technology. Every conference talks about the technology. Views vendors X or vendor Y, solutions X or solution Y. Some people will be talking about the information, the metadata, or the taxonomy.

[3:07] Some people will be talking about the process. Today I am going to talk about that part right here. The people which everyone forgets about. That’s why I’m here to talk to you today. I propose this talk to several conferences. This is the only one who was willing to talk about the people part. Interestingly enough.

[3:31] I am being a proponent for those of you know for the users. Specifically for the people who use DAM, not the vendors because there are not there for you, they’re there to make money, for the most part. There is a lot to talk about in as far as people are concerned.

[3:49] Most people, before they get the DAM, waste a lot of time searching. Remember, there is searching, finding and using. They search for stuff, but they don’t necessarily find anything. They have lots of silos, folder structures which magically will help them find something.

[4:08] Or at least the person who created the folder structure. Or the file naming convention that means something to the person who originally created it, but nobody else or is not shared by everyone else or used by anyone else. Then, there is reuse or reacquiring of these assets, because you can’t find it. You reacquire, relicense, you repurchase, or you recreate new ways for more money.

[4:26] The whole process of DAM search, find, use, reuse, repurpose it, otherwise you are wasting your time and you are wasting your people’s time. It goes back to the people. What you are trying to do for your people? You are trying to save them time, you are trying to save you company money.

[4:41] Typically, there’s access free-for-alls, because you have silos everywhere or you have everything of all then you misuse it. That increases your liability because oops we weren’t suppose to use that talent for the last five years. We only had a license to use it for one year.

[4:58] Oops, well I guess we had to pay one lawyer time and lawsuits, and settle that out of court. Some companies actually have a budget for that, literally. Their account, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to settle things at court, because they don’t fix their liability problems.

[5:13] DAM can and should fix your liability problems with the right management for your licensed assets. Things that you acquire from Getty, from Corbis, from wherever you are getting it. Or the talent that is creating your assets externally. Or the talent that is in your images or videos.

[5:30] Then, they built silos. Each fiefdom has its own silos because it’s “their assets”. No, it’s not. It’s the company’s assets. You get a paycheck from the same company, right? So start sharing.

[5:46] [background conversation]

[5:48] [laughter]

[5:49] Fiefdoms? Oh yes, that is a politics thing. We can get into that. Then you have Communication with the right assets. That breaks down and is limited to file names and folder structures. Your storage increases, while your management decreases.

[6:09] After DAM hypothetically if you do it right, you can save money and time. More time than money necessary sometimes. You can reuse and repurpose your assets if you can find them and know that you can use them legally. Right?

[6:24] You can access your assets and the people who should have access, can access those files, if you use permissions properly. Role-based permissions meaning the functional role of this group can use those assets. The other groups that shouldn’t be using, because they don’t know what to use it for or how it should be used, don’t.

[6:44] They can see it and go “yes I approve that. It looks great”, and that’s it. Then you get the people like the right managers and things like that to clear those things for them.

[6:54] That can minimize your liability.

[6:55] You visit your legal department slightly less often. Your legal department shouldn’t fear when you come to them. And they should not call on a regular basis. They don’t like to see you when you have problems. They have enough problems already.

[7:11] Consolidating silos. Now, this is back to politics part, right? You get minimized fiefdoms if you actually communicate and share your assets. Some people don’t like that. They like ’empire building’, so that there is another breakdown of things that you have to do.

[7:28] You can communicate and even collaborate. This is a new thing for some. Most organization are drowning in assets, because they are only accumulating more. How many people are in this room are decreasing the number of assets they accumulate every year? None, because we all hope that we have a job tomorrow.

[7:49] The only companies that are decreasing the number of assets they have, won’t be employed or exist very long. One question that we ask, that most people can’t answer, unless they do their homework is how long does it take you to find an asset for a new campaign or project?

[8:06] That number should decrease as you get a DAM and as you increase the efficiency of your DAM. One organization which will remain nameless. A Fortune 500 took ten people 30 hours to find one file. Who thinks that is acceptable in this room? [no one] Right, I didn’t think so.

[8:28] The other part that DAM should be able to do is manage your IP, just because you can find it, can you legally use it. Most organization can’t do that because they don’t look at their rights and is not clearly defined in a templated fashion. That’s part of their metadata it’s like this is who you need to contact for that, in order to reuse that asset.

[8:51] This is how much we paid last time for it. This is what rights we have to use it. This is where we can use it or should use it, because we have all rights reserved. This is royalty free or whatever is public domain or whatever it happens to be.

[9:10] The other thing is metadata is not ‘automagically’ created. There is no metadata fairy. Still to this day. We’re still looking. Still haven’t found one. It still takes people to catalog and apply metadata to assets.

[9:29] An example is, when we license music when we go to iTunes, when we go to get a movie or an eBook from your favorite e‑retailer, we don’t look or assume there is so much metadata in order to find that file.

[9:48] We just think it looks so done, it’s already there. Someone actually applied that, well before you saw it. That’s why you can buy it. The most successful companies out there have metadata applied to all their assets. No matter how much you search for that file, you will find it. That leads to more sales.

[10:09] Shocking, isn’t it? If you can find it, you can use it. If you can’t find it, you can’t use it and they won’t buy it. They won’t be able to use it again. The other thing you have to keep in mind is there are three perspectives in every organization. At least three.

[10:26] There is the business side which cares about how much money is going in, how much money is going out. What value they are serving their customers and clients for their services or products. Are they delivering on time?

[10:39] Then, there’s the creators who want to do anything and everything with as much time and resources as possible until deadline comes.Then, there is the technical perspective that don’t get any feedback, don’t get the requirements they need to deliver the product that they need to deliver to the end users within the organization or externally.

[10:57] Neither of them, all three, don’t talk to each other unless they are talking amongst other organizations. The idea is these three circles do intersect, because they work usually within the same organization. They collect a paycheck from the same organization.

[11:10] They deliver probably the same products and services that people will use or do use, hopefully, but they don’t communicate enough. Often the DAM professionals sit in the middle or should sit in the middle of all three.

[11:28] They need to be able to communicate in their perspective, of all three, why DAM is important. Why they should see value in it, in their perspective. Including creative, including technical, including business, not just “it’s going to save you money” the creators and technical, they want to save money, but that’s not why they are there…

Click here to continue to Part 2 of this presentation

If you have any questions or would like to hear more about this topic, please feel free to contact me directly.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Jeanette Ortiz Osorio on Digital Asset Management

Jeanette Ortiz Osorio discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does a humanitarian organization use Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor.

Today I’m speaking with Jeanette Ortiz Osorio. Jeanette, how are you?

Jeanette Ortiz Osorio: [0:10] I’m doing great. How are you, Henrik?

Henrik: [0:13] Great. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Jeanette: [0:17] I manage thousands of photos in a nonprofit organization. We
have a lot of photos dating back 120 years ago. We haven’t obviously had all of
them in there. We’re slowly adding and sharing photos through a Digital Asset
Management System.

Henrik: [0:38] How does a humanitarian organization use Digital Asset
Management?

Jeanette: [0:42] We use it to house a central repository, a central place, everyone
from internally or externally or anywhere around the world or any time zone
can access and repurpose the photos.
[0:57] Since we are nonprofit, we have to be very careful how we use our resources. We always want to be able to reuse them as much as we can. Our Data Asset Management System allows us to be able to have one place where you can find the photos.
[1:14] The photos are highly edited, meaning they are a selection of an assignment.
An average of one or two photos per hundred go in the Data Asset
Management System.
[1:27] We add information on every photo that will tell the user where the photo
comes from, the copyrights on the photos and the rights usage on the photos,
so that it will allow them to know that it’s OK for them to use it.

Henrik: [1:43] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Jeanette: [1:48] Advice for DAM professionals, I’m not so sure. But definitely for the ones who are aspiring to be DAM professionals, I would say one is start small. Start with small projects and then get to understand the whole concept of Data Asset Management System. Don’t focus so much on the software. Try to really think about the process of how you will ingest all of the assets.
[2:15] Then your audience, who’s going to use the Data Asset Management System and how they use it. Not everyone uses the DAM the same way or look for, in my case, the photos the same way.
[2:29] For example, graphic designers look for graphic elements in the photo,
and maybe other users will look for images by the specific photographer who
took it or a specific event. You have to design and think about how people are
going to look and find things in order to design that way.
[2:48] Do not focus so much on the software, but again, the process and how
your people are going to be using the system. Then you will tweak it, eventually, to try to make it as flexible as possible. Also, try to work with the standards that we have right now, in terms of IPTC standards and other standards, so you do not have to reinvent the wheel again and again.

Henrik: [3:12] Great points. Thanks, Jeanette.

Jeanette: [3:14] You are welcome. It was great talking to you.

Henrik: [3:17] Thank you. For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

Related Articles

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