Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Jenn Terbosic. Jenn, how are you?
Jennifer Terbosic: Good, thanks. How are you? Thanks for having me.
Henrik de Gyor: Good. Jenn, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer Terbosic: I’m getting ready to approach my second full season with the Philadelphia Eagles and with that, I’m responsible for managing our media asset management. With that, I help my team organize their content that comes in on a daily basis by creating metadata fields and values for those fields that makes sense to everyone on our team to improve our search and our organization of our assets.
I also coordinate day-to-day MAM activities just like normal MAM needs and maybe some support issues that arise. I just kind of handle and coordinate that stuff as each day goes on.
Henrik de Gyor: Jenn, how does one of the most storied sports franchises in history use Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer Terbosic: We use our MAM and stuff in several aspects. For example, on game day we have a lot of moving pieces, a lot of different content is being produced… photos, videos and our goal with Reach Engine was to streamline and automate how that content got into our MAM. On game day, our replay operators are constantly creating clips and sending them off to a hot folder.
That hot folder then pulls those clips directly into Reach Engine and from there we have our loggers kind of waiting, watching and reviewing that content as it comes in and they immediately start logging and tagging that content. Then, it’s easily and readily available for all of our editors as they need to start creating their pieces on game day. It helps move and speed that process along a little bit.
Another area I think we’ve been really successful in is automation and workflows. I work really closely with our integrators at Chesapeake Systems and we take our manual processes and automate them as much as we possibly can. We found that automating these processes really saved time and improved efficiency. It helps improve delivery time to our social channels as well as our affiliates. A big part that I’ve seen with creating workflows is it’s really, to be successful in it is really understanding and learning the manual process inside and out.
After that process is created, the automation goes smoothly and you really see the benefit of automating some of those manual processes. We’re also in the process of bringing on our design team content and on-boarding their team as well as going through our entire physical archive. We have tons and tons of historic photos, negatives, slides that all need to be looked at and kind of surveyed and then we actually have to go through and come up with processes and get that stuff digitized and bring that content into our MAM as well.
Those are some of the three key areas that we’re starting to kind of really use our MAM for and just keep going with those projects. As you talk to people in your department, you come up with, “Hey, maybe this idea … Maybe this stuff can go in the MAM.” It kind of just becomes that niche application. I think as you expose it to your, not just your internal team that is maybe your creative team, but letting everybody else know that it’s available.
Then I think that’s really how you can make your media asset management system a niche application that’s looked upon as almost definitely necessary to have.
Our loggers, as I said on game day, they kind of come in. They just are watching the content flow in on game day and they basically are reviewing the content and adding the metadata that’s requires for each asset. If there’s a play that happened, they’ll tag that play. If there’s a player, they’ll tag all the key players seen in that clip. They basically just kind of go through and add all the appropriate metadata to each asset that comes into the system.
Henrik de Gyor: Jenn, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Jennifer Terbosic: A big challenge for me this time around was learning a new system and just becoming more familiar with video content. I previously worked more with photos and PDF documents and that was a huge challenge for me. Another challenge I think a lot of digital asset managers may experience is just making sure that every user is comfortable using the system.
It’s something that I just find is important and it’s a challenge and you have to have continued patience and kind of just be able to go with the flow and maybe … Some users might pick up a system right away and some you might have to sit with a little bit longer. I think that is a huge challenge for us is just kind of the continuation of training and just knowledge sharing.
I think too some of our other challenges we had work were kind of more maybe pre-MAM or DAM, more of our content was stored on drives and then it was unorganized and it wasn’t easily shared. You had to walk that drive physically over to somebody. It was not easy to search for it. Those things I think are all being addressed with our MAM and we still come across small challenges day-to-day, They are usually more less like, UI or functionality-based challenges. We just work through those and continue to move forward.
Our successes are largely based on the workflows and automations that I mentioned earlier. I should also mention that our content is now managed. It’s protected and easily searchable. Like I mentioned in one of our challenges was in the past that wasn’t there.
Having all your content in one centralized location I think is key and getting there is a success in itself. I think for us, just kind of finally beginning to have all that content in one location is a huge success. I think as we bring on other teams and make that content available for other end users, it’s just going to continue to be successful.
Henrik de Gyor: Great. What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Jennifer Terbosic: I would say attend as many conferences as you can. I like to attend the Henry Stewart DAM Conference every year. I think it’s a great conference. It’s a great place to network and meet other digital asset managers and digital asset managers I think tend to usually be pretty nice and friendly people and willing to share information. I think once you get us talking about these topics, we’re excited to talk to other people that are interested in it. I think conferences is a really great place to start that networking.
I also really enjoy the Mod Librarian site. She lists 10 DAM things to check out every Thursday, I think it is. It’s one of my favorite websites. I look forward to checking out this list weekly. It’s a great resource and I think if you’re already tasked with managing your assets, you have to continue to talk to your team and learn and understand their current processes.
I would also suggest holding meetings with them, explain metadata, have metadata discussions, understand and make sure everybody’s on the same page with those definitions and their values. I also think it’s important to keep your team involved and listen to their ideas as well. A lot of times they are the experts in the content that you’re actually going to be managing and organizing, so I think it’s important to hear what they have to say too and listen to their ideas.
Just remember too that metadata is organic and it changes with every project that’s coming in as things change in your company so just remember that you may have to go back and revisit it every once in a while. Other than that, I think that’s all I have.
Henrik de Gyor: Great. Well thanks, Jenn.
Jennifer Terbosic: Yeah, Thanks.
Henrik de Gyor: For more on this, visit anotherdamblog.com. For 185 other episodes, visit anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
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