Another DAM Podcast

Audio about Digital Asset Management

Tag Archives: Photography


by

Another DAM Podcast interview with Jennifer Veiga and Theresa Honig on Digital Asset Management

Jennifer Veiga and Theresa Honig discuss Digital Asset Management

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 Jennifer Veiga and Theresa Honig. Thanks for joining me. How are you?

Jennifer Veiga:  [0:10] Good, how are you today Henrik?

Henrik:  [0:12] Great. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Jennifer:  [0:15] We are involved in various ways and various capacities. We work for a media company, and we implement the standards in which the agencies and photographers and all of our contractors provide assets to us.

[0:35] We probably use Digital Asset [Management] in a very different way than most companies do, in terms of we also use it to a degree as a news feed. We have pretty much written the standards for how the photographers and agencies insert their material into our system, in terms of captioning, keywording, metadata so forth and so on. It’s what we require, what our standards are.

Henrik:  [1:06] How does an organization focused on celebrity media as well as health and fitness media use Digital Asset Management?

Theresa Honig:  [1:13] I think part of our way is getting on our news feed, getting information from the photographers and mainly these agencies. We have to catalogue our information as far as past projects that we’ve done, and also pictures that were used by getting different pictures into our database. We also have to get them out to our designers.

Jennifer:  [1:32] We have an enterprise digital asset management system as well as workflow, so there’s other software tied into it. It’s kind of a complex system in regards to that because there’s so many users.

Theresa:  [1:45] Also, programs have to be linked together to our database…

Jennifer: [1:50] …to support the DAM.

Jennifer:  [1:51] We use it differently in terms of from the celebrity and the health portion of it. Everybody has their own library and we give access to certain people. For example, some of the builders can’t go into some of the other titles’ libraries due to copyright and embargoes and permissions and certain things like that.

[2:19] In terms of the celebrity portion of it, the greatest challenge with that is being that we are such a huge company, and we work at iconic print brands, there’s a lot of photographers and agencies and so forth that want to contribute. It makes it difficult in the sense that the more you store, the more it’s going to cost you.

[2:43] When you implement the system, you only buy a certain amount of storage. It’s not just endless. That presents a problem. Sometimes, we have to be selective on who we allow to contribute. They have to go through a process, in terms of being allowed. I guess you could say like a membership to get username and password into our FTP. Some agencies stream. In that respect, it’s different.

[3:10] Obviously, it’s just different businesses. The entertainment, the celebrity brands, don’t get people working out, and the fitness titles do. In the same realm, we’ve implemented a library that’s for internal use, and it’s a free library we’d like to dole out.

[3:30] It’s basically stock images, product shots, generic things that everybody can use, though we try to repurpose that. In that way, every title doesn’t have to go out and do the same photo shoot for generic shots.

Theresa:  [3:45] We also have to have a bigger library for the celebrity end of it because there’s a lot more material coming in and out. The celebrities are out every day, whereas, the health and fitness end of it is a lot more photoshoots and freelance art and stock art.

Jennifer:  [3:59] A lot more tailored.

Henrik:  [4:00] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Jennifer:  [4:05] Well, I think the biggest challenge really is having an active commitment from the top to support our efforts. A lot of times at the top, they don’t really get all the techie stuff about it. They just think they’re going to buy a system, and that’s it. They pay one time, and it’s all over. That’s not obviously the case.

[4:27] I’ve tried not to sugarcoat the reality that you have to maintain it, update it, and care for it. That essentially is going to cost money and time. At the end of the year, a lot of times, for us, we’ve reached our limit quickly because so many people, every single day, are putting materials into our DAM.

[4:48] For example, when there’s award shows, in a matter of eight hours, you’ll get 75,000 images. It’s a lot for the system to handle, and it’s a lot for everybody to go through. For us to handle too, because at some point, there’s no need for 10,000 pictures of Jennifer Lopez smiling in the same dress.

[5:09] That’s what you run into. It’s hard to get to what you need because you have to dig through all of the award shows stuff. It gets, kind of hairy and complicated and annoying at times. Basically, on those days, we’re all working overtime because we have to go in, basically clean and edit.

[5:29] A lot of times, like photographers and agencies, and stuff like that…It seems cheap and easy to just shoot a bunch of pictures, but you don’t need all of those pictures. I think a lot of times, people just need to learn how to edit. That’s really important for any system because you get backlogged.

Theresa:  [5:48] It gets too big, and then you have to…

Jennifer: [5:50] It slows the system down. It slows everything down.

Theresa: [5:54] You have to get it empty enough that it will take more on. You need to do the maintenance. At that point, empty some things out. Also, make sure it’s properly backed up is another issue we see. A lot of times things aren’t properly backed up and then we have to change servers, then we lose a mountain of information. We have to get it all back in again. It makes a whole, huge effort that was unnecessary.

Jennifer: [6:19] Another challenge that we have is making sure that everybody’s software, programs, technology is compatible. For example, ‑‑ what was it? ‑‑ today we had a problem where somebody’s Photoshop didn’t match up, wasn’t being properly ingested into our system. It wasn’t reading it.

[6:37] We get glitches like that and things like that come up. It’s frustrating because a lot of times it’s not the end user, so we not only cater to the end users here, but we have to support outside efforts as well. That sometimes gets to be difficult and stressful. I’m not sitting at whoever’s desk in California, so I don’t know what’s on their computer.

[7:03] And successes… I’d say our most successful implementation was SCC Media Grid, which is a digital asset management system that is basically created for the publishing industry. For our purposes, it is by far superior, I think, than most in term of  You can see everything immediately.

[7:25] You can do time searches. You can do looped-in searches. You can do Boolean searches. It is multi‑faceted, and it is extremely quick. It’s really easy to maintain. When people drop things in, it has pretty much ranks in most meta data.

[7:40] Once we’ve given them our style guides and standard guides, if they properly adhere to them, then it creates a nice workflow. It makes our job a lot easier.

Theresa: [7:53] It can handle a lot of information. There aren’t as many system crashes.

Henrik:  [7:57] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Jennifer: [8:03] First and foremost, make sure you have commitment from the top. Make sure that they know that every person that you visit, that’s a license fee. Everybody can’t share the same username and password. You can’t do that. That’s stealing people’s technology, and that isn’t right.

[8:20] Develop a strategy and customize it to your business needs. Talk to as many people as you can because it’s so imperative. Employees in different departments, everybody has data in their head. Data is essentially knowledge, so everybody is knowledgeable in some degree or another.

[8:42] We try to have an open door policy in terms of, we encourage people to come and speak to us with all kinds of questions, comments, concerns, ways to improve anything. It’s a work in progress. It’s not perfect now, but that obviously is our goal.

Theresa: [9:00] To really help, you have to know the ins and outs to the company you’re helping and know what the employees need and what they need to do their job and get it done efficiently. Also, like we said before, plan for the future. Make sure there is enough room in that database so that you have a plan after that. That you have a bigger system you can move onto.

Jennifer: [9:19] Obviously, you’ll need controlled vocabularies and your keywords. And I think sometimes with digital asset management people think the more metadata and the more keywords and the more this is better. I personally don’t necessarily agree with that.

[9:32] I think that there’s something to be said for simplicity. I think it needs to be straightforward… real people speak. Some people get a little too smart with their keywords. If it’s a picture of an island, just write “island”. You don’t have to have some crazy… I mean obviously you should [say] what island and where it is, and stuff like that is important, but sometimes people just get too literal about it.

[9:57] That’s happened here where they’ll write, “This is West Indies,” but it doesn’t say “island” and a lot of people are sometimes looking for an island. Develop a strategy and talk to as many people as you can because that’s where you will get ideas and solutions. And basically, that’s what we are usually trying to do. Find a solution to something.

Theresa: [10:20] Yeah. Talk to other professionals is great because everyone is running into a different situation. You might have a situation that somebody conquered last year.

Jennifer: [10:30] Glitches and things like that. Sometimes one person is able to pull up something on the other person like, “Well, I just typed that in, and it’s not coming up on mine.” For the most part, that is usually a user error. I have seen instances where things haven’t shown up, and I still don’t have the answers to those.

Theresa: [10:48] Stay on top of your software. Make sure you don’t forget to schedule your updates and things like that. There’s a lot of times where we have to work really closely with IT. I mean, IT is probably who we work closest with because they support our efforts as well.

Henrik:  [11:03] Thank you.

Jennifer:  [11:03] Sure.

Henrik:  [11:04] For more on this and other digital asset management topics, go to anotherdamblog.com. For this podcast and 160 other podcast episodes including transcripts of every interview, go to anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, email me at anotherDAMblog@Gmail.com. Thanks again.

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 Fred Robertson on Digital Asset Management

Fred Robertson discusses Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  [0:01] This Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Fred Robertson. Fred, how are you?

Fred Robertson:  [0:10] Good, thanks.

Henrik:  [0:12] Fred, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Fred:  [0:14] I’ve been involved with Digital Asset Management for about 10 years now. My current role as Digital Asset Manager is about two years old. My main role is to manage photography assets from the beginning of the creative process all the way through to disseminating them out to a global community of creatives. This means when a photo shoot is finished, a hard drive will come to me and I’ll transfer files onto one of our server volumes. Then art directors do their part making selections and preparing files for me then to move out to a color correction house for retouching and color correction.

[0:52] Then files come back to me when they’re complete so I can properly name them, tag them properly, and post the final assets into an image library that we maintain. I’m also in charge of managing the version control and file names where all the product groups and different models of products and series versions, which can get complicated. We really have to have a good system of naming in place.

[1:15] I also interact with the global partners so that whenever they need assets, and whenever new assets are posted, they’re constantly being updated about new activity and new imagery that’s available. Finally, managing the storage space on all of our working volumes. It’s a pretty involved role.

Henrik:  [1:34] Fred, how does a well known audio technology developer and product manufacturer use Digital Asset Management?

Fred:  [1:41] We use DAM in many different ways. Primarily, from an image standpoint, still photography is the main focus of our DAM work currently. We maintain this image library and storage system for all of our product assets, advertising, photography. We also use it as a creative workflow so that our creative can produce all the layout creative work that they need to by linking to those high res assets that have gone through that process that I explained earlier.

[2:10] Our creative group is able to produce layouts and different presentations without having to duplicate assets. It’s an all‑encompassing system where we have different volumes on our server for creative files, layouts, logos, raw photography, final color corrected imagery, even outtakes. It’s a highly managed system, but it also allows for more fluid workflow.

Henrik:  [2:34] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Fred:  [2:38] I would say the challenges are many. First and foremost, just educating people about the system we have and giving users a degree of confidence in using it. A lot of folks tend to be a bit daunted by or confused by an interface. Some DAM interface is just not as user friendly as most people expect after going on the web and, say, using stock sites. I find that if you hold someone’s hand just the tiniest bit, it goes a long way to helping them become independent in their use of it.

[3:06] One of the bigger challenges is getting all to these stakeholders, internal clients, corporate interests, some legal concerns, and anyone that needs to access it how to be on the same page about how we’re coordinating management and organization of those assets. Those challenges are ongoing. We don’t really manage digital assets. The digital group seems to manage their own. The video group seems to manage those on their own as well. I’m helping in both of those areas, but it’s not under one umbrella, which makes it tricky. It gives us something, a goal to shoot for as well, which is to get everything in one place.

[3:44] Successes are just that we have a tool in place. It’s surprisingly still unique to see large companies using a DAM tool in ways other than just small internal groups using it. We’re trying to use it on a global marketing scale is ambitious, and it’s great that we can continue to improve upon it from there.

[4:04] It helps us coordinate product launches. Just having a Digital Asset Manager in house is a new role here. I think it’s made a big, big difference in productivity in the group.

Henrik:  [4:15] Fred, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Fred:  [4:20] I think, first and foremost, just having a clear and focused approach is most important, something that emphasizes the value in having a process in place that everyone needs to adhere to, but that you can as a Digital Asset Manager, you can help facilitate that process and really step in at every point along the way so that you can interact with many different groups of people who might not often interact with the group that I work in. I really enjoy being a greater part of the whole process so I can really answer questions at any point along the way.

[4:54] I think if you aspire to become a DAM professional…My background’s photography and I came at it from that perspective, as a person who was just immersed in having a visual education. The way I look at imagery is organizationally different than most folks that come at if from a library science perspective, which I often wish I had, but I also feel like I bring something unique to the process as sort of a self‑taught DAM professional in a way.

[5:26] I just think emerging yourself in imagery and processes can only help get you to that place where really allowing yourself a chance to view lots of imagery and think about ways in which that they’re organized and interact with photographers and artists, it can give you a much more rounded perspective.

Henrik:  [5:45] Well, thanks, Fred.

Fred:  [5:46] All right.

Henrik:  [5:46] For more on this, and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to AnotherDAMblog.com. For this podcast episode, as well as 150 other podcast episodes, including transcripts of every interview, go to AnotherDAMpodcast.com.

[6:01] 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, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

Need Digital Asset Management advice and assistance?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Schedule a call today


by

Can a DAM handle Rights Managed assets?

Based on the post from Another DAM blog:

Written and read by Henrik de Gyor

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 Tom Barnouw on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • How does your organization wrestle 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: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Tom Barnouw.
Tom [0:09], how are you?
Tom Barnouw: [0:10] Good, thanks. How you doing?
Henrik: [0:11] Good. Tom, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Tom: [0:14] Well, I work for WWE, been here about six years, and I retired as a
systems engineer. I’m involved with Digital Asset Management. [0:24] We have
many live shows a year, thousands and thousands of photographs are taken
at each live event, and those assets make their way back to our company for
processing. They are used for a variety of things from websites to publications
to any type of creative services project. As these photos come in, they’re processed
by our photo department and uploaded to servers, at which time our
asset management system catalogs all those. There is metadata written to each
asset so that everything is searchable easily.
[1:03] There are many layers we have on top of our assets that can satisfy different
work flows. We’ve got certain catalogs that are web enabled. Other things
can be sent out via email, with voting and approval processes that can take
place and things. We’re web enabled data where end-users can vote and actually
have metadata written back to the assets.
[1:30] A significant process is in place for easily sharing assets around the company,
without the need to duplicate the files or copy them to other storage
medium. My involvement is in managing that workflow and trying to find efficiencies
throughout the company and ways that we can leverage the asset
management system.
Henrik: [1:51] How does your organization wrestle with DAM?
Tom: [1:54] It’s been an interesting evolution over the last six years or so.
Working with Cumulus has grown tremendously over those six years, aside from
just doing the system administration of the backend infrastructure. I think one of
the most important and impactful things that’s occurred over that time is really
studying the workflow of our users, and I would say the lifecycle management
of the data that our asset management system tracks. [2:24] We’ve evolved into
a very nice system now. We have several million assets in our system and, as an
asset ages, we need to move it, not just from the asset management side, but
from the storage side, from disk to tape, how does that process?
[2:42] The first thing we wrestled with was how do we manage the lifecycle of
this data? As an asset becomes older it’s used much, much less frequently. Do
we need to keep it on disk? If we do move it to tape, how do we easily access
that asset on tape? We struggled on solving some of those problems.
[3:01] We’ve come to a very nice place with it now where it all works very, very
nicely, including giving the end-user the ability to manage those assets, to some
degree, to a much more limited degree than I can, but still, they have access to
things, even when they’re on tape, which is nice.
[3:18] Other challenges I’d say, we continue to work with is the various workflows.
It’s one thing to have an asset management in place, cataloging assets, but
there are so many different this is going to be different in every company but,
there are so many different workflows.
[3:35] One department or one person may have very different needs for those
assets than another, understanding those various workflows, and customizing
the asset management system to blend in well with those required workflows.
In most cases, improve on those workflows. We’ve been able to leverage our
system to create significant efficiencies in workflows for different people in different
departments.
[4:04] In terms of how we wrestled with that, I think, that process hasn’t stopped,
in fact, I feel like I’m just now at the beginning. Now that we’ve got a very solid
foundation for our system in place managing lifecycle, I can turn my attention
much more to tackling various workflows and creating efficiencies within
the company.
Henrik: [4:23] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Tom: [4:28] I think it would probably have to segue way from what I just talked
about, which is there are so many different things. Obviously, each company is
going to have different needs, various storage needs, depending on how much
data you’re actually dealing with. That can significantly impact what lifecycle
management you may or may not need to have in place. [4:53] I think, again, just
what I talked about. Try to think into the future, 1, 5, 10 years from now where
do you think these assets are going to live, what access do you think people will
need to them you can start with that foundation, then, trying to understand the
various workflows that may exist within a company.
[5:16] If you can do a lot of groundwork ahead of time, before deploying something,
even if you have deployed something, start at that 30,000foot view to try
to get a good understanding from the needs of the company as a whole, and
then you can begin to zero in on different topics and processes that you can
help with.
Henrik: [5:36] Thanks, Tom.
Tom: [5:37] No problem. My pleasure.
Henrik: [5:39] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. 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