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Another DAM Podcast interview with Jay O’Brien on Digital Asset Management

Jay O’Brien discusses 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 Jay O’Brien.

Jay, how are you?

Jay O’Brien:  [0:09] I’m doing great. How are you?

Henrik:  [0:10] Great. Jay, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Jay:  [0:14] In my role at the Baltimore Ravens, I’m the director of broadcasting and stadium productions. I fell into the Digital Asset Management role here. I started 11 years ago here as an intern, just logging tape, doing tape‑to‑tape editing and logging tape in the…I think it was AVID media logger.

[0:35] I got very good at Digital Asset Management in terms of typing out every single play of every single Ravens’ game. That’s how I became a stickler for asset management and also became a football fan.

[0:47] I say I fell into it, because Digital Asset Management, as I’ve advanced through the Ravens and now I’m in charge of the broadcasting department, we were faced with a situation where we basically had to make a move. The previous system we’re on was at its end of life and it was, of course, going to be a big investment to upgrade.

[1:06] I took on the role of learning as much as I could about all the new asset management systems that were out there. It’s pretty exciting. It’s not something I thought I would be interested in but I’ve been working with some great people at other teams, and with our consulting group that we used to implement this new system that we’re on.

[1:24] I’ve really learned a lot and there are some great people in the field like yourself who’ve been very, I guess, instrumental in helping me to learn as much as I can about this. Now, I wouldn’t in any respect call myself an expert. I’m an intermediate novice in this whole thing and learning more about it every day.

[1:38] Our primary objective here is to create great content. When we made this change, I guess more involved in automating our Digital Asset Management, helped us to get away from the tedious typing out every player’s name and to actually editing content.

Henrik:  [1:53] How does a football team use Digital Asset Management?

Jay:  [1:57] It’s pretty interesting. For an NFL team, there are actually two different video departments that are using Digital Asset Management for two completely different purposes.

[2:06] We have a coaching video department which is using Digital Asset Management to record every play from practice and every play from the games so that our coaches can then go through to analyze the plays for teaching and to get ready for future opponents and that type of thing.

[2:22] What my department does is more on the entertainment side. We create television shows that air in our local market here in Baltimore and Washington, DC, also on our team’s website and mobile app and iPad app and all that kind of good stuff. Then, we also create all the entertainment at our home games on our big screens and our ancillary video boards.

[2:47] What we’re using Digital Asset Management for is to capture all the footage that we shoot at practice, at games, off the field with our players doing work in the community and that sort of thing. We’re using Digital Asset Management to capture and tag all that media so that it’s very easily searchable for us.

[3:11] You don’t know that you need a shot until you need a shot. We were working on a feature this past season about our old national anthem singer who sang national anthem for the first 18 years of our franchise. We had logged the first game that he sang the national anthem.

[3:29] While you’re logging and tagging that asset, you’re probably thinking to yourself “When am I ever going to need this?” But you eventually do. I’m sure that the people that are for us doing a lot of loggings sometimes are thinking “Wow, they’re never going to use this clip.” Surprisingly, we often do.

[3:45] With a team that’s now in our 20th season of existence like the Baltimore Ravens, we’re getting to the point now where we’re doing a lot of look backs and in‑a‑moment‑in‑time of the most famous plays and players in our history. Without a robust Digital Asset Management system, we wouldn’t be able to create the content and the quality that our fans demand.

Henrik:  [4:06] Jay, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Jay:  [4:10] For us, the biggest challenge is, with this new system that we have, we’re utilizing the Levels Beyond Reach engine. But it gives you the chance to create as many metadata fields and as many metadata keywords as you want.

[4:24] That’s the challenge and the success of the new system. You want to be able to search by all sorts of different tags. You also don’t want to create too many that you get bogged down with it or that the tagging process takes such a long time that it becomes not very worthwhile.

[4:43] That was our big challenge with this new system. Now going back in time, before you were able to tag metadata using drop down menus and things like that, everything was manual. You were typing everything out. At least, we were.

[4:58] For example, we had someone logging for us back 10 years ago who spelt a certain player’s name wrong for the entire season and nobody caught it. That’s a big challenge because when we’re searching for that player’s name and we’re thinking, “We know this player had good plays during the year. Why aren’t any of them showing up in our asset manager?” It was all just because of a misspelling.

[5:19] That’s a challenge that we’ve certainly overcome now with this new system where we can easily load an Excel roster of our players and then you type in the first letter or two letters of the player’s name and you move on. This new system has saved us a lot of time.

[5:32] At the same time, when we were first establishing the system and determining what fields and what key words we wanted, I think at first we may have gotten too overly ambitious of creating so many different fields that it was taking longer for the first few weeks of our season to log our games and not less time, which is what we anticipated going into the season.

[5:54] We were logging everything from what color jerseys our players were wearing, what the weather was like. It’s really just trying to be ambitious without being overly so where it’s really costing you time and not saving you time.

Henrik:  [6:07] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Jay:  [6:12] When we went through the process of choosing a new asset manager, we demoed as many of the new systems as we could. We also spoke with, in our case, other football teams that we knew had made this transition to a new system or teams that we knew were as robust as we are in terms of the amount of content we produce.

[6:33] Reach out to other people. Demoing is great and that was certainly helpful for us to demo every system we could. It was equally important for us to talk to people who have actually used the system, specific to our needs.

[6:46] We talked to some people who were using the system we went with and other systems but whose objectives are different than ours. What system may work for a sports team may not work for somebody who’s doing news programming or something like that.

[7:02] Reach out to as many people as you can who you think would be using the system for similar purposes. In our case, we leaned heavily on our consultant and integrator during the project to have them connect us to other sports leagues and organizations who we knew would be using the system for somewhat similar purposes.

[7:22] As I said before, as much as you can, figure out in advance what types of fields and key words you would like to use and have that all laid out. In our circumstance, we’re still evolving and we’re still adding metadata fields and key words and we’re removing some too. Don’t be afraid to do that and say, “This one is unimportant. We don’t really need this.”

[7:44] Those would be my two pieces of advice. It’s certainly a learning experience. This will be our sixth game of the season coming up. Just now we’re starting to get really into a flow and using the system in a way that is most beneficial to us.

Henrik:  [8:00] Thanks, Jay.

Jay:  [8:01] Thank you. Anytime.

Henrik:  [8:02] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics go to anotherdamblog.com. For this and 170 other podcast episodes, go to anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to reach out to me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

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

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Nila Bernstengel on Digital Asset Management

Nila Bernstengel discusses Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Nila Bernstengel.

[0:08] Nila, how are you?

Nila Bernstengel:  [0:10] I’m good. How are you today?

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

Nila:  [0:15] I have been involved on the job and also in library school. On the job, I have worked in the DAM field for almost 7 years and digital repositories for about 10 years.

[0:26] I also went to library school. While in library school, I focused on emerging technologies, how to create digital repositories, digital collections and how to implement metadata properly.

[0:38] On the job, I have worked the full cycle of implementing a system and upgrading a system. This generally has entailed creating user files, metadata scrubbing or as I like to call it, “untangling the metadata”.

[0:50] I set standards, cataloging, standards for terminology, create dictionaries and permission sets and also taxonomies. In total, I did everything to bring up a system and release a system.

Henrik:  [1:02] How does a nonprofit educational organization use Digital Asset Management?

Nila:  [1:06] The main objective was to have a centralized location for the company assets for the purpose of storage access and content distribution. Having a centralized location of assets allowed for the discovery of our assets as well as new collections for the creation of either content or product.

[1:27] Not everyone knew what was being created in the company. People would just ask for assets. They would either come to the Creative Resources Department, or they would just look around on the servers, not realizing there was much, much more out there that they could be using.

[1:43] For this reason, we really brought in a system for the centralization for access. There needed to be a place where everyone could go in, view and download without having to contact us. That means we set up a system that was based on permissions, which was really, really important.

[1:59] This really tied into our content distribution. We wanted a place for people to go in, see everything the company offered them, and nothing that was on there was out of their reach. Everything they see, they could use and we really did that by setting up a system that was centralized and was focused on permission sets.

[2:21] Lastly, the content distribution part. This was key to bringing in a system because prior to this, we were mailing out assets, mailing hard drives, CDs, DVDs, even books in the mail and it became very, very costly and not time efficient.

[2:38] To cut down on that, we brought in a system to have something that was instant for someone to use globally and domestically. The system also allowed for the governance of assets. No more like, “I’m using the logo from 10 years ago”. It was up‑to‑date and current.

Henrik:  [2:57] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Nila:  [3:01] One of the biggest challenges I have seen is changing workflow. There are a lot of companies that had the same work flow for decades and all of a sudden we’re asking people to no longer use servers, no longer to use their personal hard drives. We’re asking them to change workflow completely and that was pretty hard because a lot of people resist change, especially when it comes to technology.

[3:24] It was something that was different. They had to think about it differently. It really changed how they retrieved assets.

[3:30] The big selling point was showing them the benefits of a system. All of a sudden, you didn’t have to look for hours for something or that one photograph you were looking for. Now you could go on to one place, just do a simple search and download it and that would always be there.

[3:46] One of the biggest challenges was changing people’s workflow, changing them to move away from a physical to a digital environment. One of the biggest challenges for a system was having a lot of duplicates and a lot of versions.

[4:00] A version would be something like have a master file and then there’s five derivatives and different file formats under it. People really still wanted that and I eliminated that because I really believe that the system has the capability to download file formats, whatever you need it for. That was a big challenge also. It’s just like training people to understand all the capabilities of a system.

[4:26] Another big challenge was naming conventions. I standardized the naming convention for the system and people wanted to make sentence structures out of a name, which believe it or not, really actually affects the search. It was a big thing, standardizing how files are named and how they’re presented to people.

[4:47] One of the biggest successes I’ve heard from an end user was how easy the system was to use, how the learnability was really low. This really communicated to me that it was not only easy, but this was something that they would go back to readily and keep using because it wasn’t complicated. The visual space wasn’t overpopulated. That was really good to hear.

[5:10] I think for the company’s success, the ability to reuse assets was key. This really cut down on costs. It also cut down on time. People could reuse the same assets for many different things, which really helps the company also just save money. It enhanced work flow because it cut down on time also.

Henrik:  [5:32] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Nila:  [5:36] For people starting out in the field, I would recommend start small, something manageable and then use it as a model to scale up. What I mean by this is get your hands dirty a little bit.

[5:49] There was a couple of systems that people could easily download onto their own devices or machines. OpenRefine is a metadata cleanup program. It allows you to bring in a spreadsheet and really dive into cleaning up metadata and structuring metadata. That’s a really good tool for people to use who are looking to get into this field and also, understand the dynamics of metadata.

[6:14] A couple of systems they could try? I think SharePoint is really good. A lot of people use it. It’s pretty easy. I would really recommend going there. Try to create a collection, apply metadata and try searching. See how it works. See what it visually looks like once you apply metadata to it.

[6:30] Drupal is a system a lot of libraries use. It’s also open source. I recommend trying it. Create some pages, create a collection, apply metadata and then see what it looks like and see how it functions.

[6:42] I think just doing that over and over really clicks and makes people understand how dynamic the system is because we are moving from physical to digital and it’s basically a stratosphere of information that is being linked together.

[6:57] I think hands on is the best I could say for people. There is reading resources for people to supplement doing the hands on. I look at The Accidental Taxonomist quite a bit. I think it’s really great. It’s easy to understand and I think if you join, especially reading and a hands‑on experience, it will make you feel a lot more comfortable going into a company or going into an organization and tackling how to set up a system and how a system works.

[7:25] Another great reading source I also use is Real Story Group. They have great vendor information. They have really great white papers and documentation lists to look at because there is a system for almost everything.

[7:37] Different systems do different things. It breaks apart this idea that there’s just Digital Asset Management. There’s Digital Asset Management for a lot of different content types and a lot of systems gear towards different content types. I do recommend doing some reading and just doing a little bit of research on vendors.

[7:55] For people in the field, I would definitely recommend, even if it’s not possible, to reach out to the vendor of the system you’re using and really give them sky‑high expectations of something you want, because even if they can’t do it, they’re going to remember that and they’re going to probably try to put it into their core systems so it will be part of their system.

[8:17] Something like an example of that was we needed content pools. I needed a way to separate content by permissions without creating new portals. I wanted to use one portal for everybody to go into but not everyone saw the same content. Now that’s easily available in most systems.

[8:35] It’s really great if you really talk to the vendor, if you talk to people. It really advances the system. It advances our work flow, which I think is only beneficial.

[8:44] This is for people already in the field. If you’re creating a DAM team or a team that is going to tackle the DAM system, I really, really recommend having a dynamic from all parts of the company or organization. This means three or four representations of business IT, someone who can organize it, like a librarian and I would recommend having an end user involved in part of the process.

[9:09] IT definitely supports the company. They support the technology, but the business requirements and what the system is geared for and how it will used will come from business, because they are the ones who need to use it and they’re the ones who need this workflow to work for the company.

[9:24] A librarian or someone who can organize it is key. This is definitely a skill set people are trained to do. Organizing digital content is a huge task and there is ways to do it and ways to not do it properly.

[9:39] An end user are the people who are going to be using the system. They’re going to be the ones going into the front end and engaging in the system. They’re going to be searching, downloading. They’re key to how the system and the metadata is applied.

Henrik:  [9:54] Thanks, Nila.

Nila:  [9:55] Thank you.

Henrik:  [9:56] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to AnotherDAMblog.com. For this and 170 podcast episodes, go to AnotherDAMpodcast.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, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Julia Thompson on Digital Asset Management

Julia Thompson discusses Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Julia Thompson.

[0:07] Julia, how are you?

Julia Thompson:  [0:09] Great, thank you. How are you?

Henrik:  [0:10] Great. Julia, how were you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Julia:  [0:14] I’m the Digital Asset Manager at UNICEF, New York headquarters. Part of that role, I’m the administrator of our Global Digital Asset Management System. This includes things like configuring the ACLs, developing and maintaining metadata, working with the DAM vendor on issues, any changes we’d like to make, and features that would be useful to us.

[0:34] My role also includes the development of DAM workflows and advising on best practices, and user support and training.

Henrik:  [0:42] How does an organization focused on long‑term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers in developing countries use Digital Asset Management?

Julia:  [0:52] The DAM system that I manage contains just finished materials at this stage, rather than works‑in‑progress, although I see that being something that we may be using the DAM system for in the future. At the moment, it includes photos, videos, branding materials, publications and social media assets and things such as infographics.

[1:12] And also other related peripheral materials, mostly communication materials that are ultimately destined for an external audience. So we work in more than 190 countries and territories and we have content creators and offices all over the world. For us having a global DAM system helps us to break down content silos across the organization.

[1:33] It provides us a way to make rich media created all around the organization, available to UNICEF staff everywhere. The staff use the DAM system to locate materials for repurposing and reuse when they are creating new communication assets. So we offer B‑Rolls for creating new videos, photos that they use in new publications.

[1:52] We also use the DAM system to distribute editable versions of assets for localization. So that means that an office can create versions of assets in their local languages. We use the DAM system as a tool for sharing downloadable assets with news media and with our many partners and stakeholders.

[2:09] It also provides a source for high quality assets for publication on websites and social media, and other internal platforms and it’s integrated with unicef.org, for the publication of photos by the DAM system API. I’d say that one of the most important roles of Digital Asset Management for us is in helping to protect the rights of the children in our photos and videos, helping us to ensure that assets are used appropriately.

[2:32] So we have some assets, images of children at risk, such as children associated with armed groups, which requires special approval and particular care in their use. The DAM system helps us to handle usage approvals.

[2:45] We are able to use the system to embed the usage terms and conditions and some asset types like images, to make users aware of the usage terms and conditions upon accessing assets in the DAM system.

[2:56] We use the DAM system to pull together packages of assets that relate to a particular focus area or a campaign, which makes it quicker and easier for staff to find the communication materials that they need and the DAM system also provides a definitive source for our branding materials, so that we can keep the UNICEF brands clear.

Henrik:  [3:13] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Julia:  [3:17] So in some ways our successes and challenges are fairly closely linked. Because the DAM system has become quite central in supporting our communication goals, our users are starting to see the benefits of the DAM system in their work, which is a good thing. It’s exactly what we are aiming for.

[3:34] One of the consequences that we found of having a system that people like and see the value in, is that we’re finding ourself needing to assess and culminate new needs that are arising, we’ve seen the emergence of new use cases, new demands on the system, which have created new challenges to address, new workflows to develop, additional metadata to add, changes in the way that we handle permissions.

[3:57] So these new needs have been a challenge to address. Some taking extra resourcing, requiring changes in the way that we are working with the system. But it’s also nice to see the value of Digital Asset Management in such a large organization. Another challenge that we’ve faced is balancing our shorter and longer term needs.

[4:15] We need our Digital Asset Management to support an often high paced flow of assets within the organization and to outside partners and news media. But we also need to ensure that we have full and accurate metadata needed for the long‑term accessibility of those assets.

[4:30] In an emergency situation such as after the recent Nepal earthquake, the DAM system was used to make photos and videos available to the organization and to the news media, which needed to happen quickly. So in a situation like that there’s not always time to spend fully cataloging an asset before publication and distribution.

[4:50] However, we do need full metadata to ensure that someone can find those assets in a few years and that they have enough contextual information to know what their looking at. So I definitely wouldn’t claim to have all the answers to that dilemma yet. That’s really something we are still working through. But I think in the future, it’s going to have to involve a staged approach to Asset Management.

[5:09] We have a workflow and a system that’s live and user‑friendly enough to meet their short‑term needs, combined with oversight by information professionals, maybe filling in the metadata and making sure that everything looks right at a slightly later stage.

[5:24] And also, I think accepting that good‑enough is sometimes the best you can do. There is really no question that Digital Asset Management in a large organization like that, operating in different time zones is a challenge.

Henrik:  [5:36] I bet. What advise would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Julia:  [5:42] One of the things I would recommend is the future proofing as much as possible, being aware of the importance of flexibility and scalability when procuring and configuring a DAM system because you will inevitably be making changes, particularly when working in a large organization.

[6:00] We found it really important to have a system that allows us to be really flexible, making changes to metadata, accommodating new asset types, new asset genres and supporting new asset cases.

[6:12] Related to that, I’d say that it’s important to keep talking to your users well beyond the initial planning and implementation stage, so that your system and workflows can evolve along with the new user needs that will emerge. We’ve definitely had a lot of changes with the way that we are using Digital Asset Management within the new organization, even over a fairly short period of time.

[6:33] For people aspiring to become DAM professionals, I would say that it’s getting hands‑on experience and so getting some exposure to Digital Asset Management in a real organization is super important.

[6:44] I would think that although getting a good handle on Digital Asset Management theory and best practices is key, it’s also really important to be able to navigate the unique culture of an organization to be able to successfully identify business requirements and end‑user needs.

[7:00] At least from my point of view that seems to be where the biggest challenges lie, but also the biggest opportunities for success in Digital Asset Management.

Henrik:  [7:08] Great. Well, thanks Julia.

Julia:  [7:10] Thank you.

Henrik:  [7:11] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to anotherdamblog.com. For this podcast and 160 other podcast episodes, go to anotherdampodcast.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, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Adolfo Chavez and Francisco Vergaray on Digital Asset Management

Adolfo Chavez and Francisco Vergaray discuss Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Adolfo Chavez and Francisco Vergaray. How are you guys?

Adolfo Chavez:  [0:12] Doing good.

Francisco Vergaray:  [0:13] Doing well, thank you.

Henrik:  [0:15] Great. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Francisco:  [0:17] Well, I think I’ll go first. This is Francisco. Basically, I am the system administrator for the digital asset management system that we have here in the institution. We have a system of 24 catalogs and over a million digital assets that are served throughout the institution.

[0:36] We have several clients that use the system including doctors and our regular staff. We have anything from patient images to images that I use for diagnostics, and also stock art that we use.

Adolfo:  [0:53] I’m Adolfo. I’m in a different department from Francisco. I work in Communications, and I basically manage four catalogs within our digital asset management system, which is Cumulus.

[1:04] All total, I believe, we have about 200,000 images, mainly editorial in nature, again, I’m in Communications, so a lot of images are for publications. I don’t keep any clinically relevant images in there.

[1:16] A lot of portraits of doctors, doctors and patients, and stuff for marketing and communications purposes. I call myself a dummy user of Cumulus, where Francisco is more on the administration side.

Henrik:  [1:28] How does a comprehensive cancer center use Digital Asset Management?

Francisco:  [1:32] Cumulus that we use is actually a fairly robust system. Unfortunately, we only use the work group edition. We do not have the full enterprise version of the system.

[1:43] We cannot take full advantage of the capabilities of this system, however, we are pushing the system to it’s limit right now trying to get more catalogs and more digital assets into the system while we transition to possibly a future more robust system.

[2:02] At this point, we have been using Cumulus for over 10 years, and it’s come to the attention of the higher ups here in the institution. They are looking for a more robust system to replace Cumulus.

[2:16] Basically, it is used for many things. We have people for example in the skin center, they use it for comparing melanoma patients. They can look at skin lesions, making sure that there are differences between appointments. We have people that use it for just general stock photography or editorial. That’s basically there for run of how we’re using it.

[2:40] We have an Internet client, and we have several desktop clients. The desktop clients are actually what allow you to add visual assets today to the system.

Adolfo:  [2:50] We’re having the DAM in place and actually using the DAM, because the DAM has been in place of a while. But, when I came on board about three and a half years ago, it was in place and there were assets in there, but there was no metadata attached to any of the images, so image retrieval was still kind of a chore.

[3:09] Now, since I’ve been there, I’ve kind of taken on the task of adding in that metadata so that when any media outlet calls and say, “When you have a photo of doctor so and so,” enter in doctor so and so, we have a whole treasure trove of images.

Henrik:  [3:25] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Adolfo:  [3:29] The biggest success we’ve had is image retrieval, essentially. Previously, which I’m sure many of your listeners are probably familiar with. When images are kept on someone else’s computer, usually the designer, whoever was working on the project.

[3:44] If somebody had an image request, went to one person who is like, “Oh, I think that person worked on it.” Then it went to that person, who happen to be out that day. So then it had to wait for the next day. When they got in, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, let me go back and look at that project.” So an image request took a day, two days. That was kind of ridiculous.

[4:02] Now, image requests take two minutes, literally. It actually takes two seconds, but because we vet each of the images, some of the images have patients in them. We have to make sure that we have patients that have been consented properly. That we have permission to use the image. That the employees depicted in photos are still working here, stuff like that. So yeah, that’s been a huge success.

[4:25] The biggest challenge, at least on my end, has been getting people to use it, which I think is universal challenge to everyone in digital asset management. I get emails everyday, “Hey do we have an image of doctor so and so?” “Yeah, it’s in Cumulus. You just got to search for it. That’s all you got to do.” [laughs] That’s the most difficult part, obviously.

Francisco:  [4:48] Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges that we had when we initiated this project years ago was coming up with a naming convention for our digital assets. I think that was what really we had to go around several times until we came up with something solid that at the time, we couldn’t search for metadata when we first started with this.

[5:11] We were looking at searching by the names of the files, but now we were able to add metadata to the file so the naming convention is not…We’re still using the naming convention, but it is not as important as adding the metadata. Still, we use both of them as just as a backup to double check, make sure things are named correctly.

[5:32] That’s what’s been also one of the biggest successes for us because we were able to locate patient images. For example, they’re going into the electronic medical record, and when the doctor comes in and looks at the medical record, they can pull their patient’s images that comes from our Cumulus system.

Henrik:  [5:52] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people who aspired to become DAM professionals?

Adolfo:  [5:57] I think this is something Francisco eluded to when we first started talking, is that really fully invest in the proper software. One of the big challenges that we’ve had is that we’re trying to…

Francisco:  [6:10] We’re using a work group version of the system, rather than the enterprise version which we can’t really take full advantage of the capability of this system. It’s just having the proper budget.

Adolfo: [6:22] We have over 20,000 employees at this institution. Digital asset management is becoming more and more important everyday. There are new people calling for catalogs and they wanted catalog images, they want to do this, and it’s taxing on this particular version of the software we’re running.

[6:39] As far as, that’s for DAM professionals, as far as for people aspiring to become DAM professionals, I have a book called The Accidental Taxonomist which is the book that I got to do a little bit of research on digital asset management when I got into the position.

[6:53] That’s really the way I feel. I don’t feel I can actually give advice to anyone who’s trying to become a digital asset management person, but I’m accidentally fell into this position by nature of what it is that I do, which is photography and content creation, essentially.

Francisco:  [7:09] I think one suggestion that I would give is you need to have…You heard of it, the phrase ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’?

Henrik:  [7:17] Mm‑hmm.

Francisco:  [7:18] You need to make sure that you have a specific group of people assigned to add digital images or digital assets to the catalog. That way, you keep consistency throughout your naming conventions, throughout the way things are organized in the catalog.

[7:32] The other thing I would suggest is make sure that you have people that have very good attention to detail. Just minimal things such as a space, or a comma, or just a period in the wrong place, what would throw things off. Just people that understand how complicated this can be and frustrating sometimes.

Adolfo:  [7:55] It takes a special kind of person, I guess. Digital Asset Management, it’s a tedious gig. It takes a certain mind, I guess.

Francisco:  [8:03] Yes.

Henrik:  [8:04] That’s great advice. I would strongly recommend having a gatekeeper to your point.

Francisco:  [8:08] We actually have a, at least from the photography people, we have several gatekeepers, we have about two or three of them.

[8:14] You go for one person, the photographer, they will need their files. Then they go to the manager, who double checks them. Then they go to the person that actually catalogs them, so there’s three people that actually make sure that these images, especially the ones that go into the patient chart, are named properly.

Adolfo:  [8:32] I’m the only one in communications. There’s me, then I have an assistant now. That means that I get to make sure everything is cool, but I also get blamed for all the problems.

Francisco:  [8:45] But nobody is perfect, so even three people can miss something.

Henrik:  [8:49] That happens. Thank you, guys.

Francisco:  [8:52] Thank you.

Adolfo:  [8:52] Thank you.

Henrik:  [8:53] For more on this and other digital asset management topics, go to AnotherDAMblog.com. For this and 160 other podcast episodes, go to AnotherDAMpodcast.com. If you have any comments of questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com.

[9:10] Thanks, again.

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