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Another DAM Podcast interview with Keith Bloomfield-DeWeese on Digital Asset Management and Ontology

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [00:00] This is Another DAM Podcast of Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Keith Bloomfield-DeWeese. Keith, how are you?
Keith Bloomfield-DeWeese: Very well Henrik, how are you?
Henrik: Keith, how are you involved with digital asset management?

Keith: I’m involved with digital asset management a couple of different ways. I don’t think quite like a traditional DAM person. I don’t work in a DAM system, let’s put it that way. I do work with digital assets, of course, photos, content of all sorts, but I am not managing licenses or anything like that. I actually am more at the end of, or along the processing line of digital assets or an asset, where trying to describe what the asset is about, how it should be used, what systems it should be used in and things that are, again, a little more outside of the, I think, the traditional DAM environment or DAM world.

[01:00] I work with content management systems very much. It’s interesting, because I’ve been thinking this through in so many different ways and from so many different angles, because I work in maintaining, developing, maintaining controlled vocabularies, relationships that link terminology between classes and so on and at a certain point, I think, whenever you do this for any number of organizations, you look at it and you say, “Okay, we’ve done all this work, what do we do with it now? How do we monetize it in a certain way and how do we start, perhaps, thinking of it more as a digital asset, with a right-to-use component?” For the most part, the work I do kind of skirts around that, but at the same time, there is this, beyond the right-to-use, there is this management aspect where we’re trying to join different types of assets together.

[02:00] We’re trying to make connections between a photo and text, a sound recording and text, and the management is there, it’s just in a different way, and again, not quite so traditional. I think, going back now for, I was thinking recently, it’s been almost 20 years, that I’ve been working for media companies of various kinds. You increasingly see the lines blurring between certain, the idea of content management and digital asset management and it seems like the more there’s a blurring or there’s just a lot of overlaps. I’m kind of, I guess I’m apologizing a little bit for not being more of a DAM person, or talking about DAM. I hope that’s all right.
Henrik: No apologies necessary.
Keith:  I think a lot of this, I think that’s common these days and many people are in that kind of space, work in that kind of space and of course I have to be aware of the different restrictions that might be placed on an asset.

[03:00]  One thing that I know I have run afoul of at times is okaying, and this is not anything recently, I’m thinking quite while ago, maybe when I was a novice more in the space, of using an asset, integrating it, associating it with another type of asset, a content item, primarily, when I shouldn’t have. When I didn’t, you know, heed what the attributes and the attribute values were telling me about how something could be used. I’ve become much more savvy in that respect and much more knowledgeable in basically how you have to be aware as you work with a variety of assets and especially in media things change so much that you sometimes just have to allow yourself to fall and that’s kind of my take on working with digital assets.
Henrik: [04:00] How do you maintain the ontology for a national media company?
Keith: Well, I think it’s a daunting task in some ways and sometimes I think I’m one of those fools who stumbled in where the angels fear to tread, so to speak, because it’s certainly no a one person task, of course. There’s so many people involved. There are so many systems involved. Maintaining so much depends on data formats being correct. I think this is where we start getting into more of the kind of semantic side of this or the linked data side of this because when you’re dealing with, say, well I’ve worked for an encyclopedia, I’ve worked for newspapers, you’re really just dealing with such a vast, so many domains of knowledge, that you’re both trying to development vocabularies to describe domains plus the relationships between them in such a way that they make sense to both the machine and increasingly the machine and human beings.

[05:00] Of course, those are a great deal of reliance on various tools. I’ve worked with, I think, everything from Protégé to there are different tools. I don’t want to sound like I’m endorsing anything but, you know SAS Teragrams tool, things like Synaptic and Expert System. You know of course you have to have that kind of support that these sophisticated tools provide and I think maintaining and actually developing them further is the real trick. It’s how do you keep incorporating other vocabularies? How do you harmonize vocabularies and not the unexpected results, because of course we’re trying to do so much of this to have a positive impact on everything from search to putting out new products, driving products, and again, I think it’s just a very, it’s daunting.

[06:00] I would also say too, that one thing has easier over time is the tools have become more sophisticated in the last ten years. I think it’s incredible what we can do know as opposed to when we used to have to maintain values in spreadsheets. That was just, you can only go so far with that. Today though it does, it takes a village to raise an ontology, let’s put it that way. I tend to think too that, where I sit, I do a lot of work developing, and again, the relationships that make terms, link terms, and those relationships, of course, now we can get them from different standards. We’re very fortunate on that respect. We’re very fortunate.
[07:00] When I say standards I mean that we have OWL or just schema.org and so on to work with, where as, ten years ago, these things, were around of course, but they weren’t, I think, as approachable in some respects, or I certainly found them a little more difficult to wrap my mind around at that time and I think now we have it, so many of these standards built right into these systems that we license and so on, that it makes it easier. But, to maintain an ontology for a national media company, it’s always trying to find, I think, that right balance between what machines can do and then where the human beings have to step in and clarify and disambiguate and so on. Again for news organizations, for an encyclopedia, for, well just any of these larger media companies, you’re dealing with, not just financial data or data about medicine.

[08:00] It’s not farm. Dealing with all the means of knowledge from health to sports to politics to entertainment and actually, I was thinking, I’ve worked on vocabularies that have a number of, you know like very simple ones, 20,000 terms, up to 160,000 terms and when you start thinking of all the relationships that link those terms together you suddenly feel like a very small person and you have to, I always say I always have to keep in mind that I can only do so much and we can only take things so far with this technology and we’re still trying to improve the technology too.

[09:00] One of the questions, later, that you asked was about what advice do you give to people and I’ll go back to that later some more, but one thing I’m thinking of here is that when you do maintain an ontology for a large media company you really need to be prepared to experiment and not be afraid to try different approaches and to realize that the technology, the guidelines, are there but there’s always that fine tuning that has to be done because you can also find yourself in a situation where you’re dealing with all this great technology but you’re still using legacy systems that aren’t quite up to snuff or compatible. I think trying to find that right balance is part of the maintenance of the ontology.
Henrik: Keith, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with digital asset management and ontology?
Keith: [10:00] Well they say the challenges can range from just trying to get the buy in to follow a different direction, to getting the adaptation of the technologies, I mean that by, or adoption, the adoption of the technologies by a variety of people that interact with them and I’m thinking very much of database developers, developers of all sort, database administrators, developers, UX people, just a whole gamut, individuals who would be involved in managing the assets, developing the ontology to help manage them and I think there you do have to work a lot of times on people skills and trying to help people see the advantage of changing, going from working in relational databases to this entirely different approach, incorporating RDF, resource description framework and into the whole management process.

[11:00] It’s not always easy to make that leap and I think probably one of the challenges, biggest challenges, is managing expectations, because you will have executives, you will have stake holders just, again, any number of people who, well they do not have the interactions with the systems, with these technologies but they have heard the great benefits that can be achieved. Sometimes you have to do a lot of worker challenges and just making sure people understand that you’re not going to come right out of the gate charging at 80 miles an hour. You’ve got to work incrementally, strategically. Now a success is, sometimes my successes can be very small. When I see an inference made, engine based off of some data, when I see an implementation.

[12:00] Some years ago I was working on a search project and the final result or search results that then could expand into graphs, visual graphs, and that was very exciting. That was one of those successes of the kind where it was not only something very helpful but it that aesthetic quality too that I think, so often much of what we do, it’s not just science, it’s a little bit of art and to me, success comes in, really realizing that I’m allowed to work on some of the world’s largest word games, in a way, and be part of that, but I would really say it’s challenging to get to those little successes or even the bigger ones.There’s so many hurdles and you can’t just expect that you’re going to be successful the first time.

[13:00] You got to have stick-to-it-iveness I’d say, really keep with it and again, keep bringing people on board and everyone’s at a a different place on the learning curve with all of this technology which has it’s own problems when you’re trying to do something different and you’re working in an experimental area. I even thinking, I haven’t quite made the transition to saying goodbye to the concept of semantic web or semantic technology and saying hello linked data. I’m more at the point of actually combining the two terms but I really would say like, just even getting to that understanding of how linked data works, how linked data can apply to, just that interoperability, those are successes and you have to be open to them and see them where they are and not expect fireworks at the end of the day.
Henrik: Keith, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Keith: [14:00] Well I think earlier I made the statement about being involved in way to just being open and being and experimenter, seeing yourself as a pioneer, but with DAM itself, like you’re really going to talk about the traditional, the digital asset management approach of course, it’s learn all you can about what’s available for managing rights issues and right-to-use issues and just anything to do with versioning and so on, that’s already available in data sets publicly. I think it takes a special kind of person. I don’t know if there’s a certain profession. A couple of years ago a friend published a book called The Accidental Taxonomist and I use that term now all the time, the accidental this, or the accidental that, but the accidental digital asset manager too because I think, especially in publishing, one way or the other you’re going to be involved in some kind of decision involving an asset and that decision can be a difficult one to make.

[15:00] It can be an easy one to make. So often I think, do you have the right set of tools, if you’re open to learning as much as you can. Just even simple things, like just get the basic syntax of RDF or some sparkle statements. You can really achieve a lot, I think. You can go into this feeling somewhat confident and you’re armed well. I would say just arm yourself, gird yourself as much as possible to always be working in an environment of change. It doesn’t mean you have to know everything. You don’t have to be expert in all these technologies. I think that’s a very special person but familiarity, many different data sets, many different technology, and by familiarity I mean just kind of a cursory familiarity.
[16:00] Then definitely find a niche, look for your niche, where you enjoy, what you enjoy doing. I’m very keen on just the linguistic aspects of what I do, then the automation that can be part of this. I really didn’t touch on that, the things like entity extraction and auto tagging, things like that, that can be applied in digital asset management, but that’s my niche and that’s where I feel comfortable. Certainly with all the assets that are being created there’s room for everyone I think, kind of wrap that up in a positive note. Just be open and positive.
Henrik: Great, well thanks Keith.
Keith: You’re welcome. Thank you Henrik.
Henrik: [17:00] For more on this visit anotherdamblog.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. For this and 180 other podcast episodes, visit anotherdampodcast.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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Another DAM Podcast interview with Kathryn Gronsbell on 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 Katheryn Gronsbell. Kathryn, how are you?

Kathryn Gronsbell:  [0:10] Good, how are you?

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

Kathryn:  [0:14] I’m the Digital Asset Manager at Carnegie Hall. I’m responsible for integrating our enterprise Digital Asset Management system into activities that support Carnegie Hall’s retention and use of digital assets.

[0:26] My work ranges from overseeing quality control and managing ingest procedures to helping manage and implement and collaboratively built taxonomy, but also working with staff across all of our departments, to make sure that their needs are being met by the technology that we have, but also by the policies in place to guide that technology.

Henrik:  [0:45] How does one of the most prestigious venues in the world, for both classical music and popular music, use Digital Asset Management?

Kathryn:  [0:52] To back up a little bit, in 2015 our archives completed a multi‑year digitalization project of legacy materials; so  concert programs, flyers, choral workshop recordings, radio broadcasts. Needless to say, the materials in our archives are pretty incredible.

[1:10] Being surrounded by this kind of material has been great and with 125 years of history, there is a lot to see and to share with people. We’ve just moved out of the project phase and into the formalized DAM program, which often includes content that is being currently produced or is in the process of being produced.

[1:29] This more sustainable and integrated approach to Asset Management is taking the requirements identified by Carnegie staff and trying to make them a reality. We expect to roll out our DAM system this summer, and we’ve just wrapped up our initial user testing with select advanced users from target departments. But our continued user testing and configuration will try to make sure that staff see the DAMs as a centralized place to not only deposit and discover content but also engage with it so anything that was created by Carnegie Hall staff or for the Hall.

Henrik:  [2:04] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Kathryn:  [2:08] The biggest challenge that I’ve seen so far is trying to have answers before you have questions. [laughs] Requirements gathering and understanding current workflows and pinpoints is really essential. It’s kind of saying, “How can I fix something, if you don’t even understand what’s broken, or not even broken, just could work better.”

[2:29] Part of the way that I tried to play down that challenge is looking at the content producers and asking, “What are they doing? What kind of questions are they asking?” That helps us to fill in the gap between providing a place to manage the version of what’s being produced, but also providing source content for those producers.

[2:47] On a positive note, the success for me has been the result of the mix of perspectives from staff members here. At Carnegie, I have a regular meeting with nearly every department, or at least every department that I can get my hands on.

[3:03] It’s a very close partnership with our IT department, who supports our DAMs initiative from a technical perspective, but also our interactive services, niche strategy, digital media, our education wing, which is called The Weill Music Institute, our PR department and our marketing creative services.

[3:22] As we get closer to staff launch I expect that list of departments to grow, maybe to the chagrin of my calendar and their calendar. Every conversation that I have with these staff members either reveals something new or reinforces a need that’s been expected from our DAM initiative. Without the input of all of these staff members, there would be no Digital Asset Management at Carnegie Hall.

Henrik:  [3:45] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people inspiring to become DAM professionals?

Kathryn:  [3:49] Definitely look to how either allied fields or established fields are handling some of the same questions that we’re facing computer science, libraries and archives, traditional and emerging practices for conservation and preservation, the museum and gallery world, of course, and also community or grass roots based practices and concepts.

[4:13] One thing which I think is less of a popular opinion, maybe among the archivists and library folks, is looking at the commercial sectors, so broadcast and media entertainment companies. Money follows money, so if we have a finger on the pulse of where a lot of investment is being made in technology or structures or infrastructure, we kind of have a good idea where things are going and I think it puts us in a better position to have those conversations.

[4:43] Again, it’s not really about having the same answers as these communities, but mining their answers for something that would work for us. The additional benefit of that is that the more questions and the more conversations that you have with these communities, the more visible that we become for them, so it opens up the door for more conversation and more communication, which also translates to more inclusion in their decision‑making process, hopefully.

[5:05] There is one last thing that I wish someone had said to me when I started out. For every person who this person is usually in a position of influence that tries to exclude you from a conversation, who tries to make you feel inferior or dumb for asking questions, there are 10 people who have your back and also want to know the answers to those questions.

[5:29] The more questions that we ask, the more voices in our community and the better of we will be. If we’re lucky enough to be a person that’s in a position of power, you have the responsibility to be as inclusive as possible and lead by example. I hope that’s helpful.

Henrik:  [5:44] It is. Thanks so much Kathryn.

Kathryn:  [5:46] Thank you.

Henrik:  [5:47] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to anotherdamblog.com. For this and another 180 podcast episodes, visit 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, Spotify, TuneIn, and wherever you find podcasts.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Brooke Holt on Digital Asset Management

Brooke Holt 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 Brooke Holt. Brooke, how are you?

Brooke Holt:  [0:08] Good.

Henrik:  [0:09] Brooke, how are you involved in Digital Asset Management?

DAM is a large part of my daily work. I’m a one woman DAM team.

Brooke:  [0:11] DAM is a large part of my daily work. I’m a one woman DAM team. Our system, which we call SEAL, houses photos, videos, logos, marketing collateral, and all the typical files you would expect to see.

[0:24] I’m the only team member with DAM responsibility and we have employees all over the country, so I spend a lot of time training them, serving them, maintaining the health of the system.

[0:35] I created the taxonomy metadata fields, standards, workflow, user communication, and overall aesthetics of the system. I also have a number of non‑DAM responsibilities, but they are not as fun.

Henrik:  [0:46] Can I ask what SEAL stands for?

Brooke:  [0:47] It stands for SeaWorld Entertainment Asset Library.

Henrik:  [0:50] Brooke, how does a chain of marine mammal parks, oceanariums, and animal theme parks use Digital Asset Management?

Brooke:  [0:58] We use our system in three major ways. One is an archive. Our company is fifty years old. We have a lot of physical and digital assets. So there’s an archive area of our DAM, where we can store files that have historical value but don’t need to be accessed regularly.

[1:13] As a sharing portal. We have teams and partners all over the world. It’s vital to have a central depository in which new logos or key visuals can be stored by anyone with the appropriate permission level.

[1:25] Some of our events are held simultaneously at three different parks, so putting them in SEAL allows us to have one place. It cuts down on sending large emails or worrying about who may or may not have the most recent version of a file.

[1:38] We have two children’s education television shows that air on TV. Each week there’s a new batch of promotional assets for those and I can easily put them in SEAL and get them out to all the various people that need them. They can continue accessing them.

[1:52] The third way is as a development tool. This is kind of new for us. We use it for storage and sharing hub for projects that are under development. So in this scenario a very limited number of users have access to the files as they develop maybe a new show or attraction.

[2:09] It’s unlike the rest of the system which is really final files. It allows us to be able to share things with partners and vendors in a more secure area than just using Dropbox or any file sharing system.

Henrik:  [2:21] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Brooke:  [2:27] For me, the biggest challenges are overcoming bad user and past user experiences. I overhauled a DAM system that previously didn’t have standards, an accurate taxonomy, or modern features. Any user that had previously encountered difficulty with the system was hesitant to give it a second try.

[2:45] Another challenge I have is what to keep and what to delete. Everything does not belong in there. It’s tough to balance what should be ingested. Do we want all B‑roll, do we want all of our RAW files, do we not, and how long do we keep these active before we move them into archive? Those types of things.

[3:01] Lingo is a challenge for me. We have teams that fall within the zoological field, entertainment, sales, legal, and a number of other ones. They all use different terminology for things. A good example is that someone in the veterinary field might come looking for a manatee calf, but everyone else that uses the system is going to call it a baby manatee.

[3:26] Making sure that I’m accommodating all those options. We have a lot of internal abbreviations for our Halloween event, Howl‑O‑Scream. Are people going to search for Howl‑O‑Scream or they going to search for HOS and not find anything?

[3:39] Then some of the big successes that I’ve seen are empowering people to do their job. When a user is able to get what they need without asking anybody else for help, that’s a huge success for both of us.

[3:51] Also security, so without DAM, you know we have very little security. People can have assets wherever they want and we have no way to monitor what’s happening. We have a EULA in place for non‑users who receive files from the system to just agree to our terms and conditions.

[4:08] We can track anyone who has shared a file, downloaded a file. I can immediately replace things that are outdated. I can get very granular with the controls over somebody who can see something, versus someone else may be able to download that or of those types of things, so improving security.

[4:23] Also culture change over my last year and a half there, I’ve created a DAM culture that has gone from basically, “Like ugh, I hate this thing”, “I can never find anything”, “This is the worse”, to more like, “This is so much easier to use, oh my gosh, it made a PNG for me”.

[4:40] “So and so should be using this” or “The rest of my team should be using it.” This is still a work in progress. I certainly don’t hear these things every day. Culture change is a big success for me.

Henrik:  [4:54] I don’t think any DAM Manager hears wild reviews every single day.

Brooke:  [4:58] Yeah.

Henrik:  [4:58] No worries.

Brooke:  [4:59] I’ll take one every six months.

Henrik:  [5:00] That’s fair. What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people who inspire to become DAM professionals?

Brooke:  [5:07] I would say DAM is awesome. I’ve been working in this field for about ten years and a variety of industries. I do not have a library degree or an IT degree. I have a degree in Spanish and a Masters in Linguistics.

[5:19] The beauty of that is that you can have any type of education background, basically. The field is a good combination of many things. My passion is photography, helping people, teaching, art, grammar, I love arguing about commas, organizing language, and then technology.

[5:37] Still working with people and also working with technology. I fell into this field I think a lot of people at this point have just kind of fallen into it, but it’s growing a lot. One of the things that I would like to see professionally would be more standardization, DAM job titles, and departments.

[5:57] It’s really hard to find positions because they might be called content manager, creative services, a librarian, a systems engineer. It can fall under a variety of departments, so maybe it’s IT, a business department, or marketing. The reality is that any major company is getting more and more digital assets, so there’s great job security in this field.

[6:20] I would recommend anybody looking for a DAM job, to just apply. There are not a lot of people that have tons of DAM experience. There are so many facets that if you have experience helping people, organizing files, using a CMS system, or manipulating digital files, that might be good enough.

[6:39] A lot of people just fall into this DAM jobs. I say it’s important to enjoy working with a variety of people, being able to listen to people, having attention to detail, and be passionate about technology and creativity.

Henrik:  [6:55] Thanks Brooke.

Brooke:  [6:56] You’re welcome.

Henrik:  [6:58] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to anotherDAMblog.com. If you have any comments or questions please feel free email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com.

[7:09] For this and 150 other podcast episodes, including transcripts of every interview, go to anotherDAMpodcast.com

[7:17] 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 Pete Chamberlain on Digital Asset Management

Pete Chamberlain 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 Pete Chamberlain. Pete, how are you?

Pete Chamberlain:  [0:09] Good. How are you, Henrik?

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

Pete:  [0:14] I work for a global software company and I am the director of marketing content infrastructure. I manage the Digital Asset Management system for our marketing organization through marketing operations.

Henrik:  [0:26] Pete, how does a global software company use Digital Asset Management?

Pete:  [0:31] We use our Digital Asset Management system as a central repository that allows us to provide global syndication of marketing content and provides us with the ability to maintain asset versioning and branding control.

Henrik:  [0:44] Pete, what are the successes and challenges with Digital Asset Management?

Pete:  [0:49] From a success standpoint, been fortunate that there’s been a pretty strong vision in terms of how we’re moving forward. The strategic vision that has led us down the path to being a centralized repository, being centrally managed, being centrally governed.

[1:04] One of the things that has really been successful for us is our ability to act as an internal service organization to the marketing department, and understanding how to work with people. It’s really all about a people business. People think in different ways. They search in different ways. They learn at different paces, different skill sets.

[1:30] We spend a tremendous amount of time in terms of overcoming any challenges to adoption that you might have for the system. We have an extensive enablement program help desk support. The first line of help desk support is actually managed by the business and not IT.

[1:46] One of the things that we found early on that was a challenge for our users was that they would send a note to the technical resources saying, “I’ve got a complication. I don’t understand how to do X, Y, or Z. I can’t get at my asset.” They would get a note back that may say something like “Works as designed.” And it’s just not helpful.

[2:09] What we did was we separated that and created a help desk that comprises basically us on the business side as business administrators to be able to work directly with, one‑on‑one, our end users so that we were sure that they had any of the training they need, any of the tips that they need.

[2:28] We’re really looking at how we could help them do their job more efficiently, more effectively, so that they would enjoy the benefits of a DAM system. One of the things that we look at, at all times, when we’re dealing with our end users. We get end users who can get pretty upset. They’ve got tight deadlines to meet.

[2:47] If they can’t find something, they can’t seem to perform a function they want, those are the people that we like to work with the most.

[2:54] They present an opportunity for success for the system and success for us as a team, because typically you can turn that person to not only an ambassador for your system, amongst their peers, but more importantly, those are the people that are passionate about the function of digital asset management.

[3:10] Those are the people that can find us with a road map of how to support the organization better. It’s their daily functions of their jobs that we’re trying to make more efficient. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.

[3:23] I really get back to the point that I think it’s, the technology that’s nice and slick. It still is really about people.

[3:30] We’ve had a significant amount of success with the adoption. We anticipate that will continue. We have a department that’s fairly small, but we do some work with 3,000 users in our end user community.

[3:42] One of the other success we’ve experienced with are Digital Asset Management system is we have a member of our team who has over 20 years of experience and expertise in master data management.

[3:54] Where this has come in useful is in managing metadata and data quality around metadata. We have the ability to monitor the quality of the metadata instantly. It’s a self-service for our administrators. They can look at the different parameters around the metadata, understand where there are gaps, make assessments, be proactive in managing it and really they’ve taken a process that’s typically very manual.

[4:25] We’ve been able to somewhat automate that and create a baseline of quality around the metadata. This is really important when you start thinking about if you start to connect your applications to your DAM and you’re serving content across multi‑channels making sure that it’s accurate so, that it serve in a proper way.

[4:44] Whether it’s across the organization or externally is key to the success of some of the upcoming programs that we have like market automation.

Henrik:  [4:53] What information would you like to share with DAM, the professionals and the people inspiring to be DAM professionals?

Pete:  [4:58] The key point that I’d like to share is that if you’re aspiring to be a DAM professional, whether you’re our DAM professional not to lose track of the fact that it really is a people business.

[5:10] Understand that it’s about relationships. It’s about working with people. It’s about enabling them for success. When all of those things go into place and you’re able to provide them with a solid operational foundation that efficient, and effective for them, look at the fact that in marketing operations specifically what we do great operations becomes great marketing.

[5:36] If we focus on the fact that it really is all about people, we’d be very successful in what we gonna do. Technology is almost secondary at that point.

Henrik:  [5:46] Thanks, Pete.

For more information on Digital Asset Management, log onto 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.

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

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