There are several DAM podcasts available. Now Another DAM blog is available as a podcast with each blog post to be read by the author himself. If that was not enough to interest people in listening to Another DAM podcast, the author is adding brief interviews with members of the global DAM community. This is an ongoing podcast series about DAM professionals by DAM professionals.
In the past few years, I have been asked a lot of questions by people…
“Who are you doing this for?”
“Who really reads this stuff?”
“What is in it for you?”
“Why do you do all this for free?”
“Why do you care so much?”
I wanted to take the opportunity to explore these questions and explain…
A few years ago, when I started working with Digital Asset Management (DAM), there were a few conferences, a few books, an expensive journal and experts who knew what they were talking about. All those still exist, but now DAM is growing.
Who are you doing this for?
It all started when I was frustrated and had very few people to discuss DAM with (how many of you can relate to this?). I learned about DAM myself, I volunteered to work on DAM, but in the past, found it difficult to communicate with people who knew little or nothing about DAM. I learned how to explain why DAM is important. I also wondered why I could not find much on the first-hand experience with DAM explained, specifically in the user and administrator perspective of Digital Asset Management. I knew I was not the only person with this question. So, out of frustration, I started blogging about DAM.
After my second blog post, I was contacted by people who could relate to what I wrote about and they love/hate my blog to this day. I was even offered to be paid to blog for them. The day I drafted my first blog post, I decided early on that my blog was for everyone to share openly and learn about DAM in the user and administrator perspective. I do not talk about using DAM product X or DAM vendor Y, but rather I stay vendor agnostic. In order to stay vendor agnostic, I would not take money from DAM vendors (and I still don’t). If you have read my blog posts before, you will note I hold very little back and I am very open about what I talk about.
Who really reads this stuff?
Literally, thousands of people all over the world read my blog posts every month. My blog is aggregated on other sites which also get a lot of traffic. Some of my posts are more popular than others. Content is king. I deliver a fair amount of content in many of my blog posts. There are other DAM bloggers as well. I happily list them on blog roll when I find out about them. Sharing the experience is good. DAM is all about sharing. I know most people read about DAM during weekdays (I don’t blame them), so that is when I normally schedule new posts to appear. DAM users, potential DAM users, DAM vendors and even DAM analysts tell me they read my blog regularly.
What is in it for you?
When I have the energy, time and a DAM related idea to write about, I blog about it. I do this on my spare time. Blogging is a hobby. DAM is my career. Due to the popularity of my blog posts, I am invited to speak and moderate at conferences around the United States. When I go to events, I get to meet like-minded people…eager to share experiences and best practices about DAM. If I have a DAM idea to blog about, but don’t have the time to blog about it, I make a quick audio recording with a speech-to-text app which sends me an email with what I said, so I can revisit it later when I do have the time.
Why do you do all this for free?
To this day, I am not paid to present at conferences nor to blog. Yes, that is correct. I did not charge the people I mentored on a monthly basis either. I get motivated by helping others understand the subject. If someone really wanted me to consult for their organization, they could ask me directly. For the most part, I write in general terms about DAM. My generosity of information pays a multitude of dividends. People have told me and written that I happen to be one of the top bloggers in the field of Digital Asset Management. I do not believe this is by accident. How do you communicate you are experienced and knowledgeable about a subject such as DAM? hint: you genuinely share that knowledge by blogging about it. People read and hear about it. People recognize what you write makes sense. People learn and benefit from what is shared. And you repeat this often.)
My goal was write and share 52 blog posts per year. Done.
Why do you care so much?
Yes, someone actually asked me all these questions. I love this question so much, it inspired me to write this specific blog post. Why should I care so much? Why should anyone care about the DAM community? Not only will you learn first hand you are not alone in thinking about and using DAM, you will become part of a group of people who want to learn, get/give feedback and share experiences. It can be a career. It is for me and many others. You will soon find out I am not the only one. These days, it does not matter where you are geographically located because you can be a member of the DAM Community in person and/or online. What matters is whether you are willing to learn and share your interest in Digital Asset Management to not only survive, but thrive with DAM.
Let us know when you are ready for consulting on Digital Asset Management for your business.
Everyone who uses the DAM should take pride in sharing their work in their DAM with other users. The organization owns the DAM and they are responsible for it. When it comes to having a go-to person, it comes down to the:
Stakeholder (or sponsor)
Lead who runs the system based on the needs of organization
Of course, there is a stakeholder in your organization who:
Champions the idea and clear vision of having a DAM in use
Funds the project of acquiring and implementing a DAM within the organization
Requests the DAM to meet specific high level business needs and use cases for at least one group/department in the beginning
Approves the scaling and fosters sharing the DAM and its assets across departments in the organization
Requisites a small team to be assembled and work on DAM
Stops the bickering between groups. Everyone works within the same organization with similar goals set by stakeholders when it comes to digital assets and can share what they have
Budgets for the DAM continually to meet the business needs of each fiscal period
Owns the DAM as an ongoing business solution
It is up to your organization to decide who that person happens to be and where the accountability lies. It could be a C-level executive, a Vice President, a Managing Director or whomever has the authority/approval to do this for the benefit of the organization and its clients. They should understand the value of a DAM and, in turn, be shown this value (in a report or dashboard) as the DAM is used within the organization.
At least one person manages the DAM and often reports directly to the stakeholder. They would oversee the daily operations, train and support users. They are not simply a database administrator, but someone who understands the use cases for the DAM solution, how users should use the DAM and help meet the organization’s business needs involving digital assets.
Some people believe Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a temporary task. However, I would caution them with the following questions to truly answer this for themselves.
Are you only accumulating digital assets on a temporary basis? (did you stop accumulating, creating, using, reusing and/or re-purposing digital assets?)
Are you seeing any less digital assets over the past few years? (regardless of whether you outsource some of these tasks or not)
Are you finding it easier to locate all the digital assets created or acquired by your organization over the past few years? (Research shows that is not the case)
Have you seen a complete stop in the production or acquisition of digital assets for any purpose? (while you still have a job and your organization is not bankrupt yet)
Is the rest of the work on your organization’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution a temporary task as well?
The answers to these questions are likely the same. What is the word I am looking for? No.
There are exceptions, of course:
You could live in cave with no internet connectivity(and happen to read this blog on printed paper)
More likely, you really did not stop to think about it that way.(And that’s okay because this blog was written to help inform you.)
Those results are quite clear as well. Since most people answered daily or weekly, it seems DAM is an ongoing task. Sometimes, it is even a constant business need.
If we have multiple projects with several production cycles creating or acquiring more digital assets and this is ongoing on fairly regular basis, where does the temporary task of digital asset management fall in the equation?
And this was budgeted (with time and money) as a temporary task, right?
Oh, forgot to do that again so the next project will pick up the slack?
Wait, we need some of those assets NOW (in the middle of this project or another project), but they are nowhere to be found because we have not uploaded/ingested them to the DAM yet. That’s okay, we’ll get to it as soon as we get through the other temporary tasks. Meanwhile we’ll burn more time and money recreating/reacquiring the same assets repeatedly.
We have over-inflated budgets for a reason. We will always have over-inflated budgets for every projects, but we don’t get to those temporary tasks. This is a cyclical pattern, even for temporary tasks. And that is why we have temporary positions for temporary tasks because we don’t want consistency or accountability (these are very long words rarely followed).
Wait a second, how would other project teams know these digital assets already exist?
How would project teams search and find what digital assets were created or completed or cleared for use if that temporary task is not accomplished.
How will we volunteer someone to do this temporary task. Repeatedly. And they will know what to do based on all that documentation available, right?
If you answered ‘DAM is not a temporary task,’ you are ahead of the class. Congratulations. You likely understand that DAM involves a regular set of tasks which are part of the production/archival process today. DAM is often an ongoing task.Why would you hire temporary help to do these regular, ongoing tasks?
Is it because you can’t find anyone experienced enough, skilled enough and/or willing enough to do this type work? Where are you looking?
Is it budget issue? (Are you really expecting your budgets to get better “soon” and then make it a priority “someday”?)
Is it a time issue? (Keep waiting so it will only get worse and cost more to fix.)
That will change as soon as the mindset and training of your organization does. It should start with the top of the organization mandating this going forward.
Don’t believe me? Want to continue ignoring the issues? Be forewarned. There will have a rude awakening in the coming future if you do. Here is a refresher in case you forgot why you may need a DAM. It helps to use a DAM properly too.
Let us know when you are ready for some vendor neutral consulting on Digital Asset Management.
Another DAM Blog 