Another DAM Blog

Blog about Digital Asset Management

Tag Archives: Henrik de Gyor


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Launching first Kickstarter project related to Digital Asset Management: Transcribing Another DAM podcast

I launched the first Kickstarter project related to Digital Asset Management (DAM).

The Project

We need to fund Transcribing Another DAM podcast. Over 120 episodes of this podcast series including 80 interviews with different professionals from various organizations. The goal is to transcribe these podcast episodes from audio to searchable text.

How?

Kickstarter is a crowd funding site for projects. Someone posts a project with a defined end result. People back the projects they believe in. In this case, project involves transcribing the audio podcast episodes into text.

No, we are not going to ask you to transcribe the audio for us.

A Transcription service will do all the transcribing of these podcast episodes and they charge for every minute of audio. There are hours of audio to be transcribed. This is why we need financial backing to pay for this work to be done and that is why I started this project to fund this effort.

Why?

Why do this? What is in it for you as a project backer? If you back this project with your funds and help make this project happen, you can get a reward depending on the amount you pledge. Aside from the rewards, you will be helping yourself and anyone interested in Digital Asset Management to have a full text version of most podcasts episodes, especially the 80 different interviews. These transcripts will be indexed and fully searchable so you can easily reference these podcasts and not have to take notes on what someone said. This also makes this more accessible to everyone for learning and enrichment of Digital Asset Management.

Rewards

If the project gets fully funded and we reach the goal of $3000, every backer who pledges at least US$20 to this project will get an ebook of all the transcriptions. The ebook will not be available to people who do not back this project. The ebook is a Kickstarter exclusive offer.

There are other very limited edition rewards offered. Check out the site for details.

Risks

If the project is not fully funded, does reach its goal, then nothing happens with the project. No transcriptions. No ebook. No rewards. All the money is reimbursed to backers. Move on to the next project.

I have taken in consideration that transcripts will need to be reviewed and that will take some time. There should be enough time to avoid delays in the timeline of delivering these transcripts and rewards by sometime in August. This will not be a rush job.

Am I done?

I am not finished creating more content and improving the site for users. Another DAM blog and Another DAM podcast will continue to exist. These will continue to be free of charge to access and reference for everyone.

I will continue creating more original content regularly since there is still plenty to talk about in the field of Digital Asset Management. There is plenty more to contribute and share. Some people who want this to go away, but I keep sharing more.

Are you ready to support these efforts of sharing more through this crowd funding effort?

Help support Transcribing Another DAM podcast at http://kck.st/YWTDPL


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I see your DAM trading cards and raise you

Recently, a company came out with their list of Top DAM Influencers and I am honored to be listed as one of them. Maybe the blog and podcast had something to do with it.

Then, during a recent Digital Asset Management (DAM) event, the same company introduced their first set of DAM trading cards based on their list of Top DAM Influencers. I see your DAM trading cards and raise you some DAM voodoo dolls.

What I am wondering is where are all the DAM voodoo dolls? Someone has to have these somewhere. Really. Think about it. A voodoo doll of each DAM professional could come ‘complete with a large set of pins.’ Every pin could be listing each of the common DAM challenges, issues and pitfalls. I would be curious to know who has these dolls and who is inserting the pins into each doll. If you are a DAM professional, how many of these pins have been inserted into your own voodoo doll? (I am not going to ask where these pins were inserted though)

Just imagine that large list of pins (challenges) to choose from. (Come on. We could either cry about it, ignore these issues or we can laugh about them and do something about it, right?)

  • Lack of user adoption
  • Plan? Where do you see a plan?
  • No file naming convention nor guidelines
  • Missing metadata
  • Lack of metadata field ownership and accountability
  • Lack of metadata consistently and accurately associated/embedded to digital assets, individually or as a group
  • Taxonomy oops
  • Poor search results
  • Search engine? What search engine?
  • Inability to filter  to relevant results
  • We do not have time for an audit. Breathing is optional as well.
  • Implementation delays
  • Contract oops
  • SLA does not cover this or that
  • No version control of metadata
  • No version control for digital assets
  • Siloed thinking
  • Why do we need to collaborate with people? I thought everyone worked on their own island.
  • How do you spell communication again?
  • Implementor has not touched a DAM before…oops
  • Budget woes
  • Lack of sponsor buy-in
  • Stakeholder dissatisfaction
  • Internal politics
  • Scope creep to include new requirements…daily
  • Lack of executive sponsorship/support/understanding
  • Forgot to illustrate  value of DAM when talking to sponsors
  • ROI just means ‘king’ in French
  • User interface confusion
  • Missing vital functionality
  • You want this to do what this time?
  • Forgot this is supposed to make our lives easier.
  • Loss of productivity
  • Unscheduled outages
  • Backup? What backup?
  • Term not clearly defined nor documented
  • No complete DAM Glossary of terms and definitions
  • Lack of information
  • Missing documentation for review
  • Lack of readily available training
  • Lack of ongoing support
  • Long hours
  • Unrealistic deadlines
  • And much, much more

All DAM professionals have experienced some or all of these challenges. Maybe more. These pins in our side are some of the challenges we face and these  become opportunities to overcome and succeed. DAM professionals have experience in resolving these issues.

Now, where did this metadata pin come from?

Where is your DAM voodoo doll? By the way, Happy April Fools Day.

What pins (challenges) are you feeling with Digital Asset Management?

Note that the author does not practice any voodoo. The author has been found to have a sense of humour. Insert another pin.

Let us know when you are ready for some vendor neutral consulting on Digital Asset Management.

 


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Can Digital Asset Management reduce liability?

During one of the many DAM events, a fellow Digital Asset Management (DAM) professional stopped me and asked whether I believe part of our job was to minimize liability within an organization. I answered yes. In fact, there are plenty of reasons why that is true and why organizations use this (in part) as another justification to acquire, implement and use Digital Asset Management properly:

  • The general nature of sharing digital assets within the organization (minimizing the cost of re-acquiring or re-creating assets) along with the permission structure per role/group (self-regulation) which can make digital assets known to many people and accessible only to those who should be able to use them (access control).
  • Use of Digital Asset Management with Rights Management for each use of a digital asset (yes, more than one use per digital asset can increase ROI) and can be part of a business plan.
  • Minimize the piles of work for general counsel (lawyers) by significantly reduce the amount of:
    • copyright infringements (where is the link to these contracts and terms as metadata?)
    • usage rights violations (where is the link to these contracts and terms as metadata?)
    • property/model release violations  (where is the link to these contracts and terms as metadata?)
    • over extensions of talent contracts (where are talent contract expiration dates kept and are they linked to the assets they appear in?)
    • mergers and acquisition of unusable digital assets which can represent a major loss in value (those assets could have been migrated into a DAM)
    • Paperwork (PDF is an ISO standard. PDF with good OCR is your friend. Paper is not a digital asset. PDFs often appear as digital assets in a DAM.)
  • Simplified discovery and internal disclosure of what assets were created vs. acquired for the purposes of rights management (a big liability per use of a licensed digital asset if not cared for properly). See US copyright law and digital millenium act when it comes to laws within the US. There is no international copyright law. Not surprising, but laws and regulations can vary per country. It is also not a secret that large media vendors are making a lot of  money pursuing violators once the fees exceed a certain financial threshold before turning on legal action since it can cost fair amount to do this in the first place. Yes, lawsuits are still one of America’s favorite indoor sports. However, many infringements and violations are settled out of court to avoid negative publicity and additional fees. In full disclosure, I am not lawyer nor have I studied law. I do know how to read though.
  • Information about digital assets and all of their usage (where and how these are used by the organization) should be clear and documented with the assets in the DAM. Tracking the assets can help as well. Here is a podcast interview where we touch on these points.
  • Many of these reasons save green. How much less time is being burned in searching and finding appropriate information in a centralized database with references to the source of the digital asset? What is that amount of time worth to an organization? What is that time worth when it comes to reducing the time to market for many digital assets in many media formats to be delivered across different marketing and sales channels nationally or even globally? Forget physical delivery of marketing materials which can be outdated or misprinted (another liability which can be managed/corrected through digital delivery…not email) by the time a new product or service is released publicly (and when it should be released).

As Digital Asset Management professionals, we are regularly in contact with legal entities because clients sometimes require guidance from a SME (like myself) on technical details and contracts which are sometimes written by a vendor to the client’s disadvantage. Some organizations vet all agreements through their legal counsel prior to signing them. While many attorneys can catch the bulk of the issues in a contract, technical details are something where they may require an experienced SME’s eye to catch technical issues, clarify into understandable English and help guide them to a more favorable position.

If you need vendor neutral assistance or advice on how to reduce liability with Digital Asset Management, let us know.

If you work with Digital Asset Management on daily basis, how do you reduce your organization’s liability with digital assets?


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Where is your DAM Glossary?

I have heard Digital Asset Management (DAM) vendors use a lot of words to describe their technology, their components, those configurations, the possible customizations and the variable functionality of their systems. What some DAM vendors are lacking when they use these exciting (and sometimes confusing) words is a concise, glossary of terms. In writing.

In a world with clarity, these words would mean the same thing between vendor X and vendor Y, but they sometimes mean something different. It sometimes depends on the vendor. Or the individual explaining it.

Some vendors like to confuse clients, but they will never publicly admit this. Why would any vendor (or anyone for that matter) want to confuse a client with special words to describe their systems?

  • They simply do not know nor ever bothered to ask
  • They forgot or simply missed that hour of training
  • They are too embarrassed to ask
  • They may have not been explained how to use the DAM themselves. Ever. (As mind numbing as this may seem, this actually does happen)
  • They are guessing and hope you do not notice
  • They come up with their own way of explaining it (which becomes a different explanation each time)
  • They will continue billing you as a client because the confusion is continually not clarified (yes, please do note the lack of ethics from some people. They know who they are. Shame on them.)

Since there is a DAM Foundation and DAM Coalition out there, maybe we could all work together on creating “…a global community of best standards of practice for Digital Asset Management.” This community (that could involve everyone in DAM) that “…brings together…” the best could create a global glossary of terms and definitions we could all use and understand in a vendor neutral sense. A compendium of DAM terms which is industry wide. This could help “…provide the best qualified advice and guidance for best practice and standards within the Digital Asset Management space.” How does that sound? Do I see any takers on creating such a free and open glossary of terms without any pop-up ads?

Some vendors can produce a short list of terms either online or upon request, but I dare them to have a complete compendium of all industry terms and acronyms even if they do not have that option or feature. I believe it would only be fair for each vendor to include a list of all terms they may use months down the road from their first canned demo, through contract negotiation, through implementation, through user acceptance testing, past go live and even past the final sign off of the system because that is just the starting point. It would only be acceptable to clearly define terms not listed on Wikipedia nor commonly used dictionaries with an understandable definition of what they are actually talking about. Anyone up for this challenge?

In the meantime, ask for the glossary. When you see terms missing, point them out and ask for clarity. In writing.

Whether you are a potential DAM user, a current DAM user, a business stakeholder, an analyst, a vendor, an implementer or anyone else involved in the DAM community, we might be able to know exactly what all these terms mean if they were clearly defined.

Of course, we can find a handful of existing DAM glossaries online (created by a few vendors), but these are unfortunately incomplete and occasionally use words in their definitions that are not clearly defined. Having a question which leads to confusion to end up with a lack to clarity is not the answer. Verbal definitions are not good enough by today’s standard. Instant clarity would be. A compendium of terms should be readily available online at all times, updated regularly (not on paper) and free of charge for everyone to use. Open disclosure as a standard.

Let us know when you are ready for some vendor neutral consulting on Digital Asset Management.

Where is your DAM glossary?