REVIEW: CMS DAM Blog Post

Henrik de Gyor (2012) chides companies for ignoring to factor in the ability to scale when considering a DAM system. “Do not think short term unless you enjoy frequent database migrations.” A successful company should prepare for growth and that means choosing tools that will grow with them.

Granted having a DAMS that scales is great, but how favorably will it scale when the time comes? There’s no way of knowing for sure. Sometimes the best-laid plans fail and migration is the only alternative. The possibility must certainly be considered because of today’s world of volatile technology. Some companies that offered DAMS in the past have either discontinued supporting their systems or they have fallen out of favor. There’s nothing like a software brick to weigh down a company’s work-flow.

Some companies, de Gyor continued, setup additional DAMS in response to their growing volumes of digital assets. This thinking is in opposition to the main reasons of having a DAM; it flies in the face of sharing the same assets across an organization.  I would like to add that running multiple DAMS increase the risk of duplicate assets.

Henrik de Gyor lists elements of a company that must scale. Noticeably absent from he list are preservation, lifecycle, data migration, and software migration. All four of these tasks need to be tweaked and updated if they are to remain important to their owners. I also find it interesting that little was written about ROT (content that is redundant, out-dated, or trivial) and methods to purge these unwanted assets (Putkey, 2012). I suppose this issue needs to be dealt with by individual companies. The process should be part of a preservation plan, put into place prior to a DAMS’ implementation.

Upon reading de Gyor’s post, I want to adopt this mantra: “If you cannot search, you cannot find. If you cannot find, you cannot use, reuse nor repurpose.” The phrase situates searching as the most important element of asset retrieval. For it to be perfect, though, shouldn’t the words “the way you want to” be added after search? After all, there are many methods of searching. We should use the one that works the best of us. In addition to the many reasons de Gyor listed, shouldn’t a user-group’s searching method also be scalable?

(please find both articles I discuss referenced at the end of this blog entry)

Today I made an interesting connection between Peter Norville’s (2012) Understanding Information Architecture PREZI and Mark Davey’s (2012) blog entry about Enterprise silos, which were both linked to from the DAM Foundation’s website. Now that the public is using a variety means of accessing urls — via social networking, a sites main web page, etc.– there are multiple points, or “front doors”, that companies must build and maintain. This is accomplished by making sure that a company’s outward facing information is consistent and accurate. Davey and Norville both point to a result from a paradigm shift in the public’s retrieval and consumption of information. Many of have called this new model web 2.0. Davey finishes by stating that silos are no longer inevitable. How are they inevitable? It would seem his blog entry is a teaser for a webinar he is hosting on the subject entitled The Coming Fall of Silo Information and Thinking or Web 3.0.

The disadvantages of silos have already been discussed. According to Henrik de Gyor, they prevent assets from being shared across a company. This reduces the asset’s value, even increasing company expenditures if employees must recreate or repurchase the asset. Although DAMs are powerful tools that enable sharing of assets, they are as effective as the users make them. For example, some companies have many different DAMs for no reason. Each tailored to a silo. This defeats the purpose of a DAM and misses an opportunity to save the company money. The sharing of approved logos, speeches, and videos through a DAM ensures every branch of an organization is communicating the same information. A consistent representation promotes a source’s credibility and brand.

Conversely, there are situations where silos may be unavoidable such as within the U.S. defense department, where silos are used for security. The strategy nullifies any breach/hacking attempt from one silo into another. Any other organization can attain access control through permission-based logins. This promotes security and allows DAM administrators to track user date for analysis.

There is a rapidly growing trend of releasing control of information to users. The public has come to expect it. Apple’s marketing relies on this strategy. It would seem that social networking is beginning to effect the way enterprises work internally. Sharing information within a company is being accepted as a means to success. I’m looking forward to discovering how Mr. Davey defines web 3.0 and what arguments belie his assertion that it is around the corner.

REFERENCES

The End of Information Silos. (2012). Retrieved from http://blogs.adamsoftware.net/Webinars/TheEndofInformationSilos.aspx

Understanding Information Architecture by Peter Morville on Prezi. (2012). Retrieved from http://prezi.com/aafmvya6bk7t/understanding-information-architecture/

DAM Blog Commentary: What About the User-base?

(click this link to view the original article)

http://tinyurl.com/82sskmm

I agree that governance, executive buy-in, and complying with the company’s mission are crucial factors to a DAM’s successful implementation. There has been much literature written about their importance.

However, one important factor that isn’t discussed in Gourlay’s article is user involvement. How were employees engaged with developing the DAM? A new form of asset organization must not be imposed on the workers, but integrated into their workflow. In some cases, a DAM will lead to workflow improvements, though these cases will involve getting employees to join in. Otherwise much time will be squandered adapting or grappling with any shift in the company’s system.

Did all of the stakeholders assist in creating a uniform Taxonomy that has been translated into silo- or country-specific terms. Without adapting keywords, tags, etc. employees in other countries or even in different departments will become confused. For example, A 3-D wireframe of Mr. Potato Head may be called something different in India than in England, or a marketing manager in Mexico will refer to the asset differently than a 3-D Maya artist in Los Angeles.

Faith Robinson’s implies that the various stakeholders will need to agree on a complimentary workflow. This is undoubtedly true, though the article chooses to avoid some of the interesting challenges that the internationalization of a DAM system presents. I am confident that Ms. Robinson is addressing these issues in innovative ways, though readers would have benefitted from hearing about them in this blog post.

Commando Team

In my work in video post production I have had experience with both successful and unsuccessful teams.  The successful teams had many, if not all, of the positive aspects that professor Ken Haycock lists in his 2007 webcast “Working in Teams”.  The most important aspects were a good attitude, commitment, and participation.  The groups would always have between five and eight people.  The unsuccessful teams would have no agenda and be comprised of horizontal employees (all management).  The meetings would last hours and be counter-productive.  Some of the unsuccessful teams would include an employee who would reject what others would say blocking any sort of constructive accomplishments.  It is refreshing to have watched Professor Haycock’s and Professor Enid Irwin’s webcasts on working in teams.  I think that many of the topics they reviewed can be applied to both school group work and team work done outside of school.  The one quality of good team work I would like to improve upon is productive use of conflict.  Professor Haycock defines conflict as a unavoidable stage of a team’s growth.  He discusses how it must be addressed by the team leader so that it can be used constructively.  By burying conflict, it does the most harm to the group.  My initial thinking was that I wanted to avoid any conflict for fear that it would undermind the group’s dynamic, but I see now that it should be something that is embraced and/or dealt with immediately so that the group can remain functional.  One of the elements of success that Professor Irwin lists is to use tools wisely.  The participants must all agree on what tech to use and to be able to use it at the very beginning of the process, otherwise it will impeded their work.

At one of my jobs, I was known unofficially as “special ops” (officially I was the company’s operations manager) and was tasked with coordinating and leading teams of employees to accomplish jobs in the video editing facility.  I looked forward to the job’s challenges and engaged well with the employees.  We were a team bent on getting the job done no matter the obstacles.  I utilized some of the skills (mentioned above) successfully.  However, at another job, I spent much energy working in teams suffering from some of the barriers both webcasts describe.  I’m looking forward to applying some of what I’ve learned at these jobs with the information from the webcasts to have some rewarding experiences with teams in the SLIS program.

Mistaken Identity

Tonight, after a pint and a bite to eat, my wife and I went to see Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors” at Wadham College.  It’s a tale of mistaken identity where two sets of twins, unbeknownst to each other, end up in the city of Ephesus.  Each pair are master and slave and of course they are played by the same actors.  However, the characters are played differently enough to tell them apart.  At the end of the play, the truth is revealed in a tidy way by introducing the second set as puppets.  Most enjoyable, especially amongst the gardens of the college.

The Incredible Bodleian Library

One of the most exciting reasons to be in Oxford is the Bodleian Library.  I am particularly interested in it because of its immense collection and the challenge it poses to digitally preserve.  Currently the Oxford Digital Library (ODL), through various sources of funding, is digitizing parts of the collection.  I write “parts” because the collection is over 11 million items strong and takes up 117 miles of shelving.  Oh, boy.  Where to start?  What standards to set up?  What metadata scheme to use?  What goals to set?  Who will the digital library serve?  How will they access it?

I’m looking forward to learning more about how the library is addressing these questions.  As an aside, I am interested to learn that King’s Library was involved in a study regarding the feasibility of using OCR in digital preservation (http://www.odl.ox.ac.uk/collections/ocr_study.htm).  King’s College is one of the only colleges in the world that offers a masters in Digital Asset Management.

Fun anecdote:  Over 1.5 million items are currently stored in locations outside Oxford, including a disused salt mine in Cheshire.

Hullo!

Welcome to my blog!  I have recently moved to Oxford (UK) from San Francisco (US) with my wife and four-year-old daughter.  I am enrolled in a distance learning program at San Jose State University (MLIS).  This blog will be about my experiences at Oxford, what it is like learning online, and some random thoughts.  Please share your comments and ideas. – Cheers, Ian Matzen