We love users…no really…we do!

I’ve been neglectful. My mother will be most disappointed with me, but I do have a valid excuse in that the MADAM world, ( the masters degree that is), has been all consuming and all the words I had in my head have been poured onto pages talking about repositories, preservation, DAM implementations and the pitfalls of choosing the wrong vendor. So my vocabulary was exhausted. I was all DAMmed out.

However, there is light at the end of tunnel! The final essay for the next few weeks is completed and I have time to devote to extolling the virtues of DAM once more and share a few words.

So, the words, well word, for today is users. Love them or hate them they are the folk that can make or break your system. There are the users we love, those who embrace change, who love technology, who want to champion systems and who can see the future and that future is DAM!

Then there’s the other users. Those who have lived and loved their analogue filing folder based workflows for years. Those who say about your shiny new well implemented DAM system, ‘I hate it’, or ‘it doesn’t work’, or ‘I can’t find anything’, or ‘why do we have to change things?’, followed by foot stamping and knicker twisting.

Now you may find these users annoying, irritating, heck you might even want to shout at them, “hello!! Wake up and join the real world you Luddite!” but restrain yourself. Often these people struggle with change and new systems because they don’t understand them and can’t bring themselves to admit it or to tell you. Change scares them, the future is scary, new technology even scarier, and perhaps their reluctance comes from them not figuring out how your wonderful DAM system works and how it can help them in their day to day life.

Be patient with these users, take a deep breath, sit down and listen to what they have to say. Identify their needs and teach them what they need to know. Communicate, train them, empathize, train them and embrace and train them, and by the end of it you could find they become the greatest advocates of your system.

Or not….But hey, at least you tried.

A valuable lesson in DAM

Firstly apologies for the delay in transmission. Apart from the festive period taking up quite a lot of energy, and I was even rather reserved this year with hardly any over indulgences, ( and I do have to give thanks to Bob the turkey for being so delicious), but my actual reason for the break was I was getting over the shock of FHM, (that’s Fluffy Handcuff Monthly), imminent demise!

Yes, they are stopping printing my favorite magazine! Admittedly it wasn’t my favourite to start with, but over the past months I have come to enjoy their snappy editorial and intriguing photography. I’d even come to like the colour pink. Without them my life will be a little emptier and I won’t have anything to taunt my mother with. Also if I fail my MA in DAM then I have little background reading for my ‘other career plan’.

With such dramatic news impacting on my life I was forced to investigate further. Why on earth would they stop publishing what is admittedly a niche, but rather entertaining magazine. After many serruptitious investigations, I managed to speak to their current editor, Ilene Over, and her revelation was shocking.

Apparently its because they only had enough money to commission a very limited amount of unique content, and this was done in such a rush by inexperienced people that they had a huge amount of material, but no management of the file types or how it was stored. So all this material had been sitting on CDs and the editors lovely, but not altogether bright editorial assistant had decided to label all the discs with lovely multi coloured labels, and stack them in a beautiful pattern on her south facing windowsill. The sun poured in, and the viability of the discs poured out.

It all came to a head, in October when they wanted some photography for their calendar and found the discs were unreadable. All that content. Lost. Forever.

‘If only you had got a DAM system’, I told her. ‘or a good preservation workflow system’
‘Yes’, she answered through gritted teeth, “or an assistant with half a brain”.

A valuable lesson for us all I think. DAM or half a brain. Maybe you need one in order to have the other.

Migration: African savannas or digital lifespans?

Sorry for the break inn transmission, my time has been occupied with annual migration from one sanctuary to a new one which, knowing the world we live in, will only be a safe haven for the time it takes for a software CEO to demand an increase in profits.

Imagine if you will the African savanna, or the northern plains, and the annual move of millions of animals from one exhausted feeding ground to fresh pastures guaranteed to see them through the harsh season they face.

Picture then the hot, humming computer room, the head of IT, surrounded by his faithful minions, heads in clammy hands, bemoaning the fact that they cannot retrieve data from a disc because the powers that be a year earlier had not recognized that which the most basic animal does, the need to migrate in order to survive.

As Borgman quite rightly states in Scholorship in a Digital Age, “Migration planning should be part of the initial design of any project to create or convert digital content”. Quite right I say, however when planning a DAM system how many people factor in the cost of keeping their data accessible for the future. It’s scary if you have a system which stores images, video, documents, original design files, illustrations, webpages, flat plans and workflows and budgets and… Well the list is endless, you are at the mercy of not only the hardware of your system, but each of the above software companies. How do you know that image you open so reliably now in Photoshop will work in the next version, or the next ten versions? The answer is you don’t. But you can at least give yourself a fighting chance by ensuring that you implement a good migration policy. And that doesn’t mean having an old Mac running first version OS9 with quark sitting under your desk, (yes, I do have that).

Some would say that it’s about writing off some of your past, some material is expendable, but then we go back to the preservation argument, (and we all know where I stand on that). Migration can be expensive, but then so can losing all your assets. There is nothing simple about migration either. Each time you migrate a file it potentially alters. You could lose the information which allows the file to be found, or to make sense when opened, and that once again will raise the question of if an asset is valuable enough to warrant the work needed in conversion and metadata tagging to ensure it retains it’s integrity. There is no easy answer to migration, it’s a necessary part of all digital systems, but very much an invisible part that the day to day user doesn’t have to think about. They search for something, they find it, they open it, and it works. The day they go through the searching, finding, opening and it doesn’t work will be the day you hear about it, and wish that the migration had been in place.

When planning a DAM system the initial part is so much about the sexy side of it all, the cool interface, the money it will make you, the time it will save you. But if you don’t ask the question about migration early on then you will find yourself picking up the very costly pieces later on. Migration isn’t something you can all of a sudden decide to do five years down the line, because unless you have gone through the process of altering your files into a simpler more readable form then you may not even be able to open them. Migration isn’t about magically transporting yourself and your files into the future skipping the miles in-between, it’s about the process, the ground covered, no stone left unturned to ensure you do it properly. It’s a long hard slog, with the dust of the faster members of the herd in your eyes.

And with that in mind I shall return to my own savanna, populated not with elephant, antelope and giraffes, but instead with indesigns, jpegs and documents, and hope that they, like their animal counterparts, will find a safe haven in some fresh ground that will allow us all to see them in the future.

Dictionary asset management, or, ‘make it up as you go’.

So, just to prove that I am very serious about my studies to become a MADAM, I put down my riveting copy of fluffy handcuff monthly, (yes, I am still keeping the contingency plan active), and I picked up my required reading for that week and dear Mr Upwards paper. When I put it down, (two days later, with a headache and the need to lie down), I couldn’t settle. I reached for FHM ( that’s Fluffy Handcuff Monthly, and not that popular mens title), for a little light relief, I couldn’t concentrate. And then I realised that it was because I had actually learnt something from my reading of Upward. Unfortunately I don’t think it was what he intended me to learn about life cycles and space time continuums, but instead how it is right and proper, in fact dammed essential in our day to day lives in the world of DAM to create our own language.

In my day job myself and a couple of like minded individuals do spend our time in meetings trying to introduce new and exciting words into the discussion. The fact that these words may not exist in the real world we do not feel is an obstacle, rather it enhances the challenge and can decide who is buying the first round of drinks at the next visit to the pub.

In light of my above revelation I felt it only right and proper to try and make a starting point on the creation of a new language for us MADAMs, and even those digital asset managers out there that I know from our years of moving in similar circles. At least then we can talk in public and sound even more like we make the world of assets move using smoke and mirrors. Anyone out there who wants to input go for it. In another installment I shall publish the best, (or all of them if I get less than 10 responses)

I’ve given it a go, here’s a few I came up with

Assetini – a very small asset management system, or one that holds only thumbnails.

Interassetability – assets that can talk to each other.

Groperdata – something which can covertly insert itself into every line of every metadata schema, you only realize when you look at your database and get a clammy feeling at the back of your neck.

Obliterdata- accidental deletion of an asset.

Obliteruser- deliberate deletion of a particularly annoying user by a digital asset manager.

Invisasset – something that once loaded onto the system will never ever be found again.

[insert deity here]damkvetch- traditional name used by digital asset managers to describe a user who complains a lot.

So there’s a little starting point. Knock yourselves out!

Everyones doing it, but no-ones talking about it

No, I’m not talking about the Victorians and sex*, but about rights management and copyright. Along we blithely plod in our world of DAM, archives, preservation, but rarely do I hear anyone mention the C word. And why is that, considering that copyright should one of the drivers behind our holding and distribution of content?

I think there are many reasons, not least because it’s complicated. And it gives people a headache. Having spent years talking to both contributors and commissioning editors I know that each dislikes the subject with equal degree. The word ‘rights’ comes up and leads to pink faces and uncomfortable shifting in their seats followed by whispered conversations and eventually settling on something neither particularly wants but doesn’t feel they can ask for a change. It’s like getting a raw steak in a restaurant when you asked for the veggie option and being too ‘english’ to complain.

With the advent of digital platforms for what were traditionally hard copy materials the issue has once again raised itself into the spotlight, with contributors asking how many times work should be used for their one off fee. It’s a valid point, that some businesses are choosing to bury their heads and ignore, not just publishers, but also suppliers of digital content such as picture libraries.

Rights are an important fact of our daily creation of material as well as our past so we need to get over this reluctance to express ourselves. Let’s get some perspective. Talking about rights doesn’t create a life and death situation. If you are a contributor and you disagree then express yourself, same if you are a commissioner. They point is in how you do that, communication is the key. The end result should be that we all want to see that material displayed and held in it’s best light, to pay a fair price for it, and not having the ability to give on either side creates a situation which is useless for all concerned.

The key to having content for our future, and protecting that content adequately, all comes down to having that conversation at the start of the process. We know so much more now, we can future proof both our contributors and the material they produce by negotiating something which guarantees the contributor recognition, some security that the commissioner is serious about protecting that content from misuse, and in turn the contributor can give their guarantee that future generations can have access to their valuable material in 100 years time. Going back to my earlier blog about preservation this material being created doesn’t just have a commercial value in the present day, but also for future generations. Personally I would be mortified that an excellent piece of work, either created by myself or commissioned by me, was lost or destroyed post my lifetime because I dug my heels in when negotiating rights. I realise the reality of commercial gain may make the above argument seem rather altruistic but a lot of my time at the moment is being spent with the archivists of this world, and I can see how difficult a lack of foresight regarding rights affects their world and therefore the world of us all. Imagine if you will the British library telling you that you cannot have that book you want because the creator or publisher didn’t want to talk rights at the time.

Lets not assume that the other knows what we are thinking when we are in a rights situation. As my dear dad would say ‘to assume is to make an ass out of u and me’. I know that copyright in some form has been around for 300 years, but let’s not live in the past, and be like the Victorians. Let’s talk about it now, up front, and avoid any unwanted mistakes in the future that we will come to regret.

* bringing up this line is my one way of inserting the word sex into any speech I do when attending symposiums. I feel it gives me an edge over the other speakers. **
** or not…

Preservatives

Preservatives, we both love and hate them. Put them in our food and we complain about them, don’t put them in there and we moan about our bread going mouldy. It’s a no win situation really.

So how about preservatives when it comes to the staple of DAM in magazine publishing? DAM is seen traditionally as being more of a workflow tool, something to get data in and then out again in the blink of an eye whilst lowering the costs and adding to the profit of a title. But how many are factoring the preservation and archiving process whilst wending their merry way between print and digital, profit and loss. The question arises when we think about cost and value. It costs to keep everything, to input metadata, rights information, to store an asset in meaningful way isn’t cheap. And how do we know how much value that asset has in the future. If you don’t own it is the value reduced? How do you value history? Do you pay to keep something that commercially has no value to a company through resale or reuse? It all comes down to money.

Or does it? How about foresight and heritage? Should we wipe our history just because it offers us no immediate ROI, even if we are talking about a magazine that sells to 10,000 people?

Coming from a commercial background the money person in me says that there is no point in keeping that content. Too expensive and not enough value. But who am I to judge the value of that material? My opinion on fluffy handcuff monthly* is not that of the readers, the ones who faithfully buy and keep their copies for posterity. Who am I to say that the content they enjoy is any less valuable historically than something that sells in the millions and has been going for 100 years.

I think the point is that history belongs to us all, there will be something within every archive that will touch us us individually and speak to our past. Each company that holds an archive waiting to be preserved should have the right and investment to take that content and put it in condition where the future generations have access to their past. History is not all about stone tablets, paintings and books, it is also about the webpages created on 9/11, the TV programme with your granny in it, the magazine that had an interview with your idol, the digital photograph that captured a singular defining moment. Let’s make the effort, find a a way to keep it, and maybe the future generations will thank us for it.

*fluffy handcuff monthly is copyrighted but at the brand is available at a price.

Becoming a MADAM

Ok, the title of this post could be a little misleading. Let’s have less thinking of ladies of the night and more thinking of digital assets and you’ll be half way to the right place. Though I do have to confess, as I did to the tutors on my first day at university, that one of the reasons for doing a Masters in digital asset management would be that I got to become a madam at the end. At least I have another career choice should the following years studying go horribly wrong.

At work I am getting the response from people of complete disbelief that such a course actually runs. I think they have so many years seeing me as the face of DAM that they think I’m making all this up and instead of studying I’m off skiving round soho window shopping for racy outfits to fit my up and coming madam profile. Trust me guys, I am at uni. I just got the invoice to prove it!! (who knew you had to pay to go to school, when I was last there we wrote with slates and chalk).

So here’s to a starting point of digital, data, information, stores, files, XML, metadata, objects and the meanings of all the above etc etc. (To be on the safe side I’m also reading in depth articles about the pro’s and cons of fluffy handcuffs.) Lets see if my scintillating commentary can hold anyones interest for more than a total of five minutes.
Enjoy!

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.