Henrik de Gyor
What companies/organizations have you worked for as a DAM professional? What was your role at each?
Starting in 1999, I was a digital photojournalist using similar tools to DAM to archive all my photographs shot and applying metadata. The DAM tools did not have the scalability needed for the variety of publications I worked for as a staffer. I realized that creating media, while more fun and adventurous, did not have much of a prosperous future compared to the future of managing digital media, which few want to do. I purposely took the path few wanted to do.
In 2004, while working for an international finance organization, I was introduced to my first DAM system used internally as a power user and uploading mostly photography, metatagging images I took, and delivering those images to external media outlets and governments worldwide.
In 2006, While I worked for a for-profit education company, I pushed the efforts to customize and configure its first SaaS DAM. Then I managed the daily DAM operations where all of the audio, video, text, graphics, and photos were used in every modularized lesson offered for the Pre-K through college courses the company created and delivered.
Later in 2012, I consulted in New York City for various companies needing help with their first or next DAM system.
A few years later, I started Another DAM Consultancy. Now I continue to work remotely with DAM clients worldwide.
How do you describe digital asset management to others?
When done right, DAM provides the ability to search, find, use, reuse and repurpose digital media assets (like audio, video, text, graphics, photos) efficiently and effectively to where it needs to go. Even if you did not acquire, create nor upload a digital asset, you should be able to find it in a DAM within seconds.
What’s the most important thing for someone new to DAM to understand about DAM?
Findability and usability are key. The metadata is as important as the assets themselves. If you can not find your digital assets using metadata to your DAM users, you can not use it, reuse it nor repurpose it. The lack of accurate, consistent, and relevant metadata forces many to recreate or reacquire many digital assets, which slow down your organizations’ time to market.
How did you learn DAM? Any recommended sources?
There are many more sources now than when I started, like DAM News and several books about DAM. That frustration of lacking information while learning DAM is why I started Another DAM Blog and Another DAM Podcast.
What is your ongoing greatest challenge with DAM?
User adoption is the greatest challenge. User adoption requires:
1) user awareness to turn on some light bulbs, so people understand that DAM exists, what DAM is for, and that the organization has a DAM (or getting a DAM)
2) some training on what the type of users will do with the DAM
3) listening to a constant feedback loop to improve the DAM, digital assets within the DAM, and metadata embedded/associated with the digital assets
4) governance and
5) lots of hard work on the part of Digital Asset Management Professionals.
What is your vision for DAM? What will it look like in 5 years?
I think some DAM clients will outsource the metadata creation and the management of a DAM to contracted companies who make it their core competency to do this for their clients. I think AI tagging or autotagging will drastically improve by “learning” from the clients’ datasets. I believe within the next five years, some DAM systems will not only continue to be a central hub for digital assets but may become digital media engines to help create new digital assets based on its library of datasets by producing synthetic content to either inspire more creations and generating new digital assets never seen before.
What was your biggest mistake with regard to DAM?
Early on, my biggest mistake was not realizing that there are many different DAM users beyond just simple users (who search and download), advanced power users (who upload and tag assets too), and admins. Serving all DAM users varies based on the use cases of your DAM, your organization, and the audiences they serve. This mistake was remedied by creating and releasing modularized training based on each DAM task. Brief instructional screen capture videos were made available to any DAM user as part of a DAM FAQ showing the organization’s actual DAM interface.
What was your biggest success with regard to DAM?
Being able to help so many organizations using DAM across so many different sectors as a consultant by implementing, migrating, and optimizing how they use DAM.
If you weren’t doing DAM as a career, what would you be doing?
I would probably be doing a lot more writing and podcasting to help give other lesser-known professions and industries a voice.
What more would you like to learn about DAM?
I think we should become more aware of the limitations we imposed on ourselves, how we work with the systems around us, become very clear on why any of those limits are there, and truly learn from the lessons of how we worked before 2020. Only then can we break many more self-limiting beliefs to get our work more effectively and more efficiently, even remotely. That can make things even more available, more impactful and empower more people to use such systems to create better products and services.
You can read more about Henrik on his blog, Another DAM Blog – https://anotherdamblog.com/, his podcast, Another DAM Podcast – https://anotherdampodcast.com and connect with him on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/hdegyor/
This interview was published in DAM News on 5th May 2021. For more DAM News interviews, see the interviews index page.
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