Ask Me Anything: Governance

Chris Lacinak: 00:00

What's up y'all. Welcome back to the DAM Right podcast

I'm excited to bring you something different today from my wonderful colleagues Kara Van Malssen and John Horodyski They recently did an AMA, or ask me anything, on the topic of governance a topic for which the importance really cannot be overstated

It's also a topic that can let's face it be a bit on the boring side

But the antidote to that is two fun lovely people like Kara and John

enthusiastically fielding excellent questions from awesome people just like you.

It was originally gonna be an office hour sort of deal

But we had so many people sign up from all over the world that we decided to turn it into an AMA.

We recorded it and now I'm so very happy to share it with you in this episode.

Before we jump in I want to remind you that me and the DAM Right podcast will be chairing an event that you will not

want to miss on May 7th at MoMA in New York City.

The event is DAS, the digital assets symposium and the focus will be on DAM in GLAM.

You'll be hearing from visionaries and practitioners in leading GLAM

organizations. And I gotta give a shout out to some of our amazing sponsors including Aprimo, Allied Vaughn, Acquia,

Iron Mountain, Aviary, and NBCUniversal just to name a few.

Head on over to digitalassetsymposium.com

to see the full list of stellar speakers, all of our phenomenal sponsors, and register for the event now. And

remember, DAM right because it's too important to get wrong.

Kara Van Malssen: 01:20

Welcome. Thank you all for joining today. My name is Kara Van Malssen and I am Managing Director, Go To Market at AVP and

I am joined today by my colleague John Horodyski, our newest team member at AVP So John's only been with us a little over. Well about a month now, right John?

John Horodyski: 01:41

A month now, yeah.

Kara Van Malssen: 01:41

Do you want to say hi and introduce yourself real quick?

John Horodyski: 01:41

Good morning, good afternoon,

good evening with this international audience. John Horodyski, Managing Director at AVP. I'm so excited to be a part of this Q&A, ask me anything, ask us anything on such great topics like governance. So happy Thursday everybody. Happy Thursday.

Kara Van Malssen: 02:01

Indeed so thanks for for being here really glad John could make it

So as you all probably noticed we originally sent out an invitation that said we're gonna do something That's a small group capped at five people and then we had way way too many people

register for that to work and we didn't want to like leave everyone out. So we said let's change up the format

Let's do an ask me anything. And so you got an email asking you to submit questions in advance

Thank you so much for your questions. We are gonna start talking through some of those questions.

Now I will say since this is about governance, DAM governance

we're really trying to keep focused on that topic. So questions that were a little bit outside of that

We may not be able to get to today

So we're really gonna try to stay on topic here,

but hopefully we'll cover some of those other questions in a future session.

If you like this session and you want to have more like it, please let us know.

Because we'd love to know is this good. Is this working? Is this helpful? Do you like it? So let us know

At the end obviously. Reserve your judgment.

So

So we have some of those questions queued up

Now we're going to talk through them

But we would like to invite some additional live questions

If you think of something you didn't have a chance to ask or you just didn't have a chance to submit your question in advance

We want to you know, leave the opportunity for further questions. So please use the Q&A feature for that,

if you don't mind. And then but we're gonna keep this chat going. So obviously just chime in and you know

Just put you know, whatever you say if you want to contribute to one of the questions by all means like add your thoughts as well

We want to hear from you. So please use the chat for that

All right. So to get us started we have a poll for you and we'd love to know the answer

So we're gonna get that poll going. Okay. So the question is are you doing DAM governance

currently?

Yes, or not quite. Those are your only two options.

John Horodyski: 04:16

Answer wisely. Choose wisely everyone. I think I know what the answer will be. What do you think Kara?

Kara Van Malssen: 04:31

I'm gonna I'm gonna stay silent on this. I'm gonna see what happens

I have a feeling but who knows. All right. Oh Wow, we got a 50/50 here, that's

John Horodyski: 04:42

We do!

Kara Van Malssen: 04:47

Like exactly

Whoa, is that what you thought we'd see John?

John Horodyski: 04:54

I thought it would be a little bit more in the not quites because the not quite is like a

Am I being graded on this or can I just like, but first and foremost, thank you for everyone for participating But well done. Well, this will help the conversation today and for the not quites,

as Kara said like if you have some other questions to ask, not quites, this is the time so

kind of love that, not quites. Yeah.

Kara Van Malssen: 05:17

In my opinion, it was kind of a trick question because you're always doing governance

You might you just might not be doing it very well So it doesn't mean it's it's it's not there. It's there. It's just you know, maybe not intentional or not

formalized or something like that. So there's always governance happening

ish, I don't know

John Horodyski: 05:40

Which begs the question

Kara, what actually is governance?

Kara Van Malssen: 05:45

Ah, so yeah

We want to start with a little bit of a like let's let's lay the foundation kind of question here. Nobody asked that question, but

we want to talk about it just to kind of make sure we're on the same page. So

my opinion on this for DAM.

That this is about it is the formalization of behavior around

system and data. And it's like a combination of those two things. And that's why I think it's really interesting in DAM, because there is a lot

of

knowledge that is published out there in the world in books on the internet, etc on this topic and,

and as it relates to our field, it's it's either kind of from a systems lens, IT governance or

from a data lens, data governance. There's a lot of both out there

But I think what's interesting about our world is it's the merger of those two things.

It's this it's the formalization of behavior around the system and the data.

And so I I have a couple of books that I'm going to share

at some point here, but one of my,

one of my favorites has this quote. It's a framework for establishing accountability, roles ,and decision-making authority.

And so it's kind of answering the question who decides and I think it's who decides three things

Who decides strategy, who decides policy, and who decides standards?

Because we need to know the direction the priorities in the scope. We need to know the rules, especially around the security.

And then we need to have the standards for the data quality and then you know that will guide daily operations

for the thing. And then it's also you know, who does what in that operational context like who is responsible for what it's really the the roles and responsibilities

is kind of how it's enacted and how those standards policies, etc are put to use.

So that's my

off-the-cuff definition. What do you say John?

John Horodyski: 07:51

I concur. There is a comment. There is a was that quote from Lisa Welchman's book Managing Chaos?

Kara Van Malssen: 07:58

Oh, you're too good.

John Horodyski: 07:58

Well done Denise

Kara Van Malssen: 08:01

Yeah, that is my favorite book, yes. Actually, so while we're on the topic

John Horodyski: 08:07

You have that at your desk, awesome. Look, okay this is book of the week for all of us. We'll put that in the at the end and referencing it or something

Kara Van Malssen: 08:18

Required reading and we're gonna put the link in the chat, but that is not in the right screen

John Horodyski: 08:24

Will let her know oh

Kara Van Malssen: 08:27

Here we go

This is the book managing chaos digital governance by design by Lisa Welchman This is not about DAM. As I said, there's not really like a book on this for DAM.

It's like you have to look to adjacent fields. This is about

digital within an enterprise. It's a lot about like websites and other digital properties

And that's the lens that she's coming from but everything in there

you just replace everything with DAM and it all applies. So, wonderful wonderful book

highly highly recommended.

John Horodyski: 08:59

I would like to say that with governance

I've always framed in the in the in the way of it's a way to mitigate and manage risk in an organization. Change is your friend changes constant. It's the one thing that's always gonna happen

So, how do we manage that change?

Is there a mechanism for people to get together on a regular basis to talk about these things make decisions?

If you don't get together in a regular basis things can happen off the cuff, on the sides

Whoopsie-daisies, we've added ten metadata fields because I just felt like it.

We have an upgrade for the DAM and didn't tell anyone. Whoops. There goes the assets.

So you need the mechanism to come together as a team. And I've seen many organizations, Kare of you have as well.

Those who have governance are far more successful for those who do not

So if anything can come out of today is you know at the corner of your desk being like oh

I'm gonna a buy that book potentially or read it or borrow it from your local library,

if it's available. And get some people together, let's talk about governance. It's a good thing. It's not an option. You gotta have it.

Kara Van Malssen: 10:00

Mm-hmm

Absolutely, so we get a lot of people here today coming with some challenges and so I'm gonna start with this first question, which is What are the most significant governance challenges for DAM admins, John?

What do you what do you what have you seen out there? And we have a lot of those kind of in our

questions and scenarios that are gonna come after her but what do you what comes to mind?

John Horodyski: 10:26

I mean so many challenges. I mean where do is one start?

I mean, there's lots of things we can consider here when you think about The challenges that one can face and one and also we as a team and many people in the color are both sort of solo

DAM individuals and sometimes you're on a team.

But it's the sort of the decision of who decides who is actually gonna decide and spoiler alert

Someone somewhere has to make the decision and it might be hard and it might be difficult and it might be necessary and it will

be necessary. But someone has to decide but sometimes when you're in a situation like this, it's like is it me?

Is it you? Who is gonna make this decision?

You know, so that's certainly a challenge that does appear.

One that I think Kara you and I have seen before many times is the

How do I say it? Too many cooks in the kitchen or potentially not enough cooks in the kitchen?

So governance is all about bringing people together. So certainly if you're on the call today, you're thinking well

how do I get people to even contribute? Oh, they're there

You will find them. The vociferous ones who are saying it should do this.

Come on board and join our governance team. Sometimes those people make the best

advocates for creating change. So sometimes it's the not to not enough cooks too many cooks.

Also, is there a top-down decision in making a process happening? Do we have people in certain aspects?

Are we getting the information coming out from power users or users in the system quite a lot?

Are you getting information coming down? What is the goal of this digital asset management system?

Is it linked to something else in the organization? So that flow, the challenge of not enough communication happening?

From both sides is something that I've seen a lot. So and again, what happens if we don't do this? The opportunity,

the negative opportunity for poor data. We always want to have quality,

authentic good data running through our systems. And of course, what else could that lead to poor user experience?

Huge fan of UX and UI user experience user interaction

This can lead to these things. Let alone the misuse, potential misuse, of assets in an organization.

So again, I repeat myself governance is good. It is.

Kara Van Malssen: 12:22

Yeah, 100% agree with all of it yeah, and so in my

experience where I've seen things really really stall a lot of the things you've already mentioned John like things will get stuck when There's no real clear

like final decision maker like the one who cuts through the noise when it's sort of swirling and

nobody's really deciding.

Then it's it's gonna get stuck and you're just gonna be sitting there forever,

meanwhile bad things are happening in your DAM, right?

Or nothing's happening, which is also bad. So that's not so good. Um, and

And so yeah, that's that's a bad one. And and and then you know, sometimes it's just where

people are making independent decisions because there's also not

it's not that yeah, it's a little different the last one. There's just not that oversight

at all. Like nobody this is that nobody's really doing governance scenario.

Everybody's kind of uploading whatever they want wherever they want, tagging

however they want. It's really not the experience that you're trying to create in a DAM system normally.

And so those are definitely cases where I see

that. And then and then it gets to that result as John said like poor quality data

equals poor adoption equals nobody likes the DAM equals wasted investment, and then it's like what are we doing here?

So yeah governance is good.

John Horodyski: 13:51

So many good things and governance is not an option and for those of you on the call today who were in that maybe not

quite category There's no greater time than now.

Well, maybe not now in 20 minutes or 30 minutes maybe but there's no greater time now to go back to some of your you know

fellow, you know collaborators and contributors at your organization and say I think we should start some governance council something something something.

Always an opportunity to start governance. It's good

All right

Kara, this is a

really good question. I'm gonna read this slowly.

After an organizational mergerm spoiler alert happens all the time.

So after an organizational merger a system migration and many many rebrands

Renames and structural overhauls. Oh golly. I'm tired,

I finally managed to secure buy-in from teams from the other side of the merger to start

utilizing our DAMS for institutional assets over a SharePoint and Dropbox

Huh?

What's the best way to sneak in governance concepts without making it seem as though it's adding more meetings to their calendars?

Are there successful passive governance strategies in your experience and opinion? Great question.

Wow.

Kara Van Malssen: 15:02

A great question

and it immediately inspired me to share another one of my favorite books on this topic.

Non-invasive Data Governance. This is exactly what you're talking about. What is a more passive model?

So here's a guy who wrote a book on that exact topic because governance is often

seen as like this kind of very heavy-handed, very involved like we have a lot of meetings type of thing.

You know, it's gonna take a lot of time

Um

And yeah, so I want to plug that one. This one is more on the data governance side.

But again, we are in adjacent fields to data governance. So I do think it's and by the way, am I breaking up at all?

John Horodyski: 16:00

You did I did for a few seconds?

Kara Van Malssen: 16:04

I got that your internet connection was unstable thing

so That I would love to also point you to

because I think that it's a it's a great book. And so what he talks about in that book is

that you know, really what you're trying to do is overlay something on two things people are already doing

So if you're if you're kind of if you're kind of formalizing behavior

These are with the people who already have behaviors around digital assets, right?

So they're the people who are you know, they're creating them, they're uploading them, they're tagging them, they're using them.

They already have a role to play here. So

some of those people, maybe not every single one of them, but some of them will have an interest in

participating in a little bit more

decision making to make it work best for them. Because it's very what's in it for me, right?

And what's in it for them is if you know you participate you're gonna get a better

you know your workflows would be better, your you know, your use of the thing will be better.

so kind of an as much as possible like a minimal amount of involving them but like it may give us

Something that's already, you know part of their job and it's not like you're doing an add-on thing.

So I guess I would just also say like governance isn't just let's get together and have a whole bunch of meetings.

It can be, but I think this book is interesting because he talks about it from a different angle where it's like no you have

to do this anyway, and occasionally you have to come talk about how we're gonna do it a little bit.

And so maybe there are

certain ways to and again like maybe not use the word governance and Lisa Welchman's book

she says I wanted to avoid this word, but there is no other word.

But if you need to avoid the word just avoid the word and get it more about you know

Hey, we need to make decisions around our you know, metadata fields or how do we update our taxonomy?

You know, could you come to this occasional thing?

So so as much as possible, maybe that that approach could be a start for that.

So that's my initial thought on that question. John, what's your thought?

John Horodyski: 18:20

Whoever asked that question, well done. That is an excellent question.

I love the the other sides and this side and that side and the sneakiness potentially or the passiveness. In organizations that do go through mergers. I mean, that's a whole webinar in itself

And that is always a challenge. At some point you will all be just one side.

So let's just make sure that is part of the you know, operational sort of priorities going forward is let's be one side. And

governance can start at many places that sort of you know

we sort of hinted at. And I love the fact that it was mentioned, Kara, about the you know

if it's not governance call it something else. I had a client once they called it the breakfast club and

it was it was positive. Food was shared,

there were jokes. Food is a great motivator if that's a way to help you create governance in your organization

If you don't use that G word of governance find another word, but it is it does have to have,

it is mandatory that it's going to be there.

But that whole idea of the you know, sneaky or passive ways to do it for this individual who has this question

let's get the merger happening,

let's you know come together as one team and then within the governance council

you can start making priorities for all of us, capital W We going forward.

I would say maybe not passive but start looking towards the future as a bigger whole going forward.

Good question.

Kara Van Malssen: 19:36

Yeah, really good question

and So I have a I think the next one is kind of a it flows in nicely to that one

Because it may you know, we're talking about getting how do we involve people?

How do we get people, convince people. So this question says what would be the ideal approach to convince

higher-ups in an organization to create a data governance policy if one doesn't already exist.

Especially if you're a young recent graduate on a contract and everyone else is a seasoned professional.

Yeah, you don't feel like you have much authority. What do you do?

John Horodyski: 20:13

So that's a very specific instance. Also well done on that question, you know, that's a great question.

There's a way around these things and ultimately we're always kind of doing governance. I don't think so. First of all everyone the call today give yourself some credit. You're already doing it.

Sometimes we think it tends to be more formalized in some situations, but ultimately we're already kind of doing it.

But what we want to look for our champions within the organization.

These individuals could be mid-level look maybe a little bit more senior level.

But find out who they are people who support the program both financially,

culturally, business-wise, business process levels. You want someone within the organization who are supporting these measures.

Gind out who they are. And there's nothing better than a well-calculated presentation of like showing them the risks and

the opportunities. Both sides of what you're trying to achieve. And let them know how you know, how many assets you have?

What is the usage? What are people doing? This goes, speaks to ROI, return on investment.

You want to be able to show these things on a regular basis?

So people who are in those mid or senior level positions are able to start seeing

Ah, I'm start to see some benefits here. And I think that's a wonderful way to begin that process.

Well done you by the way on that journey, please check in with us in a little while

I'd like to know I think we would love to know how that proceeds for you.

So that's that's my initial response to that one good question. Kara?

Kara Van Malssen: 21:32

Yeah, I think yeah

That's that's those are some good thoughts. I think to add on I would say You know, what's the problem and and really kind of dig in on that what what's happening as a result of this vacuum.

If you're if you're seeing this gap in governance where it's not really formalized,

what's the results? As John said like, you know, we have to highlight the risks and the benefits.

So so really zero and what's the problem and then what is the you know the ask?

What do you think that what do you think needs to happen here?

What's you know, what's that gap specifically? I think you've got to get specific. Because if you just kind of start

you know ringing bells and saying we have no governance and people don't really know what that means,

or that just sounds like a lot and they don't want to deal with it

It really has to be rooted in like here's the problem we are seeing right now. It would be improved by

you know policies around x or better standards or you know a strategy

you know a strategy or whatever so, um

You know make it tangible. Don't just say governance governance governance. I think that's where you lose people.

You gotta you gotta kind of drill in on the what's the issue here?

And then what do we need to do about it?

And like you've got to find those champions. Like there are there are somebody out there who cares?

You know, especially if it's framed the right way and they understand like oh, this is the problem and this is the risk.

Okay, you know what what do you need to do and and you have to make it kind of tangible again for them.

Like what's in it for them? Why should they care just kind of approach it from that way and you but

you gotta again start from the bottom while you look for those senior people like just

get together with like peers that are a little bit kind of

like your direct collaborators, um as opposed to more of a leadership role and just start trying to formalize behavior

yourselves. And then as you need more support you can start bringing it up and maybe you're slowly building a team of champions

from the ground up with you as well. So

um, that's kind of my initial also thoughts on that question we have some

John Horodyski: 23:48

We got a clarification potentially

on that question, so For institutions that currently lack the budget or infrastructure to implement a DAM what foundational digital asset management practices

should they adopt? Schemas, file organization strategies, documentation

to ensure a smoother DAM integration in the future?

Huh

Kara Van Malssen: 24:12

Well

I have some initial thoughts on that Do you want to start

John Horodyski: 24:19

I was going to say I would it'd be good to know like where you are in that process

It sounds like you may have a DAM-ish Sounds like you might have a DAM

But you don't have everything around it

potentially

Kara Van Malssen: 24:33

Right

I so my initial thought on that question and I see a lot more follow-up questions And I I just want to also add this is very much about governance. So we're really not going to get into

you know how to choose a DAM or whether or not you should use certain functionality, etc

So I just want to like reiterate that point. Um, but you know thinking about this from kind of governance angle

If you don't have a DAM system yet, but you obviously you have digital assets, right?

That's why you're thinking about a DAM. You already need to formalize behavior around those assets, right?

There's already a need to establish policy

about who can access what. There's already a need to establish

standards around how are files organized? How are they named?

Do you embed metadata in them? If so, what?

What you know that vocabularies are we going to use when we embed metadata that kind of thing?

That's our that's essentially the same type of practice we're talking about in the DAM system.

You have that on a file system, you know, that's that doesn't you don't need a

specialized DAM to start formalizing those behaviors around

the digital assets and

their their creation, their management, and their use.

So that's kind of a

yeah initial take on that one.

John Horodyski: 25:49

And I would say just as a starter

Uh for those of you on the call who might be in the process of potentially selecting a DAM It might be your first DAM, start with governance right away. And sometimes people think it needs to happen afterwards

No, no, no start right away

many of the people who are helping you in this

You know the technology selection potentially could be people who'd continue on or are part of that governance council.

So I always feel that governance can start as early as possible because he, she, they who are part of those an organization and the groups

will be your advocats going forward. So

Kara Van Malssen: 26:19

Yeah, and you know, you're if you're using spreadsheets like kind of in the longer note

it says, you know, we got spreadsheets. Absolutely. You got to govern the data in that spreadsheet, right? This is like who gets to enter it

What are the values that goes where? You don't want everyone entering dates in a different format, right?

Like there needs to be certain governance around that. So

yeah, it's you start where where you are and in the same things apply.

It just gets more complicated once you have a really expensive system

that maybe a lot of people are using. Um, so that's that's that's the main difference.

But otherwise you still gotta you still gotta do it

John Horodyski: 26:54

So again for that recent young graduate, uh

connect with Kara and I afterwards. We would love to hear where you are on that journey and going forward with all these good things. All right

next question.

Kara

How do you handle DAM governance at organizations

who do not have someone whose sole responsibility is DAM administration governance.

This seems to be common at some smaller organizations. And in fact, I would say it's common lots of different levels of organizations.

Kara Van Malssen: 27:25

It's really interesting how different staffing models are within organizations around DAM.

Um, so so yeah, so I see this come in two forms. Either there is a completely shared model. Like when you say where's where the sole responsibility,

they don't have someone whose sole responsibility, I can interpret that as either

this is completely a shared model and there's actually no one who's sort of formally in charge of this.

Or

there is someone who's formally in charge of it, but that that's a part-time responsibility of theirs. They don't have a full-time

you know, they're not FTE on DAM admin. So,

those are different scenarios. Um

so the situation, speak to the the second one first. If it's somebody you have somebody who's actually responsible

It's just not their full-time job

That you know, that's actually better than the other model in my opinion

Because at least somebody is making decisions, right? Like sometimes the the governance team is one.

And it's somebody who's not even you know full-time on DAM, right?

Like they're just gonna have to do it because they're the one who's been told you're in charge of DAM.

It's 25% of your job or 50 or whatever. So

Go for it and you have to start, you know working with your peers and collaborators and users to

start to get their input to build up the the those

those decisions and document them as you go. And so that's just starting really really small.

Um, but the other scenario,

and this actually happens at a lot of larger organizations is that nobody's in charge of the DAM.

Maybe someone in IT technically is the product owner,

but they're not really, you know the product owner. They're just like we installed it. Here you go

Uh, we'll keep it up to date. Um, you need an integration. So that that's kind of it. And so, um,

You know, there's nobody who's like really kind of owning

the totality of what is the DAM. It's what is the capability, the functionality, and the assets inside of it? Um, so

in that case, it's like everybody kind of gets to do what they want.

And I think that's just the worst case scenario. You just end up with a big mess.

Like that's that's what that is what is going to happen.

The the only way to avoid it is by having some very strong governance models that requires

lots of people getting together and making lots of decisions on a regular basis,

which is highly unlikely to happen. Those people are not going to participate at that level

Like that's a waste of everyone's time. They don't see the value in it.

And so again that model is going to devolve and your system is going to become a mess

and that's the whole thing you're trying to avoid with governance. So

I don't know which scenario this is coming from but I would say the case where it's like

Just a 50% person or 25% person.

Maybe they're overwhelmed

But they're going to probably be able to build a business case to get more support over time by using really great examples of like

what you know the needs are and showcase the usage.

But that other case is going to fail. I don't know 99 times out of 100 where it's just totally a shared model. So

um in my opinion now, I could be proven wrong, but

yeah, John, what do you think about that?

John Horodyski: 30:46

Well, I think you raise a good great, uh, great point about advocacy.

So I think in in this instance, and we don't know all the facts, but he, she, they has the opportunity to do more communication to to provide the ROI and

no one's ever going to get mad at you for being over communicating.

And I think if you are potential in a solo situation and, Kara you and I have seen many

solo librarians solo digital asset managers, I you know, um

It behooves you to take time to do more communication

And to start reaching out and slowly over time you can start building that network out.

And sometimes we might be making those decisions by ourselves, but you know at some point

Hopefully the network will grow with you. So I would focus on spending that time doing

analysis, we do love analysis don't we? Look at those reports how you're using it. Get that communication out and then just sharing it as

much as you can.

Monthly, maybe weekly whatever it can take but uh, it's it's going to be some work to get that communication out.

But it is worth your while to get yourself known get the DAM known etc, etc

Kara Van Malssen: 31:50

Yeah, it takes sometimes it takes time

um And notice we got a couple of things coming through the chat. Thank you all really appreciate that.

Um, and and one of them is a is a new question.

So we're going to come back make sure we get to your question, Ralph and add it to the list.

Um, and then and thank you Kelly for letting us know about your he's a recent hire.

Um, and um

And then Kitano shared a little bit more about the the context of the question around if we don't have a DAM yet.

So it sounds like they are doing quite a lot on, you know governance wise without the you know

Establishment of an official system. So which is great. I think that's a really great one.

Um, okay. So then i'm going to go to our next question here,

um,

which is

Who should be responsible for the enforcement of governance?

To include rules, standards, best practices review, compliance by DAM users and stakeholders and governance documentation.

Yeah, who who owns the the governing of the governance is how i'll put that.

John Horodyski: 32:53

Is that g squared is that governance with the two beside it?

Kara Van Malssen: 32:53

Yeah

John Horodyski: 32:57

Great question whoever asked that question. Well you.

No, that's the short answer. No, uh It's it could be you who should be responsible. I mean in my experience i've seen many people play this role

However, the most common I see is he, she, they who is that sort of digital asset manager?

It can be different names. Some can be a product owner. It could be other names for that

But whoever is in that sort of role

The governance sometimes fall to them in larger organizations.

There could be a governance owner and I mean my 20-year career i've seen more of those happen

But for the majority I see whoever is that lead role

They are doing the governance.

But I think I want to make a shout out for those who have said and maybe for others

Is that you don't always have to be alone and you can use things like content stewards, data stewards. If you're a global international organization

you can get interest from the different regions and people feed you information.

So it doesn't always have to be by yourself.

You can have your digital and your content stewards around you help in that governance

but to

From my experience i've seen that individual in that sort of DAM product and

uh digital asset manager. He, she, they are usually the ones to be doing that governance.

Kara, what have you seen? What have you seen?

Kara Van Malssen: 34:13

Well, yeah, I think the one who sort of owns the governance the documentation of it that you know

The communication around it and make sure that it's you know clearly followed and all this stuff. Yeah, it's the the nominal DAM manager

Um, it's just because you're that is what your job. I mean, that's part of that job, of course

Um, you know, you're not doing the decision making alone necessarily, but you're probably the one who's going to manage the outcome of that.

Um, and so

Yeah, most likely now. I have seen this problem where the because of the way titles are

uh where there's like, you know, we kind of, the DAM

Ownership is shared amongst like there's a product owner and there's a you know coordinator and there's a librarian

or whatever and then it's not clear like again, who's the DAM manager?

And there can be a gap there because like everyone's not sure if it's their job.

And then you know the most senior-ish person in that scenario is actually like way too busy to do it.

It's not really like they're not going to do it.

But then the people who really are full-time on it don't feel like they have the authority because it's actually that other person who's

not full-time on it doesn't have time. You gotta have these conversations like you just got to ask the question like hey

you know, we really need to make sure we're documenting this that and the other and uh,

you know capturing our decisions and um, I think you just start doing it. If you feel like there's a gap there

you should do you know be the one to make the change be the change like just do it.

And you know

you'll kind of, it'll shake out as to who really is and if if there's a problem, you know, that'll come to the surface, but

um, hopefully you you know, you you have the opportunity

in time to do it. Or if you think someone else really should be like then maybe it's a

conversation with them if they're still not doing it, maybe it's a conversation with their boss because like

this somebody's not doing what they're supposed to be doing to actually do their job

I think. Like this should be in someone's job description.

It's actually one of their lines on their responsibilities.

So

make sure that somebody has it is what I would say.

John Horodyski: 36:24

All right,

Kara, I'll read this one slowly. Good question.

Creating a governance framework for an enterprise DAM encompassing multiple teams,

working in silos, but often sharing, copying assets across the wild west of a folder structure.

Our folder folder structure is deeply nested

and inhibits asset visibility. Oh my, and to reuse them to the organization.

Millions of assets without metadata. Oh my golly. I'm upset already. Millions of assets without metadata

No documentation of processes. Oh my gosh and lack of platform adoption.

Where to start to create a cleanup plan as well as a governance framework and strategy to assess all teams content

organization? Oh my word, is this true?

Kara Van Malssen: 37:14

Um, first of all, i'm so sorry that you are dealing with that situation, um

John Horodyski: 37:23

Virtual hugs. Virtual hugs to whoever this is.

Kara Van Malssen: 37:26

In solidarity

Um, I so here's my harsh view on this You don't have a DAM.

You have a glorified file system.

That's it.

So if you want a DAM,

you kind of got to start from scratch here like

you're going to be starting from the ground up of building a business case for

we actually need to use the DAM as a DAM

and not a glorified file system. We are paying way too much money for that DAM

to be using it this way. So

that is very expensive stuff that is not being utilized to

Um its full capabilities and a full opportunity for your business.

So this is where governance is absolutely a must must must. If you're going to have global

enterprise DAM,

um, that is contributed to by multiple teams

um

where we absolutely must have some shared standards.

Um, otherwise, like you said, you're going to end up with this situation.

um, and so for that, I guess I would say

You know, you probably need to think, you need to figure out what's the operating model here.

Like I don't know where this lives. Like there's usually again somebody who owns the DAM. Maybe it's in IT,

maybe it's in marketing, I don't know. But um

so whoever's that owner needs to start making some of those decisions. Like

we're going to change the way we work in this in this tool as an as a business, but we got to start small.

Like and who's most ready for a change which of these teams are most ready

to change the way they work? And and start to prioritize

the users, the assets, the use cases and start small. You're going to have to kind of go slow.

Build up some processes some you know, some frameworks, some decisions around governance, around standards,

roles, responsibilities, policies,

you know visibility. This is all those decisions. That governance is about those decisions.

And try to work out something that can be replicated to the wider, you know enterprise.

Um, I would probably take that approach rather than like let's burn into the ground

Uh and start fresh because I would just try to like work

you know through one team at a time and build up the model that can be you know, then replicate it out

to others so

What do you say, John?

John Horodyski: 39:55

No burning to the ground. Not on Thursdays.

Uh, I would first have a drink you choose whatever that could be in the in the vessel, but I would have a drink. Uh

I concur with everything you said. I would just maybe add a few extra things like

go do a good content analysis. What do you really actually have?

t like Dreamweaver files from: 1998

I don't know, but maybe go and look what you really do have and why no metadata, yikes,

that's a thing. But then also if you do, following Kara's approach, and you're going to go towards a DAM,

you may not have to have all that million in the dam. You might say you know what?

Let's take everything from 22 to 25 and the rest

we will get intern students from the best, you know library schools across the country and they will do that as a summer internship program.

I'm just speaking off the cuff here, but you know content analysis will help you go it's actually

Okay, maybe it's not a million. Maybe it's actually just a few hundred thousand because it's only current assets.

So, you know, what do you have? Where is it? Why do you have it? Literally, why do you have this?

Uh do that content analysis and then have a second drink. That's terrible.

I want to know who, don't you want to know who asked this question? Whoever this is, please connect with Kara and I afterwards

we want to

Kara Van Malssen: 41:09

You don't have to raise your hand in here and say yeah,

John Horodyski: 41:09

we'll do it afterwards, but

Kara Van Malssen: 41:17

Right. Um, yeah, I think this is a big big big one, obviously.

But I think you know as john said I think it's doable You've got to you know, you've got to see what's in there. Why, what do people really need?

What do we really want in the DAM? There's some strategy there that is part of governance. It's to decide

what is this DAM for and who's it for and what kind of operating model do we want to have?

Um, and um, you know try to get rid of the dumping ground

scenario. That's just not not going to be your best bang for the buck. Um,

good luck, uh, let us know. All right, so moving on to a slightly different take. Um,

Which it's a really different, uh

part of the conversation. But there's a question of the integration of AI to DAM systems should be part of governance, agree?

John, agree? Yes or no, and why?

John Horodyski: 42:06

What's AI? No, kidding.

Uh AI is the most popular word of the last two years potentially maybe even a little bit more than that. Well, this goes to scope. So if this is AI within your DAM system or even external.

Uh you with the governance council. Whatever you have there, you get to sort of decide what was it within our realm?

And if that is within your realm, then absolutely. Yes, you should be talking about AI.

Are we going to use it in the DAM?

Uh, what fields potentially in the metadata will be affected by the AI? Who's going to do it? Have we tested it out?

These are unknowns and it is the most popular thing.

I mean, I know organizations as you Kara who, there are policies around AI in terms of, are we using this?

Are we allowed to use chatGPT?

Looking at you creative services communications who are writing things that they may or may not should be.

But I do think there needs to be governance around AI and I think it behooves

all of us in this industry when we are creating digital content on a regular basis.

Photos, images, text all those good things. AI is a part of this. It's not going away.

And so i'm big believer that AI should be a part of governance. So the question is

Should it be a part of governance? I agree. I concur

with that question.

Kara?

Kara Van Malssen: 43:20

Yeah, I would also agree it needs to I mean

Again, like if if governance is about decision making around strategy policy

standards

and then how you know roles and responsibilities for daily use. So

AI is going to touch on all of those things. So from a strategy perspective, it's

Why do we even need this? What are we using it for?

What are our use cases? Because I think that's to me,

that's the most annoying thing is people like AI talking about AI as if it's like the this monolithic thing that does one thing,

but one thing does everything. It's none, none of that's true. It's you know, what's what's your use case?

What exactly do you want to do? What are you hoping it will do for you? And then you know, figure it out.

So that's governance right there. Just that decision making

around what to prioritize, uh what the possible use cases are.

um, and then of course like yeah policies like um,

When should we use it for you know in what scenarios?

Uh, what should it have access to?

You know, what should it not have access to? What data can we share or not share with our AI tools?

So yeah, there's absolutely a lot of um policies being developed,

um, usually at a pretty senior like it level CTO CIO-ish level.

Um, you know an enterprise policy around um,

AI and and you know what you can and can't do with it,

uh, within the business. That is governance, that is policy and governance.

And so you you know work with those people to find out what the the enterprise policies are here.

Um, and then yeah from the standards view like if you know, you're going to be using AI for like tagging for example

you know, how how is it going to like align with your taxonomy, your vocabularies and stuff like that?

um lots of things to to test and evaluate and so

Yeah, yeah.

John Horodyski: 45:14

I would also give a I would also give a shout out to why we actually have things like governance because

the governance is there to allow to have discussions like this. So AI, we get together as a team and go so it's here, it's coming. What do we do about it?

I remember years ago. Kara, you remember that time as well, when we heard about this thing called GDPR.

And some of us were like, oh, is that for me? Is that for you? I don't want to do it.

Who's going to do it? You should probably talk about it. I was attuned yesterday to the the European accessibility act,

which is coming to play at the end of June.

You need to be prepared for that. Governance is a great forum to talk about these issues that are going around ourselves going

Is this for me? Do I have to be aware of this if we do, yikes,

what do we do? So this is why we'd have governance. To acknowledge all those other good things that are circling around

our content and our users and our customers etc, etc. So governance is good

Governance is good.

Also, that's a plug for the European Accessibility Act because it is coming in June. For all those of you in the call who are coming

from European nations, I hope you're ready.

Kara Van Malssen: 46:18

All right next question

John Horodyski: 46:26

Next question. You get some really long ones. This is fantastic. All right, i'm gonna go slowly. DAM one

Stores only production masters and image selects serving archival and preservation needs. DAM two maintains a complete repository of all the assets including production masters, images, selects, camera originals.

So which system is the system of record?

How would the metadata reflect this distinction, and how are these systems used by internal productions and communication groups?

Oh my, DAM one, DAM two. Not thing, one thing two. Not Dr. Seuss. This is DAM one, DAM two.

Kara Van Malssen: 47:04

Maybe we need to make the like little guys with the little shirt. Yeah

Yeah, okay um, so I am gonna take this. I'm gonna wear my archivist's hat because I think this is coming from archives

perspective. Somebody's got you know, the word preservation is showing up in here. Um, so

sometimes

when we've worked with organizations, they're

they're gonna have multiple repositories because there's a belief that we need a separate preservation environment.

uh, that's not the DAM because,

don't know why.

Um, because that was somebody's idea and they're not gonna let go of it.

Um, I have worked with far too many organizations who have tried to do this and not done it very well.

If you try to have two systems that have the same stuff

But one of them is just kind of like the preservation place and the other is the access place.

There you know the the one that people actually use and there's not entire, you know sync between those two systems

Um, and then you have people going to two places to look for different things and it's not clear what's in what system or what's the system for?

Um, and it's it's it's chaos. It's redundancy

um, it's poor user experience and um,

and it's it's very costly to maintain. Extremely difficult and costly to maintain. So

um, I am

of the school of thought that

in most cases now, there are exceptions exceptions to this.

In most cases where this is coming up is in smaller cultural heritage organizations and non-profits

um

Which already are limited in resources and limited in funds

And you don't have the people or the money to manage two systems and replicate assets across them

um, so

I would be much more in favor of a single DAM

that has all these assets that has the capability, preservation functionality that you think is mandatory.

And what I would say is look very very closely at your preservation standards and what they define as functionality.

Because most preservation is policy, governance. Thank you very much. Um, and so

uh

if you look at the um

You know, so if you if you look at the functionality,

there are many DAMS that can help you with that in terms of functional and storage things.

But but how that's enacted is just policy. So

it's, you can kind of do it with a DAM, without a DAM. You can use it a file system,

You can just stick stuff in storage, whatever. Preservation doesn't require a specific tool.

um, it's it's that policy you know decision making around

um, you know, what what are you going to

what does preservation mean to you and how are you going to enable it?

um, and then what are the tools that are going to be needed to use that. So,

this is kind of a roundabout question around governance, but it is uh, I think it is a governance question

um at the end of the day because there's a strategy component here and then there's also a policy question here, but but um

I don't like that two DAM system, two system situation. It's it's

It's difficult.

John Horodyski: 50:27

It's opportunity for error and the whole thing about governance is to reduce risk and to produce those errors.

So I definitely concur. Uh, I don't like the two DAMS. However, Kara you and I have seen in multiple organizations where they have

not only DAM one and DAM two, but spoiler alert three, four, five, let's keep going and it's like

What?

Kara Van Malssen: 50:48

That happens

John Horodyski: 50:48

And that does happen. I saw once an organization, will go nameless, uh was up to 60 i'm like and stop

That's too many DAMS. Bless you all, but stop. Uh

But the the other point that I think is interesting to talk about too is system of record. Now that is something

You know librarian archivist hats on. I mean I was

Library school we always heard about systems of record and we do get that often in terms of which is the source.

So again when you do have multiple

sources again, it's that it's it goes back to the governance if the metadata is even different a little bit.

Oh, you know there's opportunity for error and I just want to reduce error as much as I can in my life

I don't know about you. Kara. I don't want that,

Kara Van Malssen: 51:32

Um, yeah, and so and when that's confusing and that's it gets really messy.

um now I will say there's a scenario where you have kind of a PAM like system like a production asset management or like MAM-ish scenario

and then a DAM and and sometimes that's okay because they really

hve different functions and they are serving different people and but at the end of the day

one of them is the system of record, you know, and you just make that decision again. That's the governance decision is

define what's the system of record? Where should people go for x, you know?

So work in progress maybe in one, finals in another. We don't want people going into work in progress unless they are working on the work

in progress. Therefore they don't have access to it and it's limited to the creatives who need it.

And then you know final assets go in the final system.

But then you got to give some incentives to those creatives to put it in there because they don't want to and they're too busy

working on their next project. Um, so there's some work to do there, but that scenario i'm okay with.

John Horodyski: 52:31

So there is a live question from Tracy.

And Tracy is asking about do we feel the same way to DAMS and MAMS? That's an interesting one. The DAMS the PAMS, MRMS. There's so many other words that

Kara Van Malssen: 52:41

Yeah, that's what I was just saying like yeah

No, I think that's okay because they're again different use cases,

serving different users, different needs. As long as you define the scope and the role and the recordness of each

system

I think it's

John Horodyski: 53:02

It's so important when you start your DAM process

What goes in this what does not go in? This I have seen so many mistakes made where people like I just throw everything and it's like no, no, no, no, don't do that.

What goes in what doesn't go in. And if it doesn't go in where does that go? I think that's a wonderful thing

Okay, but go so, um

Good one.

Kara Van Malssen: 53:24

First policy decision. The first one

John Horodyski: 53:26

What is in the DAM.

Kara Van Malssen: 53:28

Governance policy decision number one. Okay, we have

John Horodyski: 53:28

We have six minutes left

Kara Van Malssen: 53:28

Six minutes left

Do do we want to go to the question that Ralph asked earlier because I don't want to miss that one. So, let me ask that one. How would you approach working with a new team that lacks digital asset management experience,

acknowledges they need help, but resist good suggestions and even best practices because, quote, this is always how we this is how we've always done

it. Oh a familiar story

How would you build trust and encourage adoption when they seem reluctant to rely on the expertise they hired?

What do you think, John?

John Horodyski: 54:08

How do you build trust? I mean that sounds like a dating app in some ways. But uh,

so first of all, we've all seen those experiences where you know, the the you know, the hands are folded and it's like I know it's good. You know, we've always done it this way. I ain't gonna change.

Well trust how is trust built? Trust is built over time. You got to show them these things.

Training sessions.

Little simple things like that. Communication. An increase in communication to slowly win people over.

Though it does happen every once in a while that there is like some type of a resistance,

but it goes back to that unification and communication abilities and opportunities to sort of say to the organization

we as a team are going to be successful for one two, three, four, five, six and slowly trust

can be built. Whow them how well it's working. Look at the effectiveness.

Look at the we have saved so much time. We have saved, you know, we're making money again, whatever.

Show them trust is built over time. That was my answer.

Good question.

Kara Van Malssen: 55:06

Yeah, I think the show is the key word. Like show don't tell show them something cool.

Show them something that they've never thought of. Show them something that improves their lives and makes it easier to do whatever it is they need to do.

Um, and be careful, obviously, you don't want to come off too heavy-handed. You don't want to you know

be arrogant about it, or whatever. Like you'd have to kind of

know your, read the room and know how to talk to those people.

But you know show them the way forward I think is is um the approach. Um tricky

But yeah, good question. We got so many great questions and i'm so sorry

We couldn't get to them all because there were a lot which we love. So that means there are more questions and we can do it

again.

All right, we'll have a great rest of your day night, uh, whichever good night go to bed to those of you

very late places

John Horodyski: 56:01

Bye everybody.