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Masterclass interview by Michael Moon with Eric Hoffert, industry pioneer in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) systems for digital asset management, social media, and application mash-ups.

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Professional background

Eric has more than twenty years of experience building successful products, solutions, and patented technologies, as well as launching new businesses. He has played a key role designing and delivering collaborative enterprise software and digital media products at AT&T, Apple Computer, Inc., Bell Labs, new ventures, and for many Fortune 500 clients.

Eric serves as Chairman of Versatility Software Inc., a digital media and collaborative content consultancy with clients and projects including The Walt Disney Company, Scripps Networks, Campbell’s Soup, Corbis, Tivo, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon Universities, The NewsMarket, etc. Eric is also the CEO of ShareMethods, an on-demand sales and marketing document management and collaboration service. ShareMethods customers include BusinessWeek, CNET Channel, Agile Software, Airspan Networks, HID Global, etc. More than 200 companies and users in 40 countries access ShareMethods on a 24 x 7 basis. Previously, Eric was the Co-Founder, CTO, and Chairman of the Board for Magnifi, a digital asset management software provider.. Prior to Magnifi, he managed Apple Computer’s Multimedia Communications Group, where he co-founded the QuickTime software project and led development of the first real-time software video compression algorithm running on the QuickTime multimedia standard. The patented QuickTime technology he developed is now used on more than 500 million computers. He also developed patented multimedia networking technology that was licensed by Cisco Systems and incorporated into their Cisco Internet Operating System.

Prior to joining Apple, Eric was a research scientist at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories. He holds fourteen patents, has published multiple papers and lectured widely around the world. Eric has authored and co-authored peer reviewed papers and served as Program Chair, Co-Chair and Reviewer for the ACM and the IEEE, co-authored book chapters on Scientific Visualization and Digital Video, and has lectured in Japan, France, England, Australia, Finland, Germany, etc. He also serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Digital Asset Management. Eric holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from New York University, a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace and mechanical engineering from Cooper Union, and a Master of Science degree in computer science from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. Eric has been quoted in the press with his work covered in the media including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times, Fortune, Inc., The Financial Times, CIO, Computerworld, InfoWorld, eWeek, and Who’s Who in America (2007 Edition).

MM: Eric — as a member of the editorial board for the Journal of DAM, you have had quite an opportunity to see the evolution of Digital Asset Management. Before we get into the particulars of your comments, let me just set up a framework for our conversation today.

Essentially, we’d like to address the notion of the end of content-as-we-know-it. And the notion that knowledge workers or media professionals create digital files.

In this new framework that we’re going to be talking about with you — or this new framework that you’ll be sharing with us, the notion that we’re going to have “dumb files” with no knowledge in terms of what’s in there — no profiling or no metadata around it, well that notion is basically disappearing, or in the process of disappearing. Especially in the context of Web 2.0 tools and things that we’ll get into…

In our discussion today, we’ll expand or perhaps revisit an expanded view or definition of digital assets. I’d like to at least stipulate that here for our conversation.

A digital asset consists of some sort of core media and/or data — described or profiled in some sort of set of metadata — or within a metadata scheme. Such that an outsider or someone not associated with creation of files knows the contents, and perhaps its status, in a work-in-process workflow. They may know the IP rights, clearances, rights, and/or copyrights they’re held in.

They may also have parameters or specifications for how to reuse or re-express this, vis-à-vis color space, fonts, and other kinds of publishing parameters such as an online or high-resolution print.

In that context, for the most part, I’ve talked in the Journal about media assets. And to a lesser extent, editorial assets — text. In some cases, we’ve talked about educational learning assets and knowledge assets — the products of knowledge workers.

We’ve talked about social assets. These are things that are attached to an interpersonal relationship — such as e-mail or discussion threads. Blogs. Wikis.

We also have software code assets. Those represent reusable software code. IT assets. In our framework today, we might characterize IT assets as IT service-management policies and configurations in metadata profiles for assets that are part of an IT infrastructure. That’s a basic framework of various kinds of assets.

I’d like you to speak to some of your perceptions or evolution of digital assets in that larger framework.

EH: Sure, Michael.

I think that if you go back historically, we certainly started with a lot of functionality in the DAM space that could be characterized as traditional enterprise software. People would install DAM systems behind a firewall and set up an isolated database of digital assets and content.

That approach would be used to manage content and assets that were produced by a different set of media software tools. Those tools typically would run on a desktop computer, and they would facilitate content creation.

Certainly, there was a lot of power for that traditional system in the time period in which it was developed. But the world is changing fairly dramatically, as you said. We are about to enter the period of the end-of-content-as-we-know-it.

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