Pack Light, Find Everything: How We Went from Slide Chaos into a Well-Organized DAM System

Context:

At Rick Steves’ Europe, inspiring travelers begins long before they arrive at their destination – it starts with sharing stories, images, and informative content that brings those experiences to life. As that content has grown, so has the challenge of managing it.

What we’ve done:

Your DAM’s Future as an Intelligent Responder - Getting to DAM 4.0

Context:

  • As organizations scale AI initiatives, expand omnichannel experiences, and manage growing volumes of content, DAM is being pushed far beyond its traditional role as a repository for files.
  • Leading enterprises are discovering that legacy DAM architectures can no longer support the speed, complexity, and intelligence required by modern content operations.

Exploring:

The DAM Europe 2026 Reading List

As the DAM Europe conference approaches, we've curated an essential reading list to prime you for the event. These carefully selected blogs and resources from event speakers and sponsors offer a sneak peek into the cutting-edge conversations and innovations you'll encounter at the conference.

 

One Platform, Global Reach by Abi O'hUiginn of Henry Schein

Read here > 

Nick Mountford is a founder of Active Theory, the award-winning creative tech studio behind immersive experiences for Spotify, NASA, Riot Games, Nike, Google, WSJ and Tripadvisor. A pioneer in real-time interactive storytelling, he blends design and engineering to create pioneering digital worlds. Nick is a sought-after voice on the future of immersive creativity and technologies shaping how audiences connect. Awards include 17 Cannes Lions (2 Grand Prix), 120 FWAs, plus Emmy, Webby, D&AD and One Show wins.

For years, digital marketing lived outside the product: campaigns, microsites, launch pages, and interactive worlds built around the thing being sold. 

That center of gravity has moved. 

Nick Mountford, Co-Founder and CEO of Active Theory, draws on work with Spotify, TripAdvisor, Anduril and more to explore why the strongest brand experiences now behave like product: personal, scalable, and built into the way people already use technology.

Erin McElrath is a content systems leader focused on helping creative teams scale through AI, automation, and intelligent workflow design. Her work spans content operations, metadata strategy, and emerging agentic technologies, with a focus on creating connected systems that improve content creation, governance, and activation. Erin is passionate about building the contextual foundations that enable both people and AI to work more effectively across the content lifecycle.

Emma is an experienced Entrepreneur and Branding Specialist with over 28 years experience. With such extensive industry experience Emma provides a unique lens on the business of creativity having operated within creative agencies, as a leader of in-house creative teams, and for over ten years as the founder her own strategic branding agency which had clients such as Google and Snapchat.