Back by popular demand and following its success in Hollywood (at DAM LA 2026) and in London (DAM Europe 2026), a dynamic fast-paced session reflecting on key ideas, patterns and insights. Leaning into the theme of The Intelligent Evolution of DAM, we’ll cover further analysis to unpick the biggest innovations, content management strategies and game-changing trends defining 2026.

What is the Playbook for Intelligent Content Operations?

The Challenge:

Organizations are racing to add AI, automation, and intelligence to their DAM ecosystems. Yet many continue to struggle with the same operational challenges that existed long before AI arrived.

A Candid Conversation:

The evolving role of DAM and collections management across the GLAMP sector.

As galleries, libraries, archives, museums, performing arts and cultural heritage organizations continue their digital transformation, DAM has evolved beyond a standalone repository to become the connective layer linking collections, content, systems, and audiences.

The problems DAM leaders live with daily but rarely solve on their own

Observation:

Often, the hardest parts of digital asset management aren't technical; they're organizational and behavioral, like driving real adoption, building governance that survives turnover, proving ROI to a skeptical CFO, applying consistent, accurate metadata, and taming rights at scale.

DAM leaders know these gaps exist but lack the time, mandate, or skillset to close them.

A DAM can only be as intelligent as the context it receives. 

Too often, the finished asset reaches the DAM but the information that gives it meaning does not. The brief, audience, purpose and decisions remain behind in creation workflows. Usage and performance live somewhere else. 

The DAM knows what the asset is. It doesn’t know the full story. 

We’ll explore three shifts that can turn your DAM into a source of intelligence for every content decision. 

Right now, AI probably isn't working for your brand. The outputs are fast but they're inconsistent, and fixing them costs more than it should. To make AI work for your brand, you need brand context: the rules, assets, and knowledge that give it something worth working from. Join this session to learn how to build that context layer, and walk away with practical ideas including brand assistants and brand checkers.

Your DAM contains more than files. Across images, video, documents, metadata and related records are decades of organizational knowledge - but employees often need more than a search result. They need an answer they can understand, verify and turn into useful work.

Context:

Twenty years after launching its digital asset management program, the National Gallery of Art is exploring what comes next for a mature enterprise environment.

As DAM continues to evolve from a repository for collection assets into an enterprise platform supporting a broad range of institutional content and creativity, the organization must balance scalability, sustainability, governance, and ongoing innovation.

What we are doing and how:

Learn how we are strengthening the creative asset lifecycle through DAM governance, AI-assisted metadata and proactive notifications, while planning targeted API connections that can improve visibility, integration and efficiency over time.