DAM Australia 2026
First Sessions Announced
We're delighted to give you a first look at 4 confirmed sessions, offering a taste of the insights, ideas, and conversations you can expect at DAM Australia.
If you have a story to share, please contact Christine Le Couilliard at christine@clecevents.co.uk.
The Evidence Layer Wins: From DAM to AI Infrastructure
The new reality:
AI has made competent content cheap and abundant. When everyone has access to the same models, the differentiator shifts to what the models cannot copy: your assets, your metadata, your rights, your performance history. The evidence layer.
DAM has quietly become one of the most strategic and defensible assets in the AI era.
The implications:
An exploration of why, and how privacy-preserving data architecture is changing the way global organisations think about their content infrastructure.
Add to the mix that your next user is not going to be a human. The next generation of users will be agents:
- Creative agents assembling content.
- Media agents selecting assets in real time.
- Shopping agents browsing on behalf of consumers.
When machines become the primary consumers of an asset library, everything changes:
- Metadata becomes machine-readable brand truth.
- Rights become executable logic.
- Governance becomes the thing that stops an agent making a costly mistake at scale.
What to do:
Drawing on how WPP is approaching this shift across 40 plus markets:
- The reasons why metadata, governance, rights and integration, are no longer back-office hygiene but are the foundations of AI infrastructure.
- What to do to thrive in this new reality.
Everything that follows, throughout the day, is about how to win in this rapidly changing new reality.
Justin Ricketts, Global Chief Transformation Officer, WPP Production
A Digitised Project Workflow - The Challenge of Sensitive Content
What We Hold:
The Australian War Memorial holds a vast collection of official, private, and published material relating to Australians’ experience of war and conflict.
Understanding What May Be Sensitive Information:
While sensitive content is not usually an issue where events occurred over 50 years ago, it can be problematic and present significant challenges for collections containing post-1975 material, especially content created in the most recent decade. Examples of sensitive content might include:
- Doctrinal information.
- Technical and/or operations information.
- Private details about identified individuals.
- Depictions of the human consequences of warfare.
- Content which may cause offence to a reasonable adult or embarrass a donor not expecting their material to be discoverable and available online.
The Role of DAM in Storytelling:
The Australian War Memorial digitised more than 130 Private Records collections relating to post-1975 wars and conflicts as part of a major initiative to make this nationally significant material available online. The project ensures that the experiences of contemporary veterans are represented within the Memorial’s digitised collection, making them accessible to veterans across Australia and to audiences around the world.
What We Have Achieved:
A fully integrated CMS and DAM platform enables the Memorial to securely store, manage, describe and selectively restrict digital assets while maintaining appropriate access controls. This streamlined approach allows the Memorial to preserve and share authentic contemporary stories without compromising privacy, operational security and ethical obligations to donors, readers and third parties.
Sue Ducker, Senior Curator of Digitised Collections, Australian War Memorial
DAM 3.0: From Foundation to Enterprise Transformation
Fundamental Observations:
Foundations of DAM including metadata, governance, taxonomy and information management are all capabilities which are essential ingredients, but they are only the beginning of the journey.
Many organisations have successfully implemented DAM – far fewer have evolved it into an enterprise capability.
The Challenge Now:
As AI accelerates content creation, digital ecosystems become increasingly connected. Organisations demand greater speed, governance and collaboration but a new question is emerging: What does it take to evolve from implementing DAM to enabling the enterprise?
Meeting the Challenge:
Rather than focusing solely on technology, leaders from Creative Operations, Enterprise Technology, Records & Information Management and Marketing explore the organisational, operational and technology shifts required to move beyond implementation and build connected enterprise content capabilities.
Covering:
- How DAM becomes the connector across the digital ecosystem – integrating people, platforms, governance and trusted content.
- How to effectively eliminate silos and enable enterprise-wide collaboration.
- How to maximise optimisation and AI-enabled content operations.
- Shifting from how to build strong DAM foundations through to what it takes to scale DAM into an enterprise capability.
- How to keep DAM relevant, up-to-date and in the leadership’s mind.
Moderator: Nancy Colipe, Creative Operations, -lution
Panel includes: Donna Cusack-Muller, Archive and Records Manager, The Australian Ballet, Tom Walters, Creative Operations Lead, The Corner Shop, 7-Eleven
The Change Gap: Why DAM Evolution Is Outpacing Organisational Readiness
Context:
As DAM capabilities rapidly evolve through AI, automation, intelligent workflows, and increasing integration opportunities, organisations are under growing pressure to modernise their content operations.
While technology is advancing quickly, many teams are still navigating foundational challenges around governance, workflows, resourcing, adoption, and cross-functional alignment.
The Widening Gap:
Operational and human factors can significantly impact successful DAM implementation and long-term adoption. A growing gap exists between innovation and organisational readiness.
Meeting the Challenge:
Drawing on industry research, cross-sector data, and behavioural science, this session will uncover the human-centred perspective on DAM evolution and examine how organisations can build more sustainable pathways for supporting change while balancing innovation with operational reality.
Madeline Bowser, Digital Asset Management Consultant – HaelioConnec