Brand portals, DAM and the vendor side

This episode introduces Ashantè Fray, onboarding manager at Air, and explores how brand portals fit into digital asset management. Lisa Grimm and Elizabeth Keathley use the conversation to unpack when a brand portal is useful, how it differs from a traditional DAM, and why the human side of vendor relationships matters as much as the software. We discuss creative workflows, governance, raw files versus finals, and the career paths available on the vendor side. It is especially useful for DAM managers, marketers, and anyone trying to understand how brand assets should be shared, controlled, and maintained over time. Also, Canada!

Resources & Links:

• Practical Digital Asset Management: A Guide for Students and Practitioners
• Practical DAM
• 2026 DAM Salary Survey
• Elizabeth Keathley's LinkedIn
• Lisa Grimm's website
• Ashantè Fray's LinkedIn
• Original music for podcast by Steve Serra

Migration, metadata, and why DAM never ends

Lisa Grimm and Elizabeth Keathley are joined by Jacqueline Yu for a practical conversation about DAM migration, metadata cleanup, governance, and the realities of integrating DAM with the rest of an enterprise stack. Jack brings firsthand experience from a major move off an old OpenText system into a new SaaS environment, plus a wider perspective shaped by library science, hospitality, and opera .In this episode, the group focuses on what migration really means once you move past the slogan of “lift and shift” and into content audits, rights management, security modeling, change management, and cleanup after launch. They also dig into how DAM sits inside a broader information architecture with CMS, PIM, MDM, CDNs, and other systems.

Notable quotes

“There is no done. There is only next.”

“It’s people. It’s the people.”

“If you want to save money start unpublishing things.”

Resources & Links:

• Practical Digital Asset Management: A Guide for Students and Practitioners
• Practical DAM
• 2026 DAM Salary Survey
• Elizabeth Keathley's LinkedIn
• Lisa Grimm's website
• Jacq Yu's LinkedIn
• Original music for podcast by Steve Serra

Workflows, governance, and maturity in DAM

Lisa Grimm and E Keathley are joined by Celine Millinder to unpack how workflows actually work in digital asset management, where they break down, and why governance matters as much as the technology. The conversation moves from Celine’s career path across photography, museums, charity, and commercial DAM work into a practical discussion of workflow maturity, interoperability, and documentation. If you are setting up DAM workflows, trying to improve messy approvals, or figuring out whether a process should even be automated, this episode is a useful reality check.

Resources & Links:

• Practical Digital Asset Management: A Guide for Students and Practitioners
• Practical DAM
• 2026 DAM Salary Survey
• Elizabeth Keathley's LinkedIn
• Lisa Grimm's website
• Celine Millender's LinkedIn
• Original music for podcast by Steve Serra