Ten people from a DAM consulting team spent two days in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, not riding roller coasters (well, not only riding roller coasters), but working through how the company operates, where the industry is heading, and what clients should expect from us next.
The team has grown since last year, and we were grateful to be together again for our annual offsite. Here is what came out of it.
Why a DAM team rethinks itself on purpose
Digital asset management is changing faster than it has in years. AI-powered tagging, smarter search, tighter integrations with creative tools, and pressure from marketing teams to do more with less are all shifting what "good DAM" looks like. We needed to get in a room and pressure-test our own playbook.
We are also growing. More clients, more platforms, more people. That is a good problem, but it is still a problem if the team is not aligned on how we work.
Deeper on the platforms our clients use
We spent a full session on platform-specific depth, covering Bynder, Acquia DAM (Widen), and the broader landscape our clients operate in. The goal was not to pick favorites. It was to make sure every consultant on the team can walk into any engagement with current, first-hand knowledge of what each platform does well and where it struggles.
Two of our team members earned their Acquia Certified DAM Administrator certifications during the offsite. That matters because it is not a checkbox exercise. The certification process forced detailed work with the platform, and the team came back with specific, practical knowledge they are already using in active client work.
Acquia sponsored our team dinner, which was a highlight of the trip. Acquia is one of the partners we watch most closely for where this industry is heading, and we're honored to be working with them to support the YMCA program rollout.
How the Stacks team is working smarter together
A significant part of the offsite focused on how we operate internally, and specifically on the AI tools we are building into our own workflows.
Hivemind. This is our internal knowledge system. Every client engagement, every discovery interview, every taxonomy decision, every lesson learned goes into a shared system that any consultant can query. When someone starts a new engagement, they are not starting from scratch. They are building on everything the team has already figured out.
Our own AI guardrails. We talked through where AI helps our work and where it does not. The short version: AI is very good at pattern recognition, first-draft taxonomy suggestions, and surfacing inconsistencies in large metadata sets. It is not good at understanding why a client made a specific organizational decision, or at replacing the judgment calls that come from years of doing this work. We are using it where it is strong and keeping humans where it is not.
Tools built from our own best work. We are packaging our best internal processes, things like taxonomy audit frameworks and metadata quality scoring, into tools that make our consulting more consistent. These are not off-the-shelf products. They are built from real engagement patterns.
More consistent delivery. With the team growing, we needed shared standards for how we document recommendations, run discovery, and hand off between project phases. We left Dollywood with clearer templates and processes for all of it.
A permission-aware AI demo. Casey showed the team a working demo of an AI assistant that respects DAM permissions, meaning it only surfaces content a user is allowed to see. That is a real problem in enterprise DAM, where unauthorized access to assets can create legal and brand risk. The demo proved the concept works. More to come.
The part that wasn't on the agenda
The offsite was not all working sessions. We rode roller coasters. We ate too much. We took group photos in front of Dolly Parton signs. That matters because consulting is a trust business, and trust is easier when you actually know the people you are working with.
Several team members met each other in person for the first time. That changes the texture of every Slack message and every client call going forward.
What this means if you work with us
- A deeper bench on Bynder, Acquia DAM, and the platforms that matter to your program
- More structured internal knowledge sharing, so your engagement benefits from everything we have learned across clients
- Clearer, more consistent deliverables
- A team that is actively building and testing AI tools for DAM, not just talking about them
- People who actually like working together, which is not nothing
If you want to talk about what this means for your DAM program, talk to a DAM consultant.
