TL;DR
If you have only very limited time, here are the key take-aways of the Symposium.
JSS
Sitecore JavaScript Services are gaining more and more traction. Quite some presentations targeted this technology and it has been confirmed that JSS will be released together with Sitcore 9.1. JSS will be Open Source, so expect to see fast adaptions in the next year.
Horizon
Bad news first: Sitecore Horizon will not make it into Sitecore 9.1. You can register for beta access and play around with it, but do not expect it to be production ready until the next release.
Cortex
Cortex will be integrated into Sitecore 9.1. If you are interested in machine learning, this might be a good opportunity to get started. Cortex seems to work very well with Horizon, giving marketers the option to easily act upon identified patterns.
Stylelabs
The biggest business news is the acquisition of Stylelabs by Sitecore. You can find the press release on the Sitecore site. Stylelabs’ Marketing Content Hub brings an integrated way of distributed content management to a new level, enabling efficient collaboration of Marketing, Copywriters and Legal.
Notable presentations
Here is a summary of the presentations I found most interesting. This list is subjective and by no means exhaustive.
The fallacy of “Impossible”
Mick Ebeling introduced the audience to his company Not Impossible Labs, which strives to make the world a better place. They have already helped maimed kids in Sudan by 3D-printing affordable prostheses and are about to publish a device that reduces Parkinson tremors tremendously. A truly inspiring and emotional presentation which will surely help to increase the visibility of Not Impossible Labs.
Headless CMS and the great uncoupling
Deane Baker takes a look at what headless actually means and what implications come with it. Looking critically at headless technologies, he comes to the conclusion that most of these technologies are slowly mutating into full-blown CMSs due to continous feature requests. His opinion is that it is generally easier to extend CMSs with headless capabilities than to add CMS functionality to headless repositories.
Sitecore 9.1 Overview
One of the most anticipated talks, Mark Groves & Pieter Brinkman give an overview of the new features and improvements in Sitecore 9.1. Besides JSS and Cortex, the most impressive change was a significant improvements in startup times, which should make content authors and developers very happy. As you can see, the startup times improve up to 85%!
There are improvements to SXA, EXM & Forms and some interesting new Features. Sitecore Identity is the new preferred way of logging in, being based on standard protocols and Identity Server 4. Also new is Sitecore host, a lean common runtime for .NET Core instances. One of the first products to use this are Horizon and JSS. Sitecore also introduces the so called Universal Tracker, a scalable new tracking service that can be used by any device.
Horizon: Uncovering Core UX And Architectural Concepts
Another highly anticipated session was the presentation about Horizon by Alec Orlov. Horizon is like a strapped down mix of Experience Editor and Content Editor, spiced with a bit of marketing functionality.
You can see the most important elements on this screenshot.
- On the upper right corner, there are buttons to switch between modes quickly, e.g. to preview
- On the left, there is a minimalized content tree, which only shows pages, not the underlying data items
- In the middle, there is an Experience Editor-like area to edit the item fields directly on the page
- A slider for easy switching of the device sits on top of the editing area
- On the right side, there is a list of fields that are used in the current view
You read that right: according to Alec, Sitecore will automatically determine which fields on which items are needed and display those
The page overview functionality triggered some gasps: Not only can you get a complete overview of your pages and paths…
…but also can you enrich it with analytics data to see which pages work well in your paths.
Extremely impressive was the performance optimization, loading Horizon with only 23 requests and 967 KB in less than 2 seconds. Another well received announcement was the retirement of telerik in favor of the open source editor Quill.
10X Your Sitecore Development
Mark Cassidy is a purist in Sitecore development and uses as little frameworks and packages as possible. It seems to work well for him, since he showed a timelapse of him developing a fully functional Sitecore site in less than 16 hours, complete with multiple components and working Experience Editor. I guess less sometimes really is more. Take away message and my favorite quote of the Symposium: “If you’re bored with Sitecore, you’re probably doing it right!”
Looking ahead: What’s next from Sitecore
Ryan Donovan and partners from Stylelabs show what the future brings for content authors: A better, more streamlined content creation and managing experience, including Digital Asset and Rights management, PIM-functionality and Adobe suite integration. Check out Stylelabs if your content creation process is a wild mix of different tools, channels and platforms.
What else?
Aside from the presentations, I had a blast in Orlando. Meeting the Sitecore community is always great, but this took it to the next level. The party was simply amazing (just casually opening Universal’s Islands of Adventure… now THAT’s what I call experience) and the organization was great. One more guy to mention here: Jake Johanssens performances were the funniest moments of the Symposium!
A big thank you goes to oddEVEN for making it possible to attend!
