Second Annual Chicago Meets Milwaukee #Sitecore Meetup Recap. @ParagonDev @GeekHive @_Americaneagle @jouimet @DDysart #SitecoreSym

October 26, 2018October 26, 2018 / sitecorerunner (@reilleyweb) / Leave a comment

After attending the first combined Sitecore meetup last year I was hoping the combined meetup would happen again. Well my hopes were answered. Joe from Geekhive invited me to speak on the Sitecore Symposium panel. I couldn’t wait to share my experience.

When I got there the usual food and goodies were there. The pizza was very good even though it was from Wisconsin.

The first presentation was on Coveo Hive. I am always impressed with Coveo and they continue to improve their product making them a vital search framework in the Sitecore world.

Looks like Hive introduces many new and exciting things.

Next was the Sitecore Symposium Panel. Joe from Geekhive did a great job hosting. It was great reliving the Symposium experience and sharing with others what we learned.

I had a great time moderating the panel discussing Sitecore Symposium at this months joint Milwaukee/Chicago Sitecore User Group meetup. #sitecore #mkesug @jraps20 @reilleyweb Thanks to @GeekHive and @_Americaneagle @DDysart for sponsoring! pic.twitter.com/EjddCbiI3M

— Joe Ouimet (@jouimet) October 26, 2018

This meetup reminded me of one my favorite crossovers. I can’t wait for the next one.

#Sitecore Symposium 2018 Day 4 #SitecoreSYM @ParagonDev

October 11, 2018October 11, 2018 / sitecorerunner (@reilleyweb) / 2 Comments

Another late night. Today the closing keynote looked at the future of Sitecore. Things are looking good and I am excited to use some of the new features that 9.1 will use. Today was the first day of the MVP summit and my first one. We visited Pandora. What a great surprise. Tomorrow I head home, a little wiser and more motivated. I have had a long career of many ups and downs, but the moments this week have been ones filled with some of the most ups ever. So here we go my day in pictures.

SIF What is next with Sitecore 9.1. A much-improved installation process. Also hear a graphical interface may be happening.

What is new in Sitecore 9.1?

Closing Keynote. No announcement where the next Symposium will be. I secretly hope Chicago, but I am guessing Las Vegas.

Pandora with my fellow MVP buddies:

Alright last day is tomorrow. Let’s do this.

#Sitecore Symposium 2018 Day 3 #SitecoreSYM @ParagonDev

October 10, 2018October 11, 2018 / sitecorerunner (@reilleyweb) / 3 Comments

Going to try and keep this short and sweet. Just got back from Universal Studios Walk and it is getting late.

Day started out with an organized 5k run. Pretty sure team Paragon won.

Lots of good presentations today.

Sarah Robb O’Hagan CEO of FlyWheel. What a great story and she is someone I can relate to with the whole fitness thing and all. I wonder if she will let me follow her on Strava.

.NET CORE and Sitecore

Sitecore and Alexa Integration

JavaScript and JSS

Last, but not least party at Universal City Walk. I couldn’t believe how awesome it was. It was a good day to be an MVP as I got in to the fast lanes. I hope my wand works.

#Sitecore Symposium 2018 Day 2 #SitecoreSYM @ParagonDev

October 9, 2018October 9, 2018 / sitecorerunner (@reilleyweb) / 2 Comments

Second day of the Sitecore Symposium craziness is in the books. So many exciting things I got to see and do. So, I will try my best to tell it in pictures at a high level since it is past midnight here and I have to get up and run a race tomorrow.

The day started off with a run. I just kept going in circles. Still not a fan of running in Florida, but I was happy with my run.

The keynote was great. Looking forward to a lot of new things from Sitecore. Here are some highlights:

Sitecore and SalesForce has strengthened their partnership.
Cannondale Cycles site launched with a bike finder app that reads Garmin Data.
SickKids foundation is raising money to build a new hospital. Great charity.
NotImpossible is changing the peoples lives for the better. What a great company.
Sitecore has purchased StyleLabs to further their brand and infrastructure.

Presentation on Azure I attended.

Presentation on GDPR standards.

Presentation on world’s fastest Sitecore Deploy. (Fastest until we come up with something faster, lol).

The keynote speaker was amazing this year. Daymond John from Shark Tank really makes you think about things to apply to work and life. I wasn’t allowed to take any pics and post, so I will just give you his five tips for success.

S – Set Goals

H – Homework

A – Amor

R – Remember you are the brand

K – Keep on swimming

Last, but not least some drinks, food and swag just because.

Good night…

#Sitecore Symposium 2018 Day 1 #SitecoreSYM @ParagonDev

October 8, 2018October 8, 2018 / sitecorerunner (@reilleyweb) / 3 Comments

Sitecore Symposium 2018 is in full force. This year it is at Orlando. This one is special as this is the first one I am attending as an MVP. So here we go in pictures.

Welcome sign at the airport.

Meeting up with my awesome co-workers. We took a limo ride to the hotel thanks to Scott for winning a contest.

Staying at the Swan and Dolphin hotel. We had some time to kill before the festivities started.

Hey it’s Mickey Mouse!

Doing some biking for a great cause.

Food!

I want one of these pillows. Time for bed and maybe a run in the morning.

#Sitecore October 2018 Chicago Meetup Impressions

October 5, 2018October 5, 2018 / sitecorerunner (@reilleyweb) / Leave a comment

This was the second Sitecore meetup this year. This one was at a different location. It was at Productive Edge in downtown Chicago. It was a scenic walk from the train. The office itself was setup nice. A lot of the attendees will be at the Sitecore Symposium, so it was nice to connect with them. We also used the Symposium app scan on the network menu to connect with each other. Of course, they had my favorite pizza, Lou Malnati’s.

The first presentation was a joint effort by Ryan Kuchler and Will Rolloff. This covered Context Marketing from both a marketer’s point of view and developers’ point of view. One of the things I believe that are overlooked by clients after a Sitecore site is complete is the powerful marketing tools that are in Sitecore.

Summary of topics:

Marketers – Get to know Context Marketing and deliver personalization to your audiences with out of the box Sitecore features and configurations – Today!
Developers – Architect and deploy the right application components that enable the business to drive context marketing and scaling it to meet your organizations needs using Microsoft Azure

They did an excellent job presenting and it was the best presentation I have seen on Context Marketing. I walked away with much more specific understanding on how all the different pieces worked. I especially liked the parts were previous versions of a page were compared to a new page, setting the score for each campaign and swapping out presentations based on visits. I will be using this information in the future.

Last, but not least Will presented tips for first time Symposium attendees. I wish I had these for my first Symposium. Even so it being my second Symposium coming up I still learned a few things.