Sitecore Symposium

#Sitecore Symposium 2026 – What I am Looking Forward to.

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Putting this out later than I normally do, but that just gives me more time to collect my thoughts. I am always excited and grateful to be able to attend the Sitecore Symposium. This time it will be different as I am coming in as a client. It will be a different perspective, but for the first time attending I get to enjoy it more than ever. I have a few blogs on how to prepare for the Symposium you can check those out. This one though is going to be my new perspective going in and what I plan on doing. I will try and blog everyday and do a summary blog. Stay tuned.

Sessions

In the past my focus has been learning and sharing what I learned. This time it will be learning and utilizing what I learned. I am going to try and attend sessions that will help Emory as we make our journey to SitecoreAI. Here are a few of the sessions I am looking forward to.

Shipping faster and safer with the Vercel Dashboard: A guide to Sitecore on Vercel

Meet Vercel, the frontend cloud trusted by Sitecore teams. In 15 min, we’ll cover who we are, how we partner with Sitecore, and walk through the Vercel Dashboard live, showing how previews, rollbacks, and observability help you ship faster and safer.

Marketing Rewired: The Next Era of Growth

AI is rewriting how customers find, trust and choose brands, opening new opportunities for business growth. Eric Stine takes the stage with a major announcement and a bold vision for Sitecore’s future: connecting market intelligence, brand knowledge and action to help businesses reach more customers, increase conversion and grow revenue.

The Art of Staying Relevant

Andy Cohen knows how to keep people watching – and talking. Join him and Eric Stine for a candid, entertaining conversation about the creative instincts, storytelling and audience connections behind a career at the center of popular culture. Hear what it takes to capture attention, build devoted audiences and keep them coming back

When search goes sideways: Lessons from Cracker Barrel’s composable transformation

What happens when composable search doesn’t go according to plan? Explore the challenges, turning points, and hard-earned lessons from Cracker Barrel’s transformation, with practical takeaways for teams navigating their own composable commerce journeys.

Lunch

Enjoy lunch while connecting with fellow Symposium attendees and taking a break before the afternoon programming begins.

The app ecosystem: A live tour of the Marketplace roadmap

An inside look at the Sitecore Marketplace — how extensibility and third-party integrations expand what’s possible on the platform.

Beyond CMS modernization: How Fujitsu prepared its global digital platform for the AI era

In this session, Fujitsu shares its journey from a global web platform to Sitecore XP, and ultimately to Sitecore’s AI-powered digital experience ecosystem. As customer discovery shifts from traditional search engines to AI-driven interactions, Fujitsu recognized that technology modernization alone would not be enough. Success required rethinking content strategy, governance, and global operations.

Prescribing better digital experiences: How Riverside Health leveraged SitecoreAI

In today’s healthcare landscape, delivering seamless digital experiences is critical to improving patient engagement and access to care. Learn how Riverside Health partnered with Americaneagle.com to migrate from Sitecore XM to SitecoreAI, introducing AI-powered content optimization, intelligent search, and streamlined operations. This transformation strengthened content discovery, boosted engagement, and established a scalable foundation for elevated digital healthcare experiences.

From XMC to SitecoreAI: A large global manufacturer’s journey to the ultimate marketing enablement

Join Atkore and Horizontal Digital as they share Atkore’s journey activating SitecoreAI for its global B2B marketing organization. Learn how the company moved from data and technology enablement to marketer empowerment and growth.

Pathway 2.0—the agentic migration: From an application to a toolset

Pathway 2.0 turns migration into a composable toolset with agent-callable capabilities, built-in logging, and step-level traceability. Learn how Sitecore supports Sitecore and non-Sitecore migration paths, and why observable, agentic tooling is a durable foundation for modernization.

Breakfast

Enjoy breakfast and connect with fellow Symposium attendees before the day’s programming kicks off.

How WellSpan turned Sitecore into an omnichannel experience engine

Join WellSpan and Alliance Innovations to learn how reusable components, shared content, and governed design systems accelerated delivery and created a scalable foundation for future digital experiences.

The future of content editing

A preview of what’s next for content authoring – smarter, more intuitive editing experiences designed to boost author productivity.

Symposium Celebration at Universal Islands of Adventure

Symposium doesn’t end when the sessions do. Enjoy an exclusive evening at Universal Islands of Adventure, featuring thrilling attractions, including The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™ and Jurassic Park.

My Fellow Co-Workers

I love connecting with the Sitecore community, but it will be great to hang out with my Emory co-workers and get to know them better. It is their first Symposium so hopefully I can give them a few good tips.

MVP Summit

I am always honored to be an MVP and getting to go to the summit is an awesome experience. I love attending and getting a sneak preview of what is next.

Solutions Pavilion

I plan to explore and talk to all the partners and get all the swag. I will also be entering all the contests.

Parties and Dinners

The MVP Party and the Symposium Party are always highlights for me. This year though I was invited to several partner dinners. As a group we will decide which one to attend, but it was an honor just to be invited.

#Sitecore Symposium 2025 Day 3

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I realize the Symposium is over and I am little behind. I need a little recovery time after the party at Universal so had to wait until I was home to do this one. It didn’t help the Wi-Fi was really bad at the hotel so not all my photos were synced yet across my Apple devices. I will have a Symposium recap with what is coming out in the near future. For now here is Day 3 in photos.

The presentation on .NET Core in DXP was a great surprise and looking forward it. Many clients are just not ready for SaaS.

Great presentation on customizing a Marketplace app with a traditional XM marketplace module.

Now for one of my favorite parts. The Hackerspace! This was so fun and I am excited to show my team.

Scored some cool swag.

Ended the day at Universal Studios.

There is probably something else I am forgetting, but I will remember later.

#Sitecore Symposium 2025 Day 2

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Let’s just start with SitecoreAI. The announcement for SitecoreAI was a big one. Bringing all the products together is a great idea that I think will make things much easier for everyone. I can’t wait to see it in action. So here is day 2 in pictures with some captions.

Starting with big announcement.

I will admit I never heard of Savannah Bananas. Now I am a fan. One of the best presentations I have ever heard. I like what he said about “listening carefully and responding creatively”.

Learned that you can do ASP.NET Core for XM Cloud. Maybe a choice in the future.

Wellspan’s Journey with their Sitecore partner was really impressive. A great learning experience.

Random pictures.

#Sitecore Symposium 2025 Day 1

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First day of the Sitecore Symposium. The MVP summit and partner connect took place. I attended the MVP summit and had a fun time as always. I am excited about the new announcements. I can’t tell you what the announcements are just yet. Believe me when I say you will be excited about what is to come when you hear them too. So here are some pictures from the first day.

Tamas has been a staple of the MVPs. He will be missed, but looking forward to seeing him in a future Symposium.
Who doesn’t love dessert?

It’s the Robs! Just getting started with the pics since there are so many Robs in the Sitecore community.

Seaworld did not disappoint.

I can’t wait for day 2.

#Sitecore Symposium 2025 – Highlights of what I am Excited About #sitecoresym

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Always excited about this time of year, because the symposium brings a lot of new announcements and energy. As someone who has attended several symposiums, here is my list of what I am excited about.

  • To kick things off I plan on attending the general announcements.
    • Next is Now – Eric Stine the CEO of will be discussing the current state of the market. Hearing from the CEO always starts on a positive note.
    • CMO Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek will set the week of what to look ahead to.
  • AI – This of course it is hot topic and there will be many presentations to attend for it. My advice is find the one you are interested in, but also try something out of your comfort zone. Here are some of the ones I am looking at.
    • Sitecore’s AI roadmap: How agentic frameworks will transform digital experience – Mo Cherif
    • Unleashing AI innovation: the latest features in Sitecore Stream for Platform DXP – Marcus Heath and Ivan Brygar
    • How Sitecore’s AI features can supercharge the five stages of the content lifecycle –
      Robert McGovern
    • Zero-click killed the SEO star: Optimizing content for an AI-first audience with GEO – Brandon Bruno
  • Networking – Always good to see the people that you interact throughout the year in person. It is also an opportunity to make some new connections. I am excited to get to attend the parks with the MVP and Sitecore community.
  • Looking at the agenda, I like to attend non-technical presentations that I feel are beneficial to RBA and our clients. Here are some of the presentations I plan on attending.
    • Designing inclusive experiences for everyone: Build a better journey map on Sitecore -Kelsey Lindell and Megan Mueller Jensen
    • Creating the copilots your marketing will actually thank you for – Vasiliy Fomichev and Martin Miles.
  • New knowledge for developers. – As a developer we never stop learning. I am excited to attend presentations that will help me grow as a developer. Using the knowledge I gain I can show to my colleagues and bring new ideas to my clients. Here are just some of the technical presentations I am looking forward to.
    • Ready, set, launch: Running ASP.NET Core XM Cloud sites in production – Rob Earlam
    • Cutting Sitecore development time by up to 80% with AI – Rajitha Khandavalli and Kevin Suarez
    • Rethinking data modeling in the new content platform – Andrew Liu and Liz Nelson
    • Migrating an XM/XP module to XM Cloud Marketplace – Erica Stockwell-Alpert
    • You’ve been asking, and we’ve been listening: .NET is coming to platform XM/XP – Vignesh Vishwanath and Maxim Sidorenko
  • Sitecore Run – Okay I needed to put this one out there as I hope to run with others. I love running and Sitecore maybe equally so I love it when the worlds collide.
  • The meeting of the Robs. So we have a ton of Robs in the Sitecore world. I hope we can take a photo together. So if you are a Rob and are reading this let’s plan a date time.

Sitecore Symposium Summary and Final Thoughts #SitecoreSYM

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Still unwinding from one of the best weeks I have spent in Nashville. It was the only week I ever spent there. I am sure the Sitecore Symposium made it better than any other week.In this blog I will break down some of the highlights and give you my final thoughts. The them for the Symposium was The Power to Build. That is something that rings true.

Food Tour

One of the best things I did in Nashville was the food tour. It was well organized by Chet. Learned some good history and had some great food.

MVP Summit

I can’t share much yet, but as always a great time. Learned a lot and got a lot of questions answered. I got to meet my mentee in person so that was really exciting. He is doing great things and I have no doubt he will be a future MVP.

Sitecore Stream

AI is the current and the future hottest technology. With Sitecore Stream AI will be part of the DNA in all of Sitecore products. We have probably heard a lot already about Sitecore Stream. Here are some of the things I believe it will offer. To find out more go here.

  • AI Enhanced Workflows
  • Consistent content and branding.
  • Faster website page creation.
  • Content remains the property of the customer.

XP

It not be the new shiny ring, but it sure has not lost its luster.

  • Updates are released through various versions of Sitecore prior to XP, minimizing the potential for breaking changes.
  • XP will also gain from Sitecore Stream and Copilot (AI features).
  • XP will continue to get support.
  • Copilot AI will be integrated into the Content Editor. It will help in generating textual content, like titles and descriptions. It will also correct grammar and spelling errors.
  • There will be a choice to use Sitecore Search instead of SOLR.
  • MVC to Headless Migration Tooling will be provided.

Content Hub

  • More AI features added.
  • Sharing of assets between DAM and CMP.
  • Can use your own AI.
  • AI Integration: The focus is on injecting AI into business processes, particularly in content creation and marketing functions. Discussions revolved around challenges with using off-the-shelf AI tools and the need for business-specific logic.
  • Content Strategy: The aim is to enhance the quality of photography from various partners. It also aims to increase the quantity while addressing issues like licensing costs. Another focus is on ensuring brand alignment.
  • Feedback Mechanism: A system for feedback on generated images was proposed. Users evaluate assets. They give feedback to improve the AI model’s accuracy and effectiveness.

Sitecore Search

  • Modernize search experiences, ensuring consistency across diverse business units while focusing on user requirements and data governance.
  • Highlighted the need for flexible search solutions that can adapt to various content types and user needs.
  • They have merged Discover (Commerce based Search) and their non-commerce-based search into a single product now.
  • Has OOTB development kit which supports React.

XM Cloud

  • XM Cloud is now HIPPA compliant. That is huge news.
  • Many more frontend stacks supported and starter kits.
  • Retirement of Experience Editor and shift to Page Editor.
  • XM Sites – Dashboard which helps manage a multi-site tenant.

Unified Tracking

Capable of keeping track across SaaS product like Connect, Personalize and CDP. Tracking and privacy will be much smoother.

Marketplace

Marketplace is coming back.
Will have starter installations that will help get things up and running the way customers want.
Open to Sitecore and Trusted Partners.

Katie Ledecky

What an amazing athlete. Great hearing what she had to say. I never knew the medals have a piece of the Eiffel tower.

Brendan Hunt

You heard me many times quote Ted Lasso. It was an honor to see Coach Beard in the flesh. Remember to “Be Curious Not Judgmental”.

Teammates

Working from home it was great to see people that I haven’t seen a while in person. Most of all my teammates.

Swag

Got some really great stuff from the store. My chocolate lab Murray is modeling his new Sitecore collar.

Final Thoughts

I feel like Sitecore that I fell in love with over ten years ago is back. They are posed to really overtake the market. There is so much to learn. I plan to stay with the products that I know best. I will expand my knowledge for sure and hopefully start looking into products I haven’t used much before.

Sitecore Symposium Day 5 – A day of Sitecore Sessions. #SitecoreSYM

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It has been a late night. I’ll post more when I get a chance. Here are some highlights from some of the sessions I saw today.

How to harness the power of data across Order Cloud, Content Hub, Discover, search and Microsoft fabric.

Mental health checks with 100% of time migrating mental wellness to XM cloud.

The new Sitecore marketplace.

Sitecore CDP: unlock your data with unified tracking.

Sitecore Symposium Day 4 – Sitecore Stream, Breakout Sessions and Katie Ledecky. #SitecoreSYM

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Let me first say how excited I am about all the new stuff coming soon. Today was a great day.

Sitecore stream is really going to revolutionize the way things are done. Stretching AI across all Sitecore products is going to be amazing. Find out more here.

Breakout Sessions were Fantastic as always. Here are some of the highlights of the ones I attended.

Continuous improvement with Content Hub

Great session were I learned how a real world Content Hub implementation was done. Doing things right in the DAM from the start is essential. This approach will help you down the road. Especially with other parts of the Content Hub.

Content Hub Roadmap

I missed pat of this, but was able to capture a slide.

Developer Experience in XM Cloud

This one was exciting to hear. Lots of great features coming to XM Cloud development. Liz Nelson did a great job explaining it. The new offerings will help developers tremendously.

Last, but not least a fireside chat with Katy Ledecky. I found out that part of the medal is made with the Eiffel Tower.

Almost forgot I ran too.

Sitecore Symposium Day 3 – Partner Connect and RBA Co-Workers #SitecoreSYM

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For the first time ever I attended a Partner Connect. It was awesome hearing what is on the horizon. I can’t share everything yet, but it will be worth the wait.

Had to get my buttons and meet my co-workers from RBA.

Sitecore Symposium Day 2 – Running and MVP Summit #SitecoreSYM

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What better way to start the day then with run?. Wednesday I am organizing a run/walk, so I needed to test out some routes.

There are some restrictions on what I can share from the MVP Summit. However, I’m gonna share what I can.

The first thing I will share is that I’m excited about what next year has in store for Sitecore and the community.

I am a big fan of the Content Hub. Based on what I have heard, it’s gonna be a bigger powerhouse next year.

As XM cloud grows so do all of the ways to implement it. It keeps getting stronger every year. Some clients are not ready to get there yet. Sitecore is at least preparing for that when they do get there. I really like the idea of a hybrid model. Some clients can move their sites over to XM cloud. They keep their other ones in XM/XP until they’re ready.

it was interesting to learn how psych’s competitors have been attacking them in the market. Sitecore is not one to attack others. Their product will speak for itself. They will take the initiative to show that more, from what I understand.

Sitecore’s e-learning will offer new courses. These courses aim to help non-technical people grow their Sitecore knowledge.

Well, after all that serious business, it was time of the party at Dave & Buster’s.