Next level digital teamworking

The shift to digital teams is here to stay, whether we stay remote or return to the office in a hybrid/mixed mode of work. And whilst digital teamworking tools, such as Microsoft Teams, allow us to continue working, we can easily focus on meetings and chat - not the elements that drive high performing and collaborative teams.

In a recent member call, UK-based collaboration expert Andrew Pope showed how his approach to designing blended teams has been adopted by a UK Government client.

We looked at how they found opportunities and set goals, what techniques were selected using a 'choose your own adventure' approach via online workshops and game cards and how they helped their workforce learn new skills to embrace digital teamworking, to fully utilise Microsoft Teams.

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Enonic XP 2021 evaluation

Enonic XP is an open-source web experience platform now in version 7.6. The focus is on next-level headless CMS, making it easy to build custom web solutions…..

To help our growing community of digital leaders make better technology decisions, we’ve just released a new and detailed review of Enonic.

The marketplace for digital experience platforms remains crowded and it can be hard to make sense of the many moving parts as a customer. Norwegian Enonic has been around for over 20 years and has managed to reinvent itself a few times.

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Expert of the month: Blair Roebuck

“Why does your business exist digitally?”

It sounds like a simple question, but to many, it is actually quite difficult to answer. In particular, in large and complex organisations, depending on who you speak to, you’ll often find quite different answers.

In my recent conversation with Toronto-based Blair Roebuck, she shared her challenge of looking behind the numbers, finding the compromise between different views and opinions, yet only one website

According to Blair, every website has a purpose. If you are in B2B, it might be showing your authority or it might be all about lead generation. The trick is, that we are being measured on different outcomes and conversion doesn’t necessarily mean checking out in an e-commerce flow. Long story short: We’re often not measuring against the right metrics

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How key social contracts are fraying in the move from WCM to DXP

It’s no news that marketers and content editors want control over non-web experiences. Preston So from Oracle describes the current situation in the marketplace as “an uneasy alliance between personas” and last year he made a popular call for A New Grand Compromise In Content Management as he shared some of the current problems with headless CMS.

Earlier this month, he returned and hosted a member conference call with his latest thinking. He covered what he considers the fundamental problem facing content management today: “Not all CMS personas are treated equal anymore” and went on to talk about how this impacts us all on the journey from CMS to DXP (digital experience platforms).

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Let the world feel your heartbeat

Did you get your job by playing safe? According to Florida-based community expert Tim McDonald, we are too often focused on the end result and programmed to always have a plan. Then there’s the element of fear and what might happen if we move away from what is expected.

In our recent member conference call, Tim talked about how by letting the world feel your heartbeat, you inspire others to share theirs. A deeply touching conversation about the difference between telling a story and making an impact, on fear, and Tim’s very personal story.

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Do you know where your photos are?

Tracking down imagery for campaigns can be quite time-consuming and it’s a real challenge in many organisations with photos, videos and other material spread out across different systems.

In our recent member conference call, London-based digital asset management (DAM) expert Theresa Regli shared her insights on the topic and opened her talk by getting to the core of the problem:

When re-use or re-purposing doesn’t happen, more money gets spend on re-creation.

With a focus on DAM for the last 15 years, Theresa advises marketing leaders and DAM project leads on digital strategy, data design, and MarTech stack product selection. In our call, she shared from her recent work on DAM and integration points, specifically to the MarTech ecosystem.

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Expert of the month: Melissa Breker

It seems only fitting that in my conversation with Vancouver-based Melissa Breker, she brings up the famous George Bernard Shaw quote on the problem with communication. The quote has never been more relevant in these times as we are dealing with the pandemic and fighting misinformation and it is also very fitting for the career path taken by Melissa.

As you probably know, it’s often an illusion that communication actually occurred. In recent years, Melissa has transitioned from almost a decade of content strategy work to being a change leader. Her focus is now even more on clarity and how to actually ensure successful implementation of change.

Melissa is also a Boye conference speaker and our expert first expert of the month in 2021. At her recent Aarhus conference appearance, she spoke about a few gaps that you need to know, but let’s first go back about a decade to understand Melissa’s background.

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The hurdles to headless CMS adoption - and how to overcome them

Headless CMS has seen a growing popularity in the past years, mostly driven by developers and customers unsatisfied with their existing digital platforms.

While it is often sold on the premise of many advantages to developers, business users tend to struggle to make the shift to a new paradigm. In a recent CMS Expert session, Petr Palas from Kentico took a look at the most common reasons why headless CMS adoption fails and how to overcome them.

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Top five articles from 2020

We don’t do breaking news, but instead we try to share insights from our members and extended network of friends, and at least once a year, we look at the stats to see which posts really made an impact.

We actually managed to do 63 blog posts this year, which is up from 40 in 2019. Is that a good thing on a crowded World Wide Web? We think so, in particular given that it’s been a year with less in-person meetings and far fewer conferences. This means that it’s been harder to get to the unique lessons learned from practitioners and experts alike.

A big thank you to everyone who’s found the time to contribute. It makes a huge difference and it’s what keeps us going. Picking just five posts it unfair, but this is the season of lists and reflection, so here you go.

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Towards more tourism - When your industry shuts down

While the pandemic has hit each industry and country differently, few are more hit than those relying on tourism. In particular those in destinations further away than a drive or train ride.

For our final member call in 2020, we looked to the home country of Santa Claus and heard from Stine Selmer Andersen at Visit Greenland.

Using her work with destination development and sustainability, Stine Selmer Andersen dived into the new reality and trends of tourism and gave a behind-the-scenes look into what you do, when you drive tourism to a country, which is practically impossible for foreigners to visit.

In other words, a different angle on customer experience, digital business development and the new normal.

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Expert of the month: Mathias Jakobsen

Are you good at doing things for the first time? There has certainly been a fair share of that this year and you might call that a beginner’s mind, but when I spoke to Copenhagen-based consultant Mathias Jakobsen, it quickly became clear that being good at doing new things is extremely valuable, takes special skills and that this whole ‘beginner's mind’ is a misunderstood concept.

Usually, an expert has done things thousands of times and has the experience to predict how things will pan out. Doing something for the first time is different. It clearly requires additional attention to what’s actually happening. Unlike a traditional expert, say an experienced accountant or HR professional, you can’t to the same degree predict the outcome. Observing and adjusting along the way is key.

Given what’s happened this year, where few predicted the pandemic, it only seems fitting to have Mathias Jakobsen as our expert of the month. You may like it or not, but 2020 has clearly made the strong case for a different approach and different skills.

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Adapting Together in 2020

These are uncertain times, so allow me to start this community update by thanking you for being part of our shared journey.

Adapting Together has been our 2020 theme and it's all about going forward better. It’s human nature to adapt, but needless to say, the year has been quite tricky and challenging for most. Also for us as community organisers, but still, our continued learning doesn't need to stop.

Since our previous community update back in July, we’ve thankfully managed to keep the momentum going and certainly worked hard to stay relevant in strange and surreal times. We’ve faced quite some obstacles, but managed to do group meetings around Europe, virtual sessions with our North American members and even managed to do our in-person conference in Aarhus.

Follow me for a look behind the scenes at the last 6 months.

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Having a clear purpose

According to Sophia Zieger many organisations have a meaningless mission statement. Why is that and does it really matter?

In our recent member conference call, Sophia shared her perspective on the topic of working with purpose and asked some relevant questions like:

  • Can you measure the impact of an authentic mission statement?

  • What does purpose really mean?

  • How does the purpose impact us as individuals, employees, consumers and society?

Sophia is based in Dresden, Germany, and as a part of her role at software firm Staffbase, she works with HR and internal communicators to drive change.

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Expert of the month: Pernille Rahbech

Storytelling is more important than ever according to Aarhus-based Pernille Rahbech. Pernille just celebrated her 2nd anniversary as a solopreneur focusing on communications and in particular helping her customers tell stories and sell dreams.

Her small business still doesn’t have a website and she’s simply using her own name to brand herself, so she knows a thing or two about good stories and the importance of a strong network.

Pernille is based in Aarhus and has specialised on communication around major new construction projects in a new part of town and she is our expert of the month.

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Virtual First - a new way to work after COVID19

Just last month, Dropbox announced their plans to go Virtual First. This means that remote work (outside an office) will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work, also after COVID. It also means non-linear workdays and it’s Dropbox’s take on creating a sustainable, thriving workplace for the future.

In a recent member conference call, we heard from Marc Pazcian at Dropbox on what going virtual first means in practice and how this impacts creativity and collaboration. Marc is Solutions Architect and Cultural Ambassador at Dropbox DACH region. He's based in Hamburg, Germany.

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