This is a past event.
Join us for CMS Connect 27
CMS Connect 26
Thanks for a great conference!
“CMS, uh, finds a way”
as Jeff Goldblum would say it
Slides are added to the program and the conference photo album is filled with good ones. Feel free to use photos as you see fit and for the slides, please credit the speakers where appropriate.
Here are a few useful posts from the conference:
Andrei Kalamkarov on institutional memory
Brian McKeiver summarizing it: Agentic content management systems are not just coming; they are here
Deane Barker on what Carrie Hane recommended: “we need to use AI to *subtract* crappy content from our digital estates”
Joel Varty shared a detailed recap: Agentic Content Systems Are Already Here: CMS Connect 2026
Joyce Peralta from McGill: ”CMS Connect might be my favourite conference. It gives me … a heads-up on what to be ready for in the platforms we work in.”
Matt Garrepy with a summary of day #1: AI, Content, and What Comes Next and obviously on Goldblumming
Michael Thompson on the opening question from Joyce Peralta: “How do organizations shift process and messages when user expectations change?” and a longer recap with this key message from the conference: AI does not fix a weak content foundation. It exposes it, then multiplies it.
Olivier Dobberkau on moving beyond AI agents to the quieter questions that matter
Peter Dahlstrøm Andersen on top 3 conference takeaways from his first ever trip to Canada
Quick access;
- program and slides
- speakers
Day Kbilds gave an excellent presentation on that thing that determines whether content actually works: language.
Naz from Optimizely sharing her Jeff Goldblum quote during her Wednesday morning keynote
We started the conference with a morning walk and bagel quest!
Some of the conference speakers
Carrie Hane (US)
Creative digital strategist and author
Chuck Gahun (US)
Principal Analyst - Digital Business & Strategy at Forrester
What is CMS Connect?
Don’t take our word for it
“great to hear from iconic leaders in the content management system industry” - Joyce Peralta, Manager Digital Communications at McGill after attending CMS Connect 24
Based on popular request from our community, we launched CMS Connect 24 in 2024 as a North American summer edition of our conference series, and followed with a CMS Connect 25 edition.
As a recap, Matt Garrepy from CMS Critic wrote about the heart of content, open source, pragmatic AI, IA and more.
Good times on the boat trip at CMS Connect 24 with Gavin Colborne, Janus Boye, Joyce Peralta and Anders Hansen.
The sessions are without the usual sales and marketing pitches. There’s also plenty of time for conversations, so that you can bring actionable insights back to your desk and your projects.
It is an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. A friendly mix of vendors, agencies, analysts and customers who get together to learn, network and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better digital experiences right now and for the foreseeable future.
Who’s joining us?
Thanks to everyone who has already made the commitment to learning and networking. We’ll keep this list updated as we get nearer August.
Practitioners make up a significant part of the conference community, with participants joining us from organizations including Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Concordia University, ICANN, McGill, Shopify, TELUS and many more.
Among the vendors and open source projects who have already confirmed attendance are Agility, ai12z, Contentful, Dataweavers, HCLSoftware, Kajoo.ai, Kentico, Magnolia, OpenText, Optimizely, Sesimi, Staffbase and TYPO3. As you can see, it’s not just the usual CMS vendors, but also from the larger ecosystem.
On the agency and consulting side we are joined by 9thCO, b13, BizStream, Contextual Code, Digital Polygon, dkd, dotfusion, Evolving Web, HubFormation, Human Made, Inorbital, Sengo, SimpsonScarborough, TechGuilds and several others.
Among the analysts attending are Chuck Gahun from Forrester, Dan Drapeau from DXP Catalyst, Matt Garrepy from CMS Critic and our host Janus Boye from Boye & Co in Denmark.
Conference partners
Venue
The conference is held at Montréal CoWork, a place we selected for its uplifting atmosphere and environment conducive to creativity, new ideas and teamwork.
The lounge at CoWork, a good place to hangout and continue the conversation in between sessions
It’s located in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, a hip part of Montreál. Surrounded by quirky shops, colorful buildings with twirling iron staircases, and third-wave coffee shops. There are nearby hotels in all price ranges.