CMS Kickoff 24 Program

Held at the Don Cesar on January 16 - 17

The conference was tailored for everyone working with content management systems, from beginners to experts, and features 2 packed days with a carefully curated mixture of talks, workshops, activities and world class facilitators, thought-provokers, speakers and session leads.

PS: Looking for slides? You can find them below each session below.

Program

Tuesday, January 16

8:30 - 9:30: Breakfast and registration

9:30 - 9:45: Welcome & Opening

by Chris Justice and our moderator Janus Boye, Boye & Co

In this opening session, Matt Garrepy from CMS Critic will lead a conversation with Deane Barker on what we need to know for 2024.

Deane has spent most of the last 20 years working with, researching, writing, and speaking about content technologies. He is obsessed with managing, organizing, and delivering digital content. Most recently he wrote an opinion piece on CMS Delivery Flexibility Always Wins.

He’s probably also the most published expert among us with his four books:

• The Web Project Guide: From Spark to Launch and Beyond (2021)

• Things You Should Know: 25 Lessons I've Learned About Selecting Content Technology and Services (2020)

• Real World Content Modeling (2019)

• Web Content Management: Systems, Features, and Best Practices (2016)

We’re certainly living in an exciting time, at the center of what looks to be the most significant technological shift since the cloud or mobile. It is a fantastic opportunity for any business if organizations can learn how to leverage this shift. But can you avoid the pitfalls and hedge against the unknowns, especially as laws and regulations unfold in real time?

I propose that we journey together through three real-life use cases and discuss how an organization might leverage generative AI and LLMs for content creation, balancing out the risks and opportunities. The use cases proposed are: 

1. A life sciences company uses LLM to deliver newly generated and translated content to all local markets around the globe for a new product launch.

2. A fashion brand uses a computer-generated imagery (CGI) model on social media, coupled with synthetic personas and LLMs to increase personalized shopper advertising. 

3. A gas and chemicals company wants to understand how it can assess at risk of losing employees and retain its workforce longer, increase workforce satisfaction rates and boost loyalty to dominate the marketplace.

For each use case, I will present the opportunities that a business could expect and the obvious and not-so-apparent risks. The use cases themselves are not intended to conclude with a “good or bad” outcome conclusion but rather leave the attendees considering how this might play out in their organization and what type of value they may assign on the risk/opportunity scale. The use cases are based on my own projects over the past 24 months, anonymized to protect the innocent.

10.50 - 11:10 Coffee & networking

Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said “the only constant in life is change.” With smarter technology such as Generative AI, change is constant and fast. While our technology may change quickly, most people change slowly. People need to go through a predictable range of emotions and behaviors that accompany change. Change is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be painful. 

As a leader, you can take active steps to help flatten the change curve for your team. In this interactive session, we’ll dig into:

• Our Knowledge Management team's change journey   

• Commitment and change curves

• Evolution of our KM team's skills and core behaviors

• Management behaviors to support change

• Ways to flatten the change curve

How do we create a content model that truly supports a multichannel strategy?

How do we guide customers and teams, who have decades of website-delivery habits, to think beyond websites and design-system thinking?

In this session, we’ll discuss where audiences interact with content, like in social media, search snippets, and AI-powered search summaries.

We'll also discuss essential content modeling practices, including content strategy, semantic types, content connections, and common schemas, while addressing the challenge of helping people embrace a content-centric approach.

12:30 - 1.30 Lunch

The rise of component-based “page building” tools has given modern CMS users a way to produce innovative new content quickly, bypassing the rigid structure of templates and the high cost of one-off design and code. That convenience comes at a price, though: organizations that embrace it consistently face governance, design, and production challenges that wipe out the early benefits.

These problems aren’t restricted to one vendor’s flawed implementation: they’re baked into the way most organizations configure and use component-based page builders. The good news is that teams on the front lines are figuring out ways to sidestep the worst problems… and clean up the disasters after they’ve happened.

In this talk I’ll break down the important organizational needs that Page Builders fill, the distinct ways they veer off the rails, and three specific strategies that can deliver the benefits without the disasters.

2.30 - 3.00 Coffee & networking

Join us for a compelling trip through a number of real-world use cases for how GenAI can dramatically improve your overall digital experience performance.

From SEO optimization to accessibility, content compliance and auditing validation and even to more innovative use cases around personalization, experimentation and more, GenAI can be a game-changer.

This session will provide actual examples that separates hype from actual, tangible benefit, including:

• ChatBot

• Recommendations Engine

• Content Compliance

• Content Auditing

• Accessibility

• SEO Optimization

• Product Description Rewrites

• Content generation

• Co-Human Content authoring

• Email Campaign

• Messaging AI

• Personalization

• Experimentation

• Next Best Action (NBA) Experiences

As a product manager, the roadmap is our bread and butter. It's the way we communicate the direction we are heading 3, 6 even 12 months into the future. We assess the problems to be solved, the opportunities we want to seize, and we filter them against our strategic corporate goals and product principles.

But a 12 month look ahead isn't enough - not for me, as someone responsible for progressing a product, nor for agencies implementing CMSes, not even for content marketing strategists who constantly need to find ways to remain relevant and engaged with their market.

Our collective vision, as a content industry, has to see much further than just the year ahead!

Join this multi-perspective, interactive session where we will discuss and prioritize the importance of the trends and challenges we see emerging across the content industry - from how people are changing the way they consume content and how work practices are evolving, to how organisations are adopting new technologies and managing the complexity of a rapidly evolving martech landscape.

4.30 - 5.00 Coffee & networking

5.00 - 6.00 CMS Idol 2024

Help crown the next (and first) “2024 CMS Idol”! In this fast-paced, entertaining competition, contestants will have 6 minutes to showcase their system and try to win your vote.

If you like short demos, pithy commentary, and expert analyses, then look no further. This is the session for you. You'll hear thoughts from an expert panel of judges, but it's up to you to decide the winner.

Contestants:

• Agility CMS

• Directus

• Kajoo.ai

• Magnolia

• Umbraco

• Uniform

6.30 - 10:00 Social event

Everyone is invited to join us at Gigi's Italian Restaurant on 4399 Gulf Blvd, St Pete Beach for an informal dinner.

We’ll also announce the CMS Idol winner and even do a CMS Experts Quiz!

Gigi’s is just 10 minutes walk from Don Cesar.

Wednesday, January 17

7:00 Morning Run

We meet in front of the Don Cesar for a relaxed 25 minute run

8:30 - 9:30 Breakfast and networking

9:30 - 9.35: Welcome by Janus Boye

As marketing leaders, how can we build the production environment your creators dream of working in? As a former creative, and later, through motorsport, concepts from performance coaching re-framed how I think about creative producers: as performance athletes!

With examples from teams at a Fortune 100 enterprise to a hyper-growth technology startup, let's explore how you can build the high-performance engine for your content and creative initiatives.

• Harnessing peak performance - purpose and culture, hiring, avoiding overload and burnout

• Selecting and producing content - topic selection and prioritization, intelligent capacity planning

• Defining quality -  search-first, avoiding noise, authenticity, KPIs

What happens when emerging AI tools like ChatGPT can react to human behaviour? Will your solutions spot behaviour and auto-generate content?

Join this interactive session, where Nick will talk about Outputs vs. Outcomes as a crucial part of building outstanding digital experiences. In brief: If content is becoming a commodity, then your outcomes are the critical game changers.  

10.50 - 11.10 Coffee & networking

It's an age-old question, yet still relevant. Do you buy an off the shelf CMS, or build your own?

When Marli joined Verily, the team was stuck in a cycle. To build a new CMS would be too expensive and time-intensive, but to buy one wouldn't provide the right features. But to build it would be too expensive. And round it went.

Three years later, we have our CMS up and running, and a list of recommendations for how other organizations can make the decision. Did we build or buy? Marli will walk through the decision matrix and how Verily made their choice.

Much like Odysseus' fabled journey, the venture of a traditional manufacturing company into digital commerce is laden with trials and triumphs.

This session explores a case study where BizStream crafted a solution using composable commerce, amalgamating headless CMS, headless commerce, and Next.js.

The result now serves as a modern-day Athena, navigating our client through the stormy seas of digital transformation.

The shores of a prosperous online sales future are in view, but much peril stood in the way.

12.30 - 1.30 Lunch

In an age where digital landscapes constantly evolve and the power of media creation and distribution is in each of our hands, bridging the power of earned media with the authenticity of influencer marketing becomes advantageous.

This talk dives deep into the concept of "Earnfluencing," a novel approach that melds the credibility of earned media with the organic reach of influential personalities.

This presentation will not only unravel the significance of Earnfluencing but also offer actionable insights, strategies, and case studies.

As we navigate this nexus of trust and influence, participants will glean an understanding of how to harness this trend effectively, ensuring their digital platforms remain at the forefront of innovation and user engagement.

In a CMS world moving towards composable solutions and platforms, are marketers getting left behind?

In this session, let's explore this topic and get right into more detailed challenges like the power of a visual workspace, content modelling vs. experience modelling, content graphs and orchestration, content migrations, accelerators, avoiding the glue code monster, AI AI and more AI, and finally bringing things back to the future of content management.

2.30 - 3:00 Goodbyes and see you next year!

An interactive wrap-up of the two days. Key lessons learned, big questions for 2024 and what happens next

PS: Do join us at CMS Kickoff 25 in January or at CMS Connect 25 in August in Montreal.