2009

A big year for us as we launched in Philadelphia. Before finance crisis and swine flu, we had been encouraged by several of our American friends to introduce our conference model to the North American market.

We held our inaugural US conference at the stylish venue, the Downtown Club in Philadelphia in May 2009. We had 4 parallel tracks each day, and the event generally followed the template we have developed in Europe. A large number of international practitioner case studies with some panel discussions and with good representation from both public sector organisations and private enterprise.

David Pogue and Lou Rosenfeld were the keynote speakers and the first Web Idol competition in Philadelphia was won by Norwegian open source vendor eZ Systems.

Our Philadelphia delegates were also introduced to our famous social events; we had a bowling night and Wednesday’s main conference party was a classy dinner at the impressive ship, the Moshulu.

Phil Kemelor shared web analytics insights from the conference. Phil had previously visited us in Aarhus and fortunately we did not disappoint on our US launch:

One of the reasons I like the Boye conferences is because most of the folks are content managers, information architects and user experience professionals and there is a spirit of conversation, questioning and inquisitiveness that gets me thinking outside of the web analytics box.

In Aarhus, we held the 6th Aarhus conference. With 8 parallel tracks and great keynote speakers it attracted 230 delegates.

Discussions ranged from managing a successful SharePoint project to global intranet trends. The programme offered thought provoking keynotes by BJ Fogg, about Design for Behavior Change: Why Facebook & Twitter Are Winning and Marc Canter – How to build a Digital City.

As a new element, keynotes videos were uploaded on the conference website along with footage from a number of tracks, small interviews, and commentary from delegates, speakers and vendors. We also used Twitter for discussion under and after the different speakers.

Higher education marketing consultant Bob Johnson joined us from Michigan and shared Web content editors... lessons from Denmark.

CMS Wire also covered the conference with a few stories:

• Design for Behavior Change: Why Facebook and Twitter Are Winning

• Persuasion: How to Make Your Media More Persuasive

• Web Content Management: Inconvenient Truths and Industry Challenges

2008

With 8 parallel tracks, jboye08 attracted 261 delegates and was our largest event so far in terms of attendees and also with the most practitioners.

In addition it was our most international event with delegates coming from around the world. The program offered thought provoking keynotes by Robert Cailliau, Co-developer of the World Wide Web and usability expert Jared Spool.

It also featured an interesting expert panel discussion with Lisa Welchman, Mother of Web Operations Management, Martin White, Search and Intranet Expert and Nicolai Porsbo, Editor in Chief in the Danish Broadcasting Corp.

Steven Pemberton from the W3C spoke about Never is a long time (Disruptive Technologies and the Web).

A new addition was What’s On with an hour of informal roundtable discussions on a specific theme. In the Web Idol competition eZ Systems were dethroned when Sitecore won the reknowned trophy.

Among our Italian participants, Francesco Ciriaci was kind enough to send in this fan letter. To quote:

The whole conference was perfectly organized: friendly, with lots of occasions for networking, every detail taken care of, and probably the best food I’ve ever had at a conference

2007

With 8 parallel tracks, cmf2007 attracted 245 delegates. Discussions ranged from strategy and governance to specific systems and technologies.

The program offered thought provoking keynotes by BJ Fogg, groundbreaking researcher in simplicity and persuasion, Bob Boiko , author of Laughing at the CIO and The Content Management Bible, and Lisa Welchman, thought leader in the web operations management arena. Pump My Website had consultancies competing in the art of website redesign, with Creuna as the winner, while eZ systems successfully defended their trophy in the Web Idol competition.

Dan Keldsen was among our US speakers at our 3rd annual conference in Aarhus

2006

More users from around the world and record attendance at cmf2006, which was highlighted by keynotes from Ted Nelson, the inventor of hypertext and Nick Carr, the controversial author of Does IT Matter?

Representing the international user community, Ammar Bakkar provided insights into ambitious media organisation in the Middle East, while Steve Arnold presented a controversial take on Google. Many large, global and complex organisations turned up and shared their experiences. Web Idol was a new invention won by open source vendor eZ systems.

Industry analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe wrote this review on his trip back to Boston from Aarhus:

“This is the premier global event of its kind – and provides a very open and hospitable atmosphere for discussion, education and business. In addition it gets you to a part of the world you probably wouldn’t normally see, along with superb hospitality – and good food!” 

2005

We met for the first time at cmf2005 as our community back then was called CM Forum. At our inaugural event we discussed Web 2.0 and learned about new emerging technologies and standards at the BBC. The keynotes were given by experienced consultants from around the world, while the cases were mainly from Denmark.

The founders of Umbraco, TYPO3 and Sitecore were among the participants and so was over 100 other friendly web professionals.

Keynote speakers were Tony Byrne (US), James Robertson (AUS), Martin White (UK) and Erik Hartman (NL)

Besides the keynotes, program highlights included Adriaan Bloem from Leiden University on “The challenges of a large website with decentralized editors” and Brendan Quinn from the BBC on Real-world experience in implementing live metadata (PPT).