Welcome to my recap of Sitecore Symposium 2024! The week continued with numerous insightful sessions, informative workshops, and exciting new announcements. Here are my session notes and takeaways from the final day at Symposium, day three.

Opening Keynote

Opening keynote with Brendan Hunt

The morning kicked off on a high note with a special guest appearance by Brendan Hunt, who plays Coach Beard on Ted Lasso. Though I haven’t watched the show myself—there are simply too many good ones to keep up with —I still found his insights engaging and relevant. He shared valuable lessons that resonate in both work and life, without needing to be star-struck to appreciate them.

• How to make work not suck
  • Connect with co-workers.
  • Surprise your co-workers.
  • Make today different than yesterday.
    • Don’t fall into the trap of the mundane.
  • Be curious, not judgmental.
    • People have lots of things going on that might not be apparent or shared with you.
  • Don’t let the wisdom of age be wasted on you.
    • Use the knowledge that you have gained.
    • This is the opposite of youth is wasted on the young.

CDP and Personalize at Scale

CDP and Personalize at Scale session

Personalization at scale holds immense potential for boosting revenue, and companies that successfully tackle the challenges of scaling personalization will gain a competitive edge. In today’s market, can your business afford not to invest in personalization? While personalization can drive growth, it comes with its own set of challenges—overcoming these will set industry leaders apart from the rest.

• Challenges faced by marketers
  • Creating the right content.
  • Creating enough content.
  • Creating quality content.
  • Technical skills to create content.
  • Understanding what the customer wants/needs.
• Data
  • Ensuring you have the data you need to personalize.
    • Data is often trapped in multiple disconnected systems.
  • Distribution
    • Coordination between channels to ensure a consistent customer experience and messaging.
  • Scaling
    • Content reuse
      • Integrate Sitecore Search to surface existing content.
    • Generative AI
      • Content creation and revision.

XM Cloud Roadmap

The benefit of a SaaS-based product like XM Cloud is that it is being continuously updated. Best of all you get the updates without having to upgrade. XM Cloud has numerous new features coming to the platform.

• Present
  • A/B Testing
  • Marketer’s Dashboard
  • Sitecore Stream content optimization
• Next
  • Updates to Pages
  • Component level personalization
  • Component Library
  • Sitecore Stream brand assistant
• Future
  • Generative AI component builder
  • Embedded Search

Sitecore Lunch

Lunch with friends in the Sitecore community

What a great way to end a great week! An in-person Sitecore lunch started as two tables and then grew to four, six, and eight tables with almost 40 people. This shows the real power of the Sitecore community because although we might work for different companies and be considered “competition”, we can still be friends and discuss Sitecore without boundaries. With my Perficient colleagues, it’s so nice to sit around a physical table with everyone that I normally see every week in little boxes on a Zoom call.

That’s a wrap!

Sitecore Symposium 2024 is over, but there is so much to look forward to in the world of Sitecore over the next year. I’m thrilled about the upcoming changes in CDP, Personalize, and Search with unified tracking, as well as the potential of Sitecore Stream for AI-driven insights, content creation, and brand-aware marketing support. I’m also looking forward to the Sitecore Marketplace, where we can build apps and expand the capabilities of XM Cloud. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to chat and hear more about what Sitecore news you are most excited about.

Welcome to my recap of Sitecore Symposium 2024!  Day 2 at Symposium offered incredible insights and valuable information. There was no shortage of engaging sessions and thought-provoking discussions and we are so excited to bring these fresh perspectives back. Here are my session notes and takeaways from day two.

Women in Digital Breakfast

What an inspiring way to start the day! Sitecore and Perficient joined to bring the inaugural Women in Digital Breakfast to life. The morning started with a nice breakfast buffet and there was time to hang out and connect with other attendees. Perficient continued our “Skip the Swag” initiative and left notecards on the tables where each attendee could write and share how cancer has impacted their life. For each attendee, Perficient will make a donation on their behalf to the American Cancer Society. The panel discussion was very well done and the speakers had great insight and takeaways.

• How can men help support women in the workplace?
  • Create space for women.
  • Bring women along on your journey.
  • Stand up for your women colleagues.
  • Be an ally.
• How can we help to eliminate gender roles in future generations?
  • Raise boys and girls with the same standards.
  • Do not force kids into certain roles, hobbies, or toys that play to gender stereotypes.
• Many women left the workforce during the pandemic to support kids and families but now…
  • They are coming back.
  • They are changing careers.
  • They need support.
• How can we support women with families (or anyone with a family really)?
  • Be understanding.
  • Family comes first.
  • Work is a part of life, not your whole life.

Opening Keynote

Eric Stine opened the day with the announcement that Content Hub, XM Cloud, and CDP are all HIPPA compliant! This is a big deal since it allows Sitecore to be able to sign BA agreements with healthcare organizations. In today’s modern world, users expect personalized experiences but this is difficult when it comes to PHI. You cannot change your personal information like you can your credit card if you get hacked. Protecting personal information is important to a brand’s trust.

Experience Awards

The morning continued with the announcement of the Experience Award winners for 2024.  Perficient was pleased to win the Global Sitecore Practice Excellence Award. You can see a full list of all the winners in Sitecore’s official press release. Congratulations to all the winners!

Sitecore Search at Scale

This project included 6 sources, 7000 PDFs, and 44 languages! How do you scale Sitecore Search to a project that large?

• Identify your data
  • What you want to index.
• Analyze the data
  • How can you standardize your data?
• Expose your data
  • Sitecore Search uses a crawler, so it must be able to access your data in order to index it.
• How will Search help your clients?
  • What problem are they trying to solve?
  • What are they looking for?
  • Is the data useful to your clients?
• “Make it like Google”
  • Google has hundreds of developers solely focused on search.
  • Your development team is likely much smaller and has many other tasks to accomplish to launch a site.
  • Your search experience is only as good as the time and money you can devote to it.

Introducing Sitecore Marketplace

More people are moving to XM Cloud and other SaaS products. 82% of users say that an app marketplace is an important factor in choosing a DXP platform. Sitecore is taking that information to heart and creating a new Sitecore Marketplace. This will be a fully supported solution for discovering, enabling, and managing apps, plugins, and extensions.

• This gives developers
  • The tools and technologies to create add-ons for Sitecore products
    • SDKs
    • UI libraries
    • Support and documentation
    • Starter library
  • Support for app versions
  • App visibility
    • Public
    • Private (invite only access)
  • This gives customers
    • The ability to add new features and capabilities to their instance

Sitecore CDP – Unified Tracking

Sitecore’s composable suite of products are becoming easier to connect together. Unified tracking means that you only must integrate one SDK. It also means that each event triggered will persist across all Sitecore products. The first products to use unified tracking will be XM Cloud, CDP, Personalize, and Search.

• Session Tracking
  • A new session end event in CDP that allows you to update the guest profile.
• Profile Sharing
  • The guest profile can be shared across products.
    • Use the guest ID in CDP to find the same user in Search.
  • Audience segments can be shared across products.
    • Search results can be tailored to the audience segment.
  • Cloud SDK
    • One SDK to rule them all.
      • The Cloud SDK will reach feature parity with the Engage SDK.
      • The Cloud SDK will be the primary and best way to integrate

Symposium Party

Sitecore sure knows how to throw a party! We had bus service to downtown Nashville where we had space at four bars on Broadway just for attendees! There was a buffet with all the southern comforts including my favorites: chicken and waffles and shrimp and grits!  To top it off, there were three floors of entertainment and a rooftop with a view of downtown. There was live music, line dancing, drinks, and good times with good friends!  What a great night and great experience at Sitecore Symposium!

Welcome to my recap of day one at Sitecore Symposium 2024! There was no shortage of inspiring sessions, key takeaways, and exciting announcements from day one.

Opening Keynote

The opening keynote by Sitecore executives was an excellent kickoff to Symposium, reinforcing their commitment to being a trusted partner. They emphasized their focus on core strengths and want people to have a choice, whether it be XM Cloud, XM, or XP. Sitecore is determined to stay ahead of the market through innovation and they made several exciting announcements about the direction they’ll take in the coming year. It’s an exciting time to be working with Sitecore!

Introducing Sitecore Stream! Sitecore Stream is the new brand-aware AI generative copilot that will work with marketers as they try to do more with less.

• Will be integrated across all DXP products
• Shortened time to value.
• Keep marketing materials consistent.
• Help create new campaigns.
• Balance strategy with technology.

It really is an impressive tool and I, along with many others in the Sitecore community, can’t wait to see it in action. You really do have to see it to believe it.

Accessibility and the Impact on your Business

Accessibility is more important than ever, yet it’s often treated as an afterthought, typically addressed at the end of projects when it should be prioritized from the start. It’s not just about checking a box or a one-and-done effort—accessibility affects everyone and can benefit anyone. Good website design enhances the user experience for all, not just those with disabilities.

• Why is accessibility important?
  • Regulatory
  • Legal
  • Financial
  • Equality
  • Doing the right thing
• ADA lawsuits:
  • The number of lawsuits is rising over time.
    • In 2018 there were 2,000+ Lawsuits.
    • In 2023 there were 4,000+ lawsuits.
  • According to the ADA, 72% of lawsuits were against companies with less than 50 million in revenue.
    • Small companies are at just as high of risk as large companies.
  • Statistics:
    • According to the CDC, 28.7% of people have a disability.
    • UNC School of Medicine found that 71% of web users with a disability will leave a site if it is not accessible.
    • This equates to a potential 20% loss of revenue.
      • Can you afford to not be accessible and lose this amount of business?
    • Doing the right thing:
      • It can increase your reputation.
      • It can generate loyalty.
      • It’s a key differentiator.
      • It’s a marketing opportunity.
      • It makes the world better for everyone.

Is AI Bias the New Elephant in the Room?

Bias is an unfavored weight towards one group of people. How does this affect generative AI? Test it yourself: create an image without specifying details like age, gender, or race. What results do you see? Chances are, the image lacks cultural diversity, and representation of people with disabilities, or older individuals. It may also reflect assumptions about gender roles based on job titles.

• How AI bias happens:
  • Algorithmic bias during the development of the model
  • Data bias in the model training phase
  • Interaction bias when the AI learns from biased human interactions
• What is the impact of bias?
  • Legal and ethical consequences
  • Lost revenue
  • Erases diversity
• How can we reduce this bias?
  • Add diverse perspectives when building the algorithms
  • Train people to identify bias in generative AI results
  • Reward people doing good work

Sitecore Search Product Roadmap

Sitecore Search is continuously evolving like many other SaaS products. Take a look at the future of Sitecore Search.

• Current
  • Commerce product grouping
    • Group similar products on product or size variations
  • Commerce rules
    • Bury low or out-of-stock items
  • CDP
    • Audience segment support
  • Next
    • Unified tracking.
      • Tracking IDs will work across many of Sitecore’s composable products
    • XM cloud content indexing
      • Push changes directly into Search
    • Order cloud integration
    • Generative AI Q&A for search prompt
    • More accurate recommendations
  • Future
    • Refined UX
    • Simplified indexing connectors
    • Copy rules between instances
    • Exposed search analytics
    • Conversational search
    • Generative AI metadata

Sitecore Symposium 2024 is Underway!

A conference like Sitecore Symposium is a great way to make a mini vacation out of your work travels. I arrived on Sunday and explored the city of Nashville. Did you know that Nashville is home to a full-scale replica of the Parthenon? It was built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Today, it’s the only remaining building from the exposition and has since been turned into a museum. The museum contains the largest indoor statue in the Western Hemisphere, the goddess Athena in full gold leaf standing at 41ft tall.

Symposium is being hosted at the Gaylord Opryland Resort. This is my first time here and the hotel is beautiful. The atrium is covered in glass and has lush green gardens and walking paths with waterfalls. You can even take a boat ride through the interior.

For me, the best part about these conferences is seeing people face-to-face! Most of us work remotely and are only able to see these people on phone calls and little boxes on our screen in a grid on a zoom call. It’s great to see people in person, face-to-face because technology can’t replicate that experience.

Exploring Nashville

The conference schedule fills up quickly, so having time beforehand to hang out with friends is great. Chet Potvin  organized a walking food tour of Nashville on Sunday night. We started out at a rooftop bar with a great view of downtown Nashville. The guide shared some great stories about Nashville history, culture, music, and food. We had four stops, which included Nashville barbecue and the famous Nashville hot chicken.

MVP Summit

Monday was the MVP Summit. This was my first time attending. While I can’t share any of the information from the sessions, I can say it was a great experience. We got a sneak peek of inside information and got to interact with the Sitecore product teams and executives. We had interactive conversations and it’s great knowing that the team at Sitecore really listens to our feedback. As MVPs, we are really able to impact the products.

MVP Party

After a full day of sessions, we were treated to an MVP party at Dave and Buster’s. Sitecore booked the entire venue just for us. We had great food and drink, unlimited gaming, and karaoke. It was a great time to hang out with old friends and make new friends.

Tiffany, Josh, and I challenged Dave O’flanagan to a race of Mario Kart! MJ is quite the instigator and isn’t afraid to let loose and encourage others to do the same. We did a great version of Ice Ice Baby. And in case you’re curious, yes, we know all the words. The night ended with 15 people singing Closing Time. But we weren’t done yet. On the walk back to the hotel, we gave our best acapella version of Sweet Caroline. It was so good so good so good! What a fun night! It’s the reward for a full year’s worth of hard work to achieve MVP status.

Looking Ahead to Symposium

I’m looking forward to seeing what more Sitecore Symposium has to offer. It promises to be full of innovation, collaboration, fresh insights, and informative sessions. If you’re attending Sitecore Symposium, stop by our Perficient booth!

If you’ve been following the massive changes happening at the intersection of AI and SEO, you’re probably asking yourself: What should we do next? The good news is, while the landscape is evolving, there are clear steps you can take to ensure your SEO strategy thrives in this new era, especially with the rise of AI-powered search experiences like Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE).

Important Metrics to Track to Help with SEO and SGE

• Organic Traffic – Monitor how many sessions and visitors are coming to your site via organic traffic.
• Keyword Performance – Ensure you have a short and long-tail keyword strategy to watch performance. This should include tracking rankings, clicks, impressions and CTR for keyword performance.
• Direct/Referral Traffic – This will be important to get a pulse on overall performance. With zero-click studies showing organizations may see a decrease in overall organic performance, but direct/referral traffic should remain the same or increase based on efforts to strength brand awareness by populating in AI results.

Checklists
Top 5 things you should do if you have no SEO SMEs on staff

1. Invest in a subscription to SEO software like SEMRush or Moz and audit your site for on-page errors.
2. Utilize canonical tags to avoid duplicate content issues with canonical URLs.
3. Prioritize the on-page errors such as the meta titles, descriptions, H-tags, and image alt texts are optimized.
4. Follow mobile-first best practices during site implementation and build.
5. Focus on quality content and ensure you keep content up-to-date, relevant and valuable to improve engagement.

Top 10 things you should do if you have a one-person SEO program
In addition to the previous five activities, make sure to do the following:

6. Utilize SEO software to perform keyword research to identify the most high-value keywords that your audience is searching for; update this list quarterly and make sure your writers and developers are working off the same list.
7. Ensure you are strategically building internal links to improve site architecture
8. Evaluate accessibility scores and fix any potential errors that may be occurring
9. Monitor and track core web vital and page load performance to improve user experience and SEO rankings.
10. Build high-quality backlinks to boost domain authority and contribute to your E-E-A-T

Top 20 things you should do if you have an SEO team
With a dedicated SEO team, you can expand your strategy to include the following items:

11. Build out correct localization of content to improve local search rankings
12. Utilize schema mark-up to help populate in Ai results, featured snippets and
13. Leverage multimedia content to incorporate images, videos and interactive content to improve engagement and rankings
14. Monitor and analyze metrics such as organic traffic, keyword position, domain authority, conversion rates
15. Research and analyze competitors SEO strategists and find opportunities where you can outperform them
16. Optimize for image search which includes descriptive files names, alt text and captions to capture traffic from image search engines.
17. Understand audience personas to guide content creation to meet their needs and intent.
18. Leverage A/B testing and personalization to deliver relevant, high-quality content to users based on intent and needs.
19. Stay informed on major search engine algorithm updates and adjust strategist to remain complaint with best practices.
20. Integrate SEO with other marketing channels such as social media, paid advertising, email marketing to drive organic and referral traffic.

Websites to bookmark to keep up to date on SEO news

Search Engine Land

Semrush

CMSWire

This blog was co-authored by Tiffany Laster, Lead Digital Strategist at Perficient.

Nashville here we come!

Sitecore Symposium is just around the corner and it promises to be one of the most impactful events of the year. Whether you’re a Symposium pro or a first-timer, this conference offers unparalleled opportunities to learn, connect, and grow. Here’s everything you need to know about Sitecore Symposium 2024 and what to expect from team Perficient.

What is Sitecore Symposium?

Sitecore Symposium is Sitecore’s biggest event of the year. This year, the conference will take place October 15-18 at the Gaylord Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Thousands of brands, marketers, technologists, and digital visionaries come together for three days of top-notch networking, inspiring success stories, innovation-driven sessions, and more.

Perficient’s Presence at Symposium 2024  

Perficient is thrilled to be a sponsor at Sitecore Symposium 2024. Our team is ecstatic to meet you and discuss your Sitecore needs.

While at Symposium, we invite you to stop by our booth and donate to the American Cancer Society to fund cancer research, education, advocacy, and patient and family services. For every chip deposited into the box, Perficient will donate $5 to the American Cancer Society. Help us pay it forward to build a better world.

After stopping by our booth, we encourage you to join our sessions and spend part of your day hearing from our experts.

Wednesday, October 16 | 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM

Is AI Bias the New Elephant in the Room?

Description: Join Perficient’s Megan Jensen, portfolio specialist, and other leading women of Sitecore as they explore strategies for fostering equitable AI. From tackling biases ingrained in data and algorithms to shaping ethical frameworks, our panel delves into actionable approaches for creating AI that reflects and serves diverse global communities. Discover insights on team diversity, ethical integration, and the importance of addressing biases to empower marginalized groups. Let’s ensure AI benefits society ethically and inclusively!

Wednesday, October 16 | 3:00 PM – 3:30 PM

SEO, GEO, SGE, and Beyond the Horizon: Using AI to Boost Page Rank, Site Performance, and Conversions

Description: In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, one goal remains consistent for every website: to reach and maintain the highest position possible in search engine results. But how can you ensure your site is set up to beat the algorithm game when the rules are constantly changing? Perficient’s Tiffany Laster, senior digital strategist, and Megan Jensen, portfolio specialist, will cover how AI is changing everything we thought we knew about SEO, what you need to change about your SEO right now, and how to prepare for what’s on the horizon.

Thursday, October 17 | 2:15 PM – 2:45 PM

Revolutionizing the Digital Healthcare Experience: A Panel on DXP Modernization

Description: Join Perficient’s Stephen Tynes, national Sitecore sales advisor and Mark Ursino, director, Sitecore, and marketing leaders from Emory Healthcare and Encompass Health as they share their experiences with modernizing their MarTech stacks from on-premises to PaaS and SaaS solutions. From building a roadmap with pragmatic project sequencing to connecting patient-focused platforms while ensuring HIPAA compliance, they’ll share how Sitecore and Perficient helped modernize their approach to digital experience and go beyond the concept of a “digital front door” to meet their patients’ increasing demands.

Getting Registered

If you haven’t yet made the decision to attend Sitecore Symposium, here are some compelling reasons to help you justify your trip. Symposium is the largest gathering of the global Sitecore community. This is the perfect opportunity to network and build relationships with like-minded individuals.

To register, visit the official conference registration page. General conference passes start at $1,849 and will be raised to $2,049 starting October 1.

Your pass includes:

• Mainstage keynotes and product roadmap
• Celebrity and guest keynotes
• Breakout sessions
• Customer showcases
• Access to the Solutions Pavilion
• Product demos with experts
• Theater sessions
• Welcome reception and happy hour
• Symposium’s exclusive party
• Lunch and refreshments
• And more!

Our Expertise

As a Sitecore partner, we have designed, implemented, and delivered many enterprise-level sites powered by Sitecore Experience Platform. We know how to get the most out of this versatile digital experience platform and create highly effective and personalized experiences for your customers. Perficient has the right solution for you and we can’t wait to talk more at Symposium.

I have been working at Perficient for almost 8 years.  I have always enjoyed writing blogs and sharing my knowledge with others.  This is my 100^th blog post!  WOW!  I can’t believe I finally made it!  Come with me while I take a look back at 8 years worth of content.

Series

I write a lot of blog series.  I like to focus on a topic and share everything I can about it.  I have 9 different series with 77 posts.  This is obviously my preferred way of sharing content.

https://blogs.perficient.com/2017/10/30/sitecore-symposium-2017-sessions-review/ (7 posts)

https://blogs.perficient.com/2017/11/02/sitecore-bootcamp-for-developers/ (8 posts)

https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/05/22/choose-a-sitecore-placeholder-name-instead-of-typing/ (4 posts)

https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/10/23/sitecore-symposium-2018-sessions-review/ (11 posts)

https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/05/21/going-multilingual-in-sitecore/ (4 posts)

https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/11/05/sitecore-symposium-2019-sessions-review/ (15 posts)

https://blogs.perficient.com/2021/02/23/docker-bootcamp-blog-series/ (17 posts)

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/03/27/case-study-lift-and-shift-from-drupal-to-sitecore-sxa/ (3 posts)

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/04/24/getting-to-know-sitecore-search/ (8 posts)

Accessibility

I have a passion for accessibility.  When I was in college, I worked in a computer lab that housed the adaptive technologies lab.  They had screen magnifiers, braille readers, screen readers, alternate methods of input.  It was fascinating to learn about these tools and the other ways people interact with computers.  After college, I worked for a small web design company.  Our focus was usability and accessibility.  I have shared my passion with other people at Perficient and ignited a passion for accessibility within them as well.  I have a whole series of posts that I would like to write someday about the WCAG guidelines and how to detect and remedy each requirement.  Until then, I’ve shared my screen reader blog and video with many people to show them how to use a screen reader as a native user would.

https://blogs.perficient.com/2022/07/18/digital-accessibility-using-a-screen-reader/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AvHYuhZd58

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/08/22/making-sitecore-sites-more-accessible-and-screen-reader-friendly/

Content Migration

Almost every project needs some sort of content migration.  It is never a fun task!  I lead a project where we migrated from Drupal to Sitecore SXA.  I was very excited to come up with a way to do it super fast.  I found a tool called Merlin too late in the project to use, but I wrote a content import powershell suite that I’m still refining and hope to release/promote soon.

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/03/27/case-study-lift-and-shift-from-drupal-to-sitecore-sxa/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/01/19/my-journey-with-sitecore-data-exchange-framework-def/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/06/13/using-merlin-to-migrate-your-site-to-sitecore/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/06/26/import-data-from-merlin-to-finish-your-migration-to-sitecore/

Docker

More of my projects are using Docker.  When I started, I kept running into problems.  I wanted to gain a deep understanding of the tool to know how to solve these problems.  I did not want to follow article after article of troubleshooting tips that may or may not solve the problem.  I really enjoyed writing this series.  I have become a “go-to-guy” when others have problems with Docker.  I jokingly started calling myself “Docker Doctor” ⁠(⁠).  Not all of these articles are Sitecore related, but the more you know about the tool, the easier it is to debug issues while using Docker to run a Sitecore project.

https://blogs.perficient.com/2021/02/23/docker-bootcamp-blog-series/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/02/06/using-docker-docker-index-exe-high-cpu-and-disk-usage/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/02/08/using-docker-multiple-virtual-machines/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/04/14/sitecore-ltcs2022-docker-vms-and-windows-11/

Sitecore

Most of my work at Perficient has been focused on the Sitecore platform.  When I joined Perficient in 2015, I was brand new to Sitecore.  I wrote my Sitecore Bootcamp for Developer series for myself as well as for others that had been in my position of having to learn Sitecore from scratch.  Before SXA, I wrote a Sitecore Module that would make the input box where you type the name of a placeholder into a dropdown.  That made it easier to get the placeholder name correct.  I have had a couple of opportunities to work on multilingual sites.  That presented a whole new set of challenges; languages, shared and versioned content, fallback languages, and more.  I was happy to update that series to include SXA this year.  As Sitecore moves to a composable platform, it is important to learn the new pieces.  I’ve spent several months learning Sitecore Search.  I look forward to learning personalize next and seeing how multiple composable tools work together.

https://blogs.perficient.com/2017/11/02/sitecore-bootcamp-for-developers/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/05/22/choose-a-sitecore-placeholder-name-instead-of-typing/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/05/21/going-multilingual-in-sitecore/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/03/27/case-study-lift-and-shift-from-drupal-to-sitecore-sxa/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/04/24/getting-to-know-sitecore-search/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/08/04/keeping-sitecore-content-authors-happy-and-productive/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/01/19/my-journey-with-sitecore-data-exchange-framework-def/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/06/13/using-merlin-to-migrate-your-site-to-sitecore/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2023/06/26/import-data-from-merlin-to-finish-your-migration-to-sitecore/

Sitecore Symposium

I was fortunate to attend Sitecore Symposium three times in my tenure at Perficient so far.  I always enjoy meeting people face to fact that I’ve been on calls with for projects.  These events are a great learning opportunity.  I’m a big note taker, I was excited to share my notes for each session I attended for the last two symposiums for those that weren’t able to attend.  I’m not able to make it to SUGCON NA this year, but I’m hopeful to connect with people in person at the next big Sitecore event!

https://blogs.perficient.com/2017/10/30/sitecore-symposium-2017-sessions-review/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2018/10/23/sitecore-symposium-2018-sessions-review/

https://blogs.perficient.com/2019/11/05/sitecore-symposium-2019-sessions-review/

To the next 100!

Thanks for taking a walk down memory lane with me!  I’d love to hear if any of these posts have helped you in past.  If you want to get notifications when I post new content, follow me on linkedin.

Perficient is thrilled to announce that we will once again be attending Sitecore Symposium. This October 17-20, the highly anticipated Sitecore Symposium 2022 will take place in Chicago.  

Following the wake of a global pandemic and two years as a digital-only event, Sitecore Symposium will return. But don’t worry if you don’t have tickets, select insights and sessions will be available to livestream or on demand after the conference.  

What is Symposium?  

Sitecore’s biggest annual event is back and ready to bring together thousands of marketers, developers, Sitecore customer brands, solution experts, and partners from around the world for this multi-day conference. Whether you’re new to Sitecore or an experienced MVP, these four days will offer something for everyone who plays a role in driving digital experiences – executives, marketers, developers, IT professionals, partners, Sitecore users and customers, and interested parties.  

Agenda Highlights  

Here are some must-attend sessions you don’t want to skip when planning your Symposium schedule. Remember, if you are unable to attend in person select sessions will be available after Symposium concludes.  

Sitecore business update 

Tuesday, October 18 | 12:30 PM – 1:15 PM CDT  

Sitecore CEO Steve Tzikakis will discuss key trends shaping global business and how Sitecore is best positioned to help brands meet these demands and ensure success.  

2022 Sitecore Experience Awards  

Tuesday, October 18 | 4:40 PM – 5:00 PM CDT  

Lee Miles, Chief Customer Success Officer, will present the Sitecore Experience Awards to customers across the globe who have transformed their organizations by delivering impeccable connections and personalized customer journeys.  

The future is composable: delivering standout digital experiences across every customer journey  

Wednesday, October 18 | 8:30 AM – 9:10 AM CDT  

Chief Product Officer Dave O’Flanagan will conduct a deep dive into the product innovations at Sitecore and will explain the vision for the upcoming 2023. 

A conversation with Mindy Kaling  

Wednesday, October 19 | 9:35 AM – 10:20 AM CDT  

Sitecore CMO Paige O’Neil will sit down for a chat with Emmy-nominated writer, producer, author and actress Mindy Kaling.  

You don’t need to rebuild everything to be headless  

Wednesday, October 19 | 1:00 PM – 1:10 PM CDT  

Join Perficient’s David San Filippo in the Solutions Pavilion Theatre. Headless Architecture is here, and you don’t need to wait for a total rebuild to take advantage of the performance, flexibility, and resiliency benefits that headless solutions bring. Learn how to introduce headless features that exist side-by-side with your existing SXA and MVC sites, while still providing seamless experiences to your customers. 

Go global or go home: Building multilingual sites using Content Hub and Personalize 

Wednesday, October 19 | 3:45 PM – 4:15 PM CDT  

Perficient’s Megan Jensen will speak alongside Infor’s Husnain Agha for a 30-minute session. Global companies face specific challenges when attempting to provide a memorable digital experience for all their customers, no matter where they live. Decisions around site structure, translation, SEO, search, currency, privacy, and accessibility can have a huge impact on a project’s scope, timeline, budget, and final product used by the public. Perficient and Infor tackled these challenges together using XM, Content Hub, and Personalize, and we are ready to share the best practices we developed along the way. 

Perficient’s Presence at Symposium  

Perficient is thrilled to be attending Sitecore Symposium 2022! 

Our team members are ecstatic to meet you and talk business. We encourage you to join our sessions and spend part of your Wednesday with us.  

• You don’t need to rebuild everything to be headless  

• • Wednesday, October 19 | 1:00 PM – 1:10 PM CDT  

• Go global or go home: Building multilingual sites using Content Hub and Personalize  

• • Wednesday, October 19 | 3:45 PM – 4:15 PM CDT  

While at Symposium, we invite you to stop by booth #233 to donate to the American Cancer Society to fund cancer research, education, advocacy, and patient and family services. For every chip deposited into the box, Perficient will donate $5 to the American Cancer Society and you’ll receive a donation sticker. Help us pay it forward to build a better world.  

Our Expertise  

As a Sitecore Platinum Implementation Partner, we have designed, implemented and delivered many enterprise-level sites powered by Sitecore Experience Platform. We know how to get the most out of this versatile digital experience platform and create highly effective and personalized experiences for your customers. Perficient has the right solution for you and can’t wait to talk more at Symposium.  

We look forward to meeting you all at #SitecoreSYM!  

Subscribe to Perficient blogs for more updates on Symposium 2022.  

BuiltIn Boston, an online tech community, recently interviewed Hiral Shah, a lead technical consultant at Perficient, to discuss the importance for women to self-advocate and the benefits she has realized as a result. Hiral gave insightful responses and advice while discussing how the Perficient community has been an integral part of improving her confidence and helping her self-advocate.

Getting Past the Fear to Advocate for Yourself

Hiral Shah, lead technical consultant

“My family is a big driving force behind me. Because of them, I feel supported to believe in myself and keep pushing myself forward. I also think about what is in the best interest of my teams and clients. This empowers me to be clear, persistent, and to assert myself to deliver high-quality work,” explained Hiral.

It is important to make sure that you put forth your accomplishments by taking pride in your work, celebrating your successes with other colleagues, and being outspoken about your achievements, especially when you have taken the extra mile. Start by looking at your work from the perspective of the benefit it provides. When you approach your work from the mindset of the positive impact it can have, you empower yourself and others to appreciate your contributions.

“The first time speaking for yourself is always going to be the scariest, but if you just pass that barrier of fear the first time it will get better,” added Hiral.

READ MORE: Perficient Celebrates Women in Technology

She continues, saying Perficient has enabled her growth by offering tools and opportunities to improve her confidence and influence. “It has been two years since I have joined this company, and my experience has been phenomenal. Everyone has been very open-minded and never felt like I should think twice before expressing my views or opinions.”

Some Advice for Other Women Who Experience Self-Doubt

“Never feel hesitant or diffident in sharing your concerns, opinions, or achievements with your manager and teammates. Try to appreciate your colleagues, and look for ways to make your work more visible.”

As Hiral points out, effective communication and working well with others is often the first step to improving your confidence. She also emphasizes that it is never too late to start advocating for yourself, and she points to the variety of resources Perficient provides to help jumpstart the process, such as blogs and employee resource groups,

READ MORE: Two Perficient Colleagues Recognized in CRN’s 2020 Women of the Channel

Recently, Perficient’s colleague-led Women in Technology group hosted a Lunch and Learn event discussing self-advocacy and shared advice on how to work towards confidence. Kate Feltman, solutions architect, led the event and recommended thinking about advocacy less as bragging but more like making your work visible. This can be done in small steps such as updating your LinkedIn profile or personal website with your thoughts, insights, and expertise, or taking bigger steps by speaking to your supervisor about your goals and accomplishments.

Blog posts like How Perficient Employees Slay Imposter Syndrome also give important tips to help improve self-confidence by challenging yourself, repeating daily affirmations, questioning intrusive thoughts, and remembering that we are all human. These actions can help you feel more comfortable discussing your achievements in the workplace while combating self-doubt.

When has Self-Advocacy Paid-Off?

“There were times earlier in my career where I was not able to effectively take a stand for my opinion because I was too shy and introverted to reach out. Later on, I started to collaborate and communicate more with my colleagues. I participated often in professional events to be able to connect with co-workers, and it has really helped me in the long run.”

She mentions that one of her proudest moments came from presenting at the 2019 Sitecore Symposium tradeshow as a result of her hard work and dedication that stemmed from advocating for herself. “It was my first time presenting in front of big images in the technology Sitecore world, people were so supportive not only at the event but from home as well, and took and shared the video around. It made me feel really comfortable and appreciated.”

BONUS: Sitecore Symposium 2018: Empowering Women in Technology

Though it can be frightening to put yourself out there, it is important that you feel recognized for all the hard work you put in. As Hiral’s story shows, Perficient is a place that champions your successes to ensure you feel confident, heard, and able to bring your best self forward.

READ MORE: Perficient Colleagues Share Tips on Career Growth

READY TO GROW YOUR CAREER?

At Perficient, we continually look for ways to champion and challenge our talented workforce with interesting projects for high-profile clients, encourage personal and professional growth through training and mentoring, and celebrate our people-oriented culture and the innovative ways they serve Perficient and the community.

Visit our Careers page to see career opportunities and more!

Go inside Life at Perficient and connect with us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

This session provided a basic look at technical debt – what it is and where it comes from.  It also offered some suggestions on working with legacy code and Helix together. Here are my key takeaways:

• What is technical debt?
  • A measure of how untidy your code is
  • Any time when you look at your code and wish it was better
  • A barrier to code reuse
• Where does it come from?
  • Implement fast and easy solutions to meet a deadline
  • Junior developers – they do not know better
  • Senior developers – they are stuck in their own ways or stop learning
  • Passage of time since code was written
  • Updates to best practices
    • What is best practice today may not be best practice in the future
•  Helix:
  • A set of patterns for Sitecore development
  • Mostly defined for C# backend code opposed to frontend code
  • Helps developers know where to put their code
• Target architecture – Dependencies go top to bottom
  • Project
  • Feature
  • Foundation

• Moving from legacy code to Helix
  • Not easy if the code did not follow good practices when it was written
  • Large scale refactoring is a bad idea
    • Better to move one piece at a time
    • Move dependencies, create interfaces, setup dependency injection
  • Large sections of code may never get refactored
    • “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”
    • Very hard to regression test an entire application
  • Leave code better than you found it
    • When working in legacy code, clean up the area of the code you are working in if possible
    • You need to test the section that got updated anyhow

Development process:

• Create a component library
  • A basic HTML/CSS site that shows off the UI components
  • Testable by QA early in the process
  • Easier to make changes before renderings are built
• Code Analysis
  • Automatic code quality checking
  • Helps you find simple errors
  • Can check for coding standards
  • Can be a waste of time on legacy code if you don’t plan on fixing the errors
• Code Reviews
  • Difficult if you have never done them
    • Can lead to awkward conversations or hurt feelings
  • Goals
    • Improve code quality
    • Become a better team
    • Have more than one set of eyes on the code
  • Priorities
    • Understanding – Most important
    • Correctness
    • Design
    • Improvements
    • Coding style – Least important
  • Build Automation
    • Build every feature branch
    • Build and deploy the develop branch
    • Let QA control deployments to QA environments
    • All deployments should be push button

That’s a wrap on another session. Be sure to follow all my session reviews and tweet me if you have any questions or want me to write about a particular topic!

Once again, Perficient Digital will have its award-winning Sitecore team at Sitecore Symposium in Orlando, November 4-7, 2019. Perficient Digital is a platinum Sitecore partner with more than 80 certified Sitecore developers, 10 MVPs, and 5 Sitecore Site of the Year awards. Each year, we look forward to Sitecore Symposium as a chance for our team to continue to learn and grow our practice and also connect with companies that want to expand their usage. Want to learn more about Perficient Digital and our Sitecore work?
Just one great example of our Sitecore work is the portal we built with Orrick that won a 2019 WebAward for Portal Standard of Excellence. You can learn more about our work on Tuesday, November 5, at 1:30 PM when our very own Scott Stocker and Orrick’s Scott Mortenson discuss how to reinvent a modern intranet. The session will include a look at role-based personalization and advanced content management, along with other capabilities Sitecore provides to take your internal portal from minimal usage to company-wide adoption. 

Perficient Digital team at Sitecore Symposium 2018

To hear even more from our team, check out our other session on data integration and the cloud with Ken Park on Thursday, November 7, at 9:40 AM. You can view the full agenda or stop by to talk to one of our team members anytime. We will be talking through our work and capabilities at booth 206. If you stop by, you can be entered to win a Jabra Evolve 75 UC Wireless Headset. Be sure to follow our #SitecoreSYM experience on Twitter and tweet us any topics you would like us to blog about while we are on-site. 

Well, it’s that time of year again when people start thinking about Sitecore Symposium: registration is open, the agenda has been posted, and people are planning their trips.
I am so happy that I was selected to attend for the third year in a row with Perficient Digital!  Now, it’s time for me to start reviewing the agenda and planning which sessions I will attend.  I’ll be blogging my notes from each of the sessions I attend like I have the last two years.  So I want to know: Which sessions would you want to read about?  Hit me up in the comments below or tweet me and help me figure out which sessions to attend.

2018 Sitecore Symposium