Thoughts on Sitecore Symposium 2022

Author : Ishraq Al FataftahDate : 10/17/2022

Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend this year's Sitecore Symposium due to my US visa getting expired during COVID, I really do miss meeting everyone friends, partners, customers, and new everyone of the above :)

However, I won't allow not being able to live tweet during #SitecoreSym this year to discourage me, so these are some of my thoughts on this year's agenda, and with no favouritism to any friends ;). All I can say, let's keep creating customer centric moments that lasts.

Composable All the Things

A constant topic at our Sitecore Lunch in Arabic table for the past few months, Composable DXP has been a hot topic all year long and rightfully so as we have been struggling for years trying to fit every single integration and systems needed for our customers into a single platform which did the trick for so long and still but only when architected in a way that is scalable, cost effective, and modular.

When the MACH alliance has been formed to push the narrative around Cloud native, API based, headless and microservices, more options have been made available to adapt more SaaS solutions that would benefit certain brands and businesses. And this is how the Composable DXP that revolved around modularity help create more seamless integrations and scalability that can support the never ending demand for customer trust and satisfactions. The level of sophistication that we are seeing today in our customers' reviews and feedback is only showing us that in order to compete in the market in the coming few years even today, the level of agility in our implementations had not only match these expectations but also exceed that to more consistent, aggressive customer centric experiences that build a story and leave a mark.

Enough with the chit-chat! this is my list for how we can equip our teams with what it needs to compete in the composable DXP world:

Headless and Beyond

Going headless has been the main topic within the Sitecore community for many years now. With the introduction of JSS and the promise to move towards more headless CMS and headless Commerce solutions, we have seen a huge shift towards front-end first approach (JSS + Angular/React/NextJs) and a nice try back-end first approach with .Net Core Headless implementation. However, these solutions have been semi headless at best. With more demand on less complex implementations to consume content while using static site generation using Vercel and Netlify, based on first hand experiences, it has been challenging.

Fast forward to early 2022 and the introduction of XM cloud, Sitecore has been working fast to introduce an offering that is aligned with the composable SaaS offerings that has been introduced back in 2021. And despite the hidden and not so hidden frustration with XM Cloud's announcements and beta versions and limitations to select number of vendors and clients, we are excited to see just from looking at the agenda some scenarios where this have been put into practice and looking forward to hopefully seeing some of the recordings post symposium.

Here is my list for sessions I would want to attend if in a parallel universe should I had my visa renewed and attended this:

XP or not to XP

Just looking at this list you will be thinking: well, XP doesn't seem to be going dead anytime soon :D with all the hype around Composable DXP and XM cloud, it is getting a little bit harder for solution architects and partners to balance the conversation when it comes to clients asking should we move to the latest and greatest and claimed best-of-breed solutions and would all of these new technology stack fit my business? I recall giving a session on Sitecore and AI and the first slide was titled "do we really need this?" and this should be a constant question to ask every time we are being asked to upgrade/migrate/move the current solutions into something new. Is there a real value where we can measure the ROI of moving into a new infrastructure and if yes, let's just do it. Some notable sessions to mention:

Personalization FTW: today and tomorrow

Personalization remains as one of the dearest topics to my heart, what is nice about it is that it doesn't go stale overtime. Pre or post COVID, organizations and brands are still on the path to creating optimized customer experiences and personalization remains a key pillar in their strategy. Researches and reports are showing that consumers are expecting even more optimized personalization experiences given the huge shift to online shopping where retailers are given even more leverage with the amount of data and tools available for them to make this happen and to do it right.

At least for the coming 4 years, the main trends within the personalization world will continue to be:

Personalization at the times of first-party data and privacy concerns.
Location based personalization, heck face-recognition personalization.
Omni-channel remains the main way forward.
Personalized loyalty programs.
CDP to combat data silos.

Luckily, these topics within the real world will be addressed this week. My recommendations go to the following to name a-few:

I'm going to be attending the sessions made available this time around. If you haven't signed up already, you can do so by visiting this link: Sitecore Symposium Virtual

Looking forward to sharing more thoughts as more information are being made live through posts, blogs, and social media.

#HappySitecoring