Just After Midnight at Sitecore Symposium 2020

by Ned Hallett
As Digital Marketing Manager and JAM’s primary pair of lungs, I provide the JAM-y take on the ever-evolving worlds of DevOps, SaaS, MACH - and acronyms yet to be coined.
Published on October 2020

Sitecore Symposium 2020  – Done! This was the first online symposium, and though moving such a big event online was always going to be difficult, it was great to get a larger global representation – and we didn’t mind being able to watch some of the best minds in tech hash out the issues while sitting on the sofa with a cuppa.

There was a lot to take in at this year’s symposium, but here were some of the highlights:

1. Content is EVERYTHING

Content is moving from a key point in the decision making process to EVERYTHING in the decision making process. Vijay Gupta (Sitecore) and Tim Pashuysen (Stylelabs) had a lot of interesting things to say on this topic, and as Tim pointed out, with brick-and-mortar stores closed in many countries, content is becoming critical to business success.

2.  Serverless and DevOps are key to modernisation 

Elsewhere we had an insightful account of the Project Management Institute’s modernisation journey with Vangili Palaniappan, PMI’s chief technology officer, and Howard Bigelow, technology director at EPAM. As PMI is the world’s leading project management company, it was fascinating to hear how they organise themselves!

Going serverless, adopting a DevOps framework and leveraging Sitecore technologies to drill into customer data were the order of the day here.

3. CMOs and CIOs have more in common than they think

Last but by no means least was a topic close to our hearts. A talk on bridging the gap between CMOs and CIOs with Jean-Luc Ambrosi (TelstraSuper), Paige O’Neill (Sitecore), Brenda Plowman (Fasken Martineau), Justin Skelton (Dine Brands) and Yousuf Khan (Ridge Ventures). 

The key takeaways were that:

  • Although marketing and IT tend to speak different languages, in today’s tech-driven world, they’re more similar than ever. Both are increasingly driven by data and both use tools to understand their work and their impacts.
  • Communication is key – and that’s a point that bears repeating
  • And finally you need to share objectives and strategy – and set up a cross-organisational team to work these issues out

At Just After Midnight, we work with a lot of brands and agencies to provide 24/7, full-stack support, so working with both IT and marketing  and ensuring we’re all talking the same language is really our raison d’etre.

Looking forward 

Though we’ll miss having access to so many great speakers from the comfort of our own homes, we’re even more excited about getting out to Sitecore Symposium 2021 in person.

While we wait with baited breath, why not check out our take on the latest from Sitecore, or for anything else, just get in touch.

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