With SUGCON ANZ now behind us and Sitecore Experience currently underway, we caught up again with the Triggerfish Sitecore Team on the ground in Sydney to get their wrap-up of Day 2 to round out the conference.
If you missed our Day 1 wrap up - check it out here.
Anthony Hook, Commercial Director wraps up day two, saying;
Day 2 saw a commendable turn out considering the proximity to some excellent bars. The keynote was a bit of a curve ball from the CX Lead Kevin Wilkins from Tquila ANZ. After learning that the speaker loves talking about Album covers, he preached about the fundamentals of research. We totally agree, if you don’t know your customer and of course your customer's customer, you really can’t drive better experiences.
The technical tracks kicked off with traditional quality and depth, my favourites being;
Alistair Deneys and his deep dive on marketing automation, positioned as an advanced masterclass, it didn't disappoint, and showed the true power of the platform.
Akshay Sura showed us what is possible with xDB, Azure IoT Hub and Smart IOT devices for tracking users across physical locations at events. This a perfect use case for Sitecore customers, if you run events, this approach is mandatory for tracking the dynamics of your event and providing a better experience.
I was disappointed that Sitecore is still shouting about Horizon, this mythical product feature has been dangling in front of us for so long, yet no clear direction for the marketer, agency or content story. It would be wise to stop telling us it’s coming, and that it will still only be a prototype, when the Experience Editor needs love, now.
This view is certainly not a reflection on the speaker, Rob Earlam - he delivered the whole presentation with style and class. His demo was of course, flawless.
The whole SUGCON crew did an amazing job, it was delivered with all the hallmarks if a great Sitecore event and we cannot wait for next year!
PS. We hear Brisbane is warm at this time of year.
With his presentation out of the way on Day 1, Mark Gibbons, Triggerfish Technology Lead immersed himself in Day 2. To wrap-up Mark says;
Day two featured a demo of Horizon which is looking very promising. A possible replacement of the experience editor that allows you to build the site without needing to switch to the content editor. It looks blazing fast and far more user friendly.
Alistair Deneys showcased a great new feature coming in Sitecore 9.3 Marketing Automation - scheduled enrolments. I think this will be a powerful feature. Scenarios such as scheduling marketing campaigns to start at close of business to increase engagement spring to mind.
Angel Chuang from Deloitte walked us through their first journey with a JSS build. It was very encouraging to see that they had been able to deliver with this new toolset. There were many great takeaways such as the recommendations of how best to have cross functional teams to contribute to the build.
Finally I will mention a great talk from Andy Parry on how they are continuously delivering great things for RACT.
Overall I had an amazing time in Sydney and it was so great to meet many new faces and catch up with some familiar ones too.
Looking forward to next year's event in Melbourne!
Our Sitecore Developer Marko Tsoi was also on the ground for Day 2, and wraps up by saying;
In my opinion, the session of the day was the Marketing Automation extensions by Alistair Deneys on his ‘workflows for people’.
I also really enjoyed the Codehouse sponsor session that described how to implement SSO with Azure AD. I appreciated that it was delivered in a way that gave useful information to the Sitecore community which is what I find valuable in attending events like SUGCON. It wasn’t something I’d had to do before, but his examples, screenshots and code grabs were very useful and would put me in very good stead if I needed to implement that for a client at some stage in the future.
Tim Ward’s session on data driven Sitecore stretched my ideas and thoughts about how Sitecore personalisation could operate, especially with external data sources enriching the Sitecore experience.
Finally, if Sitecore bring the speed demonstrated in the Horizon demo to the Experience Editor, that will be a fantastic result, even if Horizon never eventuates.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to go down to Sydney to attend SUGCON and am looking forward to bigger and better things in Melbourne next year.
Stay tuned for our Sitecore Experience wrap up tomorrow!
