I’ve just come back from SUGCON 2018 in Berlin and I think it was the best one I’ve been to yet. It was my third time attending the Sitecore User Group Conference (a conference for the Sitecore Community organised by the Sitecore Community). This year I was lucky enough to be going as a first-time MVP and would be collecting my award during the conference.
I arrived early to see a bit of Berlin on the Sunday and catch up with some friends, colleagues and other Sitecore Devs and MVPs and before I knew it it was time for SUGCON to start.
It kicked off with some fancy lights and music and Peter Brinkman with the opening Keynote explaining how large SUGCON has grown since it started in 2016, there were 600 attendees this year!.
There was a lot to take in over the 1.5 days so before I forget it all I’ve summarized below some key learning’s from my two days at SUGCON 2018.
Day 1
Opening Keynote – Pieter Brinkman
- There will be two major Sitecore releases every 6 months and (spring & fall) which will contain new features and functionality
- Updates / Patch releases will only contain fixes and not features/breaking changes.
- Releases will be a full delivery including code, training and documentation
Great news for all Sitecore developers and customers who have been frustrated with this in the past.
Commerce + IoT In Powerful Ways – Jason Wilkerson & Richard Seal
Next up was well known MVPs Jason Wikerson and Richard Seal who created a fictional SitecoreLand complete with wristbands to access the park to demonstrate how IoT can be used with Sitecore .
- Previously this was only possible by building most of the functionality yourself buy it is now possible out of the box with xConnect + and IoT Hub and IoT Listener.
- Store the least amount of data you need to achieve what you want to do for your customers.
- With SXA, Experience Commerce, xConnect, EXM, xDB and Marketing automation you now have all the tools you need to create these kind of experiences for customers with Sitecore. Your imagination is the only limitation.
Impressive stuff and a real show-case for what’s possible with Sitecore. Speaking to Jason afterwards he said it took longer to Photoshop in the memes of Longtime MVP Jeremy Davis who got trolled hard in the talk. This wasn’t to be the only time today either :-).
Uber-modern Apis For Sitecore – Kam Figy
Kam has been building the CLI for JSS and underlying APIs and took us through some of these focusing heavily on GraphQL.
- GraphQL is:
- Strongly Typed
- Queries only the specific fields you need (no overfetching)
- The response matches the query (so you know what you are getting)
- Is discover-able
- Batches queries and catches and returns errors
- Kam demo’ed an app he’d built that used GraphQL and mimic’s the database browser in Sitecore.
- It’s possible to extend the GraphQL API using Query Extenders and add additional fields. These are than patched in using config.
All-in-all some interesting stuff to experiment with here, since I’ve playing about with JSS too this is something I plan to look at in more detail.
Sitecore XDB & GDPR Applied – Rob Habraken
Rob opened by saying this was a dull subject. That it may be but it is also a very hot topic and something many clients need to implement very soon so this was a very insightful session for me.
- Sitecore 9 has GDPR features out of the box and Sitecore 8.2 Update 7 will also have them.
- 6 Steps to follow to implement GDPR With Sitecore:
- It is recommended to build a preferences form which allows users to view and edit the PII profile data.
- It is important to consider GDPR is not a one time trick and could need to be re-evaluated with each release that effects data.
- You can read more about Sitecore and GDPR here: https://www.sitecore.com/en-gb/resources/index/white-papers/sitecore-and-gdpr
Azure Round Table – Tamas Varga
The final session I attended was an Azure Round Table where there were some really good insights from those who have used Sitecore Azure:
- Using the provided Azure ARM Templates is a good start but can I can be limiting as time progresses so creating your own is the way to go eventually.
- There can be problems with CSS and JSS not being published yet when swapping between servers.
- Testing an Azure Sitecore setup on a development environment and keeping costs down can be a challenge. MSDN provides free credits for subscribers.
- If using Azure the advice is to move to Sitecore 9.x if you can first as that will make things much easier.
Awards, Quiz & Drinks
At the end of Day 1 I had the privilege of going on-stage and picking up my MVP award with the other 2018 MVPs. I’d seen the MVPs collect their awards in previous years but didn’t think I’d be joining them this year, I felt very proud to be sat alongside everyone. Obviously a few beers were enjoyed afterwards to celebrate.
Day 2
Sitecore Install Extensions In Action – Robert Senktas
I hadn’t heard of SIX before but having had some experience of using SIF when installing Sitecore 9 this looked interesting.
- SIX has a number of powerful features that make it superior to SIF and it support storing sensitive data in Azure Keyvault:
- An early GUI was demo’ed that runs on top of SIX and allowed an Octopus style management of the install process.
This all looks pretty cool and definitely something I’m going to look into further.
White Hat Hackers Guide To The Internet – Mikkel Ole Romer
This was the most packed break-out room I saw over the two days. Mikkel showed some simple Hacking Techniques he’d tried on a list of Sitecore Solutions and the results were quite worrying.
- He showed us some simple hack’s he’d tried:
- The results of the test were a little worrying…
This session was a bit of an eye opener to say the least. Check your Sitecore installs configuration and patches folks!
Sitecore & The Blockchain – Jason Bert
Since I have some Bitcoin & Ripple and I’m interested in Crypto and the application of Blockchain technology this seemed like a talk I wouldn’t want to miss.
- Jason used a number of technologies to store the details of a ticket purchase on the Etherium Blockchain.
- Jason used a local Etherium Blockchain testing tool called Ganache but in the real-world this could be slow and potentially costly.
This was an interesting talk that certainly makes you think about how these technologies could be used in future.
From Forms to Riches – Kamruz Jaman & Mike Reynolds
Having talked to Kam a bit about what he was going to discuss I was looking forward to a bit of a deep-dive into the new Sitecore 9 forms module and thats exactly what we got.
- The metrics stuff and interface looks pretty cool.
- We were also shown how to create a custom field and data encryption was discussed.
- But there is some functionality missing as it’s an first release. If you need to you could build some of this yourself.
Latest Goodnesss JSS – Alex Shyba & Adam Weber
Having presented a talk on JSS at the Sitecore Sessions in Manchester recently I had a good idea about most of this talk but there was still some really great stuff to see and hear. I got to speak to Alex and Adam in person too and they were really helpful.
Rendering level JavaScript was what I was really interested in seeing. This is JSS Components running along-side MVC ones in the same page!.
It was really cool to see this in action. I’ll be trying this out as soon as I get chance.
Time to go home
After a few words of thanks to the organisers and attendees for an fantastic SUGCON it was time to head home….After a few more drinks of course.
What did I get out of SUGCON?
This year I was determined to do more networking and spend time talking to people in the Sitecore Community who I’ve spoke to on-line but never/rarely met. I certainly learnt a great deal from the sessions too but getting to chat to fellow MVPs, Developers, Sitecore Employees who I’ve known online for sometime but not met was my favorite takeaway from the past couple of days. If you didn’t make it this year and are thinking of going next year then I’d highly recommend you get your tickets booked for SUGCON 2019 in London on the 4th & 5th of April. You won’t regret it.