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On Tuesday the summit kicked of with an opening by Pieter Brinkman, welcoming everyone, saying how special we are: 0.53% of the Sitecore Community is a Sitecore MVP, and that makes it really exclusive that Robbert Hock of Kayee is part of that.

Then Lars Nielsen, Scott Anderson and Daren Guarnaccia kicked off the discussion panel on The Future of Digital Marketing. Marketing and Technology are more and more in need of eachother. Marketing Automation, Social Media, Email Marketing, Mobile are more and more important in the marketing process and technology allows them to do that.

So it’s very important for marketers and technologist to absolutely work together and create great experiences for the end customers.

The Nutricia Platform

Industries are changing fast, like the rise of Uber and Airbnb for example, that will change the futuristic landscape of companies. 40% of the companies will seize to exist in the future. Competition can come from anywhere, data and technology are driving change by understanding user context.

WCM is relevant more than ever before. Not only on a website channel, but on all the cross-channels (Social Media, Email, any platform really), understanding the customer needs on all the platforms and providing the customer the right content on the device the customer is connecting with at that time.

And also the Nutricia story was mentioned, the Nutricia platform, which was developed by Lukkien, the Digital Agency I’m currently working for and which I’ve been lucky to be able to work on. 800% raise in revenue, the mothers journey, Nutricia is one of the cool stories in which Sitecore was used and that changed the conversation between the company and the end clients (the mothers) so much, that the company really benefitted from putting in Sitecore and changing the conversation between the company and end customer.. Kinda proud that I’ve been able to work on that project!

xDB vNext, CMS vNext, SPEAK 2.0 & Sitecore quiz

Then we had an excellent session by Todd Mitchell on xDB vNext, which was fully confidential and can’t be shared. Exciting stuff coming up in the future.

Brandon Hubbard took the stage and showed us what will be new in SPEAK 2.0. Expect more simplicity while developing SPEAK applications, but again: a lot of slides were marked with the ‘do not share’ sign.

After that we had the last session of the day by Kern Herskind Nightingale and our own secretary Stephen Pope 😉 on CMS vNext. Again this session was full confidential, but great discussions and remarks were made. A great way of the MVP’s influencing the end product and the future of the Sitecore platform.

After that session all MVP’s entered the personal Sitecore MVP Quiz, created on Kahoot by Chris Nash. What a great platform for getting a great fun quiz with questions on Sitecore related topics.

Dan Solovay won in the end, with Nick Wesselman as a runner up and Mark Ursino as 3rd. Managed to be placed at the 9th position out of the MVP’s Not bad!

Cajun Pride Swamp Tours

The evening program was great. In three buses we went to the Cajun Pride Swamp Tours for a Cajun Fais Do Do at Manchuc Swamp, just outside of New Orleans. On a small tour, we saw a bunch of alligators, wow, really impressive to be on the boat and see the reptiles in real life.

When he tour ended, it was party time. Mark Stiles played the wash-scratch-board with the band and Lars and Pieter Brinkman followed. Great food, drinks, conversations and cigars. What a great night.

Many thanks for Mark van Aalst, Pieter Brinkman and Marissa Dresnek for not only organising the Summit, but especially organising this great night out.

After returning to the hotel, the night ended for me, but I believe that many many Sitecore MVP’s found their way to Bourbon Street.