We’re almost already at the end of 2024 and that means that Sitecore’s MVP nomination season opened up again (November 1, 2024 – November 30, 2024) for the Sitecore 2025 MVP title. In this blog-post I would like to write down what my contributions and achievements were to the Sitecore community since the last MVP nomination round in November 2023.
My year started out great! Right after the nominations for 2024 ended I got certified at Sitecore XM Cloud. At the beginning of this year I received my 15th Sitecore MVP title, and I touched upon my first Sitecore XM Cloud work through Velir (to get experience with XM Cloud was a technical goal for me this year, so big thanks to the amazing team at Velir for helping me achieve my goals).
In 2024 I was also able to add yet another certification, the Sitecore Certified Personalize Developer Certification, to my long list of Sitecore certifications and probably made the first, completely written in Next.js, Bynder DAM integration (besides Content Hub) in XM Cloud.
Technically wise it was a great year, however overall it has been an extremely difficult year business wise for me due to a collapsing market, but looking at LinkedIn I haven’t been the only one that has been ‘surviving’ this year. One thing that was a result of this, was the fact that I had more time to blog, upgrade Sitecore Modules I maintain to 10.4 and present at Sitecore User Groups.
So let’s have a look at my Sitecore contributions for 2024:
Sitecore blogs
- December 1, 2023 – Robbert Hock is now a Certified Sitecore XM Cloud Developer
- December 6, 2023 – How to become a Certified Sitecore XM Cloud Developer
- December 12, 2023 – XM Cloud – Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) Best Practices – File System
- December 20, 2023 – XM Cloud – Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) Best Practices – Include naming
- January 4, 2024 – XM Cloud – Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) Best Practices – Module Explorer
- January 12, 2024 – Implementing a Headless Sitecore Dictionary Service with the ASP.NET Core Rendering SDK
- January 19, 2024 – Sitecore releases huge headless JSS 21.6 update for XM Cloud
- January 26, 2024 – Sitecore XM Cloud Forms – A first look
- February 1, 2024 – Sitecore XM Cloud Forms – Webhooks integration explained
- February 7, 2024 – Available icons in Sitecore’s XM Cloud Pages
- February 9, 2024 – Robbert Hock wins 15th Sitecore MVP award
- February 15, 2024 – A first look at the new RTE in Sitecore XM Cloud Pages
- March 6, 2024 – A first look at Sitecore XM Cloud BYOC
- March 18, 2024 – How to Build a Great UI for your Sitecore XM Cloud BYOC Components
- March 26, 2024 – Exploring validation on Sitecore XM Cloud BYOC Components
- April 23, 2024 – SUG Jaipur meetup presentation on ‘Bring Your Own Components (BYOC)’
- April 24, 2024 – Robbert Hock featured in CMS Wire article ‘Sitecore Officially Names Dave O’Flanagan as CEO’
- April 30, 2024 – Sitecore User Group Jaipur Meetup on BYOC: Video, Slides & Code
- May 3, 2024 – Sitecore 10.4 support for auto-installing the Sitecore Publishing Service (SPS) & Publishing Module
- May 7, 2024 – Sitecore SI Snitch project is now Sitecore 10.4 compatible
- May 15, 2024 – Sitecore – Remote Cache Kick module is now Sitecore 10.4 compatible
- May 16, 2024 – Sitecore XM Cloud latest updates – April/May 2024
- May 22, 2024 – Introducing the New UI for Experiment and Experience Lists in Sitecore Personalize
- June 6, 2024 – Robbert Hock is now a Sitecore Certified Personalize Developer
- June 13, 2024 – Sitecore User Group SUGNL Meetup on BYOC: Slides & Code
- September 2, 2024 – Sitecore XM Cloud August 2024 Updates: New Features and Enhancements
- September 26, 2024 – What’s New in Sitecore XM Cloud Sites?
- October 1, 2024 – I completed the Sitecore Search for Business Users Course
- October 3, 2024 – WebP files are now finally natively supported in Sitecore XM Cloud
- October 17, 2024 – Sitecore announces Sitecore Stream: My thoughts featured in CMSWire’s latest article
Sitecore open-source contributions
I contributed to or shared the following Sitecore open-source projects/code:
- https://github.com/KayeeNL/KayeeDictionaryServiceDemo
- accompanying source code for the Implementing a Headless Sitecore Dictionary Service with the ASP.NET Core Rendering SDK blogpost.
- https://github.com/KayeeNL/SI-Snitch
- I upgraded the code to be compliant with Sitecore 10.4 -> see blogpost Sitecore SI Snitch project is now Sitecore 10.4 compatible.
- https://github.com/KayeeNL/sitecore-sif-autoinstall-publishingservice
- I upgraded the code to be compliant with the Publishing Services and Publishing Modules for Sitecore 10.4. -> see blogpost Sitecore 10.4 support for auto-installing the Sitecore Publishing Service (SPS) & Publishing Module.
- https://github.com/KayeeNL/Community.Foundation.RemoteCacheKick
- I upgraded the project, which allows to clear the remote server caches from a CM server, to now also be compliant with Sitecore 10.3 & Sitecore 10.4. -> See blogpost Sitecore XM Cloud latest updates – April/May 2024.
- https://github.com/KayeeNL/xmcloud-sug-jaipur-byoc-demo
- BYOC implementation code for the SUG Jaipur presentation -> see Sitecore User Group Jaipur Meetup on BYOC: Video, Slides & Code.
- https://github.com/KayeeNL/xmcloud-sugnl-byoc-demo
- BYOC implementation code for the SUGNL (Dutch Sitecore User Group) presentation -> see Sitecore User Group SUGNL Meetup on BYOC: Slides & Code.
Besides that I’m maintaining the following repo’s (but these I haven’t touched in 2024):
- https://github.com/KayeeNL/sitecore-module-docker-asset-image-creator, a Powershell script that handles the auto creation of a Docker Asset Image for a given Sitecore Module.
- https://github.com/KayeeNL/Sitecore.DataExchange.Gutters, where I upgraded the code to a more open source variant with Unicorn and upgraded the project to be compliant with Sitecore 9.3 and DEF 4.0.0 and Sitecore 10 & 10.1 with DEF 5.0.0.
Presentations
Bring Your Own Components (BYOC) was something I did a deep-dive on while investigating all potential development options for component development for XM Cloud. The experience and knowledge gained resulted into a technical presentation with a real-development demo. I gave this presentation to the SUG Jaipur and to the Dutch Sitecore User Group: SUGNL.
In case you would like to see my entire Sitecore MVP profile, you can check it out here.
My Goals for 2025
I’m sure there will be some exciting news coming from me soon. In 2025 I can’t wait for getting my hands on Sitecore Stream and other Sitecore products I don’t have much experience with atm. Due to the rough Sitecore market in 2024, I wasn’t able to attend SUGCON and Sitecore Symposium, I surely hope that in 2025 I will be able to meet each one of you in the Sitecore community again.
The last thing left is to wish you all, that fill in their MVP application, lot’s of success in being selected to this prestigious award and title.
It is time to submit your Sitecore MVP 2025 application!
Wishing you all a great 2025 with lots of Sitecore-ing! Good luck on your Sitecore MVP nominations!
Robbert
