Sitecore Symposium 2019 is coming up at the Swan and Dolphin* Resort in Orlando, FL.  I live on the other side of the world from Orlando.  Almost literally. It’ll take me just short of 24 hours flight time to get there.  Add in transit and the inevitable delays, it’s over 30+ hours door to door…..each way. I’ll also be leaving a young family and (very understanding) wife at home.  This bit, in particular I am not looking forward to.

But it’s worth it.  I made the pilgrimage last year too. So, either I’m a glutton for punishment, or it’s an experience that is worth the sacrifice and expense.  I vote the latter (although they aren’t mutually exclusive!).

Last year I was bewildered by the amount of content, experiences to consume and people to meet.  I soaked it all up and came out the other side inspired by the sessions and people.

This year, I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the content again as well as catch up with friends from around the world.  Looking forward to a chat and 🍻.

While engaging with the community is a huge part of Symposium, it’s the immense amount of content and learning opportunities that really brings this conference to life.  After sifting through the agenda, I’ve selected just a handful (I could’ve easily selected 20+) of sessions that really appeal to me and the work I do.  Even so I still managed to pick a bunch that clash.  The price you pay for an epic agenda!

Keynotes
I’m not going to pick one.  There are some great “non-Sitecore” speakers on the agenda and often I find these speakers and their stories to be the amazingly inspiring.

• Magic Johnson – I’m a hoops tragic and Magic has an amazing story.  He is someone in the sporting world I idolised growing up.  I’ll be fanboying out right here.
• Scott Guthrie (is he a new addition?! I didn’t see this on the agenda before!) presented some of the earliest sessions I’ve seen on .NET and his delivery is impeccable.  I can’t wait to see what colour shirt he wears 🤔🟥.

Build JSS websites with Blazor
Corey Smith & Gary Wenneker
This was the session that grabbed me right away.  Are we already there? In a Blazor world?  Really excited to see what Corey and Gary have put together and how it can start to leverage the power of .NET Core in the browser 🤯

Automate everything!
Andy Parry
Andy has delivered a pre-cursor to this talk at Perth SUG.  It’s a really interesting dive into Marketing Automation and how to extend it to….do pretty much anything.  Looking forward to seeing this come to life on the “big stage”.

New editing experience in Sitecore: What it means for developers
Alexey Vaschenko
Horizon is coming.  There have been a lot of demos over the past couple of years, but little about the developer experience.  This session looks to drill into exactly that.

The containerized mind: Working with Sitecore in containers
Stephen Pope
I’ve been exploring and playing with docker a bit lately but still grappling with getting it into daily developer workflows.  I’m hoping this session will give some good insights into containerized development approaches.

Meet your new best friend: The Sitecore rules engine
Jeffrey Rondeau
I was lucky enough to see Jeff present this session in Sydney at SUGCON ANZ.  It’s a rip-snorter (really good).  Definitely check this one out if you’re interested in seeing some “alternative” uses for the rules engine that help developers and content editors alike.

Extending Sitecore using serverless architectures
Rob Habraken
We’re all cloud focused now (right?, right?).  So I’m really keen to get some inspiration on how we can leverage more of the services outside of the “standard” Sitecore Paas deployments.

There really are so many more sessions I want to talk about.  So check out the agenda, there will be something that blows your mind.

See you in a few weeks!

*  For the record.  It is not a Dolphin.  It’s a damn fish….it has scales. Probably a Cod.  I guess Swan and Cod resort doesn’t have the same ring to it.