Kentico Partner Connection Miami 2024 Recap
Introduction
This past week, I was lucky enough to attend the 2024 Kentico Partner Connections conference in Miami, FL. What a week it was, not only was it great to hang out in the 83 degree weather, but being able to connect with almost 100 Kentico partners, product managers, executives, and friends was priceless. In this recap, I will share my experience from the event and a few key takeaways that I took. Honestly, though, I would summarize the event in one word, positive.
Arriving in Miami for Kentico Partner Connection
Traveling from Grand Rapids to Miami was fairly uneventful. I was joined by a few BizStream colleagues. The reason that we brought a few of us is that the conference was split into both a business and technology track. This would allow half of our group to attend both tracks. I appreciate how this is the tradition for a Kentico conference. It really provides value for both the business / marketing people at an agency, and the technical people.
We landed, immediately hopped into an Uber, and made it to the lovely Hyatt Regency Coral Gables hotel and conference center. As soon as we entered the lobby, the conference was upon us. Multiple long term Kentico partner agency people were already deep in conversation near the lobby bar. Plenty of Kentico team members were there as well. Everyone seemed to be very good spirits and excited to talk about what the next two days would bring.
It's always great to have these types of unofficial conference meetings. It's fun to see how people from around the region are doing with similar challenges, problems, and market observations. If you are a new partner to the Kentico / DXP world, I highly recommend making it in early to a conference such as this, for this exact reason.
Keynote and Day 1
We kicked off the first day with the CEO of Kentico, Dominik Pinter, showcasing major trends in the marketplace that he sees. The first, and most important, being how many marketing teams are experiencing the need for consolidation of multiple tools, systems, CMSs, and DXPs into more of a single solution. He explained his vision for how the new Xperience by Kentico meets that need. I totally agree with this problem and solution combo. What I also really appreciate about Dominik's presentation was that he was able to let us all know here in North America what he sees from a global perspective. It made me feel better that this isn't just a regional issue.
Dominik then handed the mic to Debbie Tucek, Kentico's VP of Product (and my good friend). Debbie dove a little deeper into how Kentico can support marketers across channels even better than before. She explained how a multichannel first approach helps marketers engage customers throughout their brand sites, digital products, social media, mobile applications, and/or email communications. She then encouraged everyone to try out the technology first hand through the conference's mobile application, which was powered by Xperience by Kentico. Which we did throughout the two days.
At this point, I thought Debbie was going to review the plan for where the product was going, but she made us wait for the second day to do the full product roadmap review. Debbie always likes to keep us all in suspense!
From there, the rest of the product team joined in. We had Martin Kralik, David Komarek, and David Slavik all Kentico Product Management team members. Martin reviewed where Kentico's new AI infused capabilities are coming from, branded as AIRA (Kentico's native Artificial Intelligence Recommendations and Assistance capability). Komarek ran us through how Xperience by Kentico is thinking of tracking the customer journey through multiple channels like web and mobile. He again referenced the conference app and how we were being tracked by our actions and behavior on the site. Don't worry, we all consented to it! Lastly, Slavik reviewed the state of multiple product features that had just been released as part of the most recent set of monthly refreshes that Xperience by Kentico has produced.
Through all of this, I was able to sit next to another Kentico Legend and long time friend, Brendan Kehren. BK and I were taking notes furiously through all the talks. Sitting next to a friend like him was very enjoyable for me.
After a quick break for lunch, I watched two more case studies on the technical track. One from Milan Sustek about how BlueSoft, a Czech based Kentico Partner, solved a unique challenge with using Xperience by Kentico and Kentico 13 together to provide an e-commerce bridge for a project. The second from Joe Peschardt, all the way up from Devotion Digital in Sydney, AU. Joe showcased a migration effort of getting one of his large clients transitioned from Kentico 13 to Xperience by Kentico. Both were great.
For the last session of the day, it was my turn. I got up on stage in the technical track and gave my session on the Top 10 things NOT to do with Xperience by Kentico. I think the talk went well. I was able to pull some helpful examples from our own challenges at BizStream and other Kentico MVPs from around the world with learning Xperience by Kentico. The goal was to show attendees the mistakes that we had collectively made in an effort to prevent anyone else from burning time like we all had. I'm hopeful the presentation showed a few things that could shorten anyone's learning curve on the new Xperience by Kentico product.
The Conference Social Event
After a long day of sessions and information sharing, we moved in to the best part of any conference, the social event! Which luckily was right across the street from the main venue. The event was at a local brewery with ample outdoor and indoor room for all the attendees.
There was a fantastic spread of food and drink, and I had many conversations with almost all of the people at the conference during the social event. The general mood of everyone I talked to was, "Wow, this has been a great conference so far", and I would say that the attendees were happy with the level of and quality of the content provided.
However, I will say that this was most likely the reason why I did not make the next morning's 5k run that was planned. I'll just leave it at that.
Day 2 and Closing
After the early morning run, that a few other people ran (without me), the first topic of the day was one of the most anticipated ones. James Turner, Director of Product Marketing, along with Ben Franklin, VP of Channel and New Business, talked about the updated Xperience by Kentico licensing approach. James and Ben did a great job discussing how licensing works with Kentico now. They differentiated the core concept of Channels and Micro-Channels quite well. In fact, most of the partners, were pleasantly pleased with the results, I would say.
Petr Klouda, VP of Partnerships, was up next. Petr introduced the audience to the upcoming new partner portal that all Kentico partners will have access to in 2025. It was a nice introduction into the new tool, that should make viewing and monitoring each partner's stats easier than ever. I appreciate this new tool as it will allow role based access to certain content, something the previous portal lacked.
The second day I sat in on the business track side because of these two topics. I did miss a few great technical sessions in doing so. One by the infamous Sean Wright, Kentico's lead product evangelist, and another by Sean Wright and David Slavik on Xperience by Kentico Migrations. Since my team and I are very familiar with this topic, it was not a hard decision for me. However, I did hear that the new Kentico Migration Toolkit extensions are really helpful. I'm excited to try that on our next Kentico migration to Xperience by Kentico.
Up next was lunch, which was top-notch. I can tell you, I was not hungry at all during this conference. Everything was great.
The remaining portion of the afternoon was split between an amazing product vision and roadmap session that Debbie walked us through and some affinity round tables. During the roadmap session, I saw a lot of heads nodding in the crowd as Debbie talked about what features were being prioritized over the next 3, 6, and 9 months. Then she ended the roadmap with where Kentico is going with e-commerce in the future. This is all very important information for Kentico partners to be aware of.
The affinity round tables were set up to allow the audience to break into small groups of six to ten people that were spread out around about a dozen tables that represented a unique topic of discussion around Xperience by Kentico. After a set amount of minutes for discussion around that topic, a member of each table stood up and spoke about what they had learned and could take away from each conversation. It was great to hear everyone saying good things about what they had seen the past two days.
The closing session stated with James and Debbie announcing the winner of the event app contest. That winner turned out to be none other than Drew Veach at BizStream. Good for Drew, he needs more Kentico swag.
Finally, the closing keynote featured Janus Boye, CMS Industry Insider and Founder of Boye & Company, Debbie, and Dominik. Janus gave his perspective of how the conference lined up with other CMS/DXP conferences that he leads and attends from around the world. He spoke of how the partner community and partner relationship with Kentico has a lot of good things going. He empathized that a lot of trust exists between Kentico and its partner ecosystem, and how rare that is in today's market. I couldn't agree more.
My Main Takeaways
I do feel like I learned quite a bit while at the conference. I'll try to summerize my takeaways here:
- Xperience by Kentico is ready for prime time and has a strong future.
- Kentico has delivered on it's promised roadmap for the new product.
- Migrating from Kentico 13 or other CMS platforms is getting easier by the month.
- Xperience by Kentico provides a lightning fast platform that is meant to handle multichannel marketing.
- If you are not excited about Xperience by Kentico by now, you should be.
I hope you enjoyed the recap and maybe I will see you at the next Kentico Connection conference.
