CMS Kickoff 2024

Thanks to everyone who joined our 2nd annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to the global CMS community.

Happening on January 16 - 17 in St. Pete Beach, Florida, this event brought together top-notch speakers, our renowned learning format, and engaging social events.

Read more about in these posts:

• Adam Böhm, ACTUM Digital: “it is actually possible to bring the great minds of the field together in one place“

• Alex Smith, Fastr: Future of Content Management: Highlights from CMS Kickoff 2024

• Benni Mack, TYPO3: Being TYPO3 at CMS Kickoff 2024

• Janus Boye, Boye & Co: Directus wins CMS Idol 2024

• Darren Guarnaccia, President of Uniform: “It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a conference this much“

• Matt McQueeny, Konabos: “awesome exercises where we went agile product roadmap”

• Tom Cranstoun:

  • Rethinking AI’s Role in Content Management

  • The AI Tipping Point: A Consultant's Takeaways from CMS Kickoff 2024

You can also browse the program and download the slides or even lean back and enjoy the brief video below which features some of the highlights:

PS: See you in Montreal in August for CMS Connect 24 or next year for CMS Kickoff 25?

World-class speakers at CMS Kickoff 24

What is the CMS Kickoff?

We started with CMS Kickoff 2023, which was quite well received. Now we’re building on it and working on making it even better with input and participation from our global CMS Expert community.

Conferences come in many shapes and sizes. This one had 70 participants.

The sessions are without the usual sales and marketing pitches. Yes, we’ll focus on the big topics for 2024, including AI, content that connects, how flexible page builders are killing your team, visual workspace and much more. There’s also plenty of time for conversations, so that you can bring actionable insights back to your desk and your projects.

Who joined us?

It was an international conference with participants from Europe and North America. A friendly mix of vendors, agencies, analysts and customers who got together to learn, network and talk about what really matters in CMS right now.

European vendors like CoreMedia, Kentico, Kontent.ai, Magnolia, Ninetailed, TYPO3 and Umbraco made the long trip. There was also Agility, Conscia.ai and TechGuilds joining from Canada. Among the US-based vendors, it was a good mix including BLINK, Concrete CMS, Contentful, Directus, dotCMS, Fastr, Optimizely, Searchstax, Solodev, Uniform and others. Not just the usual CMS vendors, but also from the larger ecosystem.

On the agency and consulting side, we were joined by European friends Actum Digital and MMT Digital. Joining us from North America were experienced implementation folks from companies like Autogram, Bizstream, BlueModus, Crescendo Collective, Four Kitchens, Kin + Carta, Konabos, Lone Rock Point, Lullabot, Mostyn Marketing, Simple [A] and Stellar Elements.

Among the analysts joining us were Mark Demeny, Matt Garrepy from CMS Critic and our host Janus Boye from Boye & Co in Denmark.

Finally, there was also more digital leaders from the customer-side confirmed than in 2023. Connect with peers from organizations like Fictiv, Johnson & Johnson, Verily and several others.

Thanks to our conference partners

Venue

We met at The Don CeSar on St. Pete Beach in Florida.

Built in 1928 to resemble a Mediterranean-style castle and known as Florida’s Pink Palace, the Don CeSar is the only historic hotel on Florida’s Gulf coast.