CMS Kickoff 26 conference program

Let’s make digital experiences better

The conference is tailored for digital leaders and features 2 packed days with a carefully curated mixture of talks, workshops, activities and world class facilitators, thought-provokers, speakers and session leads.

Unlike many other conferences, this one is not about speakers talking endlessly about their own work. Rather than being talked at, this is your conference for active participation and connecting with your peers with the goal to move things forward.

Program

Tuesday, January 13

9:00 - 9:30: Breakfast and registration

Join us early, get the conversation started, make some new friends and enjoy some freshly brewed coffee and tea.

9:30 - 9:45: Welcome & Opening

- Emily Kapes, Curator of Art at The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art
- Our hosts Janus Boye, Boye & Co & Matt Garrepy, CMS Critic

In 2025, CMS platforms shifted toward headless, AI-driven, and cloud-native architectures for omnichannel delivery. Traditional monoliths declined as composable and automation-focused systems dominated the market.

What lies ahead for 2026? Join this analyst update by Matt Garrepy and hear his take on what waits around the corner

Enterprise content teams face challenges keeping up with quality while managing several pages across disconnected tools and manual workflows. An ambient AI assistant that runs continuously in the background, connecting existing systems to provide real-time guidance without disrupting workflows, offers a practical solution.

This session explores how to implement ambient content intelligence in your workflows to move from reactive audits to continuous monitoring, providing guidance during content creation rather than after publication, and scaling quality.

The pace of change in the digital world has never been faster, and agencies are feeling it from every angle. From AI-driven efficiencies to shifting budgets and projects being sliced into smaller, faster engagements, the traditional agency model is evolving before our eyes.

But it’s not just agencies that are changing; customers are too. Clients are becoming more tech-savvy, data-aware, and expect faster results with greater transparency. They are rethinking how they work with creative and digital partners, seeking collaboration that is more flexible, strategic, and measurable. The agency–client relationship itself is being rewritten.

This session explores what these shifts really mean for agencies and the customers they serve. Drawing from real-world conversations with industry peers, it shares insights into how teams are adapting, where both sides are feeling the pressure, and what strategies are helping them stay relevant and resilient together.

You will get a candid, data-informed look at the realities of running and partnering with a modern agency in a constantly moving tech landscape, along with practical ideas to help you keep pace without losing your edge.

11.00 - 11:30 Coffee & networking

Generative AI is becoming a common part of content creation, but many teams struggle to turn experimentation into practical, repeatable workflows. AI can generate text quickly, yet much of that output lives outside the CMS creating manual work, inconsistency, and uncertainty about quality and control.

In this session, we’ll focus on a simpler, more effective approach: using the structure in your CMS to ground AI from the start. Rather than treating AI as a replacement for content teams, we’ll explore how CMS-based templates act as human-defined guardrails, giving AI the structure, intent, and constraints it needs to produce usable first drafts.

The discussion centers on one core idea: AI is most valuable when it helps teams move from a blank page to a structured starting point. By using AI to get from 0 to 1, and keeping humans firmly in control of review and publishing, organizations can reduce friction, improve consistency, and make better use of expert time without sacrificing governance or quality.

Search is no longer limited to blue links. Generative systems like Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT increasingly shape how brands are discovered, compared, and recommended. This shift has introduced new terms such as GEO and AI optimization, along with growing uncertainty about what actually matters.

In this session, we will cut through the noise to explore what is genuinely changing and what still holds true. Drawing on recent industry research and real-world experiments, the talk examines how structured content, brand signals, and distribution across channels influence visibility in both traditional search and AI-generated answers.

Most guidance around GEO today is based on correlation, not causation. Rather than promising shortcuts, this session focuses on practical, durable optimizations companies can make now, especially around content clarity, consistency, and reuse.

The goal is not to predict the future of search, but to enable an informed, honest conversation about how to prepare for it.

AI is no longer a tool we use — it’s a collaborator woven into every layer of digital experience. From generating content to shaping personalized interactions, its presence is transforming how teams work and what “human creativity” really means.

In this session, Daria Kolchina explores what she calls New-Age Human Intelligence — the evolving blend of human intuition, empathy, and strategic thinking that turns AI from an assistant into a true creative partner. Drawing from the AI-First Journey Fast Track framework, she shows how teams can move from execution to orchestration, designing systems where people and AI co-create value.

You’ll discover how roles across content, design, and engineering are shifting — and how to build workflows where human and machine intelligence complement each other to deliver richer, more meaningful digital experiences.

12:30 - 1.30 Lunch

1:30 - 2.30 Roundtables

Come join 2 x 25 minutes of informal roundtable discussions to get answers on your specific questions or help others by sharing your expert knowledge.
Each table has no more than 10 attendees and is assigned a specific topic and moderator.
First come first served: you don’t get to see who’s at the table until you get there.

After the initial 25 minutes are up, you get to pick another table for the next 25 minutes of discussion.

Tables:

1. Agentic AI in ‘26 with Nabil Orfali, CEO and Founder of TechGuilds

2. Design systems in ‘26 with Ezra Mustra, UX Lead for Design Systems at CLA

3. Digital accessibility in ‘26 with Anisi Rouleau, Content Designer at Iron Mountain

4. GenUI Meets CMS: Who Owns the Experience Now with Scott Liewehr, Global VP Market Strategy & Growth at Sitecore

5. Making Websites Work in China with Marta Cukierman, Co-founder at StreamX

6. SEO in ‘26 with Daniel Horowitz, Enterprise SEO Lead @ Informatica

7. The Real Story About AI Platform Adoption with Karolina Zimniak, Product Engagement Lead at JLL

8. What Clients Want Now (and How We Should Respond) with Karla Santi, CEO at Blend Interactive

9. What now? Open Source CMS in 2026 with Roger Williams, Community Manager at Kinsta

2:30 - 3:00 Coffee & networking

Delivery demands around CMS migrations and rebuilds continue to rise. Faster timelines, lower budgets, and more complex platforms have made delivery risk the dominant challenge. While the industry often promises push-button automation, real-world delivery remains messy and dependent on senior expertise.

This session explores the concept of agentic delivery. Systems that work inside existing CMS platforms and delivery processes to guide teams through migration, validation, and recovery when reality diverges from the plan.

The talk is grounded in hands-on experience building agentic delivery tooling and is relevant for both digital agencies running CMS migrations and organizations operating CMS platforms at scale. Vendor-neutral and focused on execution, not hype.

AI is reshaping how digital teams plan, build, and deliver. The real advantage isn’t just in adopting new tools — it’s in connecting them. When AI is embedded into a composable architecture, strategy and execution finally move at the same pace.

In this session, Chad Solomonsen explores how to design an AI-powered roadmap that accelerates value instead of adding complexity. He’ll show how to:

• Attach AI at the experience layer where it drives real outcomes

• Stream and govern data safely from core systems

• Reuse modular components across teams and channels

• Deliver measurable improvements in weeks, not years

Drawing on real implementations and lessons from leading enterprise teams, Chad reveals what it takes to turn composable vision into everyday execution — building smarter and shipping faster with AI at the center.

In healthcare, where accuracy is everything, trust is not an abstract idea—it is built through content structure and governance. As AI accelerates content creation, personalization, translation, and delivery, the real challenge becomes architectural: how to future-proof content ecosystems to scale with precision.

Patient education is more than information—it is an intimate, long-term relationship from discovery to recovery, powered by technology but grounded in empathy.

This session will demonstrate how WebMD Ignite – the #1 provider of patient education globally –  builds trust through flexible content modeling, semantic frameworks, and modular “atomic” content to deliver highly personalized, multilingual experiences while maintaining consistency and clinical authority in medical environments and critical moments where an error can mean the difference between life and death.

We'll discuss how automation—spanning metadata, quality control, publishing, and reporting—can reduce operational friction without sacrificing subject matter expertise or the quality of guidance that empowers patients to make decisions that improve health outcomes across populations.

4:30 - 5:00 Coffee & networking

5:00 - 6:00 CMS Idol 2026

Help crown the next (and first) “2026 CMS Idol”! In this fast-paced, entertaining competition, contestants will have 6 minutes to showcase their system and try to win your vote.

If you like short demos, pithy commentary, and expert analyses, then look no further. This is the session for you. You'll hear thoughts from an expert panel of judges, but it's up to you to decide the winner.

Host: Matt Garrepy, CMS Critic

Judges:

• Karla Santi

• Matthew McQueeny

• Sara Green

6:30 - 10:00 Social event

Join us for an informal networking dinner. Everyone is welcome!

We’ll also announce the CMS Idol winner and even do a CMS Experts Quiz!

Venue: Voodoo Brewing Co, 220 4th St N, St. Pete - less than 10 minutes walk from The James

Wednesday, January 14

7:00 Morning Run

We meet in front of the James for a relaxed 25 minute run. We’ll run to the famous Pier and perhaps catch the sunrise!

9:00 - 9:30 Breakfast and networking

Join us early, get the conversation started, reflect on what you’ve already learned and enjoy some freshly brewed coffee and tea.

9:30 - 9:45: Morning welcome

A brief opening by
- Stephanie Adamo, Director of Marketing and Communications, The James Museum
- Our hosts Janus Boye, Boye & Co & Matt Garrepy, CMS Critic

Your website isn’t dead, but it’s no longer enough. As AI reshapes customer expectations, brands must evolve their static digital experiences into real-time interactions.

Site visitors no longer have time to browse through endless webpages to try to find what they’re looking for. This is where AI agents come into play. They act as digital concierges that answer visitors’ questions and help them complete tasks, moving them further along their customer journey.

But what about the webpage itself? How will the actual website transform with AI? In this session, we’ll dive into AI agents built for the customer experience, and how webpages can dynamically transform through AI.

People are changing how they seek and engage with information. Today’s users expect interactions that feel relevant, conversational, and deeply contextual.

Static, menu-driven websites are being replaced by systems that deliver direct, dialogue-based responses, meeting users where they are rather than asking them to search. And search itself has become a conversation, one that demands natural, context-rich answers instead of rigid keyword matches.

This begs the question: Can a traditional CMS still deliver the experiences customers expect, or is it time for something more?

In this talk, Sara will explore what’s possible with a Generative CMS and how it can be used to deliver context-aware and compliant experiences that meet user expectations while maintaining trust and governance in the age of intelligent, conversational systems. soon

Digital sovereignty is often framed as a European concern, driven by regulation, geopolitics and public sector priorities. But in 2026, its impact will be global. From AI governance and cloud dependency to open source supply chains and platform resilience, Europe’s direction of travel is already reshaping how US organisations build, buy and operate digital platforms.

In this session, Karim will explain why Europe’s renewed focus on open source and sovereign digital infrastructure should matter to US enterprises, even if they never plan to operate in the EU.

The talk will connect regulatory pressure, AI acceleration and vendor concentration to practical decisions CMS, digital and technology leaders are making today. The goal is not compliance theatre, but strategic optionality, resilience and long-term control.

10:45 - 11:15 Coffee & networking

Website performance has always mattered. Faster pages convert better, rank higher, and frustrate users less. Yet in 2026, teams are still firefighting slowdowns during campaigns, launches and moments of change, even on platforms packed with caches, CDNs and performance tooling.

In this session, Marta looks at why performance remains such a persistent problem in modern CMS and composable architectures. Rather than focusing on optimistic optimisation techniques, she examines the underlying assumptions behind today’s performance strategies, especially our reliance on caching and runtime decision-making.

Marta introduces Continuous Materialisation as an alternative way of thinking about speed. By shifting work out of the request path and continuously preparing website state ahead of user traffic, teams can reduce complexity, regain predictability, and make performance a property of the system rather than a constant tuning exercise.

This brief presentation is for anyone who feels they have “done all the right things” for performance and still ends up reacting when it matters most.

In most CMSs, content models sit tucked away inside a hidden domain model. During everyday operations, these models collide with organizational structures and process models, creating friction for teams and slowing delivery.

At the same time, we are entering an uncharted phase of content modeling. As artificial intelligence reshapes how content is created, structured, and consumed, the emphasis is shifting. Internal schemas are no longer enough. External meaning, interoperability, and machine-readiness are becoming essential.

In this session, Marc will broaden how you think about content modeling by introducing the idea of conceptual content. He will weave in semantics and a touch of data science to show how content models can be elevated into true domain models that better support both humans and machines.

Marc will also explore the long-term advantages of conceptualizing content and, most importantly, share clear, practical steps you can take to operationalize a conceptual content model for creators, consumers, and AI-driven workflows.

Generative AI has rewritten the landscape. Search engines once ranked pages. Answer engines now rank people. Visibility is no longer won through keywords alone but through Earnfluencing, the accumulated impact of real voices, trusted communities, and publicly demonstrated expertise.

In this session, Matt McQueeny explores why thought leadership, community engagement, and the pillars of credibility — experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness — are becoming the true currency of the generative era. He shows how communities like Boye and Co. play an outsized role in shaping the credibility that answer engines depend on. These rooms are where ideas are tested, authority is earned, and the signals of genuine expertise begin.

Matt will also connect this human-driven power to the digital experience stack. Modern CMS and DXP platforms, when configured for Generative Experience Optimization, can amplify Earnfluencing at scale, surfacing structured expertise, strengthening trust signals, and ensuring your organization becomes visible inside AI assistants and answer models.

You will leave with a clear understanding of how to pair authentic human authority with optimized digital experience in order to rise in generative results and stay ahead in the age of answer engines.

12:30 - 1:30 Lunch

AI isn’t magic, but it has made it easy to turn the ‘lots of content, fast’ knob to infinity. Volume can’t move the needle anymore.

This means all organization, including vendors need to focus more carefully on the planning, quality management, and knowledge curation systems that make it possible to target and deliver higher quality, higher consistency content to the places where it has the most impact.

A brief interactive wrap-up of the two days. Join us for key lessons learned, big questions for 2026, perhaps a few answers and what happens next.

2.45 - 3:00 Goodbyes and see you next year!

Thanks for joining us. Continue the conversation over a cup of coffee or tea before leaving St Pete