Expecting a delivery

So we entered the final Month of the year, and it is time for a lot of things. Some companies have closing budgets, some people are getting ready for holidays, and me, well I am getting ready for something completely fantastic.

On December 3rd it was 4 years ago since I met my girlfriend, and this wonderful relationship is manifesting itself around December 27 where we are expecting our first child. Now that is a delivery which will certainly change my life.

Obviously this doens’t really have anything to do with Sitecore, but any parent will recognize how grand it is, and hopefully nod smilingly when I show up at the office looking like I haven’t slept for days (which might also become true). I guess it is safe to say I will soon be working 2 jobs: fulltime parent being one, and Sitecore being the other.

For the moment I have grounded myself regarding travelling, as nobody can really predict when the baby will come out. Naturally this is something I definately do not want to miss.

I expect to pick up my travel activities again in the beginning of 2010 and deliver more “on the road” posts by then…

Evidently, a blog

Last week Mark van Aalst released his much anticipated blog module “EviBlog” for Sitecore in a stable version. Mark has been working on the module for a while, and his work has definately payed off with a VERY impressive module.

The module is of course based on the latest Sitecore version (6.2) with support for Inline Editing as well as RSS, tag clouds, categories and so on. But that is not all, Mark have also added support for Microsoft Live Writer for those who enjoy writing content offline in a nice setting.

As the module was greatly expected, our Shared Source Coordinator Jimmie Overby has released 2 videos showcasing the module in action. These videos are available through Mark’s original blogpost.

The blog module is available for download on the Sitecore Shared Source Portal.

Great work Mark, keep it up!

What you say, and what they hear

Whenever I am writing emails or talking to people, I try my best to make sure that what I write or say is easy to understand. A message that is misinterpreted will most often cost you extra time and effort to solve gracefully. Practising this mindset continuously will of course improve your own communication skills over time, but it will most definately also make you realize whenever someone else fails to deliver a precise message – one that can not be misunderstood.

In general 2 things exist in communication “what you say” (and your own understanding and context of that), and “what the recipient hear” – which can be something completely different. Gary Larson, one of my favorite sketch/comic artists, already immortalized this basic rule of life [image link] (copyright restrictions might apply for the image). This also covers the problem that even despite your best efforts to deliver a clear message, maybe the recipient will still misinterpret the content.

 

Today i saw a real life example of something which probably made sense to the communicator, but which is easily misunderstood by the recipient. Basically this is a big example of what can go wrong in communication. I don’t think i need to explain further…

 

 

Normally things do not go as awry as in the advertisement above, but it serves as a reminder to carefully consider what you say or write before you execute.

 

So why am I reminding you all about this? Well basically because in online marketing, you have many options to deliver messages (also ‘bad’ messages), one is to do A/B testing (aka ‘split testing’ or ‘multivariate testing’) where several versions of a message can be defined and displayed to different visitors in order to track which option returns most conversions.

This is one of the basic features in Sitecore’s Online Marketing Suite (OMS) by the way. Imagine that you are releasing a new product and you put a big message on your front page. Normally this will get attention directly, but if you re-phrased it a bit, maybe it would get even more hits. To test this, simply create a few versions and deliver them randomly to all visitors. Over time, one option will prove better than the others, and then you should obviously select this as the only option (and stop the A/B test). This concept is covered in a 2-3 minute video that was recently released on the Sitecore website. The video titled “Increasing your website conversions” is available on this page: http://www.sitecore.net/Products/Resources/Tours.aspx

We are also currently inviting people to attend a webinar about OMS, which will also cover how Sitecore deals with A/B testing. To read more and sign up, please see: http://www.sitecore.net/en/News/Webinars/2009/OMS-Webinar-December-09-Europe.aspx.

Post DMF 2009

One week ago I attended the DMF aka Digital Marketing First expo in the centre of Brussels. The reason for attending this show as an exhibitor, was based on our experience there in 2008 as visitors. Back then my colleague and I were quite baffled at the extremly nice exhibitions. Clearly many top agencies in Belgium regarded this event as "the place to be".

So with that in mind we deciced we simply had to be part of DMF this time around. And I am sure glad we did. Apart from networking with our existing partners (Uniway, The Reference & LBi), we got a few nice partner leads to take home. We also met with existing customers who are really great advocats of Sitecore. Stephen Delvoye from Bekaert is particularly satisfied, and certainly does not mind telling people how great he think Sitecore is. Marvelous!

As mentioned in the previous post, we had Mark van der Wal from Pectora co-host our booth. This was a great combo for us, as Pectora have already delivered some nice Sitecore cases, and since the theme of the event was mainly marketing oriented. Pectora delivers a Sitecore/InDesign integration which can help companies control content and assets across print- and online material. Mark being the nice guy he is, added great value to the show.

On the downside I have to admit that our booth came a bit short of some of the others. The guys from Emakina built a whole giant black box (almost a house actually) where they invited people in for a talk. LBi had a huge bar very nicely set up as well, while a lot of other creative companies clearly had been spending big bucks on the event.

Of course the important part of going to an event such as DMF is both to be seen, but also to make new business. On the latter part, I will be busy for quite a while.

One thing is for sure, see you at DMF next year!

Sitecore attending DMF 2009.

On October 22nd Sitecore will be present at the annual Digital Marketing First (DMF) event in Brussels "Tour & Taxis" expo. As this event is more focused on Online Marketing and not 'just' CMS, Sitecore has teamed up with our partner Pectora for the show.

Pectora is the inventor of a very nice Adobe InDesign integration to Sitecore, which allows content owners to build catalogues with ease in InDesign while at the same time having full control of all their products and their properties.

One good example of the Pectora/Sitecore solution is BoConcept, a furtniture retailer with 1000's of products, who use the solution to easily tailor PDF catalogues for print on their different markets, they also use the solution to save time on creating price signs for their 200 stores. Too learn more about this case, and the other Sitecore/Pectora projects, please feel free to stop by our booth (D17).

 

 

From Sitecore Lila Carlyle and myself will be present, ready to showcase our Online Marketing Suite (OMS). A web-marketing tool which have already been praised by analysts such as Gartner. In short the OMS can bring your website and other marketing initiatives much closer together.

Attending DMF is free for visitors, please go here to pre-register.

See you on the 22nd of October!

Microsoft Germany Partner Conference coming up

During next week I will participate in the partner conference for Microsoft Germany in Dresden. Together with me on the set will be Søren Bak Jepsen, the Director of Sitecore International as well as of course our Regional Director DACH  Marc Schneider.

The show is a 2 day event (September 8+9) for Microsoft and their partners to network as well as experience the many keynote sessions and learn about the latest market trends. More information here and here.

Come visit us at booth #22 to learn more about Sitecore and our recent product release of the Sitecore Online Marketing Suite.

Bis dann...

Pleased to say I told you so.

The long awaited Gartner Magic Quadrant report has now been released by Gartner. As Sitecore holds reprint rights, this new report is available through this Sitecore link (requires registration).

As mentioned in my previous post I envisioned that this report "would blow your mind". This gut-feeling of mine is actually backed up better than I expected in the report. We are placed furthest out on the "completeness of vision" axis, among the top visionaries, as well placed centrally on the "ability to execute" axis.

This places us ahead of all the pure .Net based players, and can be seen as the result of our global business strategy, as well as Sitecore focusing solely on product development while our partners focus on building first-class customer implementations.

Needless to say, we at Sitecore are of course very pleased with this report. This kind of market approval from one of the leading analysts is bound to make a difference in the competitive CMS market.