(Covering 17th Oct events)

The second day of the Sitecore Symposium 2024 was nothing short of spectacular! With over 60+ sessions held across five breakout tracks, the day was filled with panel discussions, theater sessions, customer showcases, and exciting moments that further ignited the digital experience conversation

Icreon proudly took the stage, showcasing the digital transformation success stories of two Sitecore Experience Award winners—Grand Casino Mille Lacs & Hinckley and Acrisure. Both organizations partnered with Icreon to leverage Sitecore's XM Cloud suite, resulting in transformative outcomes that have redefined their digital strategies.

Icreon attracted a bustling crowd at their booth, sparking exciting conversations about the latest digital innovations and announcing winners of their special prizes.

Related: Day 1 Recap - Sitecore Symposium 2024

The day also built-up huge excitement for Erik Qualman, the #1 Best Selling Author, who captivated the audience with his powerful insights on future-proofing both individuals and organizations. Let’s delve into what the day looked like at the Symposium.

Day 2 Highlights – What’s going on at the Sitecore Symposium

Mainstage Keynote- Power of Trust in Digital & Physical Worlds by Eric Stine

The day started with a fantastic keynote by Eric Stine, Chief Operating Officer at Sitecore. With a little recap on Sitecore Stream AI, he talked about trust and community and went on emphasizing privacy and data security with higher morals and ethics. He made an announcement that all Sitecore solutions Content & Experience solutions hub, Cloud, CDP, and personalize have been independently audited and are HIPPA compliant.

Rick Heron, CXO at Western Health, joined the conversation to discuss the importance of trust as brands merge physical and digital experiences. The session also featured insights from industry leaders like Cracker Barrel and Aston Martin on balancing data, privacy, and community.

Celebrating Winners of Sitecore Experience Awards and MVP Red Jacket Award

At the Sitecore Experience Awards, Icreon proudly celebrated two major wins. Acrisure earned the "Best Leadership in Experience Transformation" award for boosting personalized customer engagement through Sitecore, reducing time to market by 60%, and doubling SEO performance.

MLCV’s Grand Casinos won the "Best Experience Transformation" award for leveraging Sitecore to achieve a remarkable 443% increase in hotel bookings. Icreon played a key role in transforming their customer experiences.

Additionally, Sitecore introduced the MVP Red Jacket Award, recognizing individuals for their exceptional contributions as the longest-standing MVP.

Guest keynote by Erik Qualman

Forbes top 20 influencers, Erik Qualman, interacted with the attendees through Q&As, videos, and various powerful examples to inspire and motivate them to become a digital leader and build digital reputation. The most interesting part of his speech was his “Alien Green Glasses” that he mentioned was the more impossible and discomforting thing for him and his surroundings when he first talked about. While focusing on the discomfort, one motivational line that came up was: you always need to step into that discomfort to start the greatest chapter of your life.

Breakout Sessions that Inspired People at the Symposium

Day 2 kicked off with exciting breakout sessions following an engaging keynote by #1 bestselling author Erik Qualman. Icreon connected with Sitecore MVPs, experts, and major brands, sharing how their Sitecore implementations empowered clients to deliver exceptional digital experiences across industries.

A quick rundown of breakout sessions presented by Icreon

Betting to win: Hospitality's digital evolution

Featured: Ryan McGrath, Chief Brand and Digital Officer, MLCV and Prasant Varghese, Chief Operating Officer, Icreon

In this session, Ryan and Prasant shared how Grand Casino achieved impressive digital engagement and revenue growth by merging digital innovation with physical experiences. They discussed the strategies behind MLCV’s success, focusing on tech adoption, staff training, and organizational change management, and setting new benchmarks for the gaming and hospitality industry.

Transforming D2C with Sitecore XM Cloud: Acrisure's digital revolution

Featured: Charnjiv Brar, Digital Platform Director at Acrisure and Steve Lamensdorf, SVP, Experience at Icreon

Another highlight for the day was an in-depth discussion where Steve Lamensdorf and Charnjiv Brar shared their transformative journey with Sitecore XM Cloud in the direct-to-consumer (D2C) space. They discussed how leveraging Sitecore’s modular design and integrating AI solutions enabled their organization to evolve, providing valuable insights to attendees on setting new standards of digital excellence.

Prize Announcement at the Icreon Booth

Icreon was excited to reveal the winners at their booth, presenting them with fantastic prizes. Attendees enjoyed engaging in extended conversations with Icreon’s experienced professionals.

General Sessions around Sitecore Updates and Latest Innovations

Modular content strategy and design with Sitecore: Led by Jacqueline Baxter, Director, Content Design & Strategy, Sitecore, this session unveiled how any successful content strategy revolves around trust and how Sitecore addresses this with a modular content strategy and design. This session was quite insightful for the attendees as they gained knowledge on how to build and execute a modular content strategy that directly resolves customers' problems while improving brand messaging.

Building futureproof XM Cloud architecture: Bart Plasmeijer, Senior System Architect – XM Cloud, Sitecore, addressed the audience on how to create a successful XM cloud architecture with effective and proven strategies. This session was a boon for the architects and developers who’re always in the hunt for achieving resilience.

Driven by data: How a centralized data architecture reshaped Sitecore.com’s digital strategy. The session led by Megan Engard, Sr Martech Manager, Sitecore and Conor O’Shea, Senior Solution Consultant, Sitecore, presented insights on how marketers always put data at the center stage for Sitecore’s digital strategy.

Introducing Sitecore’s Marketplace: To advance SaaS journey with Sitecore XM Cloud, Anastasia Plati, Product Manager, Sitecore and Krassi Eneva, Senior Product Manager, Sitecore announced the introduction of Sitecore’s marketplace. The duo shed light on the vision of the marketplace while elaborating on its powerful features that will improve the experience of both developers and marketers.

Sitecore CDP: Unlock your data with unified tracking: In this session, Derek Fahey, Director of Product Management, Sitecore, discussed the impact of newly launched unified tracking features in Sitecore CDP on data. The attendees get to learn more with some real-world examples of data streaming on how to get the most of CDP data in different Sitecore products including search, personalize, and more.

Sitecore Symposium Party

The Symposium party in Nashville was an unforgettable night! Attendees enjoyed Southern-style cuisine, refreshing drinks, live music, and valuable networking opportunities in a vibrant atmosphere. It was a memorable event!

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