After a long summer break, the Milwaukee Sitecore User Group had it's fall meetup. Despite the cold weather, as usual we were warmly welcomed. This meeting was hosted and sponsored by Layer One Media. This user group was organized by Sitecore MVP Joe Ouimet @jouimet. Thank you for putting this together!
As is the custom, we were given a delicious selection of pizza, as well as beer and soda. I came hungry and ate more than I should have.
There were two presentations this time, which I thought were particularly relevant to newer Sitecore developers such as myself.
Keeping Content Editors In Mind When Implementing
Andrew Schwabe
The first presentation wasn't necessary showcasing a technology so much as it was talking about a mindset that Sitecore developers often lack. Since developers often do not see things from the content author's perspective, they often do not architect Sitecore solutions with them (content authors) in mind.
During the talk, Andrew reminded us that, as developers, our customers are our clients, which include content authors first and foremost. If we create a good management experience for them, we can greatly increase their productivity, work happiness, while lessening their chance of making mistakes during content entry. This can make our life as a developer easier, because we won't have as many requests to fix issues that could have been solved by making things more straightforward for content authors. Not only that, but a good content author experience would make it very likely that the client would come back for more work.
What are the signs of a bad content management experience? Andrew mentioned several: confusing workflow, repetition (unnecessary copying data from one place to another) and inaccurate naming of items and fields.
Introduction to Sitecore JavaScript Services (JSS)
I found the next presentation particularly interesting.This presentation showcased Sitecore's new-ish headless CMS, called Sitecore JavaScript Services (JSS).
During the presentation, Phil created a sample JSS Site. He showed the basic steps and layout for how to get data onto the page. He then imported the data into a clean installation of Sitecore and showed how the JSS framework created new item templates and items. It was very cool and surprisingly simple to get started with!
I really appreciated seeing all of this in action and thought it was a great primer for how to get started with Sitecore JSS.
Thank you to all of you who presented and to Layer One Media for once again hosting a great Sitecore Meetup!
Take care!
-Szymon