Attending SUGCON 2025 has been a particular highlight of my year so far. This year’s event took place in Antwerp, a beautiful city with plenty to explore and some excellent food.
I’ve listed my key takeaways below. A big thanks to all the people who discussed with me at the SUGCON and over dinner and drinks, and helped me to thrash out my thoughts.
Sitecore and AI
Sitecore is taking AI seriously. No bolt-on features or clunky integrations. Sitecore is incorporating AI in ways that make sense for its customers, providing real value by saving time and helping to generate content that matches the customer’s brand, all without compromising the data or content used to train AI agents. It will be interesting to see how this develops, but Sitecore already seems well ahead in its thinking around regulatory, compliance and privacy concerns that often make organisations wary of AI.
Sitecore Marketplace
The Sitecore Marketplace is coming. This will be a space for developers, entrepreneurs and Sitecore enthusiasts to share their work or products with the wider Sitecore community. I’ve already got a few ideas brewing for things I could build, so watch this space…
The Components of Content Hub Make Up to a Greater Content Hub Whole
Content Hub is more powerful than I realised. I’ve not been especially up to date with it, so it was great to learn more at the conference. I was particularly interested in how WAGO used Content Hub alongside Sitecore DAM, Sitecore MRM and Sitecore CMP to create a unified and intuitive platform. Their setup streamlined and automated workflows, significantly reducing duplication and bottlenecks. The result is a well-oiled marketing machine.
The Content SDK
A new “Content SDK” is on the way. This is Sitecore’s streamlined evolution of JSS for XM Cloud. The new version is lighter, faster and more developer friendly, having removed legacy Experience Editor code and moved towards a simpler middleware and configuration model. It’s already showing impressive performance gains. Liz Nelson mentioned a 200ms improvement in First Contentful Paint when loading the editing tools.
XM Cloud Content
We got a first look at XM Cloud Content. Previously known as Content Service, this is Sitecore’s bold new direction for content modelling and delivery. It moves away from the traditional item tree and inheritance-based schemas, offering near-instant publishing, version immutability and a more flexible, API-driven model.
Acronyms
Acronyms galore. I picked up a whole host of new acronyms that I now need to look up, understand and internalise.
As usual, the conference was well worth attending. I left feeling highly enthused about Sitecore, and I can’t wait for the next one.
You can read about my adventures in Antwerp, the city, here.
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