Jahia One, Day One: Jahia 7, Glowing Feedback, and More
Today, on a crisp morning in the heart of beautiful Paris, Jahia hosted their first ever international conference, Jahia One. CMS Critic was in attendance – in the form of Mike, his wife Karlynn and myself.
The conference was off to a great start even before the the opening keynote began. Jahia's friendly team were initially expecting around 80 attendees for the Jahia One event, but as the conference neared, they realised that they were actually having to prepare their Pan Piper Centre venue for a far larger amount of 170 people.
We live-tweeted the event using the #JahiaOne hashtag, with similar coverage planned for the second day of the event. You can catch up on those tweets, and follow them all again tomorrow, by checking out the CMS Critic Twitter page.
Here's a roundup of how it all went down on day one.
Passion from Jahia, Delight from Customers
Elie Auvray – the Jahia CEO, kicked off the event with an opening keynote, touching on the the importance of Jahia's customers and partners, whilst also praising his colleagues for their hard work and vision, and the attendees, for their presence and support.
His time on the stage was short, but you sensed his passion almost immediately – setting the perfect scene for the day ahead.
After his short keynote, Elie Auvray introduced the Mick MacComascaigh from Gartner Inc , who spoke extensively on the emergence of the new digital age, and the role platforms like Jahia have to help bridge the gap between bickering marketing, IT and business departments across enterprises around the world.
“Synergy between IT and Business is vital for [the progress of] the new digital economy.” ~ Mick MacComascaigh, Gartner Inc.
Mick gave a concise, yet thought-provoking view on what he called the “new digital economy”. He pointed out how Jahia's efforts were helping to make companies more internally cohesive, and thus more successful.
Jahia customers Ambercrombie & Fitch and HomeAway were also both in atendance, detailing their digital journeys with Jahia, praising it's flexibility and explaining how the platform helped them to reach larger audience, scale their web presence, and offer a more flexible service.
“One of the main reasons we chose Jahia was because it was so stable and secure.” ~ Taylor Pratt, HomeAway
Both companies were proud to be running on Jahia, commenting on its positively evolving quality, and were eagerly awaiting the release of Jahia 7.
A Glance at Jahia 7
Clement Egger – Jahia's Director of Product Marketing, soon got talking about Jahia 7 – the news everybody had been waiting for.
His comments touched on the enhanced speed and flexibility that Jahia 7 will bring to the table, focusing more on the technical side of how things will be changing for the better.
Additionally, Egger spoke about Jahia 7's improved studio capabilities, re-designed administration panels, various framework updates, and so forth. The core principals he mentioned were focused on speed and greatly improved usability from a development standpoint.
Clement, along with Auvray were both sure to point out that customers looking forward to Jahia 7 should not consider it a migration – but an upgrade instead.
What they meant was, the process of moving from Jahia 6.6 to Jahia 7 was planned and designed to be quick and easy. Elie Auvray specifically made a point to guarantee this to his customers.
In any case, day two of Jahia One promisesto unveil far more about Jahia 7, and we can't wait.
Delicious Food, Networking and Interviews
Aside from the keynotes and presentations, there was more to see and do at Jahia One.
Lunch was served in a brilliant networking environment, allowing atendees to converse and engage over some light foods. There was plenty of variety, and plenty to go around.
Jahia's Anne de Forsan was also getting attendees involved with video interviews, talking about their experiences with Jahia, and their views on the day so far. The lunch session embodied the event, with a bubbly atmosphere full of professionalism – but not without a hint of fun and friendliness.
The first day was certainly an enjoyable one from our standpoint, and we expect that day two will be just as engaging.
Join us on Twitter tomorrow for day two of Jahia One, where we will be live-tweeting all the action and news from Paris concerning Jahia 7 and more.