Many of us are back to work after the 2018 Tridion Developer Summit (TDS) held at The Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam that took place on September 6 and 7. Hosted by long-time "Tridionaut" Robert Curlette, the technical conference covered product vision to plans, technical sessions, a networking event, and the popular lightning talk sessions.

The Eye Film Institute, Day 1 at TDS 2018 (Copyright: Alvin Reyes*)

Expect more posts from attendees and presenters. In the meantime, here are some highlights in case you couldn't attend. *I joined this year as the proud product owner for the new Graphene User Interface work while also challenging myself to take a few non-blurry pictures of some of the sessions.

The Fifth Conference

This is the fifth year for this technical developer conference, which has covered Tridion and related topics as presented by partners, implementers, customers, and SDL product development. TDS 2018 was unique as the event took a closer at SDL Tridion Sites and SDL Tridion Docs, which are now part of the Tridion DX suite. For background, read my post on SDL Tridion DX or a try an exercise to compare the Sites and Docs content models.

Your TDS host and guide Robert Curlette created the event to gather great company and expertise in one place (Copyright: pellinni / 123RF Stock Photo, modified to thank Robert Curlette and emphasize his role). 

This year's agenda included product plans, architecture, customer case studies, and lots of code.

Technical Attendees from Across Europe

The majority of attendees that responded to the pre-event survey showed interest in SDL Tridion Sites followed by Dynamic Delivery Experience and SDL Tridion Docs (multiple answers allowed).

The attendees work across popular Web development technologies. In response to, "Which frontend/backend technologies are you using in your most recent or upcoming projects?" attendees responded with .NET and Java as well as a few front-end technologies including Angular, jQuery, and React.

Word-of-mouth and the popularity of the past conferences also show in the survey responses.

Nearly all survey respondents said they were local to the Netherlands and Europe, though there were a few visitors from abroad. Their titles and roles included developers, consultants, and architects as well as some leads and directors. One simply responded, "Tridion Geek."

Though busy on the next release, SDL itself sent several attendees in Product Development from the executive leadership to Product Management to a few engineers to share the vision, plans, and details in the next and future product releases. Personally, I was quite excited to kick-off the second day's session by introducing the work we've accomplished in the Graphene implementation of Experience Manager.

Presenters

Working with common technology is one thing. But meeting the broader Tridion technical community in person is quite an experience on its own. I've personally likened it to Blind Melon's No Rain video, the one with the "Bee Girl" who eventually finds her hive of fellow bees. From others, especially those that interact with customers and other partners less frequently, I've heard people impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of fellow brand loyalists, brand defenders, and well, geeks.

As seen in the survey, those that have witnessed that energy often come back to the event. For example, Jonathan Williams, Tridion Consultant with Stage Two, and community MVP award winner noted before the event, "I'm really looking forward to another couple of days of learning about SDL Tridion. The event is always really well organized and there are always a number of really interesting talks."

Mark Saunders, fellow MVP, also explained that as a partner with ContentBloom, their presentation on Tridion APIs and community-driven tools to help in the automation of deployments was met with positive feedback and invitations to continue the discussion. Personally he was, "[impressed] with the lightning talks," which he described as "a great [variety] of content material giving great opportunities to meet personally and dig deeper with presenters!"

A Few Non-blurry Pictures of Some of the Sessions

I was able to take a few pictures. Stay tuned on SDL Community or Tridion Developer Summit for official event photos and recordings of the sessions.

See more posts and pictures on Twitter under #TDS18 and definitely consider attending or even presenting at a future event. 

What did you enjoy at the event? Did you have a post to share? Feel free to add a comment!