Experience Delivers

Build brand, drive demand and extend your reach with web experience management

In one of the most recent CQ Gems sessions, Bertrand Delacretaz presented the AEM 5.6 upgrade mechanisms.

What if you wouldn't be able to use the latest and greatest features of your great experience management platform?
Companies using Adobe AEM are keen to use the most recent release as it comes every year with great additions that bring great value to them.

Adobe AEM is designed to make upgrades as natural as possible. And we lead by example!

www.adobe.com
Our main site drives 2% of the global traffic and it is a critical asset for the business of the company.
adobe.com was upgraded to AEM 5.6 even before the release was announced.

dev.day.com
This is the reference website for AEM documentation and many related technical sources.
dev.day.com is constantly upgraded to intermediate internal releases, and it happens very early and very often in the development process.
For example: this site is currently based on a build which was released internally on May 24 2013: 7 days ago.

There are several reasons why this approach is of immense value for the product and for companies adopting it:

1. Stability. Being able to upgrade an existing site in parallel with our internal releases gives a lot of additional indications on top of our standard QE process.
2. Backward compatibility of projects built on the AEM platform. dev.day.com (the website) was built on a previous release but still perfectly runs on this latest build.
3. Longevity testing. We want our software to pass the "at least 3 months on a real website" test even before any beta release.
   

This is a critical aspect of the AEM success as a platform to support companies to managing their customer experience, and to continuously deliver more and more value with every new release, adding new content management features, more support for multiple channels, more integrations with the other solutions of the Marketing Cloud and much more.

By the way: this blog is hosted on the same platform as dev.day.com, so the page that you are currently reading is delivered by that May 24 2013 internal build. Isnt't that cool?

CQCON, the CQ developer event organized by Unic, that will take place in Basel on June 19-20 2013, is open for registrations and is ready to offer a great preview of the content. I am excited to provide here a sneak into some of the topics and to introduce some of the speakers that will take part to the event.

Register to CQCON from the conference website.
Seats are limited as this is shaped as a rather small event, to allow participants to engage in a warm and collaborative environment.

Here is a small anticipation of the conference topics:

Automated self-testing and health check of live AEM instances
presented by Bertrand Delacretaz, Senior Developer at Adobe Basel and member of the Board of Directors of the Apache Software Foundation.

Mobile First development with AEM made easy
presented by Bruce Lefebvre, Computer Scientist at Adobe Ottawa

Scaling AEM
presented by Michael Marth, Senior Engineering Manager at Adobe Basel

And several other compelling sessions and speakers are already confirmed and will be announced shortly in the final program of the conference. Some of the topics include:

• Security
• Integration with backend systems
• Apache Sling component filters
• Integration with PhoneGap
• Integration testing
  
• Efficient content structures and queries

CQCON is going to be a unique opportunity to gather more experience on some key topics that make AEM development projects successful and to engage with AEM developers as well as with some of the key developers of the product.

Book your seat now and register for CQCON!

2013 is shaping up as explosive year for Adobe Experience Manager.  This is great news for CQ Developers around the globe.  Adobe is here to help by providing educational and knowledge sharing events like the CQ Gems webinar series.  We are very pleased to announce that Adobe is also sponsoring live events for developers across the world:

• CQCON - Basel, June 19-20
• Evolve - San Diego, August 26-28
• adaptTo() - Berlin, September 23-25

With 1 event in North America (Evolve) and 2 events in Europe (CQCON and adaptTo()), developers from around the world have a great opportunity to connect within their community, as well Adobe experts participating to those events.

In the full spirit of "the community for the community", all these events are organized and promoted by well-known Adobe partners, respectively: 3|Share (Evolve), Unic (CQCON), and pro!vision (adaptTo()). And in order to be in touch as closely as possible with the developer community, Adobe is eager and committed to participating with great sessions to all these events.

Here is a quick overview of each of the three conferences, listed in chronological order, with details about organizers, content, call for papers and registration.

CQCON - Basel, June 19-20

Content focus (from the official website): "CQCON will be a unique opportunity to aggregate CQ developers [...] to share their experiences, the best development tools and practices, and learn about the most demanded deep technical dives. These will include sessions on development practices, scaling & performance, front end and back end development and specific deep dives into some CQ features [...]"

Registration will open on April 16

Evolve - San Diego, August 26-28

Content focus (from the official website): "[...] the “Deploy” track is ideal for attendees looking to roll out CQ for the first time. The “Enhance” track will demonstrate how attendees can enrich their current CQ environment. The “Maximize” track is non-technical and will illustrate how the attendees can get the most from their CQ investment."

adaptTo() - Berlin, September 23-25

Content focus (from the official website): "adaptTo() is a technical meetup focused on the technical stack of Apache Sling including Apache Jackrabbit and Apache Felix and is addressed to all developers using this stack or parts of it. [...] additional sessions will cover commercial implementations like Adobe CQ and CRX, with particular focus on how these products leverage the architecture."

Registration will open in May

I hope that you are able to take advantage of these events to show case your expertise, expand your skills and your network.

We are pleased to announce a new series of webinars on Adobe Experience Manager and CQ: the CQ Gems.

This new initiative is intended for all developers working on the Experience Manager and CQ platform, to provide more and higher-level content on top of our existing training and documentation resources.

As the name alludes, the CQ Gems is a series of deep dives, each delivered by an expert in a specific area of the technology, and each time focused on an in-demand topic based on the feedback we’ve heard from you.

This initiative started in 2012 as an internal knowledge transfer at Adobe—directly driven by our engineering team—to share with the larger internal Adobe community special content, tips & tricks, and best practices, which are sometimes hard to cover in a time-constrained course or are not always easy to gain from official product documentation.

We felt the natural evolution was to take this initiative out to you, to share and discuss it with the entire community!

Webinars will be hosted on Wednesdays, at 8am Pacific Time.

Here is a preview of the first three sessions on the books, and trust me there is much more to come:

1. March 20: The eCommerce integration framework, by Paolo Mottadelli (@paolomoz)
   
2. April 17: AEM 5.6 upgrade mechanisms, by Bertrand Delacretaz (@bdelacretaz)
   
3. May 8: Architecture of the AEM 5.6 platform, by Felix Meschberger

And as a special welcome gift, we’ve posted the session presented last week at the U.S. Adobe Summit by David Nuescheler and Cédric Hüsler: The Top 10 new features of AEM 5.6; so go check it out.

Each of the webinars will be designed to be interactive, so attendees will be able to address direct questions during the presentation and we’ll be certain that follow-up after sessions is supported to ensure all questions are answered and sufficient background material is provided.

Sessions will also be recorded and made available as part of a repository from CQ Gems Home.

So, if you are a developer working on Adobe Experience Manager and CQ and are keen to go, please Register to join us.

As previously posted on this blog, adaptTo() 2012 was hosted last week in Berlin by pro!vision and Adobe. As any participant may have appreciated more certain aspects rather than others, I have my personal top 5:

1. the technical level of sessions and speakers
2. the informal style of the conference
3. the great participation from all attendees
4. the special guest: Apache Jackrabbit Oak
5. the forecast for adaptTo() 2013

1. Top notch sessions and speakers
It has certainly been a top level conference from a content perspective; it provided 24 sessions delivered by a good mix of technical roles; and the most outstanding participation came from many of the core community members of the Apache Sling and Apache Jackrabbit projects. Among the most appreciated talks: "Use of OSGi technology in Apache Sling" by Felix, "Efficient content structures and queries in CRX" by Marcel, "Apache Jackrabbit Oak" by Jukka and Michael and "CQ5 Mobile in a Real Life Project" by Alexander, Sebastian and Bert-Ulrich.

Slides from all the sessions can be downloaded from the event website; session recordings will come shortly.

2. Informal location
Supermarkt Berlin revealed itself as a very nice location for an informal developer conference such as adaptTo(); although some minor aspects could be improved, it provided my favorite un-conference feature: big windows, many big windows, and directly on a lively street.
Look at some of the best shoots.

Update: the official photo stream

3. Active participation
As previously noted, adaptTo() was already sold out well before its date, and the excitement from the developer community was confirmed in Berlin by a very active on site participation. The main conference room was packed throughout the 3 days, most of the sessions generated a good number of questions and many participants were so kind to provide very effective feedback on the various aspect of the conference.

4. Oakathon
During the entire week and also throughout the 3 'public' days we were delighted by the special participation of the Apache Jackrabbit Oak community, which organized one of their recurrent Oakathons in conjunction with the rest of the conference. This culminated in the very well received presentation: "Apache Jackrabbit Oak" delivered by Jukka and Michael, and in a series of good steps forward for the project, presented in this report from Michael.

5. Next Year
And yes, I heard so many times people mentioning "next year" that I only regret we cannot already provide here a registration link for adaptTo() 2013...
More seriously, engines have not stopped; your organizers are already planning the next edition, to keep supporting the great interest and improve on the suggestions, to become even harder, better, faster, stronger.

A lot of good stuff has still to come; stay tuned and keep having fun with Apache Sling... and friends!

Paolo Mottadelli, Adobe Technical Marketing. @paolomoz

Some weeks ago I posted my first article about adaptTo() 2012.
I am really excited now to share this update, for a couple of reasons:

1. To let the community know adaptTo() 2012 is sold out;
2. To let you know we have a terrific agenda and to share the details of it;
   

But let's start with a bit of background.

adaptTo() is a technical meetup focused on the technical stack of Apache Sling including Apache Jackrabbit and Apache Felix and is intended for all developers using this stack or parts of it. Additionally, a few sessions will also be specifically focused on Adobe CQ, which is based on the stack.
It is at its second edition and it will take place in Berlin on September 26-28.
Further details are available on the official website of the event.

So first: adaptTo() 2012 is already sold out, with a doubled number (100+) of registrations since 2011. This is the result of the good word-of-mouth, for which we thank you. We look forward to seeing many of you there.

And this year's agenda looks really amazing!
+ 3 full days of sessions and social events;
+ more than 25 speakers from the Apache Sling, Apache Jackrabbit and Adobe CQ5 developer communities;
+ all levels of expertise are covered: from the beginner to the core project developer;
Check it out in detail on the event site.

For those who are not attending: sign up to the adaptTo() community to get a notification when all the session recordings and the technical material will be posted and made available!
And I'll plan to post here again after the event to share my perspective on the proceedings and outcomes.

Paolo Mottadelli, Adobe Technical Marketing - @paolomoz

In late September 2012 Berlin will become the global heart beat for developers working on the Adobe CQ technical stack. pro!vision and Adobe are working jointly to set up a pure technical event for developers that will be focused on Apache Sling, Apache Jackrabbit, Apache Felix and more specifically on Adobe CQ: adaptTo(), Berlin. September 26-28 2012.

The name of this event is already appealing itself: adaptTo(), which comes from the very well known "adaptability of the objects to other classes" for which the Apache Sling project is famous.

The announced venue is cool: SUPERMARKT (no typos, it's German!) used to be a real supermarket before being adapted (some assonance here?) to a cool place for conferences and meetups.

adaptTo() is at its second edition, after a very successful kickoff in 2011, when a bunch of Apache Sling, Apache Jackrabbit and Adobe CQ developers met and shared their knowledge presenting top notch topics to the community.
This year .adaptTo() will be a great opportunity for both the most experienced developers and for those who want more to get started with these technologies, as some introductory sessions will be covered as well as very advanced sessions, too. Yet-to-come features will also be shared.

The number of community members that will take active part to this event is going to be amazing. A clear evidence of a unique opportunity to get in touch for the open community.
Anyone is encouraged to contribute with compelling content they want to share with the community.

Sign up. Registrations will be closed when the availability limit is reached.
Ask for more information .
Post a session proposal.

Paolo Mottadelli, Adobe Technical Marketing. @paolomoz