James Gray

That the real opportunity with AI isn’t simply to create more content, faster. It’s to fundamentally rethink how the content operation works.

I want people to leave asking a different question: not “Where can we add AI?” but “Which parts of our operating model genuinely require human judgment, and which could be orchestrated, automated or handled by agents?”

Through the work IFS is doing with SitecoreAI, we’ll show a practical way to make that distinction - auditing workflows based on their automation potential and the risk of getting them wrong, then keeping people focused on strategy, creativity and decision-making while AI handles more of the repetitive execution.

If attendees can go back to their organization and start that audit the following week (or at least reach out to Horizontal to support), we’ve done our job.

The conversations. (People know I am a talker!) - AI has moved incredibly quickly from something we were experimenting with to something that is actively changing search, content, customer journeys, technology and even the shape of marketing teams themselves.

What I’m most interested in at Symposium is getting beyond the AI hype and hearing what organizations are actually doing: what is working, what isn’t, where AI augmentation and agents are genuinely creating value and how teams are adapting around them.

Sitecore has framed this year around “Marketing Rewired”, which is pretty appropriate! The technology is moving quickly, but the really interesting challenge now is how we rewire the strategy, processes and operating models around it.

And, of course, getting a lot of smart people from across the Sitecore ecosystem into the same place for a few days usually leads to some brilliant, human conversations.

You mean, I am not just spending a few days chilling with Mickey Mouse? Jokes aside, outside of Symposium, I’m hoping there’ll be time to explore, find some great food and, given where we are, probably still squeeze in a little bit of Disney magic somewhere along the way.

But realistically, if previous conferences are anything to go by, a large proportion of Orlando will probably be experienced through conversations over coffee, dinner and drinks with people from the Sitecore community. Which is the way it should be.

It has changed the conversation pretty significantly. A year or two ago, a lot of AI conversations started with “What can we generate?” Now we’re increasingly talking about “What can we redesign?” and “How do we change our way of thinking about...”

With SitecoreAI, the interesting opportunity isn’t just putting AI capabilities into individual marketing tasks. It’s being able to think about the whole digital operating model differently - how (and sometimes why) content is created and governed, how experiences are orchestrated, how brands remain discoverable to both humans and AI, and where agents can remove repetitive work from teams.

That means our strategy conversations with clients increasingly span technology, people and process together. Where should humans retain judgment? What can safely be delegated to agents? What governance is needed? How do we measure the capacity we’ve created rather than simply the volume of content produced?

The work we’re presenting with IFS at Symposium is a great example of that shift: moving beyond using AI as another tool and towards designing an operating model where humans and AI each do the work they’re best suited to.