Birthday Meetup Wrap-up - Thank You!
Now that the dust has settled, we want to send a huge thank you to the GovCMS community and beyond for helping us celebrate our 8th Birthday!
The GovCMS community came together on Wednesday 3 May 2023 in Canberra, to celebrate GovCMS's 8th birthday. The event was a fantastic opportunity for everyone to learn what is shaping the digital future of our industry and how GovCMS as a community can work together to build a stronger platform to embrace and adapt to these emerging technologies.
The event opened with remarks from our new First Assistant Secretary and Chief Information Officer, Peter Qui, and Sharyn Clarkson our GovCMS leader and Assistant Secretary who discussed the strength of our community and platform, how we fund GovCMS, and the key role the GovCMS community plays in deciding what is on our roadmap. Sharyn also shared how challenging it has been to keep your voice at the heart of what we do during the pandemic as the opportunities to meet and share were more limited and, also because the community has grown significantly since 2019. She also shared some ideas on how we might address this over the coming year.
Key Highlights
Craig Thomler’s keynote presentation on Generative AI and how to turbocharge GovCMS content workflow was fascinating. With recent breakthroughs in technology changing the way we approach our content creation, this presentation provided insights, tools, and tips on how to optimise content creation for government sites with limited resources. The feedback on this presentation was fantastic, with some participants saying:
“Craig Thomler’s AI session was mind-blowing”
“It was fascinating to see how it could help us do our jobs... I will definitely be speaking to the executive about this and catching up with Craig to learn more”.
“AI session was very informative and easy to follow”
The Department of Health and Aged Care presented their approach on how they create and manage a significant amount of multilingual content. This improved engagement and communication with unique audiences like multicultural communities, First Nations people and people living with disability, which was particularly vital during the pandemic.
Other highlights included the Google Analytics 4 Live Q&A, the panel discussion on a Day In the Life of a Web Developer and for the more technically minded - the GovCMS Queue and how to set up a local D10 environment. The event wrapped up with the presentation of Community Awards, reflecting the community’s hard work and achievements over the year. Congratulations again to the following recipients!
- Christine Tuff from Federal Court of Australia (Early Bird Award)
- Julie Devaney from Attorney-General’s Department (D10 Early Bird Award)
- Brett Sargeant from DITRDCA (Perpetual Motion Award)
- Josh Martin from Digital Health Agency (Smart Cookie Award)
‘Save the Date’ GovCMS Mega Meetup – Launching 22 November 2023
For those who didn’t have the opportunity to attend the 8th Birthday Meetup, we hope you can join us at our end of year Mega Meetup at the Canberra Rex Hotel! Where we'll explore our next big adventure - GovCMS 3.0.
Over the last year, GovCMS has been on a discovery mission to support the lift-off of new concepts and technical platform advancements. Find out how you can get involved and use them to improve your website! More details will be released soon, so be sure to keep an eye out for announcements on our News & Events page and comms channels.
The day after our Mega Meetup, DrupalGov will host a Developers' Day, also at The Canberra Rex Hotel.