Stay Curious – “Content First”

Bastian studied communication design in Mannheim and has been working as a freelancer between design and programming for over 17 years. Next to (still!) being known for creating Zootool around 2008 he is known for developing the content management system Kirby. It wasn't always the case, that this was his sole project, but started as a side project while still working on customer projects. But what once started as a hobby or sideproject has now grown into a full-time job with a hand full of employees, selling worldwide and used by companies such as Daimler AG, Mozilla, the New York Times, many well-known names in the Web industry and universities such as Stanford or Harvard, just to mention a few.

Georg is a practitioner of digital media. As Head of Crossmedia Production in an advertising agency he’s hands on creating content infrastructures and designing websites and apps that are driven by these infrastructures. He’s a regular conference speaker and likes doing training and consulting work, e.g. for the Typographic Society Munich. He co-authored the book “Agile Publishing”, still the 400-page reference work on how agile processes move user experience and storytelling in the spotlight of today’s multichannel world. Georg is living at the intersection of design, content, technology, and marketing. How hypes can be moved into practical use is what drives him every day.

Kirby in the wild: Content first at LOWA
A look behind the scenes: How does a modern content management strategy actually look like? In this conversation we use the website of the well-known outdoor brand LOWA as a lens to discuss how software can foster digitalization. We examine how a microservices architecture, driven by Kirby CMS and other tools, turbocharges innovation. Ands no, this is not a marketing clip but a down-to-earth honest evening directly from the workshop. When does technology become too complex to handle? How much design can actually be automated? How does a free-flowing narrative fit into structured data? Is internationalization really just a matter of swapping the language? Is metadata more important than the real data? And what is the difference anyway? Does anyone besides Georg think about Print when it comes to decoupled content management? Lots of ground to cover, but one thing is for sure: Modern content technology is fun in unexpected ways!