An open letter to the Sitecore Community
DISCLAIMER & CONTEXT: The following I offer to you, my friends in the Sitecore Community, and not in any professional capacity. I feel like we’ve lost our way in the once electrifying Sitecore Community, and the loss of focus on the people side of things has led to turmoil on the technology side of things too. It’s a turmoil that I need to take a step back from, but I still love you. Here goes…
Dear Sitecore Community,
We’ve been together for over 15 years, and it’s been a great ride for you and me. You were everything to me, and I poured everything into our relationship:
I’ve written countless blog posts on akshaysura.com and Konabos.com/blog for us. I started the Sitecore Hackathon and have stuck with it for over a decade now (where does the time go?) so we could have something fun together. Do you remember Sitecore North America in 2015? That was an epic first! I loved making that happen for us, not to mention the great times we had planning and doing SUGCON Europe and India and so many user groups presentations that I’ve lost count! We’ve had conversations with over 9000 others worldwide on the Sitecore Slack workspace that I built for us, for you, the Sitecore Community. More than 350 of us became better developers thanks to the Unofficial Sitecore Training Webinar Series, which I made, again, for us. And then, there was the Core Community Friend Award in 2018 and 2019, which helped us establish the Ambassador MVP category.
What can I say? It was more than love; you were my obsession, but it’s over now. You’ve changed, I’ve changed, and so has the world. It’s composable now, comprising much more than just Sitecore. I need to be with other communities and other platforms.
A by-product of all my work was the Sitecore MVP. I feel that over the years, that has changed. It has become more of a box-ticking exercise, with the only goal being the award, rather than for the passion of sharing, pushing the platform’s boundaries, and evolving everyone’s knowledge.
I have a confession to make; I’ve seen other platforms. I wanted to try composable a while ago, but you weren’t into it, so I started dating others. Seeing you come around now is nice, but it’s all a bit late.
The folks at Kontent.ai understood me and what I wanted. They were transparent. They listened to me, even when I was critical. Remember when we used to be like that? I’ve missed it. It’s something that I need in a community and a platform, and I found it there.
We used to communicate, but lately, I feel like all we do is compete and self-promote. Community is about supporting each other. It’s not about personal gain. We’ve lost our way, so I’m searching for new communities.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love you, but it’s time for a break. I need that for me, and I hope you’ll take this feedback in the spirit it was intended: so that we can all be better people, create better composable technologies, and find fun and excitement again.
I will continue to support the Sitecore Community. I will help run the Sitecore Slack and the Sitecore Hackathon.
I will not be attending any Sitecore run events.
A few of you from the community have been true friends.
I love you, but it’s over. Can we still be friends?
Your friend always,
Akshay Sura