IN-PERSON EVENT
Sitecore City Tour 2026 Chicago
Next is Now: Leading the AI-first era
Date: Thursday, May 7, 2026
Time: 12pm–5:30pm
Location: The Metropolitan Club Chicago
233 S Wacker Dr Fl 67, Chicago, IL 60606
Join us at The Metropolitan Club for Sitecore's City Tour in Chicago!
The way your buyers discover, evaluate, and choose brands has fundamentally changed, and the smartest marketing teams are already adapting. At Sitecore City Tour Chicago, you'll spend a day with peers and practitioners exploring how SitecoreAI helps marketers deliver content across every channel, show up confidently in AI-driven discovery, and move faster without sacrificing brand control. You'll leave with practical strategies you can put to work immediately and a sharper edge in how your team competes for attention, trust, and revenue.
What you can expect:
- AI in action: Live demos and case studies from leading brands
- Demo stations and executive meetings
- Industry insight from Microsoft and analysts
- Hear about the age of GenAI from partners
- Peer-to-peer networking
What you'll experience at Sitecore City Tour Chicago
A forward-looking keynote perspective on AI and digital experience
Hear how Sitecore is responding decisively to AI's impact on digital experience today, and what comes next as AI reshapes discovery, engagement and the role of the website-covering product direction, intelligent experiences, and how brands must orchestrate humans, AI and systems to stay relevant.
Real-world customer stories
Hear how Sitecore customers, like Michigan State University, Baylor Scott & White Health, and United Airlines, along with partners are putting strategy into action. Learn what's working, what they've learned along the way, and the outcomes they're achieving today.
Product innovation and platform capabilities
See the latest Sitecore innovations and must-have capabilities in action. Learn how teams are simplifying operations, moving faster, and delivering more relevant experiences at scale.
Practical use cases and best practices
Explore real-world use cases across content, personalization, commerce, and data. Take away ideas you can apply directly to your own digital roadmap.
Peer discussion and networking
Engage with peers facing similar challenges. City Tour is designed to be interactive, giving you space to ask questions, share insights, and make meaningful connections.
Agenda
| Time | Session | Speaker |
| 12:00 - 1:00 PM | Registration, lunch & networking | |
| 1:00 PM - 1:15 PM | Welcome address | Dave Tilbury, Chief Operating Officer, Sitecore Agata Nowakowska, President North America, Sitecore |
| 1:15 – 1:40 PM | A story about a lighthouse How are brands to navigate a safe and productive path through today's furiously churning AI waters? For a quarter century and counting, Sitecore's product strategy has led the way. Find out where we're heading together next. | Dave Michela, Growth Engineering Executive, Sitecore |
| 1:40 – 2:00 PM | Making AI pay off: A candid conversation on adoption, ROI, and governance Every organization is investing in AI, but the winners are those turning experiments into impact. In this panel, Sitecore's Industry Advisory team, Microsoft, and Icreon offer straight talk about navigating the realities of AI adoption. The discussion will surface how enterprises are choosing their AI pathway, which use cases get funded (or cut), how to move beyond hype to ROI, and how integrated governance and compliance become essential when AI touches customer experience, content, and operations. | Steven Lamensdorf, CXO, Icreon Scott Burnell, Global Industry Head, Sitecore Adeline Ashley, Global Industry Head, Sitecore Jason Hinton, Director, SE&O – One Services Segment Team, Microsoft
|
| 2:00 – 2:30 PM | After the website: how AI changes everything brands think they know about digital experience AI is transforming how customers discover and engage with brands. As search gives way to synthesis and large language models (LLMs) become the experience layer, brands must rethink the role of the website and digital experience itself. Scott Liewehr, Global VP, Marketing Strategy and Growth at Sitecore, explores what comes next and how brands must orchestrate humans, AI agents, and systems to stay relevant. | Scott Liewehr, Global Vice President, Marketing Strategy and Growth, Sitecore |
| 2:30 – 3:15 PM | Networking break | |
| 3:15 – 3:40 PM | How Michigan State University is staying relevant in an AI-driven world MSU had a brand a consistency challenge. As the brand grew stronger, its digital experience fell behind. With many teams managing their own sites and content, things became fragmented and hard to control. What started as a brand effort quickly revealed bigger issues around governance and execution. And then AI raised the stakes. As people began discovering information in new ways, outdated and inconsistent content started to hurt visibility and trust. In this fireside chat, Sitecore’s Scott Liewehr and MSU’s Carmen Crist discuss how MSU shifted from brand campaign to brand experience, and what others can learn from it. | Carmen Crist, AVP, Marketing Operations, Michigan State University Scott Liewehr, Global Vice President, Marketing Strategy and Growth, Sitecore |
| 3:40 – 4:00 PM | Operationalizing SitecoreAI: Real-world journeys from United Airlines & Shure Moving AI from vision to value requires a thoughtful, scalable approach. In this session, United Airlines and Shure share their realworld journeys operationalizing Sitecore AI—from early strategy through enterpriselevel adoption. Learn how each organization identified meaningful use cases, integrated AI into existing content and experience workflows, and scaled capabilities across teams and channels. This discussion will highlight practical lessons around governance, organizational readiness, and change management, along with tangible outcomes that demonstrate how SitecoreAI can drive smarter decisionmaking, increased efficiency, and more personalized customer experiences at scale. | Charles Hong, Product Owner - Digital Signage, United Airlines Rogelio Villanueva, Director of Global Web Marketing, Shure Jon Price, Vice President of Sitecore Practice, Americaneagle.com Alex Lentz, Sitecore Solution Architect, Americaneagle.com |
| 4:00 – 4:20 PM | The migration game changer: The agentic AI breakthrough for sustainable SitecoreAI migrations AI can accelerate development—but only when it’s built on a sustainable engineering foundation. Join Baylor Scott & White Health, in collaboration with Altudo, for a behind-the-scenes look at how FastLane brings AI into the software development lifecycle for Sitecore AI migrations and new builds. We’ll explore how the Agentic Migration tool analyzes existing experiences, identifies reusable templates and components, and helps teams generate maintainable, production-ready solutions. You’ll hear directly from Baylor Scott & White Health about their recent Sitecore AI launch and how AI-enabled workflows helped accelerate delivery while maintaining quality, governance, and long-term scalability. | Van Vuong, Director, Digital Platforms, Baylor Scott & White Health Matt Vandermolen, Global Vice President of Digital Experience, Altudo |
| 4:20—4:30 PM | Closing remarks | Agata Nowakowska, President North America, Sitecore |
| 4:30—5:30 PM | Happy hour and networking |
About Sitecore
Sitecore is a global leader in digital experience software, trusted by visionary brands like Nestlé, L’Oréal, and Microsoft to power their content lifecycle from content strategy to digital experience delivery. Our composable platform gives marketers and technologists the power to build together at global scale – harnessing content, data, personalization, and AI – to manage digital assets, create engaging content, understand customer intent, and deliver standout experiences across all touchpoints.