» #csuc09 Cascade Conference, opening session with David Cummings, 9/28/2009
“Thankfully the conference was not last week.”
—David Cummings
Thank You
- Customers
- Potential customers
- Parterners
*
Exciting Past 12 Months
- Over 30 new customers
- Launched our customer success community
- Released several versions of Cascade
The past 90 days we literally have not seen this much activity—more downloads than ever.
Released Cascade 6.0, 6.2, and 6.4 beta. Most of the room is 6.0 or higher.
New Customers
- New customers Emory Healthcare, WestJet, and Miami of Ohio
- Signed our 100th higher ed client in December
Around 122 higher ed clients now.
Success Community
- Blog, wiki, knowledge base, forum, and idea exchange
- Powered by our new product eCrowds
eCrowds was “soft launched” this year.
The goal of the idea exchange is to have a very democratic way to share ideas and vote thumbs-up/thumbs-down on ideas.
New Hires and Office
- Jennifer, Jordan, Brent, Kat, and more
- Moved to a new office on the top floor
Cascade Releases
- Cascade 6.0
- Cascade 6.2
- Cascade 6.4 in public beta now
Re-engineered the product around the concept of sites.
Setting up cross-site templates and cross-site linking in 6.2
New beta of 6.4 “we’re embarking on our new strategy”
Cascade Strategy
- Focus on multi-site, multi-server management
- Best-of-breed approach
- Connector strategy
Multi-site, multi-server management is a strength of Cascade
We don’t try to be all things to all people. We focus on core content management and do ti the best we can. The ability to push out content in different formats. When you look under the cover of other systems it’s really an application framework. Cascade is a core content management system.
Today we’re announcing Connectors. In the past we’ve made sure we’re standards compliant and publishing with standards compliant protocols. Now we’re moving to publish in different ways—more in next session.
Cascade Delivery Server
- WordPress is our delivery server for Web 2.0 and social sites
- Simple integration at first
- Listen to customer feedback
Clients didn’t want another system to learn; a java app on their site. They wanted something familiar. Made WordPress the delivery server. When it comes to live site content deliver there’s a whole set of issues related to that. Took a look around and found WordPress is the best for delivering that content. There’s a significant community already associated with it. Made the first connector a WordPress connector rather than reinventing the wheel.
All done with the web services API WordPress already has available.
Right now the integration is pretty simple; just makes web services calls. If the post already exists Cascade will update it, if not it will create a new post.
eCrowds
- Soft launch earlier this year
- Powers our success community and seceral other communities
- No timeframe right now making a push with it
Built it for ourselves to power our own customer success community. Simple ruby on rails application. A way to experiment and test certain things.
Thank You
- We’re honored you are here
One More Thing…
- Twitter Connector in Cascade 6.4
For example, at time of publish a new press release can be announced on Twitter