Well, I am honoured to participate as guest writer on the new Squiz Advocate blog after being bullied, er I mean persuaded gently by Darren at the Squiz User Conference a couple weeks ago!

I was very honoured to not only attend the conference in Sydney and to get to hear from a whole host of amazing speakers, I was also able to present a case study of the work I do at here at Westminster Abbey in London on what has been a very exciting year! For those wishing to check it out, the presentation has been added to the Squiz Youtube Channel. It was a great week and not just because it was my first time in Australia, it was a hugely inspirational and idea generating conference and dancing till 3 am was pretty fun too!

There was a wealth of great presentations and I think I learnt something from each of them, whether it was that context sensitive content is all about cloning sheep! or that the future of product development is now in the hands of the Squiz community with a new product launched called Road Map.

And Sydney wasn't the end of my tour either as I was also very honoured to speak at two Squiz Web Trend seminars in Melbourne and Brisbane. Both events were very well attended and another great opportunity to share stories with existing Squiz users but also to encourage those who are new to the Squiz empire about all the wonderful things they can achieve, not to mention all the help they can get along the way from both staff and clients alike. Plus the breakfasts were pretty good too ☺

Although all the presentations were great, for me it was the conversations which took place in the tea breaks which sparked more ideas, and got me excited to return to the Abbey to start putting some of them into practice.

Some things I have added to my to do list for the next year thanks to wonderful conservations I had with people at the conference include:

• looking at the way our website currently handles multi-language pages and changing this to be context based rather than separate assets for each translation
• Introducing SquizCMS and the Easy Edit Suite into the Abbey for colleagues to better manage their sites and content
• Funnelback powered online archive of the Abbey's vast historical data (no mean feat)
• Bake more cakes (ok not technically CMS related but still an essential activity!)

In short, I am excited about what the next year holds and I think this year will be the year of the community!

I have met some amazing people at numerous Squiz events and I look forward to meeting more of you and hearing about all the wonderful projects as the community grows and develops, not to mention all the tips i'm hoping to pick up along the way!

Here's to a fabulous year ☺

Imogen Levy is Online Editor at Westminster Abbey in London. Responsible for their website, intranet and social media presence. Her background in Media and at the BBC led to her current role where she also champions the Abbey as a web leader across other cultural institutions around the world. She also bakes a pretty good cake.

Got a great idea, bit of functionality, or a community story to share on this blog? Get in touch with Darren, Squiz Community Advocate, and you're a step close to your fifteen minutes of fame.