CMS Connect 2025

Florian “Flix” Keitgen

08 August 2025

Stylized illustration of a church with domes, featuring a central copyright symbol surrounded by interconnected nodes.

At the beginning of August, I attended CMS Connect 2025, an international conference on CMS strategies, content governance and technology, as well as AI, in Montreal. Participants came from various CMS providers, agencies, companies and universities. It was a diverse mix of people and tools, some of which were competitors, but that is precisely what enriches these events, which are regularly organised by Janus Boye. The programme was diverse, ranging from use cases of large organisations to technical discussions about content management and social issues surrounding how we want to work with AI. What I took away: The panic surrounding AI is over. Instead of pure scepticism, pragmatism has emerged, which is an important step in the right direction.

AI Is Here—As a Tool, Not a Promise of Salvation

Right from the start, speakers such as Cathy McKnight summed it up perfectly: ‘AI is just a tool—one of many.‘ This sentiment was echoed throughout the conference. Whether in editorial workflows, search or personalisation, AI is a helper, not the star. The main question was no longer ’What will AI replace?‘, but ’What can AI make easier or better?‘

Take McGill University as an example: 1,000 editors work on Drupal in a decentralised setup. AI supports their processes, but only within clear boundaries. Their motto is “governance before tools”. Without guardrails, AI can quickly descend into chaos. This was a shared conclusion.

Content remains a human responsibility—even (and especially) with AI.

In her talk, Maddy Vida from Novartis posed a pertinent question: ‘Why is no one engaging with our content?’ The answer: Speak your audience’s language. Empathy, storytelling and a deep understanding of your target audience can’t be automated. AI can help with this, for example by segmenting audiences or suggesting personalised content. However, it is still our responsibility to truly understand who we are talking to and why.

On the technical side, there have also been some exciting developments. AI-powered search, for example, offers smart ranking, autocomplete and semantic matches. This sounds great, yet it only works if it is carefully configured. As one speaker put it: ‘Stay grounded—answers should come from your content.‘ The clear takeaway is that high-quality results depend on clean structured data. AI can’t conjure something from nothing.

Four men pose for a selfie with a city skyline in the background, showcasing a sunny day and urban landscape. — There were also plenty of opportunities for us to have fun together, such as going for a jog up Mont Royal in Montreal in the mornings.

What can we, as a TYPO3 agency, take away?

Discussions about headless, composable and agentic CMSs, as well as AI-powered processes, are taking place across the industry. Many ideas are still in the early stages, but some are already highly relevant today.

Editorial assistance with AI, for example with our Descriptive Images solution, saves time.
Search and personalisation are becoming smarter, but still require human oversight.
Content structure is becoming increasingly important, especially as content will increasingly exist beyond websites, feeding directly into chatbots or AI agents.

AI may become less visible, yet more helpful, in the background. CMSs may not always be at the forefront, but they’ll be more powerful and essential than ever. Our role is to design the architecture, interfaces and user experience so that AI tools can work effectively.

Conclusion: Stay open and keep shaping the future!

For me, CMS Connect 2025 offered a refreshing change of perspective. Rather than buzzword fireworks, there were many honest conversations about the benefits, risks and real-world use cases of AI. AI is not ‘the future’ — it’s already a tool in the toolbox, alongside great UX, clean code and well-structured content.

Since we were in beautiful Canada, it’s fitting to end with a hockey quote that encapsulates the role of content management systems in the AI era: