Recap: A Sanity Open House on Delightful Editorial Experiences

Every once in a while we like to open the virtual office and invite everyone to a couple of hours of product news, interesting conversations with good friends, and a hangout with the whole Sanity.io team. We usually do it when we have something cool to show you, and something, in particular, we want to talk about.

On December 8th, we had the privilege of hosting 300 guests who take part in celebrating a year of growth for Sanity as a product, company, and community. But we know that it's not possible for everyone to take part in such a live event, so we made sure to record it.

We are grateful for everyone who showed up, and especially our good friends who were willing to share their time with us to lead some insightful conversations about content, communication, commerce, and editorial experience. Thanks, Tatiana Mac (Loom), Andrea Helmbolt (Figma), Kusum Kanwar (Shopify), and Sam Mathews (Fnatic)!

2021: A blowout year for Sanity

CEO and co-founder Mangus Hillestad sums up the year for Sanity and announces our upcoming May 2022 conference Structured Content and new pricing with free admin users on all plans.

Poor Editorial Experiences Are Holding You Back

Carrie Hane recently joined us as our new Head of Content Strategy Relations, and together with co-founder and CTO Simen S. Skogsrud, they explore how developers and those working with content can communicate toward better results. In this talk, they also present the 4 principles for effective editorial experiences:

• Share intentions, not solutions
• Define what matters
• Make the presentation support the content
• Empower the content team

Demo of references in place, conditional fields, field groups, and more

No Open House without a proper feature release and demo! Head of Developer Relations Knut Melvær (yours truly) hosts the very people who have worked hard on making these features happen. Together with Mikołaj Dobrucki, Rico Kahler, Victoria Bergquist, Bjørge Næss, and Fred Carlsen they go through:

• Create and edit references in place
• Conditional fields: hidden, readOnly, and fieldsets
• Field groups (aka tabs)

How great editing tools empower teams

One of the great joys of working at Sanity is to be close to our customers and see how they make the studio their own and the opportunities they unlock with the help of technology. To talk about this, we had the great privilege of hosting Tatiana Mac (Independent Engineer, Loom), Andrea Helmbolt (Brand Strategist, Figma), as well as Carolina Gonzalez (Solution Engineer, Sanity) to talk about what has worked for them. The panel was hosted by Developer Relations Specialist Lauren Etheridge, who also has deep experience as an engineer enabling editors to do their work without friction.

This conversation is a must-watch!

Building Flagships: Content and Commerce

Content is essential for driving commerce on the web. Recently, we launched Sanity Connect for Shopify and a demo for Hydrogen to support content-rich e-commerce experiences for Shopify storefronts. We were super stoked to have Kusum Kanwar (Product Lead, Shopify) joining us in a conversation with Sam Mathews (Founder/CEO, Fnatic), and Even Westvang (Co-founder, Applications, Sanity) about building flagships. The leading esports brand Fnatic power their commerce experience with Next.js, Sanity, and Shopify. A prime example of how to successfully combine content and social to drive commerce.

If you're curious about the future of commerce on the web, then this conversation is definitively one to watch!