From Opticon 2026: IFPA's Jim Rucinski on running a global digital experience with two people

Jim Rucinski, Solution Engineer at the International Fresh Produce Association, runs IFPA's entire digital experience with a team of two — personalization, content management, and platform support included.

He joins Greg Kihlström at Opticon to walk through what a constraint that tight actually forces you to decide.

A two-person team changes the question from what to build to what to refuse. Ruckinski on the test he applies when a request lands, and how much of the week is already claimed by maintenance before anything new gets considered.

Handing content tools to non-technical colleagues means handing out the ability to break consistency. What had to be standardized inside Optimizely's CMS and Content Marketing Platform before the organization could self-serve without the experience coming apart.

"AI" covers both a faster draft and a system that executes on its own — and a lean team can only absorb one of them. How Rucinski separates technology that removes work from technology that adds something new to supervise.

About Jim Rucinski

Jim Rucinski is the Solutions Engineer at the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA), where he oversees the evolution of the organization’s enterprise digital ecosystem. A self-taught programmer with more than 30 years of software engineering experience, Jim specializes in turning operational friction into automated, reusable capabilities. Partnering with solution provider Perficient, he focuses on leveraging modern CMS architecture, GraphQL, and practical AI tools to run a global digital presence efficiently.

Jim Rucinski on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-rucinski-925004258/

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: https://www.freshproduce.com/

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