Meet Magento Leipzig 2014

There are so many great blogposts about this years Meet Magento Event that it is difficult to add anything of worth, so instead of beginning with my opinion i would like to point to some interesting viewpoints (and continue later with mine). Sorry – most of it is in German.

• t3n Article
• First Day (Stefan Hoffmeister)
• The Harsh Truth of Magento Enterprise (Stefan Hoffmeister)
• Niemand mag Besserwisser (Tobias Zander)
• Resumee zur Meet Magento 2014 (Carmen Bremen)
• Das Magento Klassentreffen (Roman Zenner)
• Meet Magento DE 2014
• Webshopapps Zusammenfassung

Whoa. Thats a lot. Still here? Good.

I didn´t shoot many photos this year as i had the disctinctive feeling my trusty GalaxyS2´s camera is in a declining state since i switched to Cyanogenmod. Sorry for that, text will have to suffice.

Day 1: „This will be legen…wait for it…dary!“

Keynote by Magento Community Manager Rico Neitzel
Rico circumvented any classic Magento Topics and referenced to the Re:publica Talk by Sascha Lobo about the Espionage Scandal, the NSA and Data Rentention in general. Its a fact we´re not doing enough to preserve the Environment that is the base of our economic success (yes, a.k.a The Internet).

Opening Keynote ebay inc
Magento was nowhere to be seen – i missed him 😉 Ebay/Paypal was proxied by Arnulf Keese. Meet Paypal?

The Harsh Truth of Magento Enterprise
Tim could have thrown a flashbang grenade into the audience and it wouldn´t have created the commotion his speech has created. Days after „the incident“, it still is the main topic in conversations. Imho it boils down to a few things:

• Tim exaggerated a bit, but he didn´t lie
• He didn´t put an Exclamation Mark behind his ideas, think about it
• People felt that Magento was „grilled“, but all he did was grill Features, Processes and Relation to Cost
• It has nothing to do with the state of  Magento 2. Magento 2 is part of the general Problem, but it wasn´t the focus of the speech
• His goal was to get everyone involved, albeit by exaggerating and polarizing. It worked!
• Magento Partner Agencies are offended to a degree, which is understandable – to a degree
• Some People voiced a good opinion about the Enterprise Support. In general, the topic was met with Standing Ovations – this is no coincidence! Partners should ponder that the Enterprise Support may have First and Second Class Customers….maybe?
• Enterprise Support is profane. Support is only for Core Functionality, Reaction is slow to unbearable, there are not Account Managers (think, we talk about 12K $) and Asking for Shell Access to a Production Environments is a no-go. I don´t trust my grandmother with access, why should i trust Magento?
• Withholding Bugfixes from the Community Edition is not a good thing. If you have a different opinion, let me know.
• Having a lot of Extensions from one vendor is nice – agreed. But couldn´t we instead have a Enterprise-Grade Extension Marketplace?
• No Enterprise == No Community. Magento was not created by a community effort but by commercial interest.
• Commmunity Interest fuels a lot of Magentos Proliferation. This needs to be a factor, but isn´t at the moment.

Magento – Half a Rush-Hour for Developer
Whoa, that was fast. The Talk was only paused to inhale and still Rico Neitzel and Fabian Blechschmidt (or their genetic Magento-Supersoldier Offspring „Ribian Blechtzel“) were able to put focus on Magento-Specific Development Hurdles and all the Nooks and Crannies of Devmode, Multisite, Codepools, Namespaces…no, i will not even attempt to do that.

Magento 2.0
Tobias Zander told us about Dependency Injection and his general View of the Magento 2 Situation. Rock Solid Talk.

Magento I varnish you
Silvain talked about the pros and cons of using Varnish. Nothing really new, but great info.

appserver.io and Magento
Parallelization would be _the_ solution to intensive Database Operations like Import and Indexing. I really need to have a look at this project, maybe a separate VM…

PhpStorm – better, faster, more relaxed Magento Development
Benjamin Wunderlich of Shopwerft inspired the audience to indulge a little in the tool, not only the product. So, invest a little time in automation of your tasks, it will pay off later. Also, i found it nice to meet Benjamin in person.

Magento powered Mobile Shop WebApp auf AngularJS
I guess the Talk didn´t go as planned, but next time it should be more developer centric. Probably would have been better placed as a business track.

Code Quality with Magento
Andreas von Studnitz and  Nikolai Krambrock talked about Code Quality, which is a good starting point for new Developers to get a grip on the dos and don´ts of Magento Development. There was a note on „Do not use Aitoc Extensions“. Aitoc is known to use an agressive Licensing Module that forces a replacement of the Autoloader and several other hard-to-get-rid-of Changes to the Core. It is debatable if such a „bashing“ of Module Vendors is necessary in a developer track. It was also suggested to talk about doing it „right“ instead of bashing. I disagree – encrypted Modules and Core Replacements have no place in a Project, Period. It´s not worth the hassle, even and especially for Shop Startups with Beginner Level Magento Knowledge.

Central Logging with Magento
Christoph Frenes presented some Logging Services (which i had no idea of), definitely trying that.

After Show Party
Talked a lot to lots of different People…not as many as i wished to 😉

Day 2: „The World continues to rotate“

One Page Shops mit Magento & AngularJS
I read the Presenation before, so the idea wasn´t new to me. But Vinai simply cant even not get it 100% right, so – cool Idea and Execution. Angular Js will continue to rise in importance.

Busted!  9 1/2 worst Performance-Myths in E-Commerce
A Rock Solid Performance Talk by the „Managed Hosting is like assisted living“ – Guy, Thomas Lohner of SysEleven. Cementing their reputation as knowledgeable Hosting Partners, this talk was definitely reference-material.

Developer BarCamp
Ribian Blechzel continued their interrupted talk from the day before and won the battle 275:0.

In Conclusion

Ebay/Magento needs to act. Now. Fast. The Air is full of conflict which needs to be discussed. A Google Hangout with Tim Bezhashvyly and other Developers (Firegento?), maybe a Gold Partner Representative would probably be better than a Press Release. Lets see what happens? I have heard enough grave talking about Magentos Future from the Community – Ebay/Magento should definitely address this.

A lot of people were irked that Imagine overshadowed the German Event, i don´t care that much. It´s just a second con taking place at the same time. Get over it.

Magento 2 Timetable: For the love of god. Do you really want us to wait THAT long? Magento 2 was announced Years ago and now you tell us that its going to take at least another year to complete?

Magento 1.9…this seems rushed. Not good. Won´t update.

Open Recruitment was a topic. I didn´t recognize it as hostile recruitment. People talk about job opportunities and times are good for developers. There isn´t really more to it. Since Hackathons are weekend Events with cheap accommodation, i could cope without financial support from employers – it is nice of them to pay for it, but not really a requirement. The Time I spend on hackathons is at my leisure, i don´t require anyone to pay for this time.

I didn´t encounter any obvious elitism. Its absent in the hackathons, and barely felt on the Conference. But i agree that we as the community should keep an eye on it. Everthing else may not have been perfect this year, but all in good intention.