On January 22nd we organized a Magento 2 Seminar - one afternoon on the new Magento 2 (that was released November last year). It was a great event and we have received wonderful feedback. Here is a recap of the day and our findings.
Focusing on Magento 2
Because Magento 2 is now slowly becoming a hot item, we felt there needed to be at least one event that focussed on Magento 2. In the end in 2016 we have been the first event to focus in such a way. While that's great, Magento 2 is still fresh. So one important question came up: How much do we actually have to tell on Magento 2, now that the experience is still little? We decided to answer this question by getting as much technical experts in as possible: Ben Marks, Anton Kril, Peter Jaap Blaakmeer, Arjen Miedema, Vladimir Kerkhoff, Sander Mangel, Daniel Genis, and - pardon me - myself.
By sharing our knowledge, we were able to put together a program that was very attracting to developers and technical merchants: Practical input on how to get started with Magento 2, focus on deep-code architecture, an overview of the migration work. Guido Jansen and I presented the day, and thanks to a wonderful team the whole day went flawless.
Photos online
There are some photos online on Flickr, so make sure to check out the atmosphere. The location of Mereveld was great and the artwork of our designer Ruben Creemers was simply aswesome:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/138849029@N04/albums/72157661551317294
Presentations online on Joind.in
More importantly, the slides are online as well. The entire event has been added to Joind.in, where you can find links to the various presentations on Slideshare, plus you can vote on which talk you liked the best.
https://joind.in/event/magento-2-seminar/schedule/grid
Lessons learned
While the event was ofcourse about sharing technical knowledge on Magento 2, organizing an event in general takes a lot of work: Careful planning, meeting deadlines, sharing thoughts and stress. However, we did our job well, so that during the event itself we laid back and were able to enjoy the show. Based on this, we are happy to organize another similar event in the future.
From attendees we received extremely positive results, though the developer-oriented talks were interesting to most attendees but not all. As Magento 2 is quite new, practical input for merchants is still missing. We definitely will focus the next Magento 2 Seminar more on merchants, giving practical input on the usage and customization of Magento 2 shops.
Overall
Overall, this event was great. We love it. And we will be back!
About the author
Jisse Reitsma is the founder of Yireo, extension developer, developer trainer and 3x Magento Master. His passion is for technology and open source. And he loves talking as well.
