What did 2016 bring us?

Many say that 2016 was the worst year ever. That might be so, but personally I'm quite optimistic and I always turn things to the positive side. Summing up 2016 made us realize how much we accomplished, even when things went bad. Í can't share the full list with you, but I'm willing to share 3 personal dramas of 2016: A friend and upcoming business partner committed suicide. And I personally moved houses four times and got a bad back because of it. And princess Leia died.

However, where there are tears there should be a laugh as well, so here is the positive list:

• Our team was extended with Janet Iljas who helps us lift Yireo to a next level.
• We organized a Magento 2 Seminar twice - each time with above 200 attendees - an amazing result in just a single year.
• We got really experienced with Magento 2 development, already leading up to 6 extensions (and yes, we hope to add more soon).
• We organized more than 50 training days in 2016, mostly on Magento 2 but also Magento 1, Joomla and generic PHP.
• In short, both the trainings and events led up to a business shift from custom development (plus extensions) to trainings (plus extensions), something we have been wanting for a long time.

Mission accomplished.

So what is the strategy for 2017?

I think it should come as no surprise that Magento 2 is what makes our clock tick, in both 2016 and 2017. And likewise, training is our new thing. One of our ambitions is to make trainings available online, another ambition is to give trainings not only locally in The Netherlands, but abroad as well (Europe, US, Mars). This has been all set to motion already, so it does not feel really newish. However, the focus is much more clear now and we really think we can make the shift complete as we had it in mind.

That being said, our focus is also still on the things that made us great: We will continue to offer extensions - for both Magento and Joomla. And we continue to work with local usergroups and developer meetups like the Dutch Joomla Developer group, Magento User Groups throughout The Netherlands and other exciting events.

January - Dutch training month

This January is really a training month. In total we are training for 12 days mostly Magento 2, in both The Netherlands and Germany. Each Friday we top things off with a class-room based training. So if you are a developer, living in The Netherlands, and postponing your Magento 2 knowledge because of a tight schedule, this is your chance to learn yourself the important stuff quickly:

• January 6th - Magento 2 Theming Training I: XML layout, PHTML templating, building themes, Grunt, Gulp
• January 13th - Magento 2 Theming Training II: RequireJS, AMD, KnockoutJS, UIComponents, Jasmine
• January 20th - Magento 2 Development Training I: DI configuration, composer, basic MVC
• January 27th - Magento 2 Development Training I: Advanced MVC, admin modules, ORM, PHPUnit

February and beyond

After the initial training boost of January, we are planning to take things a bit slower in February, with extension development being done and redrafting some of our internal systems. For instance, we will be working to increase the number of Magento 2 extensions, refactor Magento 1 extensions and also work on new versions of our sites Yireo.com (international) and Yireo.nl (Dutch) - mainly to give both trainings and extensions the best they deserve.

On a longer term, we also looking into organizing a Magento 2 developer-only event (contrary to the Magento 2 Seminars we organized earlier), which will allow for European devs to be informed and updated on a very specific topic. Also, we will be working on removing legacy, with some of the legacy being transformed into something new (MageBridge) and some legacy being dropped (Woopra anyone?).

Happy new year!

In short, we are excited to have started with the new year. And we hope you will find the energy and focus to work on your own goals as well. Let's make 2017 an inspiring year!