Take nine: De Fabrique

This year MeetMagento NL - organized by Dutchento (the official Magento community in The Netherlands) - was already the 9th edition of this national Magento event. However, things were different from previous years. First of all, the location. While the last years of MeetMagento NL took place in the Jaarbeurs close to Utrecht Central Station, this year the venue was De Fabrique, an industrial looking place in an industrial area of Utrecht, which might sound boring but it was actually the best place ever.

There were factory halls with plenty of seats, high ceilings, metal bars, concrete walls. There were seating areas with old-school chairs, leather couches, vintage accessories. And then mix in the usual awesomeness of Magento events: Great people, awesome brands, the buzz of a Magento event, social talk. The atmosphere was great and the venue definitely added to this!

Tracks and happenings

There were 6 different tracks with various different concepts: There were business tracks, dev tracks and lightning talks. The topics ranged from omnichannel to TV broadcasting, from security to voice-controlled shopping carts, from a PHP quiz to online persuasion. Certainly, the number of different topics was overwhelming and gave a good impression of how innovative things can become thanks to Magento.

There was even more: There were great talks by Ben Marks and Paul Boisvert (both from Magento), breakouts, a meet-the-Magento-masters session, an Award Show during diner, a great after-party and a few days later in the weekend a hackathon (aka Magento Contribution Day), which I, unfortunately, did not attend due to exhaustion.

Yireo participates and collaborates

Yireo was there as well, as in me, myself and I. As part of the organizing team, I was busy months in advance to help make the event to a success. Personally, I think others moved mountains (is that English?) instead of me, but working together in the team was great. Last year in 2016, Yireo organized its own event (Magento 2 Seminar) twice and this year a great MageTestFest will follow, so we know how much work organizing an event like this magnitude involves. Kudos to all in the team.

I was also honored to sit on a couch with other Magento Masters and answer some questions from the public (as if our rambling actually had any meaning). During the day I was flying from place to place, being part of the organizing team, hosting dev sessions in a specific room and giving a talk myself as well (Magento 2 Private content via JavaScript components). And because of all that, I only got to see the tracks in the room I hosted. Still, those talks were great and I got a lot of feedback from others in other tracks that the overall quality of talks was high, the venue was great and MeetMagento NL 2017 was awesome!

MeetMagento Netherlands in 2018?

Without a doubt, there will be a MeetMagento NL in 2018 as well. And hopefully, it will be at the same venue. This years MM17NL proved again that the Dutch community is alive and kicking. I'll definitely be back next year.

For an impression, all photos are available in the Flickr album of Dutchento