I’ll be honest and say that it’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen the hour of 4.30am. I’m sure most would agree that leaving Rugby train station for a 6am train to London is not the best way to start what’s going to be a very long and absorbing day. However that’s what myself, Rob and James had to do in order to attend the first ever annual Meet Magento conference in the UK. When your arrival photo of Big Ben is still in the dark, you know you’re there too early…
We arrived at the QE2 venue at around 8.30am following a great bacon and egg roll from a nearby cafe, which was much needed following 2 hours of travelling. Upon arriving on the 5th floor the room seemed quite empty and a number of the stalls were still being set up. Many familiar companies were present, the likes of Sage Pay, Aheadworks, Rackspace, Webshopapps and Sweet Tooth among them.
As we entered the room first, our seats could not have been much better (2nd row, middle) – this certainly helped my pretty poor eyesight! The first conference kicked off slightly behind schedule with Bob Schwartz and Roy Rubin providing a nice insight into the history of Magento and what’s happening right now with the company. The Enterprise Premium edition was announced by Roy during the second presentation (but no mention of cost), which promises to offer unprecedented levels of support and better licensing with multiple installations – released next month.
The next gentleman to take to the stage was John Lunn of X.Commerce, who presented very well the benefits and opportunities that X.Commerce is bringing. Standing confidently in jeans & T-Shirt he brought a welcome less-formal feel to proceedings which seemed to go down well. There’s a lot here to cover so I’ll be posting next week about my thoughts on X.Commerce.
Following a swift refreshments break the second round of presentations had begun, starting with the cross border customer panel. They weren’t the most captivating part of the event, but I enjoyed the creative slideshow used by the Mothercare/Radical team. Neil Hamilton’s presentation about the future of predictive ecommerce was very interesting, worthy in fact of a separate post. The audience breathed a sigh of relief at the end when he reassured us about potential cookie legal issues.
The Rackspace showing was completely focused on their cloud hosting offerings and went into a lot of detail. Perhaps some of the specialist ‘server-talk’ went over other people’s heads as it did mine? Nonetheless they got their point across nicely.
The lunch break was a great chance for us to speak to a number of the stands about their products and make a few connections. I was particularly impressed with Josh from Webshopapps, Jenny from Sage Pay and the folks at Campaign Commander. In fact we were so busy that we missed the start of the third round of presentations. As a side-note, the view from the conference centre was awesome! (see my pic below)
We joined half way through Sweet Tooth’s talk on how to reward your customers properly through loyalty schemes. I think these guys are the only ones doing something like this so it must’ve been a great plug for business.
After the final refreshment break we were treated to a very entertaining and informative talk from Roger Willcocks with his 50 tips for increasing sales. Many of the points were common sense and some where fairly straightforward SEO standards, but they were all valid and very well explained.
The next two presentations were decent, I found it difficult to concentrate on the high amount of data being thrown at me during the abandoned cart presentation. Serves me right for getting up at 4.30am.
With everyone’s thoughts drifting towards the aftershow party, the wrap-up by Bob and Roy was nicely delivered, though the question and answer session never really got going. There was quite an unsual video played from a musical Magento fan who decided to write a Magento-inspired cover of Bon Jovi’s Dead or Alive. To be fair it was pretty awesome.
We were treated to a surprising moment when Rob’s business card was selected to win a free Magento hoodie at the end of the day. If anyone deserves the title of ‘Mage_Wizz’ it’s Rob.
So, to the aftershow party – possibly the most surreal part of the event. Expectations weren’t too high as we breezed past McDonalds and the Namco arcade on the Thames riverside, but we were blown away by the event once it got going. We had to leave early due to our railway commitments, but getting to meet Roy at the end was a great highlight to a fantastic day.
In summary, the event was great to be a part of and it has certainly reinforced my passion for Magento as a platform. As accommodating as Virgin trains were, I think next time a hotel is in order so I’m not zombified again the next day. Bring on Meet Magento 2012!
Adam Moss Author Page
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