This article extracts some key moments that we have witnessed when Meet Magento was happening in London this year. This event was hosted by a very special team led by Jamie Huskisson. I was pleased to meet some faces that I had only seen online so far.
The first bold decision that JH made was to leave the Adobe sponsor and the Adobe keynotes out of the event. The effect was surprising as it meant the content of the event could focus on retailers issues in a different way. While Adobe is a significant part of Magento, its absence provided the opportunity for retailer-centric discussions and solutions that could be implemented at their desks the next morning.
The second decision was to bring extremely experienced people in the mix (over 25 years of experience). Coleman the Wizard‘s SEO talk and the talk with 3 CTOs sharing their restrospective views on their roles were my favourite talks.
It was packed with conference all day and yet every stand and everyone was so relaxed and happy to be back with the community for another vibrant, high quality event. Overall, the Meet Magento this year has been described as a milestone in the Magento journey.
JH is now looking at transforming other Magento members into speakers. Creating fresh inputs, developing and mentoring other members to become potential speakers was at the forefront of the last part of the event. Several formats were explored for this purpose:
- train the newbie speakers to create successful talks
- give only small talks of 7/8 minutes rather than 20minutes to allow more chances to be ready to deliver successfully
An idea that came to me after the event was to leverage the talks with open questions at the end of specific talks