The Presentation

So a couple of days ago I trounced up on stage and gave a presentation around extensions at Meet Magento NY. I hope it was a balanced presentation where I highlighted issues with the Connect Marketplace, but also aired my strong opinion that Magento is the platform of choice for design agencies, developers and merchants.  Indeed this was one of my statements:

“Magento in 2008 was a far superior platform than either Shopify or BigCommerce are today”.

In my mind this one statement sums up a lot about Magento. You add 6 years onto that and we have built a tremendous offering, both the Magento developers and this fabulous open community we have.

Unfortunately I think some people may have taken my presentation along with Kurt’s presentation about ‘The Center of Gravity’ and made 5 instead of 4.  So I’d like to just set the record straight on how I see things with the Magento ecosystem, and also my recommendations. Much of this extends beyond my presentation.

The Ecosystem

What I’m seeing is a slight fracturing of the ecosystem, we saw this after other Meet Magento events too.  This is good for no-one, we as a community need to stay together, because together we are so much stronger than apart.  I just want to look at some of the parties in the ecosystem and how we can get some resolution here.

Magento Inc

In my mind Magento/eBay need to sort a few things out:

1. What is their strategy around eBay Enterprise? What is the impact likely on other members of the ecosystem of that strategy
2. What is their target market?
3. Who is the leadership team?
4. How are they going to fix Magento Connect and when?
5. What is their strategy with regards to SMEs?

I feel that one of the key issues Magento have right now is no revenue model around the SME market.  This is very easily resolvable and I feel essential that Magento do resolve in order to keep the ecosystem working correctly.  The other big issue is we just don’t know where Magento are going, and how that will impact us. They need to make this extremely clear, and now.  Because we need to consider our own futures as companies, and our investment in Magento, if Magento/eBay Inc become our competitor that is cause for great concern IMO.

What’s interesting here is that Magento 2 in my mind does not come into this. Let’s just pull back from everything being about Magento 2. Actually Magento 1.x is a damn good product. Can we please start realising that?  Because I know agencies realise it every day of the week, and so do Technology Partners like WebShopApps. Let’s start rejoicing in what we have instead of always wanting the next big thing.

Community

The problem at present is that there are a select group of individuals who feel they represent the whole community. But they do not, no more than I do.  We are one of hundreds of thousands of people that make up this wonderful community.  What concerns me is that certain people have their own agenda, their own castles to build, their own goals.

Call me what you want but as a decent human being with a respect for all people I would like to state once again that a community should be open, free, inclusive and welcoming.

What I see are people trying to create cliques, to do things for material gain for themselves, or to stroke their own ego. And I’m sorry I have no time for this.  This is business, we are all in business, every single person in the ecosystem, and there is no time for playground antics.  Some of what is happening right now is just chaotic, unprofessional, and frankly childish.  This is not Magento, this is a set of people who are looking to improve their friendship ranking. Go look inside yourselves.

There is also a little bit of stoking of a fire going on, you know everyone likes a drama. But seriously just sit back, is it really that bad?

New Faces

What I saw at Meet Magento NY was a lot of new faces. And some of us took the time to go up to those people and extend a welcoming hand. As a community this is what we should do. We should bring in new members, make them welcome and extend our community as much as we can.  Because, as Ben Marks so precisely pointed out to me, continuity is key here. The ecosystem needs to move forwards, to innovate, to change, to grow, and to make that happen we need new life, fresh life, new ideas.

The Merchants

Merchants using Magento are usually guided by the design agencies or developers they choose to work with. We have a truly fantastic set of people in this space, and luckily 99% of them are seriously nice intelligent people.  So merchants really have good opportunities to build great partnerships and hopefully a great store. I’ve seen this time and time again, and I can count on 1 hand those I’ve seen fail, but its in the thousands those I’ve seen have massive success with Magento.

What the merchants are demanding now though, and especially on the SME side is simplicity.  They want more features, more power, but they want it to be simple to use.  And they want to know their costs.  Magento struggles here, it doesn’t have fixed costs and if you are not careful the costs can escalate. Magento is complex and in the wrong hands it can be very expensive.  I believe Magento can better work with Merchants by doing the following:

1. Having a closed forum for Merchants to talk with other Merchants without fear of advertising, promotion or similar
2. Having a forum for Merchants to talk freely with ‘trusted experts’ in different areas, who are open and honest about their own self-interest but also give their time freely
3. Providing details to Merchants on the various options open to them, especially in the SME market – for instance a website where they can go and see the agencies in their price range, the hosted Magento platforms available etc
4. Improving the marketing output both in frequency and quality. I would suggest look to your partners, I’m sure many would like to write copy for you

The Center of Gravity

In my mind the Center of Gravity is not around one thing, one community, one set of people, Magento. It’s actually around each web design agency, each technology partner, each merchant. We all create our own center of gravity, where we find partners we can work with comfortably, people we trust, companies that fit us. I think a great many companies go on completely oblivious to what’s happening at these conferences, and are actually pretty happy. We need to acknowledge and respect this, and actually realise we aren’t the sum total.

So Where is Magento Now?

Right now Magento the product is running strong.  Because the ecosystem outside of Magento Inc is keeping it afloat.  And because the product is so powerful it is currently unmatched.  But this will change, I fully expect both Shopify and BigCommerce to extend more and more into Magento space, and indeed Hybris to enter the party now they have recovered from their merge with SAP.

It is my full belief that Magento need to embrace the community more.  My proposal is that Magento setup 2 things:

1. A democratically elected rotating working committee made up of around 3 reps from across the whole of the community in each area (Gold/Silver/Bronze/Non agencies, Tech Partners, Hosting Partners, Large/Medium/Small merchants, Magento, etc)
2. A quarterly town hall meeting with the whole community where they are transparent about their strategy, allow for questions, and engage 100% with the community

By doing these 2 things Magento will increase trust, transparency and engagement. And they will give the community a place to air their feelings, or representatives that are ready to listen (and you would hope push for action where appropriate).

From a community perspective we need to respect Magento, the constraints under which they are working, and be professional and organised in our approach to them. Its a two-way street.

What do I want?

Let me just get personal here. I have no interest whatsoever in joining any committee.  Why?  Because this is not about me, and actually I’m probably not the best person to have on a committee.  When I helped kick-start the Magento Meetup London as soon as I possibly could I replaced myself, because I have a small company in WebShopApps that actually demands my full and total attention, I’m manically busy all the time.

So this isn’t about me. In fact it’s not even about my company. I’m doing this blog, and I spoke at Meet Magento NY for 3 reasons:

1. Because I care more than I can possibly quantify about my clients, small, medium and large, and I care about their investment in Magento
2. Because it annoys the hell out of me when people can’t do the right thing.  This isn’t rocket science, the left arm at eBay needs to talk to the right arm, its as simple as that
3. Because corruption and greed really pisses me off

The reason I will not join a public forum or a private room is because one is a chaotic mess giving the wrong message to anyone just browsing through and the other is a club. Neither are appropriate.

The Time is Now

I think there is a fair level of frustration around because quite a few of us have been waiting for some changes really since 2011.  That’s a long time. Since eBay took over we have bounced around various people, management teams have changed, and its really become unclear whats going on.

We have seen massive progress with Magento 2 and I commend Magento for that. But I think they need to get a small amount of resources just back on Magento 1 and keep that ball up in the air.  I don’t think what we are asking for is a lot. But some indication they are engaged is definitely required. And I know we have the wonderful Ben Marks, but its about more than Ben, we now need to see some action.

Make a plan, approve it and then do it now.  Cut out the red tape, lets go build the future together. But please let’s not wash our dirty linen in public, let’s be professional and stand strong as a unified group with one common goal, to serve the merchants success. Because in their success we too will have success.

And so once again Magento hits London for the annual Magento Live event, this time in the summer, just barely a couple of months after Imagine.  I was talking to one guy and eventually we figured out that it was 3 years back in 2011 when the first Live event happened, with a view of Big Ben from a slightly different but similarily awesome viewpoint.

So did it meet expectations?  There was no Roy Rubin, the startup founders had departed, the eBay crowd had truly arrived, were they going to be able to handle this unique and wonderful UK Magento ecosystem consisting of entrepreneurs, one-man developers, and merchants large and small, or would they fall flat and it be the end of Magento as we know it? All the ‘oldies’ from the ecosystem were looking for the cracks, the corporate tone, the ‘we don’t really care but we will try to kid you otherwise’ approach.

And the Result is In

Actually from the feedback I received and the way I saw it (which is obviously the only view I can state) I think they managed to pull it off. Magento survives, and actually it might even prosper under this new management team.  What was clear to me was that this event was well thought out, organised, and full of clearly intelligent people from the eBay side. I would argue actually this event in terms of the message from the management team was stronger and more consistent than at Imagine – where I personally felt it was a little conflicting.

You can tell some things are still being worked out, but their message was extremely clear:

• This ecosystem is totally unique within the eCommerce space and we must preserve and nurture it
• Open source is here to stay
• Magento is doing great things, there are some amazing customers using it and market share is increasing

We needed to hear this.  But what we wanted more was to feel it. And we did. We felt like we are a part of something that still has a lot of life left in it, and that our participation was understood and appreciated by Magento. Everyone in this ecosystem knows that the role they play, whether it be large or small, involves a heck of a lot of hard work, dedication, and passion. It was nice to know from the very platform that we all rely on and have nurtured ourselves over the years that those at the top haven’t discounted us, they are starting to understand us and realise what we bring to the table.

So who was there?

In the end there were over 700 attendees. I counted the rows in the keynotes and the numbers looked sound to me.  At times it was standing room only.  The web design agencies were in full presence, though only OnTap had a stand.  Jonty from Red Box Digital seemed to crop up a bit on stage, he clearly is running a very professional influential company, great to see such a genuinely nice chap starting to reap the rewards of his total utter dedication to this space.  There were many other quality partners around including The Distance, Limesharp, The Pixel, Creare Group, Healthy Websites, Hunters Design to name just a few.  I spoke with many of these agencies, and they are all growing, all raising the bar, and all finding that Magento is growing in popularity still, which is great to hear.

There were a great many merchants in attendance, obvious from their green badges.  Many were household names, I won’t divulge for competition reasons but from talking with these merchants they all said to me they got a lot out of the event, the content in the breakouts was useful, and the ability to connect with other merchants and indeed speak with agencies, technology partners and Magento gave them a much needed opportunity to re-evaluate and learn.

Our great friends over at SLI Systems had their usual presence, they were professional, courteous and engaging. Their stand was always busy, clearly search is hot in demand at present, and they know how to do the job well.

From the eBay side there were various heads, including those of Small Business, Product Management, Marketing, eBay Enterprise, together with the architectural innovative brilliance of the likes of Brent Peters and John Lunn.

And of course WebShopApps – we hosted the opening party, and the family friendly open atmosphere was exactly what we wanted, no segregation, just everyone hanging out and enjoying the evening free of the stresses of everyday work for once.  It was the perfect start.

The Venue

The move to the Plaza Hotel was needed, the venue near St. Pauls was too small, and having the large exhibition area where food was served worked well for all, we mingled and networked much more than previous years I felt. Having the evening event in the same venue was also appreciated, it just seemed more intimate, even though there was more space. This is the same venue for next year, and I suspect off the back of this year’s event there will be an even bigger crowd, this really is the eCommerce event to attend right now.

So What was Missing?

So all this positive talk, surely something wasn’t right?  Well, I think Magento should have joined the community event on the Tuesday evening and actually taken off their jackets and come mixed in a neutral setting with the masses, that would have been great. Though we did get the pleasure of both Ben Marks and Beth Gomez joining us, and in fine form too!

I think there are still questions around whats going on with Magento, and it would have been nice if they had cleared up some of these. The biggest question that I think a few of us pondered was:

“Where does the platform finish and the ecosystem begin?”

It’s clear that there is a push down from eBay Enterprise into the Magento space. Magento need to clarify how far that push down goes, because let’s face it right now we are all growing up with our customers, and we want to continue to grow up with them. If eBay Enterprise is this large monolith where our best customers depart to never to be seen again I think there will be some questions asked, as we in the community have really been key contributors to their success (and in turn Magento’s), we aren’t going to sit quietly by and let that just happen. I think the same applies around the lower end of the market, with the disappearance of Magento Go (which wasn’t even mentioned) what are Magento’s plans here, and if its still being worked out please be transparant and tell us. Because if the move is to Big Commerce (as the emails and news reports suggest), well that affects a lot of agencies, hosting providers, technology partners and indeed merchants.

Then we had the boxes for suggestions for Magento 2 – what did people most want to see. For pretty much every box there already exists extensions that solve the issue (e.g. Import/Export capabilities around orders).  If Magento is going to build such features that could impact on the ecosystem my feeling is they need to be very transparant so that companies have time to react to that, otherwise they risk de-stabilizing the great work being undertaken by innovative companies.

And Lastly

I think this was the best Magento Live event ever.  It was true, intimate, honest and well executed by a management team less interested in fame, career progression and parties, much more interested in results, stats and diligence.

Well done to the Magento team, and keep up the great work. But remember – in the words of keynote speaker Mariana Mazzucato

– “We should be building mutualistic ecosystems rather than parasitic ones”

Once again companies and individuals from around the world headed to Vegas for 4 days of Magento, networking, keynotes, casino’s and partying.  The conference moved from it’s remote M Resort location to the slightly less remote Hard Rock Hotel.  Here we mingled in with tourists, listened to crazy music blaring whilst trying to have breakfast meetings, and I’d say it generally felt a little less personal than when we literally took over the M Resort venue. But it’s location nearer to the strip was certainly welcomed, and well, its nice to have a change.

The People

The keynotes introduced some new faces, most significantly Mark Lavelle, who has a frighteningly long title of Head of Global Product and Strategy at eBay Enterprise & GM Magento. Another name for the future was Brent Peters, the CTO of eBay Enterprise.

The guest keynote speakers were of top quality once again. My particular favourite was Malcom Gladwell. Apart from the fact he spoke about shipping for a good 30 minutes (which I hope for once made it non-boring!) he brought up the argument that being disagreeable was actually a good thing. So that justified the last 20 years I’ve been in IT, finally I found someone who was telling me standing up and being counted and not worrying about what people think is a good idea!

Roy Rubin was at his last Imagine as an employee of eBay. It was certainly sad to see him go, but in a way I’m pleased we can now move on and focus on the future.

Product Highlights

CE 1.9/EE1.14 was introduced via a great video from The Buzz Lab about Classy Llama and 3M.  CE1.9 is a collaboration between Magento and Classy Llama/Brendan Falkowski

which gives us a theme with jQuery, a responsive design and CSS5 built in. It’s great to see Magento/eBay working with the community here, I’d encourage them to do this more, use the resources you have as we have the expertise, plus also the drive and passion to make things happen.

Magento 2 was discussed, and some very broad timelines given. It seems a Release Candidate may be out by March 2015, though they are taking an iterative agile approach so it sounds like some features won’t be added until Q3 2015. Magento 2 does look pretty cool tho, from my discussions I get the impression they now have a good team on this, with good overall direction and a focus on delivering a MVP as opposed to a ‘perfect solution’ (which we all know is non-achievable).  They seem to be thinking for the first time about how this will be used/extended, over and above some of the lower technological aspects that really won’t mean much to merchants/agencies/developers.

There was a fair amount of talk about Magento Enterprise and eBay Enterprise, personally I find the fact that both are called Enterprise confusing, and it seems clear where this could go. It seems eBay is building out features for eBay Enterprise, and I can see this floating down to the Magento Enterprise offering. Personally I think this will be a bad move, as the companies in the community are building far more superior offerings already, eBay should look to partner/white label rather than trying to build in house – the whole success of Magento has been built on the foundation of a community marketplace, changing that seems wrong.

Transforming

The topic of the conference was ‘Transform’, so I thought I’d take a look at some of the companies there that I saw were transforming themselves.

1) Classy Llama – They are offering a ‘turnkey’ type Magento offering where you can get hosting, a default Magento platform, extensions, etc and from there adapt to create your Magento store. This is really aimed at being a beefed up Magento Go, and I have a feeling they will do it better!

2) WebShopApps – ShipperHQ.com was launched at Imagine, this is a cloud based shipping rate solution encompassing the best of the WebShopApps extensions into a single cohesive solution. This was met with great feedback at Imagine and we are now working with a number of Enterprise clients doing a managed rollout of this great solution. Expect a lot more info over coming months!

3) UK company Red Box Digital won the Magento Site of the Year – Best Design award at Imagine with Paperchase.co.uk. This is a great company WebShopApps work with a lot, congratulations to them on this well-deserved award.

Well, it’s been coming a while, and finally less than 2 weeks before Imagine Roy Rubin announces he is stepping down from Magento.

Roy, along with Yoav Kutner, first brought us the Magento platform back in 2007/2008, initially under the Varien company.  Since then it’s been a fast ride for many of us as we, along with them, have kept up with the frantic pace of growth of the Magento platform.  An eBay buyout back in 2011 left some of us worrying about its future, but here in 2014 we can see this is a platform that is definitely here for the long haul, thanks in large part to the great extensibility and flexibility it offers, and also in part due to the vision Roy and Yoav have had.

Thank You

I’d personally like to extend my deepest gratitude to Roy for all that he has done to aide and enable companies and developers such as WebShopApps in being able to participate in this great journey. We owe him and Magento itself a great deal, indeed for myself Magento completely changed my life, bringing me to live on American shores, giving me the passion and enthusiasm to step beyond my comfort zone and see my own vision for the future of shipping in commerce.  Without the support of people like Roy encouraging us to step up and to innovate and, more than that, believing in us, well, where would we be now?

It’s only natural that there comes a time the founder will want to move on. By their nature founders are innovators, they are creators, they are looking for the next big gig.  For someone like Roy who has spent many years in this space I’m sure it will be great for him to step out and enjoy the thrill of small startups again, to search for that next big ‘thing’.

Where does this leave us?

Where has our leader, our visionary gone? Is Magento falling apart, is the monolith which is eBay going to wave its corporate wand and try to stifle this great community that is full of people with a startup agile mentality.

I can only give my personal view on this. Which is actually I think this is a good move that it has been done before Imagine. Because now we can look forwards to the future of Magento, and this is our future, we are now in the driving seat here, all of us that run our own companies, its time for us to step up and be counted.  Magento is there, its a platform, it has a great reputation and great traction, its used by companies from the Mom and Pop store right up to the multi $100M organisations.  Roy has done his job. We now need to do ours.

What I would say is that in the type of community we are in we love figureheads, we like personalities, and we want to be in this exciting tech space where companies have a ‘face’.  So please Magento, all I ask is you keep it cool, you keep some personality and you keep your individuality. I recall saying a long time back to Matthew Mengerink – ‘Who do you want to be known as – the Apple of eCommerce or the Microsoft?’ I’d ask that again.