Last weekend, nine members of our team took part in the Magento Unconference in Cologne. A little summary to those who are not in the picture yet: The Magento Unconference has been a loved and well attended event in the Magento community since 2015. Events like this are a great opportunity to catch up and find solutions to current challenges in person. It’s not all about Magento though but also networking: Topics that are unusual for regular conferences are welcome at the Unconference and the discussions strengthen the bond among the community members.
The sessions
Given the fact that all of the sessions I suggested where selected, I was only able to attend a few other sessions. My colleagues covered other topics and brought back different, also very interesting, insights for our team.
Slot 1: Marketing Support Group
When I returned to work in March 2024 after a year of parental leave, I was a bit overwhelmed by the rapid changes that had happened in Marketing. Combine that with a company internal shift in Marketing and you can understand why I felt the need for a “self help” session.Validating my learnings of the last couple of months, other participants in this session shared their current struggles: The limited resources marketing departments have, the rising cost of SEA, the ever-changing rules of the main social media platform for B2B content (LinkedIn), and the challenge of getting employees to act as brand ambassadors to provide the much needed engagement that would then make it easier for your content to reach a wider audience.
The fight for attention in the B2B e-commerce market is more competitive than it used to be a few years back. Thanks to AI tools, content creation can be done a lot faster, increasing the quantity of published content. The amount of low-quality posts on LinkedIn increases, making the platform less attractive to spend time on it, but it’s also turned into a central platform due to the decline of others, e. g. x.com and XING for the German market.
Biggest surprise of the Marketing session: Ben Marks casually walking in. Of course, Ben is always a welcome addition to any Magento event and in this session, he contributed some valuable insights into the American market, e. g. how Temu and Shein take up so much of the available ad space on platforms like Meta that what’s left is expensive.
Looking back at it, this session started a pattern that followed throughout the event: When a session was over, there was still lots to discuss. So the following “coffee break” usually turned into a session’s extended version.
Slot 2: Hallway track
I had a lot of catching up to do. When I looked around me during lunch, at every table of four there was at least one person I knew and like talking to. My colleagues consider me an extravert; I don’t agree with them but I can understand why they get that impression 😉Slot 3: The environmentally-friendly Garden
What started as a chat with Claudia turned into a proposed topic and then into a session. So there we were, talking about pollinators, hedgehogs, bugs and caterpillars, how to make your garden more attractive to insects and animals without annoying your neighbors too much.I hope this session inspired some of the attendees to reconsider some gardening choices. It definitely helped Claudia and me to boost our vocabulary. For the German readers: Do you know the translation for Blattläuse? Löwenzahn? Heidekraut? Gefüllte Blüten? Mähroboter?
Slot 4
The session on Work-Life Blending was led by Tom (Thomas von Gostomski, one of the founders of Wamoco). It was interesting to hear the different perspectives on the flexibility many of those present have in their jobs. While some want to distinct separation of work and private life, achieved e.g. by working in the office or not talking about work when they are at home, others enjoy the opportunity to work from home, the time they save by not commuting and the ability to switch between work and private life at a moment’s notice.
For some, however, flexible work location and work hours come at the price of worrying more about whether they do enough. A heated discussion ensued when someone talked about not enjoying their work and regularly needing a break. The strong voices claiming work should be enjoyable and that you should be passionate about it were checked by Joachim’s wise comment (if I remember correctly) that people whose job is to work on complex problems on their own are at a higher risk of depression and that being passionate about work can lead to burnout.
While our community ages, I greatly appreciate the wisdom we collectively build and share with each other. And if that isn’t the best transition to Sunday’s Slot 1, I don’t know what is 😉 But first:
The After Show Party
This year, integer_net was not a main sponsor, but the sponsor of the After Show Party. At Eigelsteintorburg, a medieval building with lots of stairs, we enjoyed a delicious dinner, drinks and talks. I left shortly after inaugurating the dance floor with Christian, but I know that there was an After After Show Party as well.
Slow start on Sunday morning
Slot 1: Women’s Health
Following conversations with Claudia, Myrjam and others, I proposed a session on Women’s Health. The goal: Not just sharing nightmarish stories, but to make it top of mind for all that in order to get the best health care possible you need to be an informed patient, prepared to advocate for yourself or when necessary have trusted people advocating for you. Unfortunately, women’s complains are often not taken seriously. The stories shared by the session’s participants were another confirmation that doctors are more responsive when a female patient is accompanied by a male person who supports her. That shouldn’t be necessary. And so I was happy about the fact that we had some men join this session, too.Slot 2: Meetups, Conferences, Dev Paradise
My colleague Christian proposed this session. For me, it was a real throw-back to about two or three years ago when there was a push to bring back Meet Magento Germany.
There are plenty of Magento focused events in Europe and around the world. There are a number of Magento meetups happening throughout the year in Germany. However, when we are looking at the meetups, the number of attendees are going down, no-show-rates are going up. As a result, some Magento Meetups in Germany are being merged. For example, Hamburg, Kiel and Bremen now have the “Magento Stammtisch Norddeutschland”.
Also, there seems to be less interest by merchants in platform-specific events. The topics they request tend to be about regulations and marketing / ecommerce management - platform-agnostic topics.
At the same time, agencies are facing challenges: Again, regulations are a hot topic. One of the results of the session was that there is an interest in joining forces and to collaborate more closely on solutions instead of re-inventing the wheel and developing solutions for the different regulatory requests all by themselves. I’m happy to report that already today there has been a push to get things moving. Thank you, Tobi (e3n)!
Mathias correctly pointed out that starting this kind of cross-agency collaboration in a closed, small group excludes others and lacks the inclusive spirit that an open source community should live and breathe. On the other hand, after several years of non-committal reactions, I understand why a new approach is in order.
Slot 3: How do you use AI in your day-to-day work?
Simon from CustomGento led this collection of areas of work where the community already uses AI tools and the list of tools employed. There were quite a few AI coding tools mentioned. A central differentiation here is how context-aware the tool is.
To be honest, I had expected more people to contribute during the session. I got the impression that there are a few right now curiously exploring and cautiously employing these tools while many others either didn’t want to share their experiences or haven’t tried any AI tools yet. The conversation shortly touched on reasons to refrain from using AI tools, like energy consumption, data privacy and code ownership.
Thankfully, Simon took a photo of the gathered items and shared it with the MageUC Whatsapp Group:
Slot 4: Being an undertaker - AMA
Korbi, the photographer at the event, offered this session. These days, being an undertaker is his main occupation after deciding during the Corona pandemic that a more stable occupation than freelance photography would suit him better. Aptly placed in the room called grave yard, Korbi answered all our curious questions, sharing some interesting stories. Very much off topic and a welcome change of perspective.Of course
Of course, this MageUnconf offered plenty of food, great coffee, lots of snacks, healthy smoothies and friendly staff. I half-jokingly said I only attend because I like the strawberry tartlets so much. Of course, I also do so because of the cappuccino 😉
The MageUnconference is organised by volunteers, though these four - Carmen, Claudia, Fabian and Rico - probably are more experienced in event organisation than many event organisers out there. They did an awesome job of providing the community with a temporary home. And I loved every minute of it. Thank you, Carmen, Claudia, Fabian, Rico and your team behind the scenes!🙂