Community 2/24/2021

Recap of Hyvä Release Party

On the 12th February 2021, we celebrated the release of version 1.0 of Hyvä Themes. As the main partner and co-creator, integer_net organized and sponsored the event.

From the Idea to version 1.0 in 8 Months

It's only been 8 months since Willem Wigman first started working on this new frontend. With 380 registered attendees for the release party and already more than 650 views of the event recording on YouTube, Hyvä Themes has created quite the stir.
During the last couple of months, a select number of people had access to Hyvä to review it, to test it in a first (or second or third) project, to give feedback, and to contribute.

The embedded videos are all from the same video, just starting at different chapters. If you want, you can start the first video and keep on watching it to see the complete recording of Hyvä Release Party.
Or you could watch one chapter, read on, and start the next video.

An intro by Ben Marks

Following an intensive exchange about Hyvä, Willem asked Ben Marks, then Magento Evangelist at Adobe, to open Hyvä Release Party and he said yes! His opening speech very well captured the excitement around Hyvä:

Willem makes some big announcements

Afterwards, Willem took over to introduce Hyvä Themes to those not yet familiar with it and to drop a big announcement or two. One of these is an update to the license that is a little uncommon these days: No subscriptions.

Vinai Kopp presents Hyvä Admin

Before the release of Hyvä Themes, Vinai Kopp became interested in the new approach that is marked by its simplicity. He then transferred this principle to the Magento backend, providing the community with a new, simple way of building grids in the Magento Admin area. Vinai presented Hyvä Admin at the Hyvä Release Party, making many attendees enthusiastic about creating admin features without UI components:

Hyvä Themes in Action

To have a great tech stack is one thing. But to see it in action in Magento projects can be a very different matter. That's why we were very keen to share the experiences of the first Magento Hyvä projects from two Magento agencies with the audience.

Peter Jaap Blaakmeer shares his project experiences

First, Peter Jaap Blaakmeer, co-founder and CTO of elgentos, and a very early adopter of Hyvä Themes, gave some insights into the Dutch agency's work with Hyvä Themes as a Magento frontend. Noteworthy here: From Peter Jaap's experience, the bigger the shop, the more it makes sense to use Hyvä Themes.

Fabian Schmengler about Hyvä as a new perspective

Peter Jaap was followed by Fabian Schmengler, who was disarmingly honest about some uncomfortable truths regarding the experiences the team at integer_net made with Magento projects and different frontend solutions. Just in time, Hyvä Themes offered a way out and a great new perspective for upcoming projects.

Plenty of Questions about Hyvä Themes

Shortly before his closing remarks, Willem and the team answered a bunch of questions the audience had collected during the event. To make it easier for us to collect questions, we integrated Slido into the event page. While we tried to have most questions answered during the event, we were not quite successful. There were simply too many questions coming in to be answered in the rather short event. So the remaining open questions will soon be answered in text form and published separately from this blogpost.

Gathering the Magento Community

Once the event's talks were officially over, people gathered in smaller groups to discuss some more Hyvä or just to chat and hang out. Many of us dearly miss the in-person events of the Magento community. This online way of hanging out was both a blessing for us folks deprived of human interactions and a reminder of what we miss.

With this, we want to thank everyone that was part of Hyvä Release Party, from the speakers to the engaged audience to those who popped up later on just for a chat. It's been a fun evening for us and we are looking forward to seeing the launches of the next generation of Hyvä Themes powered online stores.