What did you do on Thursday, October 27? I hope part of it was spent listening to the Magento Association Town Hall. If you didn’t get a chance to be a part of the virtual Town Hall, read below for my take on it. Also, if you registered but just couldn’t make it, you’re in luck! You will get access to the recording as soon as it is available.
It was a long event, but packed with information. For me based in California, United States, it was 7am. It was early for me, but I had my coffee in hand, so I was ready to go. We had participants and speakers from all over the world. It was great to see the broader Magento Open Source community come together all across the world, making time for this update.
Josh Warren, the Chair of Magento Association, led off with business and admin updates. He touched upon bylaw changes and upcoming events sponsored by the Magento Association. We’ve have eight Meet Magento events this year. The next Meet Magento event is on November 3 in Thailand. Unfortunately, I can’t attend, but it’s looking like there’s going to be a nice crowd there. Josh also mentioned that we’re trying to get back to historical norms and host between 10-15 Meet Magento events around the world! I wonder if anyone can make it to all of them. That person (or people) needs to be specially recognized for their commitment to the Magento community!
In addition, Josh welcomed the new additions to the Magento Association board including Sonal Puri, Vatsal Shah, Willem Wigman, Stanislav Idolov (Adobe liaison) and myself as the Adobe representative. We now have 10 total board of directors from all over the globe. I joined in July officially and it’s been exciting to see the energy from the new board members along with the wisdom and guidance from the older members. It’s made my transition to the board and working with the open source community so much smoother.
Following Josh’s introduction, a representative from each of the committees provided updates on work and progress each of the committees has been making. Did you know there are 7 committees that are a part of Magento Association that help drive collaboration, education, and social engagement of the Magento Open Source Community? I’m still learning about each of the committees and their work, so it was awesome for me to hear what each committee, led by volunteers from the community, has been focused on. If you’re looking to make a difference in the open source community, want to learn, or just meet some cool people, I encourage you to reach out via email to one of the committees by clicking on the link above and scrolling down to the committee you are interested in.
We followed these updates with the topic that’s the most exciting for me, the Open Source Prioritization Process. I spoke about this at Meet Magento New York in September as an idea where we want to provide the community with more influence in prioritizing the issues that are the most important. As part of Adobe’s commitment to this, we will provide resources to incorporate these prioritized issues and maintain the infrastructure needed to bring back the innovation into the Magento Open Source code base. For more details on the process and how to make your voice heard, refer to my last blog post on this topic. As of now, we’re in the process of having the community vote for the PRs that should be merged first. We’ll continue this until November 5, at which point we’ll pick the top PRs and work towards getting them into the code base.
Having worked in commerce and payments with small and mid size businesses for most of my career, I continue to be surprised by the vision and drive of entrepreneurs all over the world. Whether it’s to create economic prosperity for themselves and their families, or turning a passion into a thriving business, entrepreneurs and small businesses are the engines of the economy and their courage, creativity, and determination continue to inspire me to do better for them. I see the Magento Open Source community, all of us, as the enablers to help unlock these entrepreneur aspirations. Whether we are agencies, developers, marketers, or vendors, we can each contribute to making ecommerce a reality for the next generation of entrepreneurs. Who knows, in 10 years from now, one of us might have helped the next Amazon launch and scale. How exciting is that?
-Ritesh
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