As they say, better late than never. This applies to my blog post on Meet Magento NYC this year on October 10th & 11th. Even though the event is more than a week in the past, I took some time to reflect on the event and wanted to share my thoughts.
As usual, New York was an inviting venue for this annual Meet Magento event. Meet Magento New York was the first Magento community event that I’ve attended, and just like before, this year’s event didn’t disappoint. With multiple tracks of speakers from the community, and visitors from over 20 countries across the globe, this was a great opportunity to learn and share.
I was fortunate to participate in two ways this year. One, as a board member of the Magento Association and secondly, as a conduit to the community from Adobe. While I’ve been involved in Ecommerce and entrepreneurship in the past, I have never experienced the energy and conviction from a community like I have from the Magento Community. I have now made friends and acquaintances in the community, and it was awesome to see everyone again. We had a chance to talk business, but also to catch up personally as well.
From an Adobe perspective, we continue to be a supporter of the Magento Community. We were proud to be a headline sponsor of Meet Magento NYC 2023, as we have been in the past. Huge shout out to Marsha Naidoo and the entire Above the Fray team for organizing the event, and managing all the details and logistics. I’m sorry about all the last minute changes to my slides. I promise I’ll be better next time.
I was honored to have some time in the keynote session to talk about Adobe’s strategy to focus on large enterprise and B2B customers for Adobe Commerce. Customers are looking for personalization at scale with performance and tying together the other Adobe products to create a holistic and seamless customer journey. In addition, I had the chance to reiterate our support for the Magento Community. Last year, we committed to supporting the community and increasing the velocity of changes into the core codebase. I made this announcement at the MMNYC 2022 stage last year and I’m happy to say that 1 year later we are going strong with our commitment to the Prioritization Process that takes community input to address issues we should be merging into the codebase. I’m delighted by the participation of the community in this program and the commitment of Adobe to stick to this program. In addition to the resources Adobe provides to this program, we continue to support the codebase with security patches, quality control, maintenance, monetary support to the Magento Association, and sponsoring events like Meet Magento with in person attendance. I’m thrilled with the journey we’re on to work with Magento Community and looking forward to continuing the adventure.
Finally, it wouldn’t be a true Meet Magento event without the people. I am so thankful for all the codebase contributions by the community. I was happy to recognize some of them on stage. Aside from that, the welcoming I’ve received from a large portion of the community has been overwhelming. Seeing old friends, and meeting new ones is always the highlight of these events for me. The opportunity to learn, share, and have some fun with people who ultimately have the same inherent goals and objectives is magical. We may come from different companies, different backgrounds, and different professional skills and education, but at the end of the day, we can all talk Magento, and all find ways to uplift businesses around the world and create economic prosperity. It’s a tough mission for sure, but a lot easier when you’re amongst people who are smart, friendly, and open-minded. Together, I’m sure we’ll continue to find ways to work together, but have fun doing it!
I had a blast, as I expected. After hours I was able to mingle, grab a slice of famous New York pizza, and say hi to the rats that greeted me to the city that never sleeps. I indeed needed to catch up on sleep when I got home, but I wouldn’t trade the experience one bit. If we didn’t get a chance to catch up, please feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rksomani . I’m looking to connecting with everyone again, and sharing all the things we can do for the Magento Community to keep it moving forward!
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