If you are a Magento developer, you pretty much know what this post is about. If you were last Saturday (1.Nov.2014) in the Manchester area, you definitely know what this post is going to be about. If you don’t… well.. sorry for you! š
This post is not going to be another review of the event, couldn’t do that even if I wanted to, I think I’m too close (personally) to do that.
Last Saturday, in Manchester, at “The Comedy Store” the first edition of the “Mage Titans” conference took place. I’m proud of being part of this from the beginning, when it was just and idea spinning around the Space 48 offices, ever sinceĀ we were trying to find a name, to think who to invite as speakers, etc. And, thanks to our amazing team, in partnership with Manchester Digital developed the idea into something that no one was expecting.
You see, the thing with Magento, being the “beast” that it is (especially being an eBay company now), most big conferences around the world (Meet Magento, Magento Live, etc) have a tendency to be a bit more commercial, more business-oriented than a “nerdy developer” would like. No disrespect for anyone, I’m one of those as well. But Mage Titans was exactly the opposite, it was (like Jon, the Space 48 MD said it really well) “for developers, by developers”.
The thing that blew me away (well, one of them anyway) was having the opportunity to be in the same room with guys like Vinai Kopp, Ben Marks, Alistair Stead (to name a few) and to be able to speak with them, exchanging ideas, getting advice, talking about best practices, hearing some really good tips. And after all that, to realise that, at the end of the day, they’re developers, like everyone in the room, that day. There no CEOs, no MDs, just Developers. Even better, Magento Developers.
I mean, hearing Vinai Kopp with his talk entitled “The Beautiful Magento Module” was a great kickoff for the day. And the day finished with Magento’s own Ben Marks, the “dude” who’s training videos I was watching almost three years ago getting ready for my Magento Certification exam. Not to mention Alistair Stead‘s tips and tricks, dos and don’ts to scale and have your Magento solution highly-available, having your Magento getting closer to the speed of light with HHVM by Daniel Sloof, or loads of informationĀ on caching and debugging with our own Space 48 Technical Director, Tony Brown.
By far, the most important part of the day (and I know for sure most of the devs in there agree) was the Panel Discussion, with Ben Marks, Vinai Kopp and Alistair Stead, moderated by Tony Brown, where anyone had the opportunity to ask questions and have not one, but 3 answers. It was both informal and fun, could have stayed there another hour or more š
I won’t postĀ in here links to the speaker’s slides, you can find those online if you do a quick search on Google or if you follow the speakers on Twitter.
I will, however, post a URL with the images I took that day:Ā https://plus.google.com/photos/+GeorgeSchiopu29/albums/6076877709958501345
By the looks of it, I see absolutely no reason why there should’t be a “Mage Titans 2015”, right? Looking forward to it!
Cheers,
George