So here’s what went down at Magento Imagine 2017...

I’m only just getting back from Imagine and catching up with emails. Overall the whole event was a total blast.

A huge highlight for me was being recognised as a Magento Master for 2017 (two years in a row!) and receiving some unexpected news that Fooman was in the top 3 of Marketplace submissions.

@foomanNZ recognized as an extension rockstar! Well deserved! #Magentoimagine pic.twitter.com/beGsURQlrR

— Laura Folco (@lfolco) April 3, 2017

The hackathon just before the conference is always a great place to catch up with folks from across the ecosystem before the conference starts in earnest. Together with Andreas and Robert I worked on a tool dubbed GeneratedCodeReaper which aim it is to selectively delete files from var/generation when needed. Andreas and Robert finished a command line option to do this. Things still on the todo list are an invocation method on every request as well as adding some further smarts around inspecting changes in di.xml configurations.

Fooman sponsored the event this year. I did this run last year, and caught a first glimpse at that Dam everyone was talking about, even if it meant going a little further than precisely 10.0km. This year, was lots of fun [especially since the Dam was the starting point so everyone got a chance to see it.] Thanks to Brent and his team for organising this year's event.

"Winners circle" at #preimagine #bigdamrun. Community rocks. #roadToImagine pic.twitter.com/5OWxl4q3Mk

— Craig Peasley (@craigpeas) April 2, 2017

This is one of my favorite events, and it’s not just for the beer. I liked supporting this event in particular as it gives us all a chance to get to know the Community on a smaller scale, just chatting one on one I met some fellow community members and “recuperated” from the flight over a few drinks and some laughs as we gear up for the full-on conference days.

I don't think #preimagine will fit in a group photo next year. 😂 Look how much we've grown since that first tweetup! #MagentoImagine pic.twitter.com/FUENKX4DRZ

— Sherrie Rohde (@sherrierohde) April 4, 2017

This year the Marketplace Council meeting took on a different format with lots more people involved. They had split up the group into multiple tables which worked better for discussions. ExtDN (Magento Extension Developers Network) was again well represented and the overall feeling that I got was that the team is definitely listening. I am hoping to see some substantial changes coming out of this soon to make the Marketplace more useful to the end customer. Their current effort to manually QA every single extension listed on Marketplace is a huge undertaking and should, once completed in a few weeks time, add substantially to building trust in everything that is available through Marketplace.

Last years’ Masters event involved us in a cooking show, whereas this year's event was a breakfast which gave us more time for discussion. And it's not every day that you get to sit at one table with Mark Lavelle, Andrea Ward, Jason Woosley, Peter Sheldon.

I survived another talk on the big stage. This year, I wanted to share with the community how to get the most out of composer and Magento 2. Without composer, your options are either take a gamble or check. every. single. Extension for compatability on updates. I’ll be sharing more details on the whole talk later on. For now, here is the presentation.

Here’s what some of the attendees had to say about the talk:

Great overview of composer versioning syntax & operators by @foomanNZ. You can reference these at https://t.co/FuyxlyT42U #MagentoImagine pic.twitter.com/lqZMNAgtqY

— John Hughes (@JohnHughes1984) April 4, 2017

It takes an ecosystem, says @foomanNZ on the subject of using composer to manage M2 dependencies #MagentoImagine pic.twitter.com/edXvfU0Q77

— Daniel Nettleton (@ddavidn) April 4, 2017

We had some great catchups from the ExtDN group as quite a few of our members made it out to the conference. It's great to be able to come together and discuss ideas on how we can take the group further. We also had some expressions of interest of new members which we will announce soon.

One last shot for The Magento Imagine Wall

There you go, maybe the last picture for the #Magentoimagine wall! pic.twitter.com/dNYTYU2eT5

— DiPola (@di_pola) April 6, 2017

You would think with 5 days of solid meeting people you would meet everyone, but with more than 2700 attendees that is a lot of people. And in doing the math, you’d have to meet 540 people per day to meet them all through the conference. That would surely be a record breaking networking session.

Great to have made new connections, and meet up with old friends. If you we’re hoping to connect, I’m sorry we didn’t get that chance, Imagine 2018 is right around the corner or get in touch via the comments. I love hearing about all the new improvements going on in the ecosystem at Magento Imagine, there’s such energy and creativity in our community. I’m excited to see how things progress this year and where our Magento journey will take us.

Until next year, Kristof