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Magento Imagine 2018 brings the whole of the Magento ecosystem together, providing them space and time to discover substantial business opportunities. We’re cheerful about our three days at Wynn Las Vegas, spent among the Magento community, hosting a booth promoting DCKAP’s services and products – Productimize, a product customization software, and QA Touch, a test management tool for eCommerce stores.
The conference this year had over 3000 attendees (over 1000 merchants), a record number since the inception, and the overall theme behind the event was “Lead the Charge”. Similar to yesteryears, Magento with support from Wynn offered unmatched hospitality to attendees. We enjoyed the food, flowers, pool at sunset terrace, the tidy rooms and corridors, to name a few.
Amazon Pay and Braintree, were the two bookend sponsors this year. Apart from these giants, many agencies and solution providers, like us, showcased their prowess and engaged attendees in various ways. Interesting to see Amazon, now joining force with PayPal, in a strong show of support for the Magento ecosystem here at Imagine. It reminds us of Amazon’s longtime, consistent show of force behind Shopify.
We’d like to sum up the whole three days into one single article and so what follows are a few key takeaways and memorable happenings from the event.
Pre-Imagine – the rendezvous
The DCKAP Team flew in from 4 different cities from across the world. This was our 5th Imagine in a row. We were off to a good start, thanks to our friends @ Nexcess for the free limo ride to The Wynn!
Thank you @nexcess for the Limo Ride. #Roadtoimagine pic.twitter.com/K4QtE6u5Rb
— Karthik Chidambaram (@chatwithKC) April 22, 2018
Magento Swags this year:
Registered and ready to go! We’re here @magento! #MagentoImagine pic.twitter.com/iFbSQ5ilcx
— Tommy Bliven? (@tommy_bliven) April 23, 2018
The Magento Partner Summit, on Sunday evening, was inspiring and we happened to meet representatives from different agencies – not to forget the Pre-imagine party, food, and networking.
Monday, (April 23)
The first day of the conference started with a session by PayPal, Mobile & Millennials – Payments Best Practices for 2018 and Beyond, and breakfast. B2B Payments, Mobile conversions, mobile checkout and usage of mobile browsers were some of the key topics discussed during the panel.
The Master of Ceremony was Magento’s very own Phil Winkle. It was nice to see someone from the community lead the charge this year. (a great Magento community story). This was Phil’s 5th Imagine, and he outlined his #RoadtoImagine journey!
@philwinkle sharing his #RoadToImagine at @magento Imagine General session #MagentoImagine pic.twitter.com/nNWmtPTKWq
— DCKAP (@DCKAP) April 23, 2018
Mark Lavelle’s talk @ Imagine this year was inspiring. He touched on leadership and also recommended a well shopworn book (7 Habits of Highly Effective People). Some interesting facts: $124 Billion worth of transactions happened via Magento this year. This number is expected to grow to $224 Billion by 2020. Magento has 800+ employees today, and 50 new solution partners were added in the last year. Magento is also investing in Progressive Web Apps (and they have the PWA Studio coming out soon).
@mklave1 #MagentoImagine General Session pic.twitter.com/vxCtYfHN0w
— DCKAP (@DCKAP) April 23, 2018
Sucharita Kodali, Retail Analyst at Forrester, kindled interesting thoughts. Retailers don’t do well because of poor execution, weak store locations, and more. They don’t plan well for the peak or great demand days (and the peak days happen every day with one product or the other). She shared a good example of Solar eclipse glass. On-Demand manufacturing must become mainstream was one of the learnings from her talk.
Tuesday (April 24)
Jamie Foxx‘s talk was the highlight of the day! It was nothing but inspirational. One of the key takeaways listening to him was ‘Dominant’ and never give up! It was also insightful on how he tried different comedy lines for different audiences to test out what would work for a national crowd. It was interesting how Mark Lavelle related this to A/B Testing retailers do. Jamie Foxx considers himself first a comedian, and second -a hustler! He’s also a Magento customer, using the platform to sell sunglasses.
Welcome Jamie Foxx on the stage #MagentoImagine pic.twitter.com/kJpvOi8Q8m
— DCKAP (@DCKAP) April 25, 2018
Also, the second day of Imagine 2018 included a few interesting keynotes: Melissa Ben-Ishay founder of Baked By Melissa, Eric Broussard, VP of International Marketplaces & Retail from Amazon and Jason Silva.
The story by Melissa Ben-Ishay, founder of Baked by Melissa, was truly an inspiring one dealing with brand promotion. Click here to read more about it: https://magento.com/blog/events/baked-melissa-founder-shares-journey-sweet-success. She also quoted:
“When you find yourself being challenged, please see it as an opportunity”.
Thank you @bakedbymelissa ‘s Melissa for sharing your inspirational story of turning your passion into a successful business! #Imagine2018 #womenentrepreneur @magento pic.twitter.com/cLMpsZzu6y
— Andrea Ward (@awatpa) April 24, 2018
Jason Silva, an Emmy-nominated television host, educator, filmmaker and self-proclaimed ‘futurist’, spoke passionately about the destiny of human and technological coexistence. A very much needed topic for the Magento community. He quoted:
“The tools to change the world are now in everybody’s hands.”
“We need to embrace the opportunity to steer the future, not fear the future.” @JasonSilva #MagentoImagine #LeadTheCharge pic.twitter.com/OQknaQ13bz
— Magento (@magento) April 24, 2018
Amazon’s Eric Broussard, VP of International Marketplaces and Retail, inspired us all to Lead the Charge. He quoted:
“Over 25% of global revenue generated by sellers on Amazon in 2017 comes from cross-border sales. This is a tremendous opportunity as you have control over your brand and you choose the country you want to sell into.”
Eric Broussard, VP of International Marketplaces and Retail at Amazon: Know your customers if you want to drive business.#MagentoImagine #LeadTheCharge pic.twitter.com/FTuwSmKDrS
— Magento (@magento) April 24, 2018
That said, rest of the second day was focused on addressing the needs of customers and merchants passing by our booth.
Join with us at #MagentoImagine and see how @productimize helps to improve your customer experience/personalization pic.twitter.com/fsXlwcA7Qo
— DCKAP (@DCKAP) April 24, 2018
Wednesday (Apr 25)
The day started with a splendid continental breakfast followed by a couple of breakout sessions from guest speakers. Jason Woosley, SVP of Product & Technology, Magento Commerce, presented the roadmap priorities, comprising Superior shopping experience, Omni-selling and fulfilment, and Merchant intelligence.
#magentoimagine @jasonwoosley_mg on stage talking about the Magento road map pic.twitter.com/J9qHfERCuQ
— DCKAP (@DCKAP) April 25, 2018
Some other updates are:
- The industry-leading Deutsche Post DHL Group has joined Magento as a Premier Partner. Together, Magento Commerce and DHL will work together to provide merchants with progressive and flexible shipping options.
- The new Magento Association and Community Insider Program are designed to drive more collaboration with the company for over 315,000 developers and 4,000 agencies.
Next year’s Magento Imagine:
#MagentoImagine next year is on May 13-15, 2019 at Wynn, Las Vegas.
— DCKAP (@DCKAP) April 25, 2018
After completing a tummy-full lunch at the Sunset Terrace, we’d a surprise shout-out to Timothy Diep, DCKAP’s regional manager, for his birthday.
Happy Birthday, Tim. Wish him at Booth #116 #MagentoImagine pic.twitter.com/cP4tgdUeIu
— DCKAP (@DCKAP) April 25, 2018
With the satisfaction of addressing hundreds of merchants and attendees throughout the summit, all at the booth were exhausted. We enjoyed sharing our freshly minted DCKAP Rhinos, one of the offshoots of our updated branding.
No #MagentoImagine is complete without awesome swag for the kiddos. Thanks @classyllama @ShipperHQ @DCKAP for these goodies! pic.twitter.com/9sXuTkSmss
— Kyle Carpenter (@CarpKyle) April 26, 2018
Thanks to everyone we met during this years event. If you could not make it, we hope to see you soon. Please do drop us a line or, share your perspective on this year’s Imagine!
