It was a chilly November evening in Munich, Germany when developers, merchants, representatives from Magento, eBay, and Paypal gathered at the Rilano No. 6 bar & restaurant for the MagentoLive Germany 2013 pre-conference party. Two of the WebShopApps UK team, Josh and Raf, joined the fun and connected with other Magento developers, some wonderful WebShopApps customers, and others in the Magento community. A highlight of the evening was meeting a number of owners of small to mid-sized businesses who had recently moved or are considering a move to Magento.
Noam Inbar presenting Zooz.com. Photo from
On Tuesday, the conference began in earnest with registration and breakfast and an opening session featuring several members of the Magento team and executives from eBay and PayPal. These included Roy Rubin, COO and co-founder of Magento; Jimmy Duvall, Head of Product at Magento; along with others.
After the opening session, attendees split up to attend breakout sessions which included a rich mix of speakers from both international and German companies. One presentation that particularly caught the attention of our team was given by Noam Inbar, VP of Business Development at Zooz. She talked about different ways to reduce conversion friction by simplifying checkout with the goal of increasing conversion rates and decreasing cart abandonment.
Throughout the day, Raf & Josh had time to learn more about some of the exhibitors at the conference who Raf noted “were completely different” from the exhibitors found at UK conferences, except for the “the big names.” To him, “the standouts were the German companies focusing solely on the German speaking market.” German-speaking Europe (Germany, Austria, & Switzerland especially) has a large and growing Magento community and are increasingly represented at worldwide Magento events.
MagentoLive Germany 2013 was yet another example of the strength of the Magento community and its broad reach across languages and regions. For our team it was a great opportunity to connect with many members of that community from hosting companies and software providers to developers and merchants.
Tags: Conferences, magento, MagentoLive