Meet Magento Romania 2024 Recap

I had the pleasure of attending ???? Meet Magento Romania 2024 this week, which took place in the beautiful city of Cluj-Napoca, in the heart of Transylvania.

Here’s my recap of a great few days. A big thanks to Vlad Stanescu for inviting me to be a part of the event as a speaker, which I attended on behalf of Hyv? ??

New friends and pre-event dinner

I arrived in Cluj on Sunday afternoon with Nicholas J Muldoon from JH , my partner in crime for the event (his words, not mine ??). Feel free to insert your own ‘an Englishman and an Irishman...’ jokes here!

Once we checked in to the stunning Grand Hotel Italia, which was also the event venue, we linked up with our new found friends at Developers Alliance. Certified Ecommerce Developers. and headed straight into the city centre for food, drinks and plenty of good chat.

The event unofficially kicked off later that evening with a dinner for speakers and organisers where I met up with plenty of familiar faces, as well as many welcoming folks from the Romanian community who I met for the first time.

Kicking off with a change of schedule

On Monday, Vlad Stanescu opened up the event, but the initial keynote session had a last-minute change due to Mathias Schreiber from the Magento Association being unable to attend due to travel issues.

If there's one thing you can guarantee at a Magento event, it's people willing to help out! To replace Mathias' slot Ivan Chepurnyi , ??Jakub Winkler , my fellow Mage-OS board member dr Maciej Kalkowski and I banded together to form a panel, with Vlad handling MC duties.

We discussed the importance of open source solutions for eCommerce businesses, why there was a need for Mage-OS to exist, our focus and mission and how we’re jointly working with the Magento Association to achieve our shared goals. We also discussed the reinvigoration of Magento, the community and the ecosystem in general. The key takeaway was that while Adobe does continue to support Magento Open Source through updates, support and initiatives like the pull request prioritisation, they don’t market Magento Open Source as a brand or platform, and therefore it’s important that we as a community come together to do this.

In addition to this change, Marius Strajeru also had to pull out of the event at short notice for personal reasons. Sending best wishes your way Marius ?? you were missed!

A day of high quality presentations

There were many great talks across both the technical and business tracks that I attended throughout the day, but these were my highlights.

Blazing fast data processing

Ivan Chepurnyi , a self-titled ‘grandfather of Magento’, given his time as part of the core team back in the Magento 1 days, shared his knowledge and work on increasing the performance of the Magento catalog, with incredible results. He also announced that he is working on applying his performance enhancements to the default indexers, and once complete this will become a part of the Mage-OS Distribution. In the future, it could even become part of Magento Open Source as well.

Handling your frustrations

??Jakub Winkler from qoliber gave a masterclass on how to channel your frustrations into positive results, citing his very personal journey from Magento complainer to advocate! This included a nod to his legendary rants on MageChat where he regularly competes with Francis Gallagher for the top spot ?? as well as how he used some of his newfound techniques to help him create and finish his recently published Adobe Commerce frontend development book.

The importance of a11y (accessibility)

Magento legend Kuba Zwolinski ?? from Snowdog outlined the importance of a11y (accessibility), including the upcoming changes all businesses will need to comply with that come into place in June 2025 and to start planning and preparing for them. There were even some Romanian specific tips and resources, which was a great touch, and a mention of Hyv? , where Snowdog has contributed a11y improvements to our offerings!

Using AI to punch above your weight

My travel buddy Nicholas J Muldoon from JH gave a whistle stop tour of all things AI, including an overview of the current state of the landscape, where things are headed and how you can leverage tools to help your business compete with the larger players. I was particularly intrigued by his prediction that we’re only a few years off seeing a unicorn startup being built and run purely by a solopreneur and a suite of AI tools ??

Hyv? ?? Romania

As with every event I’ve attended since joining Hyv? , I’m always humbled by all the positive feedback we get from those who have worked with our solution, and this was no different in Romania. I had some engaging discussions and there was plenty of interest in our offering throughout the event.

On the stage, it was my turn to steal the limelight again. I gave a presentation on why we believe the future of storefront solutions for eCommerce, and Magento specifically, is about taking evolutionary steps to improve, because, let’s face it, merchants didn’t ask for a revolution of technologies, concepts and approaches (and they certainly didn’t ask for the price tags that often go with them).

The other key message from my talk is that our values and focus on performance, quality and affordability, along with enjoying your work, are all aligned with the concept of simplicity.

I showed how performance and reduced maintenance can be achieved by using simple and sane solutions that deliver results, including some examples from our Enterprise offering (for Adobe Commerce ), such as reducing the amount of markup/JavaScript loaded and using server side rendering (SSR) to load listing pages, reducing page load times by over 75%! ??

An agency perspective

The final technical talk of the day came from Sorin B?rnu?iu of Baldwin who shared his and his agency's experiences of switching from Luma to Hyv? , explaining both the benefits and considerations needed.

Given they've now launched 5 sites with Hyv? , including a Hyv? Checkout implementation, and over 200 more via their SaaS offering, they're certainly qualified to provide insights! ??

There were some great examples, such as showing the differences in file structure and the component based approach Hyv? takes, meaning all related code lives in a single file, making it easier to maintain, customise or even swap out.

He was also on a self-declared mission to spread the word about Hyv? to the Romanian ecosystem, which of course, we’re very much in support of! ??????

If you have any further questions about Hyv? , please follow us here on LinkedIn and reach out!

Adobe Commerce Storefront

There were also talks on the new Adobe Commerce Storefront tools: Edge Delivery Services, Document Based Authoring and Commerce Dropins, both from a business perspective, presented by Bogdan Marin , and the technical side, including a demo, from Dan Sergiu Ilie . I won't cover more detail here, but you can read more in my Adobe Summit recap from last month.

Afterparty

After all the learning, it was time to kick back and head back into Cluj for the after-party at Colin’s. There’s little more to share at this point, other than it was a great evening with good food and drink, and even better company!

Summary

Meet Magento Romania was another good reminder of the power of the Magento community and the breadth of its reach, and as with any event, the magic is always in connecting with like-minded people and learning from each other's experiences to improve.

Clearly, an event such as this is never going to be the size and scale of some of the marquee events in the ecosystem, but smaller, more intimate events are just as important (plus a good time too!). I’d encourage folks both to attend them and organise them in their own countries/markets where there is currently no annual Magento event.

Finally, a big shout out to everyone who made it a memorable time, including: Vlad Stanescu Remus Lucut Nicholas J Muldoon ??Jakub Winkler Kuba Zwolinski ?? dr Maciej Kalkowski Ivan Chepurnyi Bachana Margiani Oskars Tuns Dmitriy Gallyamov Sorin B?rnu?iu Pieter Hoste Adrian Ilovan Stefan Nicolae and many more! ??

Until next time! ??

P.S. Credit to Vlad Stanescu , Nicholas J Muldoon and ??Jakub Winkler / qoliber for some of the photos seen above ??

P.P.S. I wish I’d bought more of these, I’m now addicted! Rum + chocolate = ??

P.P.P.S. Before heading home I got a chance to have a good wander around Cluj, including the botanical gardens. It truly is a beautiful place! ??