Wrapping up Magento Imagine
2013 Moroccan Style

We went to Vegas again this year for the Magento 2013 Imagine Conference and once again, what happened in Vegas will not stay there! We are too excited to share what happened there with you from fashion shows to a Moroccan party, the excitement was unbelievable! The conference, which was titled, “The Art of Commerce,” was an intense, yet exciting three days filled with amazing amounts of information and plenty of fun, in Vegas style of course!

Keynote Speakers

The event took place at the M Resort, where the energy was high the entire event. The keynote speakers were simply amazing and spanned well-known executives, such as Roy Rubin, the Co-Founder & COO of Magento; John Donahoe, President & CEO of eBay, Inc.; Jeff Jordan, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz; Matthew Mengerink, CTO at Magento; Jamie Clarke, Extreme Adventurer and Founder of LiveOutThere.com; James Barrese, CTO of PayPal; Steven Levitt, Economist and Co-Author of Freakonomics; and John Couch, Head of Design at Magento.

Breakout Sessions

The breakout sessions were amazing, with information covering some of the most important concepts in commerce right now. The importance of utilizing marketplaces, such as eBay, through Magento was highly focused on, as was the importance of mobile commerce to satisfy today’s sophisticated consumer. Another exciting topic we found interesting was given by Jamie Clark, founder of LiveOutThere.com. He talked about his adventures in his life, as well as with Magento, which was a great tie-in for the entire conference.

A Twist and Turn

Imagine our surprise when the conference then took a completely different turn with a fashion show! There was a live fashion showdown with music, incredible lighting and models strutting the runway, just like they do in Paris! There were 14 models all together that modeled items from various Magento customers, including Custo Barcelona and Erin Fetherston.

Magento Schedule

We were also privy to the Magento roll-out schedule, which was exciting news for everyone! Magento Enterprise 1.13 is released and available to partners and customers. The exciting news was Magento committed to provide three years of developmental support to customers who purchase and use this latest edition. Magento Community 1.8 will be released 2 weeks from now and Magento 2 is still being developed, but the beta version will be released in the 4^th quarter of 2013.
We also learned about a little clean up Magento is doing. They removed more than 20 percent of the extensions that did not have any value or had no downloads available. This is a way to offer more room for more successful plug-ins that satisfy today’s consumer.

Party Time

It wouldn’t be Vegas without a party! We partied it Moroccan style at Moroccan night! The party was held by the pool on Tuesday night, running late into the night. The Moroccan-themed party had live music, dancing, snakes and cocktails. It was cold, but we had a great time!

i95Dev’s Involvement

i95Dev was one of the silver sponsors for this amazing event. The Imagine Marketplace had more than 85 sponsors in total, including PayPal and other big names. We had an amazing location, thanks to our Magento channel manager, Carly Rachman, and Magento’s Marketing Coordinator, Aleza Shepiro. We were able to host live demonstrations we feel had a major impact on the attendees. The unveiling of our new mobile point-of-sale solution was also a tremendous hit.

Once again, we had an amazing time in Vegas at the Magento Imagine 2013 Conference. We felt the excitement from the moment we arrived until the moment we came back home. We look forward to Magento Imagine 2014 – until then, stay tuned.