Even though this was "only" my 5th Community Day, I have to say how professional everything has become over the years. From the selection of the speakers, the processes, the catering, to the networking - simply an all-round successful day.
At the same time, it felt a little as if the first day of school and family celebrations were at an e-commerce fair, because after two years you could finally meet old friends again and meet new, previously purely virtual contacts in person.
The keynote by Sebastian Hamann gave an outlook on further planning, of which international growth, additional staff and a new branch in New York were only a small part. In addition, Daniel Nögel was mainly concerned with new features such as the Flow Builder, delayed flows, for example to only send evaluation forms after a waiting period in which the customer can return the goods, new metrics for customer-specific prices, approval processes for content pages, the new enterprise cloud for SaaS and PaaS solutions for enterprise installations, device-specific content (in the future, high-resolution videos can be replaced with low-res videos or images for mobile viewing) and much more. Stefan Hamann honored the best plugins in the Shopware Store, including a new address validation by the partner Kraftware, which enables supported address input based on Google addresses and thus minimizes incorrect addresses.
Shopware United gave insights into their events, activities and plans, encouraging along the way to join the union of partners in the Shopware universe.
All in all, it was once again shown that Shopware is on the right track to continuing the success story, not only with the new support from industry giants such as Ben Marks or Marcus Diekmann, but also with a clear vision.
Foto vom SCD 2022 Shopware Community Day
The lecture by Laura Winterling, CEO of Space Time Concepts, former astronaut instructor (ESA), pilot and paramedic, was also quite impressive, providing an insight into astronaut training, recruiting and the skills required. If you think in general that what is most important here is that astronauts are NOT allowed to make any mistakes, it was much more about the fact that the focus was not on perfection but on excellence. So the goal is not to avoid making mistakes and fear and doubt as a result, but to accept that mistakes can happen when making decisions, to accept them and to have the courage to face the consequences. Anyone who is interested in a similar situation in the software development of the first Apollo moon travel programs should read the story of Margaret Hamilton, among other things, at https://www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/ingeniouswomen/apollosfrauen/margarethamilton/index.html .
It continued with Ken Hughes, who was there live in 2019, who compares customer relationships with a love relationship and shares funny personal experiences, marketing best practices and tips on how professional and private relationships can be strengthened. It's amazing how closely the two are related, but how the language differs fundamentally in some cases. After all, who would use words like "recovery" or "loyalty campaigns" in a private relationship that was in crisis?
Last but not least was the Fireside Talk with Dirk Nowitzki. I can still remember sitting in uni in China in 2011 watching the NBA Finals on CCTV and the Mavericks becoming NBA champions and Dirk Nowitzki MVP! As time goes by... He is said to have kept his feet on the ground and that is how he presented himself in the interview. You didn't experience a detached world star, but a good-humoured person on a sabbatical "in between 2 projects". And so it was about his career path, risks he took, what he learned from mistakes, how he motivates himself and what he wants to pass on to his children.
Really a good guy and a worthy conclusion for the Shopware Community Day 2022. Afterwards we went to the after show party with many participants, where you could exchange ideas with other partner agencies and review the day over a beer. Whether all visitors have found their way out of the crooked club after the event will be seen at the latest at the SCD 2023.