Ecommerce Was Alive And Well At Shop.Org!

October 7, 2016
shop.org conference image

As a developer, it’s always an interesting experience to attend a conference catering to retailers as opposed to a conference geared towards the more technical IT crowd. Shop.org was a retailer-centric conference and it was remarkable to see just how many different tools are available to the modern-day online retailer.

For somebody like myself who is generally focused on nitty-gritty details down to the code level, Shop.org was a cool place to see where other vendors have invested time and energy. A great example is the company, CreativeDrive. Developing eCommerce applications with Magento, I often have found myself in a situation where I’m bothering somebody (clients, PMs, etc) for product images/digital assets for a site. I know this is not a simple “ask” but just the same all of the details for me have been abstracted away. At Shop.org it was interesting to see and hear CreativeDrive’s pitch that added a dose of reality into just how many systems and complexities go into providing me a set of product images!

It was also great to see that Magento continues to be a popular integration partner at the conference – the number of third-party vendors at the conference that offer integrations with Magento (and Magento 2!) was surprising and great to see. And of course, that now includes Adobe Experience Manager itself! Braintree was another notable booth and was super nice (or perhaps it’s just their great and much much-improved API that I’m currently loving and appreciating!).

Of course, shop.org isn’t Imagine (the Magento-centric conference in the spring) so there were many other eCommerce platforms represented which is always enjoyable and refreshing. I had the opportunity to talk to a number of different companies including the increasingly popular Symphony. It’s great to read these companies' documentation online, but it’s another entire experience to get a chance to chat in person!

I’m looking forward to the next opportunity to hang out with the commerce crowd!