Kalen and Willem talk about the Magento Association, whether the Magento Association brand can be used currently, the need for urgency around the website and other things, etc. Recorded on October 18, 2022
00:00 Welcome to MageTalk ep.238
01:02 Magento Swag through the MA?
07:24 Magento Branding / OS Task Force
10:59 A year ago Kalen didn't care
12:38 Magento businesses hurt with Adwords from Adobe
15:16 Is Willem prepared to walk from the MA?
22:00 What do we need from Adobe (reg. Magento brand)?
26:38 Does Adobe need the community?
28:24 Google performance metrics on Hyvä sites
35:33 MageChat updates
41:27 Giphy or Jiffy
51:52 Meet Magento Thailand coming up
55:56 MageTalk (or MageChat) meetup Madrid?
58:11 MageUnconf Austin?
1:04:56 Magento Security Patches released
[00:00:00] Willem: Welcome.
[00:00:00] Kalen: Full time is a charm. Episode number 2 38, 8. I'm Cal And Will is here forcing me to do the intro four times in a row. You know what they say the fourth time is, is a charm. How we doing
[00:00:17] Willem: T-shirts. Oh good. Which episode number was it?
[00:00:20] Kalen: 2 38. 2
[00:00:21] Willem: 38, 2 38, 2 38, almost two 40.
You're almost, uh, almost more or less 10 full days into [00:00:30] Mitch talk. Yes. You count the hours
[00:00:33] Kalen: into 40 into the reboot. You mean 10, almost 10 full days into the reboot?
[00:00:39] Willem: No, I would say season two. If once you hit 240 and you would say that more or less, the episodes are one hour, it would be kind of a milestone, I think for you.
240. That's if you take 24 hours a day, that's 10 days of podcast.
[00:00:57] Kalen: Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. 10 pure, [00:01:00] pure days. That would be kind nuts. Um, T-shirts, Let's talk Magento Association T-shirts. Um, that's a good. Or better yet, socks. Let's, let's go, let's, let's pivot this to a sock discussion, but the broader discussion.
I know there's conversations happening around branding and stuff like that. There's the, are we gonna, are we gonna be able to use the Magento brand? There was the whole Magento as Adobe Commerce thing. I don't know if we need to summarize any of these things. [00:01:30] I'm a fan of not summarizing at all. If you know, you know, if you don't, you need to pay more attention.
Um,
[00:01:37] Willem: I don't know. I like to think that people listening to this, that are not constantly on Twitter. Fair enough. I wish they were, but, uh, fair enough. The whole thing is that for a year I've been advocating for real brand citation for Magento on the Magenta Association. So I have been on this open source task force for over a [00:02:00] year, and initial goal was to plan the future of Magento, the open source product in that task force.
So we spoke on, on a whole range of subjects, including. The maintenance and ownership of the source code of Magento, but also, um, the Magento brand and a couple of other things. Whenever something happened that we weren't so happy about, we took that to the open source task force meeting because Eric iWay used to be [00:02:30] there who had a direct line into leadership, and he would tell them that, Well, this thing about certifications that you're doing is not ideal.
People are not happy about it. And then it's kind of the role that we had with band marks. And, uh, instead of taking everything to Twitter, we used to have direct line to someone that would kind of represent us inside Adobe. You felt
[00:02:54] Kalen: that you had That's a bit hard. Now somebody talks to me and that's more complicated
[00:02:57] Willem: now they listening here.
Yeah. And so [00:03:00] for the past year, I've been really pushing for magento.com to be linked to a page that. At the bare minimum doesn't say Magento is now Adobe Commerce. Right. And they've been using that tagline for, for at least a year now since the redirect to this Adobe business page. Right. And, uh, I guess we had a whole, whole episode about this.
Um, so I guess from [00:03:30] that, people should know Yeah.
[00:03:31] Kalen: And that they should be
[00:03:32] Willem: caught up. That we've been fighting for
[00:03:34] Kalen: this for a while. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's, there's so many things I wanna say, uh, on this, on this swag thing specifically. Like, I wanna start going nuts with this whole sock thing. This is gonna be my whole new thing.
So, um, can we currently, uh, I, I believe that currently we can use, when I say we, I don't know what I mean exactly by we, the association or whatever you can help me understand, [00:04:00] can there be created a, a shirt, a sock, whatever, with the Magento Association? Logo? Is that currently possible? Could you go on print full right now and do it and I could buy it right now.
[00:04:14] Willem: So my personal opinion would be, as I've brought it to the MA board, is the branding of the MA is Magenta Association with the [00:04:30] hexagon, with the Big M. So as the Magenta Association, I am 99.99% sure that you can have your own branded t-shirts, socks, or whatever with the Magenta logo because it's part of the branding of the association, right?
So if you wanted to print a t-shirt with the Adobe logo on the chest magenta association under it, that should be well within the rights of the [00:05:00] licensing that the MA has.
[00:05:01] Kalen: But what about without? What about without the Adobe logo? Just the Magento Association
[00:05:06] Willem: logo? That I don't know because I, I still haven't seen the exact licensing deal that the MA has.
Okay. So, Okay. The, the MA has limited rights to the usage of the Magento brands, so that's, that's explicitly meet Magento and Magento Association. So they're not allowed to [00:05:30] just use Magento as
[00:05:31] Kalen: a brand. Right. I understand that. I understand that. Which is something we wanna work on. I think that we want, It would be nice if eventually the Magento brand could be used by the community.
It's what? It's what we do. If they want the commercial side of things to move to Adobe Commerce, more power to you. Totally fine. Listen, if you want the entire Magento brand, if you want to gobble the entire thing up, which you, it's already, that's [00:06:00] not gonna happen because the Magento Association is its own entity.
But even if in theory you wanted to do that, at least let's just like make that decision and move forward. We will go whatever. We'll do what needs to be done. But like this whole, everything takes a year to decide is just, it's, it's um, it's death by a thousand cuts. It's like, It's managed decline. You know what I mean?
It's not that anybody wants to go kill [00:06:30] anything, it's just that, Hey guys, you know, let's, let's, let's take our time. Everything takes time. Everything. There's a process. Let's discuss. Great idea, great idea. Let's discuss that at our next meeting. Four weeks from, No, that's a great idea. Let's discuss that in q3.
So, and I get it, everybody's busy. I get it. But like, what, what I appreciate that you're injecting is the urgency and you, you also are willing to play ball. You're willing to get involved, You're willing to do [00:07:00] 500 meetings. Personally, I'm not, I, I can't, I don't have the, the temperament to do that. I'm not saying they'd want me to, if I did.
I'm just saying that you're, you're putting in the work, but you're also injecting some urgency, which I think is much needed. Um, not that you're the only one doing that, but it's part of what you're doing. So I'm all riled up about this, but there's um, what.
[00:07:25] Willem: What angers me about this situation is that I felt the [00:07:30] urgency a year ago, and I did totally not let go of this.
So totally, every, every two weeks we had a meeting at the open source desk force, and every two weeks I would ask Eric iWay, Do you have an update yet? Yep. And he got to a point where he worked out a whole site map for a magento.org website and a proposal and everything, and that didn't move anywhere.
Right. Um, I, I [00:08:00] had a meeting with their leadership. Um, everything seemed to be hanging just on the decision of one person, and we spoke to that person and it was sad that there was a branding guideline or, uh, um, yeah, brand branding guideline for Magento. The brand Magento was being worked on internally at Adobe so that they could better communicate what Magento is and separate it from Adobe Commerce.
Um, [00:08:30] little results have come from that so far. Um, but what what angers me more or less is that. I'm now continuing those discussions with eSSH, the new board member, the new Adobe liaison. Mm-hmm. at the Magenta Association. Mm-hmm. , and I'm trying to explain to him why it's so important and why it's so urgent.
Mm-hmm. and when he goes into the organization to verify [00:09:00] and he says, Okay, so apparently William says it's been worked on for 12 months. There are IDs, there's a plan, and everyone says we know nothing about this And mm-hmm. and the annoying bit is like you build up a relationship with. I, I built up a relationship with Eric.
I worked on that for 12 months, and then he leaves, and then they put someone in, in Eric's place that has no prior knowledge of the Magento community. The [00:09:30] product. The ecosystem, Yeah. Yeah. It was his very first Magento conference in New York last month for Resh. Okay. So I very much appreciate that. He's, he's putting himself in that position to learn.
He's a super nice guy. He's very willing, he's motivated. So that's all on, on a personal level. Resh is fantastic. Right. But it annoys me that Adobe chose to put a [00:10:00] person without prior knowledge in that position, which feels to me like they're purposefully sending us back 12 months so that we have to restart the whole discussion about the Magento branding thing,
[00:10:12] Kalen: and, and it's.
And it, and it's like whether it's purposeful or not, the result is the same. So like sometimes we get into this, this, this debate, is Magento trying to kill or is Adobe trying to kill Magento? Is are they doing something purposeful? And it's [00:10:30] like, at the end of the day, there's no way of knowing if it's personal or not.
But the point is, and this is something I hear repeatedly, is that you, you had a point of somebody had a point of contact. That point of contact is now gone. Turnover does happen, but, but there's somebody in the place now who is not at all familiar with any of the history of the situation or the community or whatever.
And which happens, I mean, it happens, but like, Yeah. So that, that makes sense. And like, so [00:11:00] I, I got into a, a, a little bit of a LinkedIn thread with Slava on his, on his post that he posted recently. And the gist of his post was, um, you know, there's progress happening, there's things happening, there's things moving forward with the pull request thing, da da da da.
And my thing was like, my response was, and I think up until now I've been hesitant to be real vocal about this publicly because, to be quite honest, a year ago you were putting on this work a year ago, I don't even think I [00:11:30] cared to be totally honest with you. I had gotten, and a lot of people go through this, You got me to care again, like you and other, other others.
I'm gonna just say you, I don't care if it bothers you, you got me to care again. And so, um, I care now and, and, um, and so, but my point is, is that, um, there is this thing of like, well, let's take time. And it's like, we need some urgency on this stuff. Like I, I, I know that [00:12:00] not everything can happen overnight.
Adobe's a big business. They have business interests. That's fine. Look, I, I think about business stuff all the time. Most of the developers, open source developers, they think of me as the marketing douche guy. So I can put my head in that. Place of how can we serve their business interests while serving our interests, and how can we speed this shit up a little bit, you know?
Um, is
[00:12:28] Willem: is kind of my, Yeah. Cause the, [00:12:30] the, the reason why I care so much about this, and I don't know how much this flows in, this overlaps with what we said in the previous episode, but we hear that businesses are really hurting right now because the Magental brand is not being marketed. There's like, there's no brand representation for Magental, and they can.
Keep the platform as healthy as they want. They can put technical doc, uh, technical [00:13:00] documentation somewhere, uh, they can, they can keep releasing security updates. But as long as a merchant, Google's Magento and the thing that they find is now a top one Google ad position for Magento is now Adobe Commerce.
So if you Google Magento anywhere around the world, Adobe bought the number one position and it says Magento is dead. It's now Adobe Commerce. And [00:13:30] those advertising positions used to be, um, taken by extension providers and hosting providers, and they're still there, but they, their advertisement is right below Adobe's advertisement that says Magenta no longer exists.
So we hear from extension providers that they are losing business. Today. Like they see that the revenue, the revenue from Edwards [00:14:00] is going down because Adobe is purposefully advertising. If use Google Magento, it shows Adobe Commerce. So not just on the, on the, on the Adobe website, but also in Google where the merchants are to search.
Yeah. And that feels so purposeful. That feels like it's really a kick in a nuts. Like I go there with all of my, I go into these meetings with Adobe people, throw all of my passion in there [00:14:30] and I say, People, you need to help us because you're hurting us. Yeah. And instead of saying, Well, we're gonna relieve you, we're gonna like take off the pressure, they double down on their efforts.
Yeah. Then what am I to believe of the fact that they say they want to help
[00:14:47] Kalen: us? I mean, yeah. So it's, it's, um, yeah, I, it's, we gotta move, we gotta figure out how to get things to move more quickly [00:15:00] there. Um, were some, I was able to start talking a little more specifics with, um, Slava in, uh, ma chat, which I obviously, I'm not gonna mention any specifics.
Um, I'm not gonna get into any of that, but, um, If we need to speed things up is the bottom line. Like, I don't know what happened. Yeah. I don't know if you can talk about what happened in the last meeting. You had obviously tweeted about the fact that you were getting ready to bounce. You did, You didn't tweet that you bounced and I [00:15:30] think a meeting occurred.
Yeah. So yeah,
[00:15:32] Willem: so I, it's maybe good to, to, um, tell a little bit more about that. So I got, I , I Rich tweeted a year ago, if this situation doesn't change, I'm gonna stop collaborating with the association and all of this open source desk or stuff because I put a lot of time in those meetings, um, and, and trying to communicate them to get things better.
Did you say you did that a
[00:15:57] Kalen: year ago? You did that
[00:15:58] Willem: a year? I tweeted that the [00:16:00] first time a year ago when the redactive magenta.com to a business. Uh, website. Okay. Um, and last week before the board meeting, I just came out of an open source D force meeting where I was expecting an update from Redash on a magenta.com thing and on the, uh, the, the voting board for merge request and such.
Um, and, and no one showed up, like it was only [00:16:30] me, Phai and Stan Love, I think, and someone from, uh, from Smid Blocklin, uh, to, uh, to, um, guide, guide the me the meeting itself. So, . I was like, Oh, I, I emphasize that. I really feel like we now need to move things forward. And then I, I got out of a empty meeting, , we quit the meeting after five minutes because [00:17:00] there was no show.
So I was just angry as like, Okay, so next, first day on the board meeting, I, I wanna hear Unup updates from Adobe on a Magen magenta branding thing. Mm-hmm. And it doesn't, it doesn't need to, I didn't need a full answer like, Okay, we're gonna do this next month or whatever, but just an update. And not every time I ask, it's, Yeah, let me check.
Yeah. I haven't heard anything yet because that's just stalling month after month after [00:17:30] month. And after, after 12 months, , I just got kind of done with it. Mm-hmm. . I am willing to walk away from the MA if we, if we don't achieve anything with Adobe on the branding thing because mm-hmm. , I really believe the association is, its biggest value that it has right now is that it can represent the Magental brand towards merchants and [00:18:00] agencies and the whole ecosystem.
Mm-hmm. , and if that is at risk is, if Adobe is so clearly trying to erase the Magental brand, then the association, uh, Barley has any right of existence like then, then yeah, they lose the purpose that they have. And I'm not gonna pour all of my energy into the ma if we don't get like the, the one big requirement is that we can work with the Magento [00:18:30] brand and if they take that away from us, if they're devaluating the brand so hard, um, then we need a new brand.
And that would mean I would put all of my focus on MAs or another form of, Of moving . Yeah, Moving magenta forward. And it's still like we will have the Magento platform for at least five years to come. Adobe will keep supporting the codes, um, to [00:19:00] whatever extent, but at least we can work with them. The platform is in a great place.
Like it's better than it it's ever been technically. Um, but. We need more than that to, to pave our ways into the future, beyond the next three to five years. Yeah. And our mission differs so much from Adobe's mission. What we, we wanna continue with the monolith, so that means we wanna keep it healthy, we wanna do maintenance, we wanna remove stuff, we wanna build new [00:19:30] features and, and really have that platform flourish.
Right. And Adobe rightfully has other plans. They have a feature stop on the code base, which is totally fine, but we just need to be able to move forward with that. Yeah. It's which like that we need to be able to use the Magental brand, otherwise we need to focus on other
[00:19:50] Kalen: things. Yeah. So Yeah. Totally. And, and it's like, it, it's like, yeah.
Even if, and things just need to [00:20:00] move a little. I know that I'm biased because I've never run a company bigger than one person. It's, it's, I tend to oversimplify things. You're much more moderate than I am, but, um, uh, we gotta speed this up, dude. We got to, I'd be happy to talk in my slack. We could, You guys can talk in a, but it talk wherever you want to talk, But it, it, we, this whole waited another month to continue a conversation that already should have [00:20:30] been concluded 12 months ago.
Is not, that ain't, that's not gonna work. Like it would be one
[00:20:36] Willem: thing to, to be, It has to be a plan. I just, one thing
[00:20:39] Kalen: share. Yeah. I say I a tactic is . Sorry. If you wanna think of these monthly meetings were super productive. A lot got done. Everything was, you know, like a lot of stuff got done from month to month.
But that's not the case. Like, so, So anyway, you're saying you just want them to share what the tactic. . [00:21:00]
[00:21:01] Willem: Yeah. So, um, I don't necessarily need to see that change next month. I, I do feel that we need to be taken serious as the Magento station bought, Adobe created the association to be the, the, um, to be the bridge between the community and Adobe.
And if they're just using it to take all of the energy out of the community and to take [00:21:30] the wind out of our sales, then the ma has, there's too much, uh, bureaucracy, there's too much processes, there's too much that we need to constantly wait Adobe's approval on that, that we can't move forward. And if they don't, if they don't allow us to do more, then, then I, it's, uh, just poisonous, bring me energies.
Just, it's, it's, uh, sucking all of the energy out of our
[00:21:59] Kalen: [00:22:00] initiatives. And, and another thing that, um, that, that Slava said in the public, in the LinkedIn thread was that, you know, he said that what needs, you know, the work that needs to happen is around creating proposals that get into the specifics on how things can be done that meet Adobe's business objectives and things like that.
And my thing is, and I mean, what again, what you described, you, you, you like, and it's funny because I was trying to loop you into this and stuff, and [00:22:30] now I have more context on this. It's like, like, dude, I have been, do I, we, I ma you mapped out the site map with Eric, or you worked with him on, and now he's gone.
And then that whole thing essentially disappeared. So it. I agree. Like, and I know you keep collaborating. Yeah. And, and I know it's easy for me to criticize stuff that I, I haven't, and I know Slava and others have put a lot of time in, um, to this kind of stuff. And I feel bad criticizing when somebody's put hundreds of hours into [00:23:00] something.
But it's like when you say, proposals need to be made, da da da da, da, okay, fine. But if, if, if we're sinking all these proposal, all this proposal time into a black hole that isn't being addressed, whether it's a prioritization issue, whether it's a, this just isn't a very big priority for them. Whatever the reason is, the results is the same.
You know, I can find the people. [00:23:30] Figure out the details. You can figure out the details on the proposals. That's not hard. We
[00:23:34] Willem: know who can, we've address. The, the biggest issue we, we've addressed the fact that their main slogan magenta doesn't exist anymore. That that's critical. That it changes fast. All the other things can take time.
Um, they can work on whatever message they want. They don't even need to put up a whole Magento page. And I understand they're not, where they don't wanna sell [00:24:00] Magento because it's not a product they can sell. It's, it's for free . So agree with that too. I understand. I agree. So that's not an issue. But um, as you said, like we can keep writing plans, we can keep giving them input, but as long as they end up nowhere , uh, it's, it, yeah, it's really a waste of energy.
And it's not like if I go and write some copy. Do you [00:24:30] imagine the marketing team at Adobe Copy and pasting that into their website? What I come up with never. That's, that's not gonna happen. So
[00:24:40] Kalen: that's not gonna
[00:24:41] Willem: happen. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. And, and, uh, I'm happy. Um, John, John Baxendale is taking a, a bigger role in communicating towards the, the Magento community.
Mm-hmm. , I think he's, he's from the uk but works from, uh, from Spain. He's Barcelona, I [00:25:00] think. Yeah. Yeah. Um, which is in Spain. , he, um, Correct. He's, he is, he's, uh, responding to more of these Twitter FRAs about, uh, uh, trying to get an alignment internally and, and respectfully he's the, at least the 10th person to say, I'm gonna, Uh, internally and see what's happening a percent.
And I appreciate all of those people trying to achieve something. Um, but yeah, he said Adobe is a [00:25:30] 1200 plus person company. Um, of course there's many, many islands, many silos, but it kind of feels like there has to be one person that has enough, um, enough say in strategy that can just pull the trigger and say, Okay, I'm gonna send one internal email to everyone involved, and I'm gonna tell them we need to stop communicating this one slogan [00:26:00] today.
And someone, it, You can't tell me that it's not one person that has that authority, even though it's not, it's not their department. Even though it's maybe a product owner or someone in marketing, someone in sales or yeah, whatever, whatever silo. There has to be some communication between those silos and someone that can say, Hey, we really need to stop doing this because we're killing the ecosystem and we need this ecosystem [00:26:30] for the next five years at least.
Um, because yeah, it's just, it's hurting business. I don't, and
[00:26:39] Kalen: I don't, It's an interesting way that you phrased that they need it. I don't know whether they need it or not. I think you could probably make an argument that they don't at all need the open source side of things. That doesn't change our position on the fact that it's important to us and we're gonna push for it and advocate for it and for us.[00:27:00]
That are in that community. It's, it's, it's our whole thing. But they may or may not need it and that may be the reason. It's just not a priority.
[00:27:10] Willem: I think there's at least one reason why they would very much like to keep the community an ecosystem around. And that's the magic quadrants from Gartner.
Mm-hmm. Um, they are in a really sweet spot on that quadrant. Mm-hmm. . And that's one of the [00:27:30] reasons is that they both have their composable commerce pass offering. Mm-hmm. with microservices, but also open source, community and ecosystem. All of that combines, puts them on the right top corner of the magic quadrants.
And I'm pretty sure that alone is enough reason to work with the community and, and makes sense. Keep around. That makes sense. [00:28:00] And beside that, that's just there, That's still enormous markets and enormous Adobe commerce market that works with the monolith and this platform. And they were, I wanna believe, to do that
[00:28:13] Kalen: for many years.
I mean, I wanna believe that they need it and, and those are some good arguments. Um, but, um, all right, let's move on to happier topics, man. Do we have any, do we have any good vibes? Hashtag good vibes only. Uh, we're, it
[00:28:28] Willem: depends. Like, [00:28:30] I, I definitely had something to celebrate this week, but, uh, um, is it happy vibes for everyone?
I don't know. I don't know. No. I think we should talk about if we sat over chat as we sat over chat. Um, one, one person's celebration is another person's . How another person's, What's Grace for that? Yeah. Um, yeah, no, we were
[00:28:58] Kalen: happy. You had some good [00:29:00] numbers. Yeah.
[00:29:01] Willem: Yeah, we, So I got forwarded a, a report, a graph that, um, allows you to list performance, uh, Google performance, uh, for any given technology or platform.
And, um, I put Hova net graph along with some other front ends from Magento. And, uh, we did about 20 times better than other front [00:29:30] ends. That's great. Um, on, on, uh, Lighthouse performance and on, uh, core web vitals. So on Lighthouse performance, we score 20, 20 times higher than PWS Studio. Um, and that's, that's on real stores that are.
Live today. And of course right there was a lot of, like, it started a discussion like numbers without context don't really mean anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Some, some [00:30:00] other platforms have much, much more numbers, um, much more live stores that have been analyzed by Google in that report. Um, but for us, we have, as you know, almost a thousand stores live.
Um, about 400 something were analyzed in this report. So, uh, it shows half, let's say more or less, half of the stores that we have live.
[00:30:26] Kalen: And you don't have any control over what it picks. It's just [00:30:30] magically
[00:30:30] Willem: picking. I have zero control. I don't understand what he didn't do more. Yeah, because it uses izer, which is something like built with it's online statistic side that shows you how many stores are live.
So, uh, Izer is from Google, or at least it, um, it, it's, uh, they work together with Google. Um, Alan Can is someone somewhat, uh, involved there who used to be Magento architect. Oh, that's cool. [00:31:00] But, uh, they have, you can see a Weizer if you go there, does 980 Hova stores right now, I think that they have in a database, yet they only scant half of those.
Mm-hmm. . Same goes for PS studio. This can't have of it. And for other platforms it was also a lower, a lower amount. So, um, that's, um, that's strange. That's pretty awesome. Um, but yeah, we're, we, were very happy about that because we, we know that we see the sites that go live, we see the high scores. We [00:31:30] see, of course, also stores that still score 20 or even lower in, in lighthouse out of, out of a hundred.
But, um, you can do that with, with any web. Yeah. At Google Tech Manager and a chat bot and done tracking pixels. And you're there
[00:31:46] Kalen: and you've, and you've been battling this mindset that PW equals fast, monolith equals slow, non pw equals slow. Like that sort of mindset or that sort of oversimplification. So seeing this completely [00:32:00] objective and st.
Everybody, I mean, there's lies, damn lies and statistics. So statistics can always be argued, data can always be argued. If I was in the wrong place on a graph, I would have thoughts about why. I was in the wrong place on the graph. That's, that's always gonna happen. But it's,
[00:32:16] Willem: the argument is you can build a quick pwa.
That's, that's possible, but it's so much harder, especially if, uh, a front end, like PW Studio currently scores 24 points out of the box in Lighthouse. Out of a [00:32:30] hundred, we score 99 to a hundred. So the, the starting points. with with Hova looks a lot better. And it's up to you to mess it up and bring that score down.
Yeah. And sometimes the implementation just is so complicated that you can't get around the fact that you'll drop down to 25. Yeah. But if you're working with PW Studio, you can still achieve high scores, but it's so much [00:33:00] harder because right out of the box, you already need to push to increase it from 24.
[00:33:06] Kalen: Right. Green service. And, and, and by the way, the, the PWA Studio thing is not even as impressive because I think not most of us assume that's the case. The thing that I'll mention that I know you're not gonna mention is that you are also beating view storefront by good margin. And the only reason I'm gonna bring that up is cuz we're actually having Philip and Bartek on the pod next week.
So they'll gonna be nice. Uh, that'll be fun. We, I mean, [00:33:30] we like, it'll just be, it'll, it'll be a blast. I love those guys. We all love every, we're all like friends and, and uh, and they had, and he had on Twitter, he replied some reasons for different versions, older version numbers, whatever. So I'm sure that might, that might, um, come up a little bit, but that's gonna be a lot of fun.
I'm looking forward to seeing them in Madrid as well. And I'm a gigantic fan of, of view storefront, uh, as well. But the fact that you were doing that was, to me, what was a bit of a shocker. [00:34:00] Um, without being very familiar with, uh, all of the, um, details of, of the, the core web bottles, all that kind of stuff.
I was like, I was like, damn. Like, you're like, uh, uh, ahead of them by a good margin. Um, so, uh, so yeah, man. Congrats. Congrats. Good stuff. Thank you.
[00:34:16] Willem: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's some, it's interesting just to see what on average, um, it, it doesn't mean that any Hoover site [00:34:30] scores that high. It still depends on the implementation, but it does show that on average people achieve it easier with Hova because so many stores, um, I think we had 40% pass core web vitals.
Um, which could be, which should be a lot higher still if we, if we help our customers and ate them better and, and help them fix things. But sometimes it's just, [00:35:00] there's no budget or the knowledge is not in house and immersion doesn't care, doesn't wanna pay for it. So you throw in a couple of functionalities that bring the score down.
The merchant puts a video on the homepage, which brings the score down. , mm-hmm. by 40 points. Mm-hmm. . So there's, there's just no helping, um, bringing, bringing the scores, uh, of keeping the scores up. Um, but yeah, it's, it's a good indication that people are having that success with, with who are on average.
Yeah.
[00:35:29] Kalen: Yeah. [00:35:30] It's awesome, man.
[00:35:32] Willem: Very cool. So how are things going with your, uh, new venture?
[00:35:36] Kalen: Ah, I was hoping you'd ask, I was hoping you'd ask. Um, going, well, I'm up to, um, a hundred and like, uh, I'm not gonna open it up. I always close all my windows down to keep the windows to a minimum. I'm, I'm up to take a hundred and, uh, 10 paid seats or so, um, which is pretty cool.
Um, I'm getting close to the, um, [00:36:00] basically it's the full, the full-time income mark for me, which is, which is, which is cool. And, uh, but more importantly than that, like I think I see the conversations. Uh, I, I, I see the engagement, um, ticking up. There's just, um, there's a, it just feels like, um, there's good conversations happening.
Both technical stuff, fun stuff, socializing stuff, [00:36:30] job stuff. Um, I, um, Uh, yeah. So, uh, I, I, I keep rolling out new things, so I ro i, I added like a job section, a candidate section. I've been kind of recreating some of the commerce hero stuff under this kind of different model. No referral fees. Um, I, I had somebody ask about, um, like listing a, a business for sale, um, which, um, has something else that I've kind of toyed with in the past because people would tell me like, Oh, I'm, I'm [00:37:00] thinking about selling my business, or I'm looking to buy a business, and I would do a LinkedIn post about it.
So I just formalized that with a section on the site. Um, and, um, uh, somebody who happened to be a Dutch agency owner, um, was posted their thing and so I got them. I've already gotten them like three intros, which has been kind of cool. Um, no, again, no referral fees on that either. It's all, I really like this about the model.
everything's just baked into the membership fee. [00:37:30] And I don't, I can do every job stuff, e e, everything without any other fees, which, you know, that was the commerce hero model, which was cool, but it just kind of, it just sort of limits a little bit what you can do and it limits the amount of value that is can be exchanged.
Um, so anyways, so it's, it's uh, it's been fun to have you involved because you have a lot of stuff going on. You know what I mean? When I see you and I see Vanai, cuz I think initially you were like the second [00:38:00] person to be like, All right, man, here's a hun, you know, here's a hundred bucks to do your thing.
And there was, it was just a dream, you know? And now there's more social proof and stuff and, and you've got a million things going on. But seeing you, it's like a blank check in there, .
[00:38:16] Willem: Yeah, but I wrote you blank check. It's like, do figure, figure something out. But,
[00:38:23] Kalen: but seeing you, and I think you saw that I was getting excited about the community and you wanted to encourage that and I, I, I, [00:38:30] I think it's, I think it's hopefully doing that and, um, and I, one of the things I hear from a lot of people is that we all are kind of nostalgic for the past where everybody was excited about the Magento community and there's people that we would talk to and interact with who have mo maybe moved on, um, to other platforms or other things.
Um, and so getting everybody to kind of just be together in one place is just kind of fun. Um, and so, uh, yeah, so it's, um, yeah, so, but it's cool seeing [00:39:00] you and Vanni in there and, um, you know, getting more active and stuff like that. And, and so, um, yeah, man, . Pretty
[00:39:08] Willem: exciting. Yeah. You got in some, some, uh, old school community, ex magenta community members, uh, report, which is nice.
It already brings kind of the, the meat commerce vibe that expect you to
[00:39:22] Kalen: have. Yeah. Like I talked to, uh, uh, for Beato Bronca, uh, because we've, we've stayed in touch over [00:39:30] the years. Just, just, you know, talking on the phone every once in a while and he's doing DevOps, AWS stuff, you know, he hasn't been doing gentle stuff for a while, but I said, Hey, you know, and that's part of the strategy with the, with the community is that obviously there's a gigantic portion of it that's Magento specific, but if somebody's into DevOps, you know, we're all working on similar things.
With DevOps, you can discuss that. If somebody's into another platform, you can, We've got channels, so we break out different channels for things. And so, um, you know, he [00:40:00] hasn't been super involved in the Slack, but I, what I try to do is I try to figure out what people are interested in and how can. How can I pull them in?
You know, I talked to Alan
[00:40:09] Willem: McGregor, he might be reading, He might be just absorbing Yeah. And, uh, enjoying all of the gies.
[00:40:15] Kalen: Yeah. But, uh, he, I got him, you know, he posted to General and, you know, and so that was cool. And I talked to Alan McGregor, He's working for an HR company, a company that does HR tech and um, and stuff like that.
But I said, Hey, let's see if, I'd love to see
[00:40:29] Willem: his social [00:40:30] media. Like, um, he's, he's like a full on farmer now. It's, and hes all his videos of
[00:40:36] Kalen: his, It's so cool. Yeah. He has
[00:40:39] Willem: a literal farm. Whole came down and, and
[00:40:43] Kalen: it's crazy. Like he has animals. He bought a farm. He lives out or he, I think he mostly lives out there.
It's, which is something I've wanted to do. Like I, I'll see videos of that stuff and I've talked to my wife about, It's Canada, right where he is. It's Canada. Yeah. Yeah. Um, [00:41:00] which is totally cool. And so, like for example, He's interested in Elixir, which is some language, and there's another guy in the Slack, a Magento guy who's super into Elixir.
He's like obsessed with it. So I created a channel for them, you know, and maybe that'll, you know, grow, but it's that idea of like, what are our different interest groups and how can we get people into groups to talk about stuff they're into? Um, so yeah, man,
[00:41:28] Willem: that's the status. Important [00:41:30] question. Do you say Giffy or Jiffy?
[00:41:34] Kalen: Oh, Giffy. Come on dude. Let's g Let's not even, Okay. Yeah. I'm not a Giff guy. Are you? You're not a Jiff guy, are
[00:41:41] Willem: you? No, no, I'm Dutch because, So we have a, Oh, okay. I is grungy with us owning it.
[00:41:53] Kalen: So is that how you say it? You say like,
[00:41:56] Willem: No, we would say, uh, Giffy or gif. [00:42:00] Okay, good, good, good. And Dutch you would say if you,
[00:42:06] Kalen: Yeah, I keep thinking about how you said it would be cool if I could understand you in Dutch, because you're even more obviously like fluent and witty in Dutch, which I, I have a hard time imagining that cuz you're pretty witty and fluent in English, but you're like, Bro, it's, I'm on a whole other level in Dutch you don't even
[00:42:26] Willem: understand.
Well it's just, you can't, you can't [00:42:30] make the same level of linguistic joke like, like word jokes. Yeah. With double meaning and, and, uh, it's just, um, it still feels, even though English is, I think in English, like I had whole phases Finland, where I, I spoke so much English that I, I noticed that I started to think in English as well.
Mm-hmm. now with my work is also mostly because Phai is in our team, so we speak English all the time. Mm-hmm. . So I [00:43:00] feel my vocabulary is okay. And I've, I've learned, especially in Finland, we all learn to not stay stuck on finding the right word for something. Like, I wouldn't know how you call the water around the castle.
Mm-hmm. . And in a story I would say the water around a castle instead of getting stuck on the work for that moat. Mm-hmm. Moat. Moat. Yeah. Okay. I wouldn't, I wouldn't know. And it, it [00:43:30] takes some time until you can, like, you make the switch and just talk without thinking about the words that you're using.
Mm-hmm. . Um, but it's, yeah, it feels different. Like if I listen to podcast also between you and Philip, uh, the old, the, the older ones, it's like you have a different, different rhythm if you're making jokes in your own language and, uh mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . It's, um, so yeah, I hear you. Yeah. That, that does feel a bit like a mess.
Like if I, um, uh, [00:44:00] if I would have these conversations in Dutch, I will be quicker in my responses.
[00:44:05] Kalen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you. I hear you a
[00:44:07] Willem: bit shopper
[00:44:08] Kalen: probably. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm in Spanish, I'm not as fluent in Spanish as you are in English, but I, if I practice a lot, I get pretty close and I can make jokes.
Like, like it took me, I don't know, 12 years of learning Spanish before I made a joke and somebody actually laughed. Like, that's a huge milestone in a language. But [00:44:30] still, even if I'm at my peak level fluency and I've been speaking it for a month straight, I'm still not, I'm still, I'm, I'm still maybe only 80% of the way there of fluency with, with somebody who's a native speaker, um mm-hmm.
So yeah. It's, it's, it's tough to get that,
[00:44:49] Willem: like total. Yeah. It's, especially once, once you, you get into topics that you. talk about on a daily basis. Mm-hmm. , then you start to need different [00:45:00] vocabulary than what you're accustomed to. Yeah. And it's often as soon as it gets really personal or emotional. And then, I mean, if you get into a fight with someone or someone is angry at you and you're trying to explain, I've had more than one occasion where I had a Twitter DM fight with someone where I, I was trying to deescalate, and the more I [00:45:30] wrote, the anger the other person became, and it's like, no, no, no.
Don't to prep that like that. I don't mean no. All that came. I'm entirely wrong, Like I'm just missing the right words. And yeah, in the end, um, in the end it took, uh, it took two or three days for that person to call Cool off, and then read back. And then like it, it's like you can read a message with the intent and if you agree to think that the other person means [00:46:00] best, you can.
messages differently than what you, You think they're being Totally, I know. Yeah. If they're being
[00:46:06] Kalen: ours, . Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then sometimes you'll read something, interpret it one way, and then you'll go back and read it and you'll go, Oh, . And then you'll interpret it like totally differently.
[00:46:19] Willem: Yeah. Um, yeah, that's where emojis and Gies I are really, gies are such a, I like half of the time I communicate with my mother and [00:46:30] Gies because it's like, do you really, It gets you the exact Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like on what? I use it everywhere. Like also WhatsApp, a lot of my communication and gies because they can strike the exact, Right. Yeah. Like you can be kind of, You can be a jerk without really saying the words or like, just like some make it funny, but still like giving, giving
[00:46:53] Kalen: someone critique. Yeah. The right subtlety to it.
Yeah. It's really, it's kind of a new, I mean, gifts are kind [00:47:00] of like memes. Gifts are, are kind of a new form of communication almost, I think. Um, or a new, um, medium, you know. Um, but it's funny because you posted one, uh, yesterday and then I was like, on Twitter was like, How much time do you spend looking for these?
And when he said that it occurred to me, it was like, cuz everybody uses gifts, right? It's universal, but a lot of times, like, like I'll use the same ones over and over, but like, you're [00:47:30] pretty go, like you, you post like, pretty good unique ones. , like, you're pretty good at it. Uh, which is, which is kind of go.
[00:47:43] Willem: What I hate is that if you use gfe and Slack, it always shows what search terms you used Uhhuh. And I kind of like the magic of like, if you do it on Twitter or WhatsApp, it just shows the gfe. Yeah. And it doesn't show like what level of creativity you use [00:48:00] to search. But it's true, like so often I find like the, the exact right one and then I already know like what giffy I'm looking for.
Yeah. And uh, the one yesterday with the, the, the two boys uh, partying, the, the two goofy boys. Um,
[00:48:20] Kalen: I Do you have your socks on? I, we haven't, we haven't seen your socks cuz we were gonna both Yeah, we've . Yeah. We've both [00:48:30] got
[00:48:30] Willem: this sock.
[00:48:34] Kalen: I love it. Yeah, I love it.
[00:48:35] Willem: Had to get that in frame. First time I made orange, uh, swag. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're just listening, we have orange socks that has a particular logo on it. Um, Yeah. Repeat logo. . That's fine. Adobe logo. Yeah. .
[00:48:52] Kalen: It'll be funny.
[00:48:54] Willem: Um, yeah. But I admit sometimes, yeah, I spent too much time on finding the right [00:49:00] gift sometimes.
Like, it can literally take me half an hour. . Um, I'm, I'm in the kitchen. I'm, I'm cooking and just quickly finding a response. And a rice is like, Uh, becoming buggy. . This is so ruin ruining dinner. And my wife comes in and she looks at me like, Oh, he's on his phone again. And, uh, it's like, Yeah, I'm just writing a quick response.
[00:49:26] Kalen: Yeah. It, it, um, that's actually, that's, that's, that [00:49:30] makes me like, it's like I as, as the, as the CEO of your company, all the stuff you're doing, like I want you to have a certain amount of your but time budgeted towards the right gift. Like, there's something about that that just feels right, but we do
[00:49:43] Willem: gotta get you, It's so much more important than getting on new website live.
Like Yeah. Which I'm you
[00:49:48] Kalen: pushing for 12 months. Um, I, um, and I think when I was 30, Are you 30 or 33? How old are you? 30. 36. [00:50:00] Oh, my bad. My bad. My bad, My bad. When I was 30. Uh, yeah, I think when I, Yeah. I think any point is, um, I was really glued to the phone. Um, and it's every, it's hard not to be, but we gotta get you to, to, to unplug a little bit during the family time.
Sometimes I see you doing stuff late and I'm going like, You gotta, you gotta gotta unplug, you know, relax. It's hard and you do it a lot and,
[00:50:28] Willem: well, we're, we're [00:50:30] selling in and we're, we're selling in, in different time zones. 40 total 48 countries. Yep. We have support in Slack that sometimes calls my attention.
Yep. And I'm managing four Twitter
[00:50:42] Kalen: accounts. Yeah, no, I know. It's a lot. It's a. And part of me is glad that you're overworking yourself because it means good things for the community. . But
[00:50:56] Willem: yeah, and it's like now I have so many roles [00:51:00] to play and I really try to strictly separate them. And I I also try here not to, not to make this like, this is Mitch talk and this is for me, this is time to, um, to talk about the Magento community. Yep. And, uh, and try to, Yeah. I'm not strictly separating it.
From Hiva, uh, because Hiva was live, but , Yeah. But, um, I do try to make this valuable for the Magento community as a whole. Um, [00:51:30] so when you give me access to the Mitch Talk Twitter account, I really look for things that are relevant for Mitch talk to tweet. Yep. Same from hos. Same for ho, same for my personal.
So I really split that out.
[00:51:44] Kalen: Yep, Yep. I, I,
[00:51:46] Willem: But yeah, it's quite intense, uh, the notifications .
[00:51:51] Kalen: Yeah. Um, Yeah. No, no, no. I get it. Um, and by the way, I wanted to, um, um, I actually added events to the website recently. I [00:52:00] wanna start making a kind of a, a nice central events location. And I know you had Cool. Been wanting to talk event Magento community events.
One of the things I noticed meet Magento, Thailand is coming up November 3rd. And, um, I noticed that the website, there's not a lot of detail when I Googled it. Cause I was trying to find like a description I was trying to find. Um, so there's a kind of a bullet list of speakers on the Magento Association [00:52:30] website.
Um, but it looks a little thin as far as the information. So that was just something I wanted to mention to be, I, I wanna try to connect with some of, actually, I tried to connect with, uh, Eddie Tang yesterday, uh mm-hmm. , uh, who's listed on there. Um, and so I wanted to kind of connect and, you know, just kind of mention that and stuff.
But, um,
[00:52:52] Willem: Yeah, I love's the amount of events that, that the Asian region is, uh, is throwing. Uh, they're [00:53:00] on top of it, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think they have by far the most events, uh,
[00:53:04] Kalen: worldwide this year. Dude, I, I talked to, uh, Moti, uh, uh, Geo, who is at, uh, in, in Indonesia and runs a, a good si, a very good sized agency out there, and who I think, I want to say organizes meet Magento.
Mm-hmm. Indonesia, he also, I think, has attended Meet Magento, Singapore. Dude Singapore is on my list of places I've, [00:53:30] I'm dying to go, so we might have to go, we might have to go to Singapore at some point together. That would be kind of dope. But, um, but Mu dude Muti was in our, our first agency owners, uh, private, uh, uh, hangout session, made chat session.
And he, he was talking a little bit about some of the way they structures things. dude, the, he's, he's, they have a solid, um, agency and, um, I can't remember why I started talking. Oh yeah. But ba yeah, but events in Asia, um, [00:54:00] they're, they got, they got a lot, they got a lot of stuff going on. And, and you know, it's interesting because like, one of the pieces of feedback I heard from somebody was on, on the association was that, People want to get more people involved in the, in the community and different things that, that are, you know, that, um, are not as, like, not the same people that you always see doing everything kind of a thing.
Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . And, um, you know, it's interesting because I don't know a ton of people in Asia, right? [00:54:30] Like, I don't know a ton of them personally. Um, and, uh, you know, the ones who come to the US events like Moti for example, was in New York. Mm-hmm. , obviously you get connected that way. Um, but it's interesting that you mentioned that they have a ton of events.
They, there's a lot going on there. Um, and I don't personally know a ton of them, so it'd be cool to just kind of increase the interconnectedness of,
[00:54:54] Willem: um, Absolutely. People, I'm starting to learn more and more p uh, get to know more and more [00:55:00] people in that region through, through h of course. It would be fantastic to, to be able to, to travel there next year to one of those events.
Um, but yeah. Um, , I have a family with a young child. Yeah, no, I know. I know, I know. So it's, um, I can't go to all of the events already feel like I've, I've never been to so many events as this year.
[00:55:25] Kalen: Yeah,
[00:55:25] Willem: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's, um, [00:55:30] it's, it costs quite a bit of energy as well. Like to recover from New York.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uk But that's also, I mean, the way that I'm going there now is to, to be part of the event and, and have a respons booth and speaking Yeah. And all of that. And, and then you want to go and throw meetups the day before and after . So tell me, it's funny, are you, are you doing a meetup at Madrid?
At Mid [00:56:00] Commerce,
[00:56:00] Kalen: So, Okay. Well, You know, I, I don't know if you want to make it a ma talk one, but, um, I know you got a lot. We, we've taken the wives out there. We're gonna do some per, you know, each of us separately are gonna do some non non-work stuff. Um, but I sort of was defaulting to let's do another ma talk meetup, you know, But I don't know whether, But then somebody asked me yesterday, like, I had been getting ma chat members out to Madrid.
I, there's coupon, I've got coupon codes and stuff, [00:56:30] so it might make sense to make it a, a ma chat meetup. That'd be kind of cool. I could buy all the members of beer. That'd be kind of fun. But, um, we could also make it a ma talk that feels kind of cool too. So I have, I haven't decided yet, yet, ,
[00:56:45] Willem: but, um, yeah, it's, for me, it's gonna depend a little bit how many days I'll have it moderate.
If it's, if it's like two or three days Yeah. Then it's gonna be tight. Um, if, if we, if we have four or five days, then I'll definitely be there. Yeah. I will [00:57:00] help you organize it. Uh, regardless. So, uh, yeah, and I, I won't be alone there from the HO team, so, uh, we can, you can always ask son to arrange you a venue
[00:57:12] Kalen: She's so good at that. So I, I've, I've been going crazy with these events. I organized the meetup in Austin last week. How was that? Yeah, it, it was pretty good. Eric was there. Um, it was, mm-hmm. , It was a blast. Dave McCauley was there a bunch of people, Magen ex Magento, Chuck, Chuck [00:57:30] Lou, and a bunch of people.
And, uh, there was about probably 10 or 11 people. And dude, it was just fun, man. It was super chill. Um, you know, but I'm, I'm really bad at the whole organizational piece, finding the venue, calling the venue. Picking the venue. I had picked this one place and my buddy Jonathan, um, we went there together to check it out and we were like, eh, we need to pick another place.
And so it was cool, but what I, what [00:58:00] I, I think the sweet spot for me is if I can just post about, if I can try to get people to go and not have to do any of the actual organizing. I think that I was also going, like I was hearing about the UN-conference in Germany. I was like, we gotta do an UN-conference in Austin.
And so I tweeted about that the other day. Brent, uh, did an UN-conference in, um, Florida. So Brent I think is interested, um, in that and if I can [00:58:30] just post about it, um, and maybe do some outreach to get people going, that would be ideal. Um, But Bradon wants to turn it into a big commerce thing, which, uh, listen, I'm not as, uh, I'm not, I'm more, I'm interested in big commerce.
I had, I hung out with Aaron Shehan the other day. He's there, I'm interested in other platforms and at the same time, I'm more biased towards [00:59:00] Magento. And so, um, yeah. So, you know, we'll see.
[00:59:06] Willem: We'll see. Uh, in what way, in what way does he want to make it a big commercial thing? Well, um, would they, would they, is he looking for them to become
[00:59:14] Kalen: one of the main sponsor?
I can't remember if he said this publicly or privately, but. Um, I think that they might have been interested in sponsoring and, um, and so, yeah, so I [00:59:30] don't, So we'll see. It's all, it's all very early stage, like a couple tweets happened and who knows if anything's gonna actually happen or not, but I was thinking of it as like the equivalent of the German Magento conference, major conference.
Mm-hmm. was kind of the, the thought process that I had. I've never been to an UN-conference. It just has always sounded really cool to me, you know, like I hear you guys talk about 'em and I think it, they just sound really cool, but, um, uh,
[00:59:57] Willem: they are, yeah. They are [01:00:00] to be, to be really honest, when Brent had his own conference last year, it was a major on conference and uh, I was about to be ready to sponsor it.
Okay. And then I saw that other platforms chimed in to become a sponsor and he expanded it to be not just Magento. So then I felt, because I'm fighting the Magento fight right now, hundred percent. So I will support, I will support and I will be supportive of [01:00:30] anything that brand does. And I think mm-hmm.
the whole eCommerce industry. Um, , It's all right, , but I'm just like, I'm putting all of my energy into, uh, helping the Magenta community. So that meant for me, I wouldn't put my sponsorship money towards that. Yeah. Uh, which is a, which is really shame because I, I really felt like supporting the things that brand does.
Yep. Um, and, uh, yeah, no, [01:01:00] for this,
[01:01:00] Kalen: like, um, Yeah. And I, I think it's cool that you're doing that. You're, you're, you have a focus, you know what I mean? And you're, you're focusing on it. And quite honestly, you're bringing a lot of people on board. I mean, you've gotten me reenergized about Magenta. You've gotten a lot of people, you've, a lot of people are, I know we're trying to not make this whole podcast a Hi a Hiva ad, but a lot of people are happier, excited about work and, and so I think that's [01:01:30] cool and, you know, um, Uh, yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's an interesting dynamic because some people are moving other platforms and they're excited and they're doing cool stuff, and I see that as well and I appreciate that as well.
But there's this, I don't know if it's nostalgia for me, like for you, it's, your business model is entirely magental only, so it's business model plus the nostalgia plus everything else combined. Um, for me it's a combination of those things. Um, but that's kind of what [01:02:00] I wanted it to be was, was a Magento thing.
Obviously BigCommerce has a huge presence in Austin. Um, and the thing that's interesting to me about the UN Conference is it's really the attendees that determine everything. The, you know, it's, my understanding of it is that it's very lightweight. You don't need a lot of money for it. You don't need a lot of sponsorship dollars, I assume.
And so it can just be really pure where people go, Hey, I wanna talk about this. And then people vote on what they want to hear. And, um, [01:02:30] You know, um, so it, I I just always thought it was a really cool idea. And, um,
[01:02:36] Willem: yeah. What makes the German one so good is that they do spend quite some budgets on really good coffee.
Like, there's a barista who makes excellent coffee and smoothies. Nice. And, uh, the internet connection is always solid. That's awesome. It's like the, a lot. Yeah. So they, they do make sure that all of the, [01:03:00] all of the equipment and everything is, is in place. The food is really, really good always. Um, God, this makes sense.
That makes it, because the coffee breaks are as important as the presentations. Um, I know some people just don't go to the presentations at all. They just hang around and catch up with
[01:03:21] Kalen: people. That's me, dude. That's all I'm gonna do is just, I mean, maybe they'll be a presentation I'm interested in, but.
And is it [01:03:30] normally a one day thing or is it a multi-day thing,
[01:03:32] Willem: or They do a two day thing in Germany? Yeah.
[01:03:35] Kalen: Mm-hmm. . So you get a hotel, you, you have to book a hotel and everything like that. Okay.
[01:03:42] Willem: Dude. Unless you wanna stay up all night. Yeah.
[01:03:44] Kalen: It's up to you,
dude. Yeah. We gotta do this. Do you want, You don't want to come to, I, I'm already, I'm already trying to bug you too much about travel, but Austin would be a strategic, Austin would be strategic, strategic, uh, [01:04:00] bit of travel for you Potentially.
[01:04:02] Willem: I would, I would really like to go there. I would, I would, but uh, then we would need to plan it a bit further away, uh, when we're in a period of time with us.
Not too many other, other events.
[01:04:15] Kalen: Um, Fair enough, fair
[01:04:17] Willem: enough. Yeah, I don't, I don't know if they would still have me, but I would love to go to the Adobe offices, , the old Magen office and meet some
[01:04:28] Kalen: people. . Yeah, [01:04:30] dude. I mean, I've never really been, but, uh, well before when it was the Magenta office, I went there once for a meetup.
But yeah, I mean, hopefully we can all be one big happy family at some point, , but, um, Cool man. Shoot. Anything else or
[01:04:53] Willem: I, I didn't prepare a doc this time. Uh, we could, we could talk about, uh, the security patches that were [01:05:00] released last week. Right, Right. That's big only for my job. Big deal. 2.4 0.4. Mm-hmm. and 2.4 0.5. So only the last two versions. And. The thing that caused a lot of noise or disappointment is that Magento 2, 4, 2, 2, 4 3, at least 2, 4, 3 is still supported until the end of next month.
So the end of November. Mm-hmm. , [01:05:30] But they didn't provide, they initially didn't provide batch. for versions below 2.4 0.4. Right. And the whole communication around what the actual breach was and what versions were affected. Mm-hmm. , it was very unclear. And even this morning, so it was last week, I think Tuesday maybe, that he released the, the new versions with security upgrades.
Mm-hmm. and everyone was like, Okay, so where's the patches for the order versions? And it's like, [01:06:00] well, no, it's, uh, we're not gonna provide those. Um, so there are some community, uh, community, uh, built patches from, uh, aco, uh, a Dutch agency. Um, they started riding patches, uh, all the way back to Magenta 2.3 0.7.
Mm-hmm. . Um, and now last night, let's say yesterday they released a patch for two for free. Mm-hmm. , [01:06:30] um, but not for lower versions. And right now there's still a bit of confusion whether, uh, the order versions are or are not affected. Right. Because Adobe's talking in terms of, um, the supported versions are not affected.
Right. Um, Right. So we don't know right now. We don't know exactly if, for example, 2.3 0.7 [01:07:00] first is said that it had the vulnerability and later they said, Well, if you're up to date with all of the other patches, then you're good. But, um, I'm not entirely sure. But, um, as it's almost holiday season, it's almost Black Friday.
Mm-hmm. timing was very bad to not offer patches for older versions because merchants are just not focusing on upgrading right now. They will wait until after Black Friday. [01:07:30] Everyone's planning for Black Friday right now. Mm-hmm. . So, um, having patches for the order versions is just crucial right now.
Mm-hmm. . Otherwise you'll get another meco thing. It was a level 10. Uh, a level 10, uh, uh, security risk, which is the highest level. So it's full admin access, full root access to Magento. Um, but they classified it as level three because it hadn't been exploited in world yet. [01:08:00] But that means as soon as someone has reverse engineered to fix, they know what the vulnerability is.
And you'll see the first breaches. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised.
[01:08:12] Kalen: Already happened today. Oh, it's probably happening right now as we speak. Um, yeah. Question. So it's crucial to patch quick. You have a great sample set of Magento instances with with Hoba customers. Do you track what Magento version [01:08:30] they're on?
Like do you have
[01:08:33] Willem: We don't, we don't host the stores Right. Who sell the
[01:08:38] Kalen: software. And you don't do any callbacks or anything.
[01:08:42] Willem: No. Gotcha. No, no. We're honestly, we don't, No, no, no. We
[01:08:45] Kalen: don't call home . No, but isn't that okay to do a co I mean, I, I know we talked about your licensing model, which I think is great, but I'm saying if, if you had a way to at least know what versions they were on, that would be, um, in a, just [01:09:00] in a, I don't know, whatever, back in pixel or something.
Um, my only question was, is like, I understand people are always behind the version on Magento, but like in an ideal world, they would be up to the latest version. And I'm curious. Yeah, like if you have an interesting sample of customers, which are, you know, they're, you know, they're probably, I'd imagine your customers are probably doing it on average, better practices than, you know, [01:09:30] the entire set of Magento instances out there.
[01:09:34] Willem: We focus a lot of on agencies initially, so, um, um, . Yeah. I think they're, they're typically a bit bigger stores or let's say more professional without trying to Exactly. Be disrespectful. Exactly. It's, that's what I'm saying. There's not many merchants that buy a license and install it themselves via FTP and just use to, So [01:10:00] far Yeah.
without, without coding anything. Yeah. There, there's basically always a coder involved when they work with fifa.
[01:10:10] Kalen: Right, right.
[01:10:12] Willem: Yeah. No, it's relatively new builds as well. So we don't have legacy customers that, that's what I'm saying, already run the stores for five years because we only exist for two years.
So, um,
[01:10:25] Kalen: Yep. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But I, I also gotta ping somebody privately and maid chat [01:10:30] about 2 37 about the patch issue specifically. And, um, so yeah, that seems like, uh, definitely an issue. And again, it kind of comes back to, obviously their resources are limited, Adobe's, and I can understand from their perspective, they might say, Look, we did the patch for this version.
We, we don't necessarily have the
[01:10:53] Willem: time. Hold, hold it, hold it. Yeah. Hold it, hold it, hold it. What was Adobe's latest [01:11:00] acquisition? Figma Figma. Do you know what they paid for Figma?
[01:11:07] Kalen: Oh yeah. No, no,
[01:11:07] Willem: no. Trust, Trust me. How many resources do you think Adobe has if they want like this, like it's correct. It's a matter of how much resources they wanna spend on.
Well, it's not like they have limited resources. That's by choice. It's
[01:11:22] Kalen: a, it's by choice. It's a, it's a question of what's allocated. So, um, and I understand you might decide to allocate something to one place [01:11:30] and not to another, but I'm just saying if, if that, um, if the community has, uh, I'm sure that like the community could knock out that 2 37 patch or somebody probably already has.
Um, and
[01:11:43] Willem: so the, it's not PCI compliant then. No, I know. No, I know. I'm just saying Adobe needs to deliver those patches to the commerce customers. At
[01:11:51] Kalen: least I agree. I agree. I'm just saying that if the community helped with that and they could just act on it quickly and reviewed on there and [01:12:00] quickly release it.
Um, what my point is, is that in almost all these cases, the community can do probably the heavy lifting. Um, and we just need them to put the official seal of approval on it. Um, kind of a deal. But, um, Yeah, I think it, I think probably something they, they should do. Um, yeah, man,
[01:12:25] Willem: it's the same. I, I, I personally think if they have paying [01:12:30] customers that are on certain versions, I'm not even talking about open source customers.
Right. But this also included our commerce customers. Correct. Right. Which was still on a supported version. Right. For at least six more weeks. And even then, Right. Even if it were just, even if support and it, a month ago, it would be a disaster for them to have another ME card like, Yeah. Yeah. And. , a mass breach [01:13:00] on so many stores will not look good on the Adobe S brand or the Magento brand.
Yeah, the fact that it's called me cards, like it's not even a Magento a Magento hack anymore. Like it started with Magento, but mic card expanded to all our platforms, but it's still called Mako, like the association to the name.
[01:13:22] Kalen: That itself
[01:13:23] Willem: wild. It happened once. You would not want to have, have that happen twice.
I, [01:13:30] I just don't talk about,
[01:13:31] Kalen: talk about brand recognition. Talk about brand recognition. Man, that's, that's kind of messed up. Um, yeah, no, I definitely agree there. Um, well we're over our time, so thanks everybody for tuning in and unless, uh, Will has any final words. We will, uh, let
[01:13:51] Willem: you get back to it. Do you all at ma chat?
We'll see you, dad. We have all the gies. .
[01:13:59] Kalen: We got [01:14:00] GIES for days. See you next week. See you next week.