We've been to London for SolidusConf 2017 and after a long week made of code, friendship and eCommerce, we're back on regular work, more thrilled than ever to be part of the Rails eCommerce revolution.
What happened there
Solidus' third main event. After Whistler, BC (which unfortunately was a private event) and Toronto, ON, this year SolidusConf happened in London!
The formula is almost identical to the previous one, a two days hacking session followed by two single-track conference days. Of course we used the conference as excuse to arrange a trip abroad with all the team, from Monday to Saturday.
We had a ton of fun while having a great chance to meet fellow Solidus developers from all over the world (Canada, UK, USA, Mexico, France, ...).
Considering the amount of work we do with eCommerce in Italy and abroad, it was a pleasure for us to sponsor the event to make Solidus eCommerce better and better.
The hack days
Monday and Tuesday were probably the best part of the conference. We were able to do what Solidus nerds like the most: sit with their laptops to code/design/document software.
Many great developers and designers were involved in improving Solidus and making it more stable and refined. A lot of code was coded during those two days and a huge amount of work was put into an open source project without any kind of funding from big companies. Take a look at the number of PRs we worked on.
The conference
The following two days went on with talks about technical matters as well as business and marketing aspects of the Solidus eCommerce ecosystem. Through the eyes of the speakers we gained a lot of interesting insights on the eCommerce.
The best talk was probably the first day's opening keynote by Clarke Brunsdon, Solidus core team member and Stembolt co-founder. Clarke always makes a lot of promises about the future of Solidus and usually manages to accomplish (with the help of the Solidus community) everything he says.
After a short introduction about how Solidus is becoming the best Ruby on Rails eCommerce implementation and how so many of the things we only dreamt about in the previous SolidusConf are now a reality (like the growing number of stable and tested Solidus extensions) he talked about Solidus' future: better documentation, a complete rebranding and a new website.
This is pretty big: Solidus greatest weak point is its not-so-fresh brand image and a lack of guides for both new developers and end-users. This will make it easier for stores and entrepreneurs to choose Solidus, since moving to the new platform won't require any prior developer knowledge about it.
The keynote ended with huge news for us: Alberto Vena (Nebulab co-founder) is becoming part of the Solidus core team. This means a lot for the whole Nebulab team and we hope it'll bring us closer to the project. Congrats Alberto!
The days after
When the conference was over we had the best fun we could have. We walked all over the place and drank all kind of booze and ate so much street food. London is really a great city when it comes to all that.
Given that we spend most of our time working remotely, it was a great time for our team to be together, laugh and party hard!
Here are some pics!
Awesome London scenery on the Millenium Bridge.
Strolling outside the conference venue.
Relaxing times in Camden Town.
London is a huge city but also has many parks.
Eating out at a Thai restaurant.
Having fun at the conference party.
