Meet the movers

The Magento Masters 2018 are grouped into 3 different categories - Mentors, Makers and Movers. It is really a big thing for me that I have been chosen to be part of the Master's program - in 2017 and now again in 2018. And I'm happy to share the last category with some great guys: Miguel Balparda and Phillip Jackson (who has also just been announced as Imagine Master of Ceremonies).

Opening up technologies

The slogan of Yireo has been Opening Up Technologies for about 5 years now and within this period, we have driven Yireo away from custom development into the area of training and education - thus giving meaning to our mission statement. We found that just giving training did not give enough engagement with users. Personally, I've been speaking at numerous conferences to spread the word on cool developer topics. Also, we organized numerous user group meetings in The Netherlands to interact with merchants and developers. Plus, we organized cool events like the Dutch Magento 2 Seminar (to advocate Magento 2 in general) and the international MageTestFest (promoting code testing).

Moving developers into new directions

Slowly, we have become to realize that Yireo has a specific role to pick up in the community. Instead of organizing generic events for reasons like fun and commercial benefit (which are both still very valid reasons do stuff for us), we have started to bring across vision as well: With MageTestFest, we felt there needed to be a single event focused on a single topic (testing) to wake up developers and push them in the direction of better quality code.

Likewise, the new Reacticon event in March pushes developers forward to PWA and React, which will alter the frontend world in the upcoming years. Instead of just going with the flow, we are starting together with the real pushers of the technology to advocate new developments, new approaches, improvements and much more. I'm honoured to be announced personally for this. However, I also feel that the movement of developers into new directions is not only the mission of Yireo, but also the mission of the Magento community as a whole.

Thanks Magento

I'm in awe. I'm in awe of the new opportunities that Magento has given me. Also, it is just really cool to have been given an award for the hard work I'm putting in organizing so many events. Thanks, Magento, for this appreciation!