On Thursday, March 6th, we organized the third meetup in the Yireo office - this time on PIM meetups. And I was delighted to see three PIM competitors share one stage without any tactics: Just friendliness, open conversation and sharing strength. I like it.
The three musketeers: Ergonode, KatanaPIM and Elovate
The meetup was a joint effort of Yireo and Channel Support (Jelle and Rob) with the focus on how people could choose the right PIM for Magento. A hard pick, because every shop is different. It was therefore the task of the speakers - Tomas Hesseling (Ergonode), Henk de Gier (Elovate) and Raoul Straathof (KatanaPIM) to eloborate on the various choices to make. And of course, to proof which PIM was better.
In general, the mood was to inform the public (about 25 people) about PIM decisioning in a proper way - without trying to outdo another. And the format succeeded: The atmosphere was relaxed, often the story about PIMs was told by all three competitors mixing in.
And to me, this shows that competition is healthy and positive, as long as it is approached from the right angle - focusing upon the technology, the customers need, instead of focusing on market shares or money.
Other PIMs were missing out
That being said - saying that the meetup tried to be as honest as possible - there were only 3 competitors on stage, not 300. And there are that many PIM systems out there. Big names like PIMcore and Akeneo were mentioned but not present during the meetup. And because of this, the tendency was to outline the benefits of the 3 competitors present (KatanaPIM, Ergonode and Elovate), instead of promoting the non-present competitors much.
That's how we humans work :) But it was impossible to try to get more brands over, this was just a meetup - not a large-scale event. And in any case, we got the impression that most attendees were positive about the entire meetup. Goal accomplished.
More meetups to follow
Last year (2024) we organized a meetups (Mage-OS NL) plus two hackathons (Magewire) in the Yireo space. We also organized webinars on CSP and accessibility. This year, we already co-organized a meetup on deployment (together with Hypernode), plus this PIM meetup, plus a webinar on Hyva and Figma.
And we intend to do a lot more this year. The first stop is an online webinar on the new Yireo LokiCheckout extension suite: Details. We hope to see you soon!
About the author
Jisse Reitsma is the founder of Yireo, extension developer, developer trainer and 3x Magento Master. His passion is for technology and open source. And he loves talking as well.
