This Contribution Day wasn’t the first one for Mobelcs team, except me. To be honest, it was my first Magento event ever, so I didn’t know what to expect from it. Nevertheless, I was really looking forward to attending it, as there’s nothing more exciting than experiencing something new. As a first-time participant, I decided to give a short overview of this event.
Mobecls Team: Artem Pugachev, Anton Kulakov, Alex Mitskevich, Alex Yermak, Roman Dmytrenko, Sergei Bogomaz.
Where: Kyiv, Ukraine
When: 12-13 April
Day 0. Departure
The four of us started our journey in Minsk, Belarus as the last two members of the team were already waiting for us in Ukraine. To be honest, I was thinking that only two of us will leave Minsk. 15 minutes before departure. Artem and Anton decided to buy some souvenirs for our Ukrainian colleagues. Fortunately, they took the train two minutes before the departure. Really good sprinters.
573 km, 10 hours by train, the trip was calm and easy as it was a night train, so we had time to sleep. The only drawback of the trip was crossing the border because it happened at 4 a.m. and we had to awake for 40 minutes to pass passport and luggage control.
Day 1. Arrival
It was overcast in Kyiv but nevertheless warm. We had breakfast at a local cafe near the railway station. In my humble opinion, Kyiv is the best place in Eastern Europe for culinary tourism. I’m serious, everything is perfect: cuisine, atmosphere, service and prices. While we were waiting for the order, a cute waitress offered us coloring pages!
In the blink of an eye, everyone picked up pencils and began to draw. It was surprising and joyful. Everyone had own creative process and painting techniques. Someone was drawing UFOs, someone green cows, cocktails and saucepans. I think it helps to reveal the inner self. Should think about suggesting using this “test” during job interviews.
When we arrived at the hotel I was a little bit shocked as it was a giant ship on the Dnieper! Just look at the view from the window!
Before Meetup, we had some free time. I decided to have a walk in the city center while the rest of the team were working on projects) I headed to my favorite place in Kyiv – Andriyivskyy Descent. It’s also known as “Montmartre of Kyiv”. It’s a historic descent connecting Kiev’s Upper Town neighborhood and the historically commercial Podil neighborhood.
I’ll just list some of the top attractions and museums, in order not to waste lots of time. You can just check Wiki:
- St Andrew’s Church
- Castle of Richard the Lionheart
- Mikhail Bulgakov Museum
- One Street Museum
- Lithuanian castle
- Numerous monuments
One more visit card of Andriyivskyy Descent is street trading. Despite some strict street trading limitations, numerous vendors offer national craftings, souvenirs, paintings and some Soviet artifacts (posters, badges, ushankas, etc.). You can spend hours looking at all this stuff, but it’s really exciting. This time I purchased a poster devoted to Soviet cosmonautics.
Unfortunately, my phone was dead, so I didn’t take any pictures. That’s why I’m attaching some Google photos for you.
After an hour-walk through narrow cobblestone streets of the landmark, I had to come back to the hotel to join the rest and move to Meetup.
Day 1. Magento Meetup
The whole event took place at the Innovation Park Unit City. Slava Kravchuk, CEO and Founder of Atwix, thanked all the 70+ participants from 4 different countries and opened the event.
There were 4 speakers on the agenda: Igor Miniailo, Alex Kravchuk, Vadim Justus and Victoria Yashchuk.
Igor’s topic was micro-service architecture. I’ll point just some thesis of his speech:
- Problems: Application grows in size. Customization becomes more complex. It pushes Magento to longer release cycles. It makes merchant less flexible as they can’t react to the market changes quickly.
- Micro-Service architecture will solve these problems.
- Magento services (Catalog, Checkout, Order Management, …) should be isolated and only communicate through service contracts.
- This significantly reduces the scope of required modifications and makes implementations and customizations easier.
- Manual testing is not an option anymore.
- There will be a time of everyday Magento releases.
The next topic was In-Store Pickup by Alex Kravchuk. A highly popular feature will be built-in. Extension providers can relax cause there will be opportunities to customize it. More information via this link.
The third speaker, Vadim Justus, was giving a tech talk about enhanced handling of complex recurring processes using pipeline pattern.
For the desert, we got the latest eCommerce trends by Victoria Yashchuk:
- Personalization
- Voice and Image Search
- Augmented Reality
The atmosphere was really friendly and homely. Everyone was joking, chatting, drinking beer and eating pizzas. That’s what community should be and I really liked it because I felt myself like a part of a big family.
Day 1. Afterparty
I couldn’t afford myself to miss this event. It was really interesting to see how developers and maintainers go hard and what they talk about.
We moved to a secret bar which was located under another bar. It was really small and literally occupied by Magento community. We were packed in like sardines.
I was hitting rum so hard, that when a man said “I’m from Adobe office”, I asked myself “Adobe? What the hell is that?”. Only the next day I realized that we were drinking with Sergey Ivashchenko, Software Engineer, Magento Engineering Community.
I noticed that everyone prefer not to talk about work during partying and it’s good. Work hard, play harder. Everybody had enough time to talk about work, that was time to relax.
No photos for you, as it was a secret bar)
Day 2. Contribution Day
It was really hard to wake up after the party, I had a terrible hangover. I should change my outlook on partying so hard because a long contribution day was waiting for me.
We were a little bit late, so we missed the opening ceremony of contribution day hosted by Igor Miniailo.
To my surprise, everyone, who was in the bar yesterday, was fresh… except me.
While my team was contributing hard, I was waiting for Igor Miniailo to do a small interview with him. I had been waiting for him for several hours but it was OK because I needed some time to recover and finish some work.
Finally, the time came and we had a small talk which turned into a 50-minute long conversation. It was interesting for me to learn how Magento core team cooperate with the community, is it beneficial, is it difficult, what is the aim of contribution day, etc. Igor is a nice guy and it was pleasant to talk to him. I think I will finish editing it this week and of course, I’ll share it with you.
The cutest photo of the event:
My applauses to Atwix and the sponsors. Free noodles and beer were the best medicine to recover me after the work was done.
The rest of the contribution day I spent taking and posting photos, watching demos.
Day 2. Free Time And Departure
We left UNIT City at 7 p.m., so we had 1 hour and a half for our needs. The team split according to their preferences and needs. I decided to visit the city center and have a walk there. Khreshchatyk was amazing. It was Saturday and the main artery of the city turned into the pedestrianized street.
People were walking in the middle of the street, dancing, playing musical instruments. I don’t know how often it happens in Kyiv but it was really amazing.
After a one hour walk, we had to go to the railway station. The last souvenirs were bought and we started our road back home. I wish I’ll visit Kyiv one more time this summer.
Final Thought
It’s really great the Engineering Community started working with the community. I want to thank Atwix team and their sponsors for hosting this event. Contribution days give the opportunity to talk to Magento maintainers, enrich professional skills, expand networks, contribute to the Magento community, speed up releases of complex projects like MSI and simply to have a good time. It was an unforgettable experience and visiting such events is a must for every Magento developing company. Waiting for new meetings!
Sincerely yours, Alex Yermak.
