Founding of Mage-OS Nederland

In 2022, we (Sander, Jeroen, Core, Sanne, Michiel en Roland) already started to work together to try to revive the Dutch Magento community. And we did. Mage-OS Nederland was founded as an association. We organized some social events (WWVD23, member meeting). And we saw that people got enthousiastic about Magento in The Netherlands again. I'm excited to stand at its base and more excited to see that others are stepping in as well.

Magento 2 Academy & Shopware 6 Academy

On a business level, I was hired as a teacher in 2022 to help some newcomers get started with Magento development: The project failed, for multiple reasons. And I decided to pick up on things myself. End of 2022, I rented an office space in Baarn. Next, I was busy for months turning the space into a classroom. And in March 2023, the first Magento Academy became a reality, together with Vendic, Modern Minds, Indiegroup, MaxServ and Epartment. In June 2023, a second academy was ran on Shopware, together with Studio Emma, No Dots, Sition and Webversiert (and Pim Hofman sat in on this one). A great success.

MageUnconference NL 2023

Right after finishing the second academy, the gear shifted into organizing mode: MageUnconference Netherlands 2023 took place in Utrecht - put together with the entire Yireo team (Janet, Ruben, Ruben and Sean). And this also created a further buzz on the new Dutch associaton of Mage-OS Nederland. It was a blast (Stormtrooper BlasTech's E-11 Blaster Rifle) and we are definitely going to do this again ... in 2025.

Passing of Pim Hofman

Tired of the unconference, I went to bed the day after, my wife woke me up - Sunday morning - with the exciting news of us getting a second child. And that same afternoon, the wife of Pim phoned to mention that Pim died. This was a shock. I worked together with Pim on the Shopware Academy, I brainstormed on many opportunities and we were building up to collaborate much much more. His passing was not only an emotional shock - stupidly, it also set back the plans of Yireo: Pim was set to be the next teacher of Yireo. And now he was gone. I'm missing him.

Regular training, video courses

After this, things were moving slower, less energetic from my side. I went back to regular training with numerous agencies I already knew (Elgentos, X-Interactive, MaxServ, Studio Emma). One noteworthy collaboration was together with Strix Poland to help them on-board new Shopware developers in Krakow. And MaxServ got my back with regular training sessions in Waalwijk (#worstebroodjes).

Slowly the energy got back. I jumped on the Hyvä Checkout - creating a new video course. And with Len Lorijn, I'm trying to setup a new training program for 2024. And that's where I'm standing now: Looking back at a wild 2024 - first full of energy, then completely depleted from energy and then steadily coming back again.

Meet Magento NL and hackathon

It was awesome to see therefore that the energy I (and others) put into Mage-OS Nederland paid off: In November, Meet Magento NL took place - organized by a very active team, backed by Mage-OS NL, but I had nothing to do with it: I liked it. Yireo did put together a hackathon the day before, but that was just a couple of nerds working together on cool tech (aka Magewire). But the fact that Meet Magento NL involved a different team than the team of Mage-OS Nederland, is a sign for me that the reactivation of the community did work out.

Looking at 2024

So what is next? Well, I'm becoming dad of a second child - so that's keeping me busy in Q2-Q3. There's not going to be a MageUnconference NL, but there is going to be a Meet Magento NL and hopefully also a MageTitans GR. On the business side, more video courses will be developed. And the academies of 2023 will be transformed into bootcamps in 2024 - more news will follow. There is a lot of things ahead - let's close of 2023 :)