Latest / Talk Commerce / Meet Magento Poland: Kuba Zwolinski's Vision for Community-Driven Commerce
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:02.466) Welcome to this special episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Kuba Zulinski. Kuba, go ahead, do it from Snow Dog. Go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day -to -day role and tell us one of your passions in life. Kuba (00:16.414) Hi, Brian. Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm really happy to be here with you. What can I tell about myself? I'm a very active member of the Magento community since 2009. I think that's the time when I introduced Magento to Poland. I did the first translation to Polish language, so made it more useful for the market. And since that time, I'm really still a big fan of the platform. So over years, I was always active in various initiatives to get community together and build amazing things together. So I organized 10 editions of Meet Magento Poland, what I'm very proud of. We had guests from all over the world, from so many continents. So it was a great adventure. And for two years, I had a break. There was no Meet Magento Poland. But fortunately, we have a great moment on the market. can see a comeback of all those open source activities. So it's also time for Meet Magento Poland to come back. Of course, that's more like side project. My main job is running a Magento agency or it started as a Magento agency. Now it's a little bit more. It's more like a general commerce support agency called SnowDog. And what else? I was in my free time. I'm a big fan of outdoor activities. So I'm practicing a niche sport called adventure racing, which basically means running with compass and biking and paddling somewhere in the wild, but interesting parts of the world. And same like doing volunteering for Magento community. I enjoy volunteering in general. So at this moment I'm also volunteering and mountain rescue service. So this is like Kuba (02:43.929) I think the best combination of spending time outdoors and doing something for others. So that's it. So don't know, a lot of commerce, a lot of outdoors and family and dogs, horses, cats at home. So that's it. Brent Peterson (03:01.418) Yeah, you're very busy. And so when you also say, I just want to comment that when you say adventure racing, sometimes you'd run for seven days across a desert or something like that in Namibia or in in South America, you do some quite adventurous racing. Kuba (03:13.379) Yeah, yeah, that was, it was, it was adventurous and it was great fun, but different. It's just pure running. And I tried that for a couple, a couple additions. But after all, I think I prefer multi -sport. I really enjoy combining biking and running, paddling, climbing, caving, canyoneering, rappelling or whatever else you can imagine. Related to others. So running is fun, but at some point I really enjoy more Brent Peterson (03:50.946) Yeah, you introduced me to swimrun, which almost took off in the US right before the pandemic, and it's never quite gotten a hold back, but I'm very intrigued by this idea of swimrun. Kuba (04:01.815) Yeah, it's amazing sport. It's much easier to train than triathlon because you don't have this, you know, the most consuming, time consuming discipline, biking. And it's so close to adventure racing idea. As you know, you have all your gear with you. There are no changes. Just keep running and swimming. So I still, I love this sport. When I like, if I have a choice to go for a run or go for a swim run. I would prefer to go for a swim run. And it's a team sport. So it's a great time to spend some time together. But you're right, that there was a moment when it became more and more popular. And right now, there is a slowdown. Same in Europe. There are a lot of interesting competitions, but they are not so popular as right before pandemic. Brent Peterson (04:54.136) Yeah. All right. Well, so let's talk a little bit about Meet Magento's and then you also do one called Meet Commerce. Can you tell us a little bit of first, tell us about your upcoming Meet Magento Kuba (05:09.017) Yes, so Meet Magento Poland will take place in Poznań, Poland on the last day of September and the first day of October. So we'll have two days. We'll have the first day more focused on business cases. And the second day is more something I called like a community ecosystem day. We have a lot of panels discussing various topics about the community around Magento, different challenges. that we are facing as agencies or merchants when working with Magento, Adobe Commerce. This is another experiment. Like every year I organized Meet Magento Poland, I tried to experiment with different format, new ideas just to keep it interesting for people visiting our events. So this time it will be like more business case studies day and this community technology For case studies, we will see how it will work because I made a requirement that every case study needs to have a merchant on stage. So we'll see. That should make it a little bit more, you know, realistic. when we are agencies, when we are on the stage telling our success stories, there are real success stories. So we are missing this reality element. So hopefully that will work for Poland, this new format. What may be really important for our international guests, official language of all the presentations will be English. So Meet Magento Poland is very local. We have a lot of presentations and guests from our local market. But in the same time, I think that Meet Magento is so international. that making it English speaking even, it makes it much more valuable, even for Polish merchants and for Polish agencies, because it will just help them to network with guests from all over the Brent Peterson (07:19.96) Yeah. And I could say that I've been to Meet Magenta Poland and it is one of, it is the premier event. It's such a great, you put on such a great event and you've changed different locations each year. And it's been such a fun time attending your events and even the after parties and all the fun things that you plan. It's not just the event, it's things outside of the event that you plan on doing that make it a memorable experience. you know, can't almost can't call it once in a lifetime, but certainly it is a memory. It's a reason for joining the event, but also going to Poland and seeing some of the wonderful sites is there as Kuba (07:56.471) thank you. It's really, really great to hear that. It's like, you know, I don't know what to say. But after all, I always organize the event, the event I would like to attend. So I want to create something that I wouldn't be bored at and I would really enjoy. So when I hear something like that, this is the best reward. I know that, you know, all those months of hard work really Brent Peterson (08:02.243) Yeah. Kuba (08:25.979) pay back, so it's Brent Peterson (08:29.134) And I think we put on our first event in 2016 or 17 and your advice to me was get the feedback from the people, the negative feedback, because you want to hear the people. Like one thing you said to me is that you want to know what you can approve for next year and that you've had 10 times to make it even better every single time. It's such, you know, such good feedback. And I think that, you know, in that event space, you're such a great leader. in the whole, not just the event space, in the whole Magenta community space. So thank you for that. You also put on Meet Commerce. Do you want to just kind of just touch on what that Kuba (09:06.339) Yeah, sure. Over years of organizing Meet Magento, I discovered that there is a whole world, like a technology and business world, that is really not interested in Magento because there are people interested in technology, but who are just exploring different platforms. And when we want to bring them together and create the same networking atmosphere and open collaboration atmosphere. we need to be more open to different technologies. So with Meet Commerce, I think it's an add -on. It's like when Meet Magento is just for our ecosystem, for people who are working with Magento and they do care about the tool they are using, that it's Magento because of its open ecosystem, the architecture, people around that. So that's Meet Magento. And Meet Commerce can move it a little bit more towards business. and open discussion with different tools and different platforms. It's challenging because of course every platform is competing. So when we put them all on stage, it's really hard to make it a peaceful conversation. But on the other hand, when we really can do that, it creates a very interesting discussion. Because if you are a programmer, usually it's really valuable that you are not only programming in your main language. It's good to know other languages and know other practices. And it's exactly the same with Magento. If you want to be a good Magento agency and good Magento specialist, you should know other systems. You should know how other platforms are solving challenges because you can learn from them. And that's why Meet Commerce was created. And I think it works. There are some people who attend both Meet Commerce and Meet Magento, but there are also like a huge base of our attendees who are different. They would never go to meet commerce and meet commerce would never go to meet magenta. So it looks like it was success. The first meet commerce edition took place in April and it had a main topic about unified commerce. So we managed to get people who are really focused on retail and people who are focused on digital part and we brought them together. And it was really interesting to see that there are different worlds Kuba (11:33.359) Some of them looking, you know, they were so excited looking at what retail is building, what innovations you can see in retail and people from retail. Wow, it's so exciting to see all those digital services, how you can connect it all together. And that couldn't happen in just Meet Magento because there are way more technologies that we are talking about and Magento is great for that, but it's not the only platform. So I keep experimenting I said before, I experiment with Meet Magenta and now I just add another layer, another event. And after all, I love connecting people. So that's why having those events twice a year, one Meet Magenta and one Meet Commerce creates a great opportunity to build such networks. Brent Peterson (12:23.602) Yeah, perfect. So let's talk a little bit about Magento Association. I think we've both volunteered for the Magento Association for a long time. Give us some reasons why people should, why somebody should sign up for a Magento Association. Kuba (12:43.831) Every open source needs an independent organization that will take care of it because Magento is right now a product of Adobe, but company has its own goals and open source should have some independent support, something that it's really taking care about ecosystem and community. And that's why the association is something very important. when association can be independent, when it's really supported by the community. So that's why I think it's super, it is very important that everyone who works with Magento or other commerce should think about joining Magento association or other ecosystem associations. We know that they do exist. So it's just important to support open source the best way, because this is the best way to keep this ecosystem not only exist, but also grow and create amazing things like we did for last 15 years. That's actually a pretty long Brent Peterson (13:54.584) Yeah, and I think I've been speaking to a number of different communities. I think that a lot of communities think they have the best community. it's not really about being better or worse, but it is about engagement in the community. And I've learned certainly from some of the other SaaS communities, even though there is a big merchant following of a certain SaaS platform, there's not a big community around that platform where people come together and do things. like you've done with Meet Magento and how the Magento Association has come together to really hold up the community outside of Adobe completely. Kuba (14:33.083) I think it's also important that it's cool to have a community, but after all, it's a business community, business technology community. It's not just for fun. So it's important to be effective and having some governing body like an association that can have funds to create, to bring coordinators and to shape a direction or show the direction for the community. think it's, this is something that it's really required for a healthy community. Because other way we have chaos. have, you know, so many really smart magenta specialists all over the world, which is a great thing. But the thing about smart people are that they all have their own independent ideas for the future. And if we have no coordinator bringing those ideas together and choosing the best way, know, everyone will be going in different direction. So I think that's that's the, that's the answer. So we should join. association and we should just support our platform that we use also for business. Brent Peterson (15:37.89) Yeah. And I think we've seen in the Magento community, we've seen it go in and out and different chaos and things coming together and eBay and all the purchases of it's we've been through a roller coaster yet our community is still there and it's still very Kuba (15:55.643) Yeah, so that's actually something I forgot to mention that during Meet Magento Poland in 2021, I think it was three years ago, I initiated a discussion on stage of Meet Magento Poland in Poznań. A discussion between Magento Association, MACHEOS, and some other well -known community members. A discussion about the future of Magento Open Source. And what I did for this year, I invited more or less the same group of people to be on stage. And I will ask them to just discuss the same topic. What changed? What happened? So I think it's a great, great moment to really check what associations really did over those three years. that's important. It's good to have associations, good to support them. But as a community, It's our duty from time to time to check what they are doing because they are important for us, but we need to make sure that they are doing right things. So I'm really excited about that, to see them on the stage and to hear how they will prepare, how they will show us that it's really going in the right direction. I strongly believe it's going in the really good direction. I can see that both Magenta Association and MajOS found a good way to work together. Let's Let's see September. actually, it will be the panel will be the first day of October. So we'll see in October how they will show all those success to our audience at Mid -Maj into Poland. Brent Peterson (17:40.46) Yeah, that's good. I look forward to that. I attended the panel discussions at Meet Mention New York last year and at Florida this year, where they were really pressing the Imagento Association, and Mateus specifically. And I think he's got a really good head on his shoulders and a good path forward to make things work for the association. I'm very encouraged. Kuba (18:05.977) Yeah, I think that's important to have a strong and competent leader. And I'm also happy to see him a delete in the association. think he's doing a great job. So keep my fingers crossed all the time for that. And I do my best to support all the ecosystem activities with my Brent Peterson (18:28.43) Cuba, before we close out, I completely forgot about doing our free joke project. I know that you were hoping I forgot, but I, still have to tell you a joke right before we leave here. so I'm going to tell you the joke and actually you had some really good feedback on the joke. If it's the worst joke, maybe a number one is good for me. So, or if it's the best joke and number five would be good. And I think that for me, the joke is a winner no matter if you give it a one or a five. I'm going to tell you the joke. You just give me a rating one through five. And I've got a good one today for you. Here we go. Aladdin has been banned from the magic carpet races. Apparently he's been using performance enhancing rugs. Kuba (19:20.121) You won. You definitely won. Brent Peterson (19:21.741) All right, thank you. I win. Yes, perfect. Kuba (19:27.995) I Love it. I love your jokes. Really. I like you should have a dedicated channel with jokes. Like I was subscribed to that Brent Peterson (19:31.138) Right? Brent Peterson (19:36.308) Okay, yeah. All right, perfect. Well, I have them on TikTok at least, so, but yeah, maybe I should just have a joke channel. Kuba, it's been really good talking to you today. Tell us how people can get in touch with Kuba (19:54.419) I think they can just email me at, know, that's the best way I try to reply to every single email I get. They can find my contact details or even my phone. It's the same phone for the last 15 years. So, you know, everyone can get in touch with me on WhatsApp or just a message. So it's easy to find on meetmagento .pl website. or meetcommerce .pl or meetcommerce .com, which is actually a site for our global meetcommerce events, because that's also not only a Polish initiative. So if anyone has an idea or something that would like to discuss about how to make Meet Magento Poland or meet commerce ideas better or wants to do something together. I'm always open to interesting discussions with interesting people. So just reach out to me and I will do my best to respond as quickly as Brent Peterson (21:02.04) Thank you so much, Kuba Zulinski, the founder of Snowdog, a fantastic agency in Poland. Thank you for being here today. Kuba (21:11.525) Thank you very much, Brent. Thank you for inviting me here.