All aboard the Magento Live UK 2017 Express, baby! In just one week, we’ll be packing our travel toothbrushes and best Hawaiian shirts and hopping aboard the fast train to London. So, having only just recovered from the excitement of Magento Imagine 2017, what are we most looking forward to at #MLUK17?

As always, Magento has put on a great line-up. Our 6-strong travelling party – look at this lovely lot below – will be adopting a divide and conquer approach to make sure we cover as much of the schedule as is humanly possible!

The iWeb Magento Live UK 2017 Team

Day 1

12.30 – 13.45 / Design Thinking: Focus on User Research and Prototyping

Eric Erway, Snr UX Manager @Magento and Guliz Sicotte, Director of Product Design @Magento lead a session on the design thinking process at Magento. We’re expecting some valuable insights into user research and how to test ideas to deliver better customer experiences. As an agency that delivers everything from the UX process to build for our clients, we’re looking forward to hearing how the guys at Magento tackle this process themselves.

15.30 – 16:00 / Managing Your Magento Migration Expectations

Brent Peterson, Chief Magento Evangelist, is a well-known face on the circuit and always delivers an insightful, engaging talk. The whole M1 > M2 migration is a very hot topic right now, certainly in our office, and in the wider community too. As more of clients start to become aware of M2 and its associated benefits, Brent’s talk will hopefully answer some unresolved questions and set some realistic expectations.

17.15 – 18.45 / Magento U: Utilizing Marketing Features in Magento 2

Ben Marks, Evangelist, Magento Commerce promises to teach us how to leverage the advanced Magento 2 Enterprise Edition features to create comprehensive marketing campaigns.

To my mind (and yes, I do work in marketing) this feature is one of the most exciting additions to the platform. If you build it…it doesn’t necessarily mean they will come. So, how can we start using these tools to help our clients get a competitive edge? Ben’s demos of the different tools should help answer that.

19.00 – 22.00 / Opening Night Networking Event

Tropicana Beach Club. Cocktails. Hawaiian shirts. The Magento Community. No further words required.

Magento meets Tropicana

Day 2

09.45 – 11.00 / New Integrated Magento B2B Capabilities

The challenge of transforming customer experiences for our B2B clients – of which we have a lot – is one we relish. B2B customers now expect the same functionality and ease of buying as they do in a B2C environment. And why shouldn’t they.

How can Magento help deliver on these expectations? We’re pretty excited about the possibilities of the new, integrated Magento B2B functionality and this live demo is another good chance to get to grips with the core functionality –  company accounts, quoting, personalised catalogues and price lists, fast ordering and more.

13.45 – 14.45 / DevExchange

A golden chance for Magento devs to get together and discuss key developer topics as well as finding out how our peers are tackling the same challenges.

Our Lead Dev Pembo has submitted his chosen topic – A deep dive into service contracts in Magento 2 –  you can’t beat a good bit of collaboration!

All Day, Every Day

The chance to chat with and learn from our peers at other agencies, merchants and the Magento team is a big part of what makes these events so great.

Here’s our top three tips to help you get the most out of the event:

  1. Say ‘hello’ to people – it’s a great icebreaker 🙂
  2. Pre-event have a think about your goals – e.g what do you want to learn, who do you want to meet – and write down any questions in advance
  3. Take notes – even if it’s just a few bullets, try and jot down a key takeaway for each talk

For more of a flavour of what’s in store, here’s what went down last year:

What about you? If you’re attending and fancy a chat we’d love to hear from you @iwebtweets.