As already announced in our MagentoLive 2019 recap, I had the chance to interview Magento Vice President Jason Woosley at Magento’s biggest European conference in Amsterdam. I’m quite happy about the result and hope you will enjoy this as much as I did.
Episode Transcript
The time markers refer to the interview section itself, not the whole podcast.
Nick [00:00:03] I’m sitting here with Jason Woosley from Adobe at MagentoLive Europe 2019 in Amsterdam, the biggest Magento conference in Europe. Thanks, Jason, for taking the time to speak with me in person.
Jason [00:00:16] Thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Nick [00:00:18] It was a surprise for me, I didn’t plan that.
Jason [00:00:23] I’m glad it worked out.
Nick [00:00:25] So my name is Nick. I’ve been a Magento early adopter in 2008. I’ve been organizing Magento meetups all over Switzerland for the last couple of years, I’m an open source blogger and the founder of Openstream, a distributed ecommerce agency based in Switzerland. You’ve been Vice President of Magento Commerce for over three years now if I’m informed correctly.
Jason [00:00:50] Yes, almost four years.
Nick [00:00:55] So in the early days of Magento, Roy Rubin once said at a Magento keynote that he wishes he could bottle the energy that the Magento community generates. Why do you think Magento has such an energizing community of users, developers and partners?
Jason [00:01:11] Yeah, it’s a great question. And, you know, I don’t have a concrete answer. I have maybe, you know, some theories about why I think it’s it’s just so energetic because, you know, lots of companies have ecosystems around them. But something that’s really special about the Magento ecosystem is the passion that you find from literally everybody you talk to. And I’m sure, you know, organizing meetups, you’ve seen it as well. People are willing to give of themselves in a way that it almost seems unnatural. But it’s really the tie-in to one another. I think it’s the reliance on this broader community to really help people move things forward, shared innovation and being able to accomplish things that are bigger than yourself with a group of like minded individuals, global like minded individuals. We bring the world a little bit closer together in the commerce space. And I think that’s really what drives the energy and the passion and it’s something that’s absolutely intangible, but it’s probably one of the most important characteristics of our community.
[00:02:12] I agree, absolutely. Mark Lavelle last year at MagentoLive in Barcelona said: Here’s what’s not going to change: our commitment to our customers, our commitment to our partners and our commitment to our developer community. And today during your keynote, you said if you don’t have an ecosystem, you don’t have a platform. So maybe you can elaborate on that.Jason [00:02:35] Yeah. You know, really what I’m trying to get across there when I when I say if you don’t have an eco system, you don’t have a platform, is a platform does only exist for the benefit of their ecosystem. You only have a platform if you can extend it, if you can develop against it, you can move it in ways that perhaps it wasn’t even designed to be to be used for it. We’ve done, I think, a really good job of making sure that our developer community has full access into all of the capabilities of the software and all of the entitlement to go and move that software in a different direction, not only through, you know, community pull requests can actually come in and, you know, change the APIs and change the way that the software works. But then all of our customization and flexibility that lays on top of that. I think it just tells a very, very good story about how we can fit into just about any environment. And Mark, you know, had a brilliant, brilliant foresight guy. You know, I think his insights there are really about, you know, just you how do you keep a community super engaged? And the only way you do it is with investment. We’re part of that community, right? Magento corporate is part of the Magento community. We’re not the custodians of it. We’re not the leaders of it. We’re not the owners of it by any stretch of the imagination. And I think that humility, I think that the lack of hubris and how we approach this is really one of the things that made it much more successful that we’re willing to empower our community to go do things that may be different than what we had in mind, may not be perfectly lined up with our strategy, but it’s perfectly lined up with the community strategy. So it becomes our, you know, our feedback loop that just becomes super critical to how we move forward and what we do next.
Nick [00:04:20] Is there actually currently an open roadmap? I think I remember something.
Jason [00:04:24] Yeah, absolutely. Everything is published on GitHub. So we try to be as transparent as possible with not just our community, with the broader community as well. Right. So our roadmap fully published on GitHub, our active backlog, you can see what’s being worked on and when and who is working on it. It allows people to really anticipate when features and changes are going to impact or create new opportunities for them to take advantage of things in our software.
Nick [00:04:51] That’s great. It hasn’t been the case in the past that the roadmap was public. But it’s great that it’s now. I think since last year?
Jason [00:05:00] Yes, either early this year or late last year, that when we finally made it public and I think it was early this year that we opened up the backlog completely. And really, I think, you know, companies that don’t do that know they think that there’s some value in the secrecy and there is some value in what you’re going to spring on on the world. You know, what we’ve found is are our partners and our merchants. They want to know what’s coming. And I have a right to know what’s coming. And if we can give them insight into what we’re doing such that there aren’t any surprises. Then everybody seems to be a whole lot happier and their planning processes a lot more stable.
Nick [00:05:34] On the magento.com website, it is stated that Magento offers ecommerce solutions for every Web site, size and type of commerce business. I also noticed that you mentione Shopify on the Web site. So I was wondering if Magento really is for every Web site size or whether Shopify or solutions like WooCommerce may be better suited for small merchants.
Jason [00:05:55] Yeah. You know, it’s a good question. And so one, let me say that I absolutely agree that Shopify, WooCommerce, Big Commerce, these kind of smaller out-of-the-box SaaS players, they have a place to play in our ecosystem. They do a really good job at handling non-technical small merchants. You know what? We do find a lot, though, and where our open source product really creates a disruptive force in that lower end market is in small companies that actually have a technical background because then they actually have access to perhaps a more powerful piece of commerce software in Magento that may require a little bit of finesse in order to get up and running in terms of technical skills, but then unlocks the capabilities that you’re kind of locked out of in the SaaS platform. So, you know, I think there is room for all of us. I think that, you know, Shopify, big commerce say they do a great job in the area that they play in. We have a terrific, very technical alternative in that space. And then as you move upmarket, we’ve got the ability to grow with customers far beyond where Shopify and Big Commerce have aspirations.
Nick [00:07:03] Yeah, makes sense. Last year in Barcelona, I heard that Google Smart Shopping will be available out of the box for Magento merchants. And I’ve been waiting for that for some time and then I’ve noticed just about a week ago that there’s a free extension on the marketplace for some time now. And I think you also mentioned during your keynote today that the latest Magento release has Google Smart Shopping now included as an ad channel?
Jason [00:07:33] Yeah, finally, finally, we’ve actually got it included in the software.
Nick [00:07:37] So it was the plan all along?
Jason [00:07:38] It was the plan all along. We had it as a as an extension to make sure that it was available. Really kind of it gave us an opportunity to, one, test it out, make sure that we had full scalability, performance, all that good stuff, and then really kind of understand what the market need for it is. Right. So as we were looking at, you know, the usage and the adoption of the Google ads channel, it became obvious to us that that’s something that we should provide as an out of the box experience. And so with our latest release with Magento 2.3.3, Google ads is now a component of the software.
Nick [00:08:10] OK and the existing extension will be removed from the marketplace or will it be used to to develop new features and stuff.
Jason [00:08:18] So the existing extension will eventually be retired from the marketplace. It’s there today for folks that are not yet on the latest version of the software. So, as we get to when 2.3.3 becomes the release that’s about to get retired, then we’ll be able to pull that out of the marketplace. Until then the capabilities are the same. The code base that underlies both of those are identical. So as we make improvements to one, they’ll also improve. For example, as we make improvements to the core bundle capabilities, that will also improve the extension as well.
Nick [00:08:55] I think I forgot one question here. I read somewhere that you have a technical background or a developer background. And I wanted to ask you what kind of developer background?
Jason [00:09:08] Absolutely. So, I mean, I came out of undergraduate school in 1998, which was a great time to be a software developer. And I basically began my work in databases, wrote a whole lot of SQL server stored procedures. That was my specialty for a long, long time. And then I kind of switched over to learning .NET programing. So I was in the Microsoft stack for quite a bit of time and then started picking up, you know, scripting languages like PHP and Python and really so my technical expertise kind of runs the gamut through object oriented programing, less JavasSript. I’m really bad at JavaScript. I never, ever got good at JavaScript. But I understand how powerful it is. And I think, you know, having the technical background that I have has really helped me understand how to best invest in Magento, given that it is such a technical platform.
Nick [00:10:05] One of focuses in the ecosystem seems to be progressive web apps or PWA. What else will Magento be focusing on during the next couple of years.
Jason [00:10:18] Yeah, that’s a great question, I think. I think PWA is still a work in progress. We’ve got a terrific GraphQL layer that is providing our headless implementation. PWA Studio consumes that GraphQL, so there’s still work to do there to complete our Venia storefront. Primarily around B2B. We want to make sure that the PWA experience is not just a business to consumer experience. It also needs to be a business to business experience. So and as Adobe starts to think more about our interactions with the world, less around B2C and B2B and more around B2E, kind of B2 everyone, the use cases are starting to blend. A lot of cohesion is happening between those two kind of two fronts. So in the next couple of years, I think, one, you’ll see us continue to invest heavily in PWA. We’re very well along the path. There’s work remaining to do there. And then beyond that, I think you’ll see our investment in integrating Adobe capabilities. Right. Taking some of the enterprise capabilities from things like Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Experience Manager, and bringing those capabilities into the mid-market for Magento Commerce, as well as improving our integration with things like Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Experience Platform in the enterprise space.
Nick [00:11:43] I only have one last sort of fun question: What do you think about bringing back Roy Rubin as CEO of Magento Commerce?
Jason [00:11:50] Oh, Roy is fantastic. And, you know, we’d really love to have him. I don’t think I can convince him to take up the title, but, you know, Roy was instrumental in really laying the foundation for how we engage as a community. So, you know, I’d welcome Roy’s involvement in any way that he’d like to participate. And we’d certainly love to have him back on the Imagine stage someday.
Nick [00:12:12] That would be awesome.
Jason [00:12:13] Bringing him back into the COO role, well, I think he’s having a little bit too much fun right now to come back for that job.
Nick [00:12:21] Thank you very much. Is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners?
Jason [00:12:26] No. Nick, I appreciate the time today. I think the questions have been very thorough and hopefully you’re enjoying the show and let’s stay in touch as you go forward.
Nick [00:12:34] Thank you very much.
Jason [00:12:35] All right. Thank you, sir.
Credits
- Picture courtesy of Adobe
- Music courtesy of Northern Dusk