Shopify Unite, the yearly event dedicated to Shopify Partners, is back!
The first of the three in-person events for the Shopify Partner ecosystem was held in London on September 12-13.
This is the first time Nama has attended an in-person Unite and it was really great to talk to other agencies in person and see the community of developers come together to share ideas and learn more about building on the platform. Here is a short summary of how we experienced the event.
Event details
- Attendees: 250
- Location: Tobacco Docks, one of the most historic London commerce sites
- Dates: 12-13 September 2022
- Sponsors: Deloitte Digital, Rise.ai, Astound commerce, Recharge
This year’s Shopify Unite was catered to developers, with a series of hands-on workshops dedicated to building themes, apps and custom experiences for the Shopify ecosystem, as well as more general talks on Shopify’s latest features and how to grow your theme or app business.
Shopify talks
The talks were held by both Shopify team members and by Shopify Partners.
On day 1, we got to hear from Shopify staff about key topics announced during Shopify Editions like the state of theme development, Hydrogen and Oxygen and when you should use them, and we had a sneak peek of the new Shopify Content Platform, which is now in beta for Advanced and Plus clients.
One of the recurring themes across the talks was the improvement of the tools dedicated to developers, both for themes and apps, as well as the opportunities that Shopify functions and checkout extensions represent for app developers.
On day 2, it was time for the Shopify partners to share their experience. For example, AskPhill e Boa Ideas dived deep into how they are approaching the new features released by Shopify and shared with the audience practical examples from their most recent projects.
Rhian Beutler inspired all of us by talking about her journey as both a boostrap enterpreneur at Vennto and her most recent experience in the world of venture capital with Govalo. As fellow enterpreneurs, o ur favourite quote from her talk is “Own your mistakes. Learn form them.” - we love to work on tech as its ecosystem allows you to learn from your mistakes and quickly correct them. When everything changes so quickly, accepting failure and turn it into a resource is fundamental.
Workshops
The workshops, led by Shopify engineers and developer advocates, were focused on getting familiar with some of the most recent Shopify features announced at Shopify Editions, such as Checkout extensions, Shopify Functions or leveraging the power of metafields.
They were held using Codelabs, so that attendees could have an easy way to follow along. They have also already been shared by the Shopify team for the larger community of developers that could not attend the event or that want to work again on the workshop on their own. You can find the Unite workshops here.
I think one of the most interesting workshops was about Effective ways of improving the performance of your online store, where the Helen Lin analysed with PageSpeed insight the score of a theme and then step by step went through all the optimizations we can implement using Liquid.
Also, as an agency focused on developing themes, it was good to get exposed to technologies we don’t normally use and try our hand at developing app extensions.
Office hours
Shopify allowed participants to book a 1-1 office hour session with Shopify team members to discuss different problems. The topics you could discuss were the following: API Support, APP Review, Theme Support & Review, Custom Storefronts Support, and Functions & Checkout Support.
Networking
A great opportunity of professional growth was offered by the networking sessions throughout the two days, and we found it extremely helpful to discuss both wins and struggles with other entrepreneurs and agencies.
Once again the Shopify ecosystem proved itself as a collaborative and proactive environment, where you can easily pair a pint accompanied by a kitten-themed discussion with a serious and passionate debate around the most pressing eCommerce challenges.
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As an agency, we are looking forward to play around and implement the upcoming updates!
If you are considering using Shopify for your online store, you can subscribe here for a free trial or email us at info@namastudio.it
