Bargento 3 took place last monday in Paris, France and all the attendees were treated to a great event with a great turnout, with over 300 retailers, partners and community members attending.
After the introductory keynote by Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner, special guest Zeev Suraski of Zend took the stage to announce the new partnership between Magento and Zend. Magento and Zend have partnered together to help enhance Magento and the Zend framework and Magento is now available bundled with Zend Server. For more information read the Magento and Zend Press Release and see the Magento and Zend information page.
After that it was time for the partners to take the stage and we had some great talks from Magento hosting partner NBS System, YSance and Gabriel Bouhatous of Fragento on topics ranging from Magento hosting, to integrating Magento with CRM and some very exciting Magento sites that are under development.
Phillipe Humeau of NBS Presenting
Samuel Augy of YSance presenting on integrating Magento with CRM packages
Following that, after the break, the crowd gathered back inside for the announcement of the Official Magento Academy which is being kicked off in France. The Magento Academy aims to offer high quality training and certification around Magento. Look for more information on an expanded program soon. The crowd was very excited and the rest of the day there was tremendous buzz about the Magento Academy and how people can become more knowledgeable about Magento and gain better understanding at a code level.
Yoav Kutner doing the honors and cutting the ribbon to launch the official Magento Academy
Another highlight of the Bargento event was the Magento Hackfest. Teams of pairs of developers teamed up to see which could create the most innovative Magento Widget in about an hours worth of time. There were some really innovative ideas put into action and congratulations go out to the winning team who won free Magento Certification from the Magento Academy. Look for news on an extended world-wide developer event taking place in the first half of 2010.
Participants in the Magento Hackfest line up to be judged
The day ended off with another couple of talks by Magento Partners Smile and SQLI and on topics including integrating Apache Lucene with Magento for more effective search and using Magento in a B2B environment.
Overall the event was a huge success with a great turnout and great talks. Many new friends were made and a large group went out for dinner after the event. Look forward to more community events in other places, all over the world as well as a developer event taking place soon. A special thanks goes out to all the French community coordinators who made this event possible and thanks for starting to plan the next Bargento!
Please note: All images are courtesy of Flickr user Narno!