Marbella. Sunshine. A conference full of people who are actually excited about Magento again. What’s not to love?
We’re back from Hyvä Developers Paradise, where we joined as sponsors, attendees, and speakers. A combo we’re pretty proud of.
Developers Paradise has always had a special place for us. We organized one ourselves back in 2016, so attending it in its current form carries a little extra meaning.
This year, three Inchooers made the trip: CEO Tomislav and our Hyvä certified duo Josip and Karlo. First Paradise for the certified duo. Not the last, that’s for sure.
Three Days of Community Spirit
The energy was felt the moment we walked in. WAM and the Hyvä team had created something that felt less like a conference and more like a reunion.
It was a packed few days: keynotes, technical talks, hands-on workshops, evening socials.
Three days in Marbella
DevExchange
No slides, just real conversations out on the pool terrace.
A full room and real announcements
Sharp talks, packed crowd, and product news worth showing up for.
Wrapping it up with networking
Hallway chats, last conversations, and goodbyes that took a while.
A lot happened, but a few moments really stuck with us:
Hyvä Is Why Merchants Still Believe in Magento
Hyvä is emerging as a key anchor of trust. Not just through features, but through momentum and direction. In an ecosystem that’s been searching for energy, Hyvä is setting the pace. The roadmap is genuinely exciting, and merchants feel that energy too.
Amasty shared data that made things pretty clear. Magento took a pretty big hit during COVID, but since 2022 it’s been on the rise again. A big part of that is Hyvä. Lower TCO, better performance, and a frontend developers actually enjoy working with.
John Hughes (VP Product at Hyvä) covered all the product updates and then kindly wrote it all up too. Make sure to check out his recap.
Two things have us particularly hyped: Hyvä POS and the transactional email beta.
AI Is Already in the Workflow
One of the most interesting signals from the whole event was how quietly confident the Hyvä team is about AI. Vinai Kopp gave a great talk about how skills, agents and Magento combine, and Josip and Karlo followed it up in a CSP workshop where they traded workflow notes with fellow developers.
The takeaway: AI isn’t a “future topic” at Hyvä. It’s already baked into the daily workflow, supported by weekly internal syncs where the team shares what’s working and what isn’t. No hype. Just habit. The weekly-sync idea is a practice worth copying.
The Talk That Hit Hardest
If one talk captured the mood of the whole event, it was Jakub Winkler’s.
His argument was simple and uncomfortable in a useful way: the Magento community spent years developing in a closed loop because the product “sold itself.” That’s no longer the case.
If we want this ecosystem to stay healthy, we need to change how we show up. That means:
- attending conferences that aren’t just about Magento
- sharing solutions publicly instead of keeping them internal
- breaking things in the open
- supporting each other when someone puts work out there
As Jakub put it: it takes passion, courage, and support. We couldn’t agree more.
The same thread ran through several other talks: the future of the ecosystem will be stabler and healthier if more initiatives and contributors actively shape its direction, whether that’s Magento Open Source, Hyvä Theme or Commerce, or Mage-OS.
Our Talk: UX Measurement, With a Hajduk Split Case Study
Our CEO Tomislav also took the stage with a talk on UX Measurement Plan: how to actually figure out whether the changes you’re making on a site are working, and how to structure measurement before you start pushing pixels around.
The case study was a Hyvä-powered webshop close to our hearts: Hajduk Split. It was a good chance to show how UX measurement plays out in the wild on a real, high-traffic Magento store running Hyvä, not in a polished hypothetical.
Resource
UX Measurement Plan Card
The framework Tomislav presented at Paradise, free to explore.
Evenings: Parties, Networking and Honest Conversations
And then the sun went down, and things took a turn (in the best possible way).
There’s a certain looseness to Paradise evenings that conference days don’t usually allow. Marbella was the perfect choice of location, and the evening parties were very much the cherry on top. It often ends up being where the most honest conversations happen.
Old faces (familiar, not old old 😄), new faces, good conversations. What more can you ask for?
Soaking in the City
Between sessions, we snuck out for short walks. Nothing ambitious. Just enough to let Marbella settle in.
That’s the thing about this city. It just gives you permission to slow down. Would recommend. Would return.
Flying Home
We came home with more optimism about Magento than we’ve had in a while. The ecosystem is changing, but it’s changing with intention. There’s this quiet confidence in the air, not loud or overhyped, just steady progress you can actually see. And for the first time in a while, it really feels like the best of Magento isn’t behind us… it might actually still be ahead.
Big congrats to WAM and Hyvä for pulling it off, and to everyone who showed up and made it what it was. Already looking forward to the next edition!
Check out the official Gallery for more photos 🙂
PS. The Shirts
One last thing.
Josip and Karlo came back from Paradise with fresh Hyvä Certified Developer T-Shirts that say, in no uncertain terms: “Trust me, I’m a Hyvä Certified Developer.” They also brought one for Robert, our third certified dev who couldn’t make it to Marbella, so no one felt left out.
All three of them have been spotted wearing the shirts around the office. We’re choosing to interpret this as a public reminder that they can, in fact, be trusted. 😄 Message received, guys.
