We interview Muliadi Jeo who organizes Meet Magento Indonesia. This is the seventh year for Meet Magento Indonesia.
This is a broader series of interviews to focus on the Magento Association. The goal of these interviews is to increase awareness and increase membership for the Magento Association.
The event happens on August 3rd, 2022 in Jakarta Indonesia
Transcript
Brent: Welcome to this episode of Magento association or something. We don’t know what to call it yet, but this is promoting the Magento association today. I have Muliadi Jio from Indonesia, and he’s the organizer of Meet Magento. Indonesia
Muliadi: hey, Brent. Hey everybody. Good to see you all. And talk to you again, Brent
Brent: let’s dive right in. Tell us a little bit about your event, and how long you’ve had it running for.
Muliadi: This is if I count it this is supposed to be the, instead the six or the seven-year we run in Indonesia. So it’s always been offline, of course. And then the last two years, unfortunately, during the pandemic, we have to switch to online for a couple of years and this year.
Muliadi: So we are so excited. Finally, we were able to do it again as an in person meeting. And so far the respond, at least from the advertising for the sponsor side. They’re so excited. It’s been a while there’s no event and everybody just jump in and join. So we’re very excited.
Brent: And traditionally, you get a lot of people at this event.
Brent: Tell us about your attendance
Muliadi: and things like that. I remember when we started seven years ago I think that’s close to about a hundred people which is where we see, oh, that’s a good audience to start at that time. And then as we go year after year, I think the last. In person event on what’s that right before pandemic 2019 that one is actually around 600 people show up on the event.
Muliadi: And we can always unique us. So we have Three different track traditionally, so one track really for business and one track really for a solution. So where the sum of the sponsor can talk in the solution because they’re bringing their solution to it. And then the last track’s really more technical discussion.
Muliadi: And yeah, we have about 50/50 about like merchant versus a engineering dev flow burst kind of audience. .
Brent: And how about your venue and the location? Tell us a little bit about Indonesia. Why would, why should we all come to Indonesia?
Muliadi: Why would we want to come? I think most you have to, if you’ve never been to Indonesia, I think a lot of people very funny when we talk to a lot of people, especially from American or from the Europe, obviously a lot of people know Bali more than the Indonesia itself.
Muliadi: So when we talk about, do you know Bali. Indonesia, maybe not but obviously Bali sits in Indonesia and where we are is in Jakarta, which is the kind of the central the biggest city in Indonesia. We are close to two hours away from Bali. By flight.
Muliadi: Yeah. And then we’ve been doing this in Jakarta because like it’s all the business and all the enterprises all have the headquarter in Jakarta. It’s fun. You can fly to Jakarta and then you can, obviously once you’re in Indonesia, you should just explore to any, like to Bali and all the rest of the, a exotic islands on the east part of Indonesia.
Brent: And of course there’s so many exciting and beautiful places to visit in Indonesia. Obviously going to a Meet Magento event is such a great opportunity to travel and meet people. And from the sponsor standpoint maybe tell us a little bit about some of the merchants you have there and why somebody would want a sponsor.
Brent: A Meet Magento event.
Muliadi: Yeah, we traditionally very very localized as far as like our event. A lot of the sponsor, we get a lot of local sponsor, but obvious some we open up for a lot of international. Businesses that want to get their business exposed to Indonesia market, which is well known for the big population and the opportunity here.
Muliadi: So that’s always the kind of the attractive point to be able to get your business exposure to here in Southeast Asia especially in Indonesia itself. Yeah at our event is always free. That’s the unique part. Compared to any other event around crossroad on the other meet change event I think we are the only one that is free and fully funded by the sponsors.
Muliadi: Luckily and then, yeah it’s exciting.
Brent: And you have, you said you have three tracks that you’re running in conjunction with the event?
Muliadi: And they yes, there’s a three tracks. It’s a whole day event.
Brent: So you have a business track, a developer track. And what was the other.
Muliadi: It’s what we call it.
Muliadi: The solution track it’s really for people can present their product and basic more like showing kind of solutions. And typically we use that for the sponsor to be able more engaged and able to demo the product and stuff like that. But digital this year seems like we are going to
Muliadi: blend it together. We have a lot of different kind of speakers this year. Not only just a group sponsor, but as well, like a lot of the business practitioner. So we mix around all inside the three track that we have. We still have gonna have three tracks, but not like really divided that way anymore.
Muliadi: For this year.
Brent: So part of this is the Magento association now helps to promote these events. And Magento association has paid memberships now. So I’m on the membership committee. And our goal is to increase membership.
Brent: What would you say to people
Brent: who that, what would you say to people who encourage them to join the Magento Association?
Muliadi: I think let’s go back with the heart of this Magento is the community and this Magento has been really successful because all those community support. So I think the Magento association is becoming the form of that. And naturally we want to be part and this association and participate as much as we want
Muliadi: and that’s and in the form of the paying membership, I think that’s at least a little bit that you can do as far as participation, and that’s a lot more to participate. I believe you are also involved with much more than just a paying member. You are also involved in the comittee and a lot of the different stuff.
Muliadi: And I, I think that’s what we are looking forward with the Magento association. So we can recreate this vibrant community back where everybody can participate and basically yeah, I think in our maybe like blessing each other, something like that.
Brent: Go back to the beginning. And why you decided to put on a Meet Magento event, had you attended events in Europe?
Muliadi: So it’s by accident actually, I went back to Indonesia way back on 2010. So it’s almost 12 years now. Initially I just going back here because family reason and I was already have a good relationship with Magento. I was in the states for 16 years and right before I went back to Indonesia, I worked with a company called Guidance, which is.
Muliadi: Partner of Magento. We are among one of the first partner working with Magento directly, still in the Culver City office. Naturally when I went back to Indonesia at that time I’m building the first set of developers for Guidance and really focusing on Magento and it started with only a couple of us.
Muliadi: And then the team grew to five. And 10 and all of a sudden become a full team of I think at that time we still have about 15 people concentrating, really delivering the gentle project for our US clients, a lot of, but then Indonesia eCommerce picking up around 2012 to early 2013.
Muliadi: So then we get a lot more exposure with a big comp, a big company that interested to know more about Magento. And obviously at that time I still go back and forth, always attending the Imagine. We miss the Magento Imagine events. That’s been really great. And I met a lot of people there.
Muliadi: Some of them were was the founder of the Meet Magento association at that time still . And so we have a talk and then we would think, okay, maybe we can build a community in Indonesia. Why don’t we try? And then I talked to a couple folks on the Magento and they also interested to
Muliadi: build exposure in Indonesia. So we just launched our first event out of the blue working with Magento, working with several I’m trying to remember. It’s been so long and yeah, but that’s, it’s turned out really good. The event we get a lot of support from the local company, as well as audience that coming in and show really interest on the platform and interest in the building the community.
Muliadi: So just that’s becoming now every year after that, we just continue to have the events until now, basically. Guido is one of the first person actually flying to Indonesia on our yeah. Guido. Yeah. Guido Jensen. Yeah, he put
Brent: on the, I think they put the very first event in the Netherlands and I think Meet Magento, Netherlands by far is one of the best ones that’s out there still.
Brent: It’s such a fun event. Yeah.
Muliadi: Yep. And then the following year or year after two years after that, Thomas also fly to Indonesia. So yeah, it’s been really a good run. All right. Followed them, saying that I need to
Brent: come one of these years. I’ll come
Muliadi: next year. You need to, I’m gonna keep saying until you come here, please do so
Brent: tell us, how do they find an event?
Brent: is it
Muliadi: your address? It’s re really from information? Yes. So the official website is called very easy to remember is the M A G E dot ID. So it’s a mage.id as. So you can go to the website, you can see the agenda, you can see the speakers that are already set for this event. It’s gonna be on August 3rd.
Muliadi: So not too far, it’s less than two weeks. Their venue will be the venue address will be on the website and you can register there right away too. And like I said, it’s free.
Brent: So just outta curiosity when you do a free event, do you find a lot of people don’t show up?
Muliadi: Obviously with the free event typically the, from the registration and the show up is probably it’s a industry stranded around 60% show up or so 40% most likely not show up.
Muliadi: Yeah. But it’s still it’s still good number. We we’ve like we, with all the registration that we have it’s a good turnout
Brent: for us. Yeah. That’s a really good number. I know that so we organize meet Megento India. and did, have you been to meet Magento India yet?
Muliadi: Did you come?
Muliadi: No. No, you have to come we’re planning. I only went one time to Bangalore. Oh, that was
Brent: Magento live. Yeah. Anyways we get we pay, we have people pay, but we do get an incredible attendance. It’s in the 90%, the people that buy tickets come to the event. Yeah. I think all the meet Magento events and I’ve been to meet Magento Singapore as.
Brent: So that whole south Asia , meet Megento events you do such a great job putting those on I tended last year, virtually which was a very good event. , I stayed up late to to be a speaker in my evening. Thank you, morning. It, it was very good. I actually spoke the night and followed watched a lot of the speakers.
Brent: Yeah. Thank you so much for being on. I will put mage.id on the show notes and I wish you all the best in your event.
Muliadi: Thank you. Thank you, Brent. Really great talking to you as always. Thank you. And good night.
