Magento's community politics, argued out loud.
MageTalk is a conversation show from inside the Magento community, and it spends most of its time on governance, branding and who keeps the platform moving. Guests from the Magento Association and the wider ecosystem give candid views on Adobe, Magento Open Source and the effort to give the community a voice of its own.
PRESS PLAY
MageTalk is a conversation show about the Magento ecosystem, and its recent episodes keep coming back to one question: who looks after the platform, and on whose behalf. The titles alone show the range: 'What do we need the MA for anyway?', 'Tightly Aligned, Loosely Coupled', 'A Touch Of Urgency Is Needed' and 'Walking Cats & Composable Commerce'. The Magento Association is near the centre. Matthias Schreiber, introduced as the association's director, is asked what the MA is up to and why it matters. The talk then turns to transparency about where its time and money go. The same conversation offers a deliberate provocation: that the Magento world has never truly run open source itself, because a well-backed commercial company always stood behind the product. There is a practical side too. One plan would turn contributor updates, which are posted on the Magento forums, into developer appreciation posts that name the people who did the work. Adobe is the other recurring presence. One speaker describes the MA as a bridge between the community and Adobe. The same speaker notes that few of the people now working on the commerce product at Adobe have a Magento background, and that community pushback usually comes from passion and a fear of losing something. Elsewhere, a speaker argues that Adobe refuses to represent Magento as a brand, and that Magento Open Source remains Magento Open Source even though Magento Commerce became Adobe Commerce. Another speaker says they wrote to the MA, before joining its board, to urge independence from Adobe, and started MageOS when that outcome looked uncertain. New branding guidelines are raised as one obstacle to securing more funding and independence: they would require Magento Open Source to be pitched as only for very small merchants. Not every stretch is policy. Guests Bartek and Filip compare notes on staying focused, and Filip describes a Pomodoro routine that splits his time between deep work and catching up on Slack. Another exchange puzzles over why a Google report looked at only about half of a platform's live stores, and what that means for brand recognition. Season three is framed on air as a reboot, with the show described as inherited from its founders, Philip and Caelan. On-air credits name Future Commerce, a podcast by Philip Jackson, who is called the original brains behind MageTalk. They also name MageChat, a private community for Magento people. Kalen and Willem tease each other over a retaken intro and work out how many days of listening the back catalogue adds up to. The arguments are broken up by jokes: positive vibes only, the community as a religion with its own excommunications, and a five-star rating request aimed at anyone named Philip. The result suits someone who already knows Magento and wants the arguments that shape the platform, told by people with a stake in them.
Made for: Suits a listener who already works in or around Magento and wants the governance, branding and community arguments behind the platform rather than an introduction to it.
What sets it apart: MageTalk focuses on who looks after Magento: how open the Magento Association is, how Adobe handles the brand, and the community's push to stand on its own. The pointed arguments sit alongside a relaxed, joking rapport between the speakers.
The Magento Podcast. Season 3 is here! Brought to you by Hyvä.
Magento's JavaScript gets a close look; you also get a debate over how to pronounce a name.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
MageTalk traces who steers Magento Open Source through Association elections, GitHub upvotes, contributor credit, and transparency.
MageTalk uses a pointed question about the Magento Association to open up a broader discussion of who really guides Magento Open Source. The host's challenge, that the Magento world has never quite run open source for itself, gives Matthias Schreiber room to talk through board…
A candid Magento conversation about community pressure, Adobe's bridge-builders, and rebuilding trust.
This episode presents Eric Irway as a bridge between Adobe and the Magento community, and it is sharpest when it shows how quickly passion can turn into pressure.
A loose, familiar Magento discussion that becomes a pointed case for open-source independence.
MageTalk's 240th episode uses its long-running familiarity as a way into a sharper Technology discussion about Magento's future, especially the tension between Adobe's branding guidance and an open-source community trying to keep its own direction.
A Magento-rooted conversation about headless storefronts and the productivity loops around a CTO's calendar.
Mace Talk uses Bartek and Filip's visit from View Storefront to trace the point where Magento know-how starts meeting headless commerce. Filip's front-end path through AngularJS and Vue.js, his work with commerce APIs, and his limited time in Magento back-end code give the…
A grounded Magento discussion on brand identity, storefront performance data, and Magecart's lingering reputation problem.
MageTalk uses a Magento branding question to open up a more useful discussion about how ecommerce technology gets judged. Kalen and Willem move from Magento Association T-shirts and the Magento-versus-Adobe Commerce naming problem into a Google report that analyzed about 400 of…
Linux talk with hands-on scars.
Kubernetes changes, explained by the people who made them.
Ruby talk with the edges left on.
Kalen Jordan and Phillip discuss Magento 2.3, including multi-source inventory, declarative schema, GraphQL, asynchronous web APIs, and delayed Bluefoot page-builder support.
MageTalk Episode 186 features Philip and Kalen recording a second informal 'on the go' edition while discussing Magento community activity, Christmas-themed Magento jokes, career training, PWA, and agency software.
MageTalk Episode 158 features Philip and Kalen discussing Magento community news, accessibility, retail technology, and Kalen’s move to Austin.
A podcast about Magento e-commerce development, featuring discussions on PWA, cloud hosting, and developer insights.
A podcast about Magento e-commerce, featuring an interview with a community member discussing technical and personal topics.
MageTalk hosts Philip and Kalen review Magento Live EU announcements, including Magento’s acquisition of Akron’s B2B purchasing approval workflow product and a planned Q1 2020 B2C API-coverage milestone.
James Zetlin, Senior Front End Architect at Adobe, explains why Magento 2 frontend development can demand full-stack knowledge and why PWA Studio offers a different path.
MageTalk's 'What do we need the MA for anyway?' turns on Matthias Schreiber's argument that Magento has always had commercial backing behind its open-source layer.
Eric Irway returns to the Magento community through Shipper HQ and says the core lesson from two years at Card.com is that "the community is the product." He traces his path from computer science into Magento 2, Luma, and PWA Studio, where developer experience, GraphQL, service workers, and Google Lighthouse shaped the work.
MageTalk episode 240 opens with Philip and Willem joking that the show has reached about 240 episodes, or roughly ten full days of listening.
Kalen and Willem interview Bartek and Filip from View Storefront about Magento roots, open-source storefront projects, and the company's separation from Divante.
Episode 238 of MageTalk centers on Magento Association branding, Adobe Commerce messaging, and the fight over whether the Magento name can still be used publicly.
MageTalk episode 237 examines why Adobe's statement that “Magento is now Adobe Commerce” omits the continuing Magento Open Source product.
Mage Talk episode 236 features Willem and Kalen discussing MageChat, a paid Magento community built around peer support, weekly talks, and a dedicated rant channel.
MageTalk hosts Kalen and Willem examine Amasty’s large Magento extension portfolio, its reputation for code conflicts, and its partnership with JetRails.
MageTalk: A Magento Podcast examines Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for digital commerce platforms and questions whether its leader designation reliably predicts platform durability.
MageTalk hosts Willem and Caleb compare the Magento communities in Europe and the United States around Meet Magento Singapore and Meet Magento New York.
MageTalk episode 232 pairs Kalen and Willem for a retrospective on the show's 2014 origins, Magento community cycles, and MageOS.
MageTalk: A Magento Podcast follows Damien through a workday that starts with a Kubernetes alert at 1,400 requests per second and about 30,000 concurrent users.
MageTalk: A Magento Podcast compares audio-only and video podcast habits before moving into Magento's evolving ecosystem.
MageTalk: A Magento Podcast begins with Phillip Jackson apologizing for calling Kalen 18 months late, arguing that Kalen is actually two years early to emerging trends.
MageTalk Episode 228 examines Willem’s HVA frontend framework, which uses HTML and CSS as its foundation and adds JavaScript selectively for Magento storefronts.
MageTalk Episode 226, “It’s Pronounced ‘Hyva’,” moves from cricket protein and Purina’s early Magento adoption into a discussion of Hyva’s pronunciation and Magento community history.
MageTalk Episode 225 features David Manners discussing remote work, Magento community experience, and managing distributed teams during the COVID-19 period.
Kalen interviews Damian Retzinger, CEO and founder of Graycore, about Magento, Angular, Daffodil, remote work, and gaming.
MageTalk Episode 223 features MageMojo CEO Eric Heilman discussing remote work, Slack governance, meetings, and maintaining customer connection at a 40-person company.
Kalen interviews Kito about conversion rate optimization, community building, and the changing Magento ecosystem.
Kalen interviews Riccardo Tempesta of Skiller, the Italian Magento services company in which a larger digital group took a 51% stake after about a year of discussions.
Phillip and Kalen Jordan examine why developers choose merchant-side work over agencies, focusing on ownership, equity, project longevity, and technical specialization.
MageTalk Episode 219 pairs Phillip and Kalen’s discussion of remote work with practical routines for writing, exercise, journaling, and family time.
MageTalk hosts Philip and Kalen examine a SanSec-reported Google Tag Manager workaround that can bypass Content Security Policy and contrast roughly half a billion broadly configured websites with about 15,000 stricter implementations.
MageTalk hosts Kalen and Philip interview Joseph McDermott, a senior solutions architect at Clevu, about Magento search and developer integrations.
MageTalk: A Magento Podcast interviews Peter Manajac about Magento certification updates, including a full stack credential combining professional developer, JavaScript, and front-end exams.
MageTalk: A Magento Podcast returns after a listener asked whether the show had “podfaded,” with the hosts discussing why publication became irregular.
MageTalk hosts Phillip and Kalen move from a 32.1-mile sand-dune ultra marathon to the changing identity of the Magento community.
MageTalk Episode 214 examines Magento 1 end of life through a debate between Kalen Jordan and Phil about merchants, agencies, platform support, and the shift toward cloud commerce.
MageTalk Episode 213 features Rebecca Brocton discussing mental health, weight loss, and wellbeing within the Magento community.
MageTalk Episode 212 interviews Rico Neitzel and Fabian Blechschmidt about MageOne's plan to provide paid Magento 1 support after Adobe's June 2020 end-of-life date.
MageTalk host Philip interviews Phil Hansen of Queue-it, a company that manages traffic spikes for e-commerce launches, ticketing sales, and other high-demand online events.
MageTalk hosts Philip and Kalen review Magento Live EU announcements including Magento's acquisition of Akron's B2B purchasing approval workflow product, Sensei recommendations, and continued PWA and Vinnia work.
Kaelin interviews Rick Willett about his path from ColdFusion development and a ten-year career with Stomp to Magento work beginning around 2012.
MageTalk Episode 209 examines podcast presentation, e-commerce nihilism, consumer manipulation, and the conversion of cultural criticism into merchandise.
MageTalk Episode 208 features Aaron Sheehan of Widenhammer discussing Magento migrations, B2B commerce, product content, and the cost of digital discovery.
Kalen and Phillip discuss their weight-loss progress, including Phillip’s proposed 10,000-pound community challenge and Kalen’s reported 25-pound loss.
MageTalk Episode 205 connects a voice-warming claim about humming with Magento hiring, AI risk, and the changing role of e-commerce platforms.
MageTalk hosts Kalen and Phillip examine Matt Asay’s move from Adobe to AWS and David Manners’s departure from Magento for BidExpert.
MageTalk Episode 203 examines why retailers at Commerce Next described ecommerce platforms as too limited, too flexible, too expensive, or too small.
Philip and Kayla discuss a cycling crash, Meet Magento New York on September 5–6, 2019, and Magento community reviews.
Philip Jackson and Kalen Jordan open with Reed Jenkins’s five-star Apple Podcasts review and invent the “Reed Jenkins comma” around its disputed punctuation.
MageTalk Episode 200 marks the show's 200th installment with jokes about unmet anniversary expectations, mild anxiety, and references to Seinfeld and Modern Seinfeld.
MageTalk Episode 199 features James Zetlen, Adobe’s Senior Front End Architect, discussing Magento 2 frontend complexity and the direction of PWA Studio.
Kalen and Phillip debate whether Magento can serve a constrained $10,000 project, including an off-the-shelf theme, one plugin, and one required module.
MageTalk Episode 197 contrasts one host's week-long Vancouver sabbatical with the Imagine conference he skipped after attending for six or seven years.
Phillip and Kalen discuss Gary Vaynerchuk's planned Magento Imagine keynote, comparing his broad internet following with Magento-specific figures such as Philip Jackson.
Philip interviews Peter Manajak, Joseph Maxwell, Emily Dowd, and Caitlin Makeda about rebuilding the Magento 2 Solution Specialist certification exam.