I had a blast in New York the other week at Meet Magento NY 2025. I saw a few familiar faces, and I learned a few new things about everyone’s favorite open source commerce platform.
Hyva Theme is now open source!
Hyva, which I definitively learned this trip is pronounced Hoo-vah) is probably the biggest thing in the Magento Open Source space, providing what many consider to be the best theme for the platform and is widely considered to be the right starting point for most people interested in Magento open source. The theme used to come with a hefty license fee, but no more! Use it as you wish, with it’s new OSL 3.0 licensing. I’m a strong proponent of using Adobe Commerce and Magento heedlessly through it’s GraphQL APIs so it’s possible I’ll never happen upon Hyva in my client work. Even still, I think I’ll start looking at it as the rightful default monolith theme and include it in my sandboxes. Just seems like time.
Loki Checkout
loki-extensions.com/checkout/…
If you’re on Hyva, Luma or even your own custom Magento theme, you may be interested in a lifted checkout experience. We got a great walkthrough of Loki checkout and it seems like a great foundation if you’re looking for a lift but still keep things relatively close to the ground.
Daffodil
I was keenly interested in this talk because it speaks to some very real problems that we see play out in our day-to-day life. We have several practices here at Blue Acorn, it’s not just Adobe. But since each platform has it’s own toolchain, it’s hard to find developers who can interoperate between platforms. And even if they can, they are often forced to reinvent the wheel as we usually build for more modern frontends that don’t have the interfaces Hyva and Luma have perfected. Daffodil changes all that with a rich component library for commerce that works across platforms, supporting Adobe Commerce and a whole host of others. The maintainer is commited to keeping it open source and making sure developers can extend across platforsm and teconologies, and I hope we get a chance to use it soon!
Upsun (Formally Platform.sh)
Another major shocker was that Platform.sh, the beloved platform behind Magento Cloud, has changed it’s name to Upsun. Personally, I thought Platform.sh was the perfect name – succinctly describes the tool. I got the sense that the new name is a bit controversial. I’ve hosted Magento pretty much every way possible, but over the last five or six years that’s really become a forgotten skill with Magento Cloud. So whaever they are calling it, it really is a mature and reliable hosting platform. And trust me, rolling these things by hand can be more trouble than it’s worth for most people.
Adobe App Builder and Optimizer
experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/c…
What Magento event would be complete without Adobe’s heavy hand talking up their enterprise platform? This year Ritesh brought out all the new mainstays: Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, App Builder and Adobe Optimizer are really where you want to be if you’re in the enterprise space. There was a slide with the apps in the Exchange, and I think I might have had a hand in more than a handful of them! Watching the Cloud Service and App Builder platforms take off has been a highlight for sure.
We also keep hearing a lot about Adobe Commerce Optimizer, and this was no exception! ACO is poised to be the stepping stone from any platform, be it Magento, Shopify, Oracle or something home grown into the Edge Delivery Services space, providing catalog, search and that blazing-fast storefront. Customers are using it as a key first-step for eventual SaaS adoption. Adobe seems to have a strong strategy in out-of-process extensibility and edge delivery services, it’s great to see them continue down this road.
Hanging with my Team!
My favorite part of the trip is that I didn’t have to go alone! With Magento Meet we’ve made it a habit to not just send wildcards like me, but we’ve made an effort to send Technical Architects who love both Adobe Commerce and Magento to soak up the culture. This year, Max and Ryan, two guys I’ve worked super closely with for years – most recently building out some blockbuster App Builder apps, were able to tag along. I’ve worked with Max for six or seven years at this point, and while we’ve been through hell together on more than one implementation, I had never met him before until the trip. Really great putting a body to the face, and I immediately felt at ease because I knew him for years. Ryan and I have worked on the same team in the Charleston office for years and years, so the three of us roamed the streets from bar to bar, tried not to go over the per-diem, and had a great time.
Infosys and the World Trade Center
Once word got out that I was going to be in New York, like half of management offered to arrange for access to our office in One World Trade. In truth, there wasn’t time to even put our bags down, but I have to say that it’s probably my favorite stop anytime I’m in New York. From the lobby you take an elevator to the 64th floor with an observation deck overlooking the city, complete with a little lounge! There’s another elevator you have to take to get to the floor Infosys and our sister company WongDooty are. The view from there is nothing short of astounding, if you work here you should definitely find a way to work out o the office for a few days.
That’s it!
I t was a great trip. I got to see a lot of old friends, including the good folks at Adobe and old school Blue Acorn alum like Ben Marks. I want to thank Blue Acorn and my leadership for flying me out, and I’m looking forward to next year!
