Review - maxcluster partner day 2023

Ever since we set up our partner program, we have been thinking about a partner day in order to have a more intensive exchange with our partner agencies on e-commerce and agency-related topics. It was important for us to foster learning from each other, talk about new things and identify topics that are important for our partners. At the same time, we wanted to give our partners the opportunity to get to know us and our premises better and to ask their questions about maxcluster topics.

Setting

Our partner day was divided into two lecture rooms with different focuses as well as a co-working space and two lounge rooms as a place to retreat. We used our large event room to give external speakers a stage for e-commerce and agency-related topics. In the maxcluster room, we wanted to encourage exchange between partners and our employees on maxcluster topics. There, only our employees were appointed as speakers on topics related to their daily work.

Day 1

At 10 a.m. on September 13, the time had come: we opened the doors for day 1 of our Partner Day. The participants received their name badges and were welcomed by our technical consulting staff in our restaurant. There they were able to grab coffee, cold drinks and snacks for the first presentations.

Let's start

At 11 a.m., maxcluster Managing Director Sebastian and Jan, Partner Manager at maxcluster, started with the official welcome in the large event room and Jan explained the structure of the Partner Day. After the welcome, the participants spread out into the different rooms, depending on their main interests. The presentations in both rooms were well received and during lunch there was a lot of networking. Between the program and the evening event, participants used the time to visit our premises, check-in at the hotels, check their emails or go bouldering (an idea of our participants).

Highlight-Themen Tag 1

New Work (Julia Bunte, Head of HR maxcluster)

In her presentation, Julia Bunte addressed the question of how companies can use New Work approaches to shape a sustainable work culture.

As a starting point, she presented that many companies find it more difficult than expected to transform collaboration towards New Work. Therefore, Julia addressed the core values of New Work and showed that not everything has to be reinvented in order to change, but rather a mixture of stability and change make dynamic transformations of the working world possible.

Furthermore, she presented how the topic was approached at maxcluster and which advantages even the smallest changes towards a human-centered company offer.

Communication Management (Carsten Möhrke, Coach und Mediator)

In his presentation, Carsten Möhrke highlighted the communicative aspects of introverts and extraverts and drew detailed conclusions about the different personality traits. He focused on proper listening, the interaction of different characters in a team and team building through proper communication.

He also presented various moderation and communication methods in which introverted personalities can also be better integrated and, at the end, gave the participants valuable key lessons on appreciative communication and correct praise.

Next-Level E-Commerce: the crucial role of automation, paid ads and SEO (Jens Grube and Marc Cormann, Think11)

What do Paid & Social Ads have to do with automation and how does it work in e-commerce? Is it possible to automate SEO? What do I have to pay attention to in every store system so that it runs on Google? Jens and Marc had the right answers to these questions in their presentation and provided the participants with a lot of useful knowledge about SEO and Paid Ads.

maxclusters “secret cheat codes” (Jonas Hünig, Service maxcluster)

Jonas' presentation on maxcluster's "secret cheat codes" exceeded all expectations. He presented internal scripts, which we use for example for debugging or to handle general questions. In the second part he presented tools to build such codes.

Whether performance check, health status or error log, the presentation of cheat codes had a great entertainment factor. Not least by Jonas' hint: "These are not official maxcluster tools, right now this code for example shows the php version, tomorrow it might delete all domains."

The data center: A look behind the scenes (Christian Fertsch, TL-IT and Infrastructure maxcluster)

Christian took the participants on a digital excursion into the data center. He showed the structure of our racks and systems and explained our responsibilities in the areas of security and monitoring when providing capacity for hosting purposes.

The evening event

From 7 pm on, the participants met on our roof terrace and Sebastian and Benno opened the evening event. With a delicious barbecue buffet, CI-adapted lighting and relaxed background music, there was a lot of networking, discussion about the first day and good food. A photo box invited the participants to take some snapshots.

Day 2

On September 14, we opened the doors at 8 a.m. for day 2 of our Partner Day. This way, we were able to allow participants who had a longer journey to get home early.

Presentations, workshops and a surprise

Shortly after 9 a.m. the official welcome of the second day was on the agenda, followed by a surprise for the participants: the launch of our new Application Center. In addition, a first test session with a question and answer session was scheduled for the afternoon as an alternative to the workshop. The presentations on the second day were extended by the possibility for 1:1 performance checks with the Magento performance expert Ivan Chepurnyi to discuss specific problems or simply to get an assessment for ongoing projects. Ivan was also available for a raffle, where the winning agency could win a 2-day workshop at their premises. The second day was rounded off with a Lego Serious Play workshop, where the participants got to know LSP as an innovative idea generation method and were able to get creative on different tasks.

Highlight Topics Day 2

Managed Hosting - Look at the details (Blasius Damaschek, 7thSENSE)

In his presentation, Blasius reported on practical examples, problems and solutions as well as pitfalls and experiences from his agency life.

He gave examples such as setting up VPN, special requests in a managed hosting setup, migrating large amounts of data into Magento and Shopware, marketing campaigns and scaling.

Innovative Idea Development (Daniel Piel, Process manager maxcluster)

Daniel's speech served to set the mood for the LEGO Serious Play workshop that followed afterwards. Daniel presented various methods for idea finding and how companies can benefit from promoting innovative ways of thinking and breaking away from rigid thought patterns.

Managing full text search and facettes in Magento (Ivan Chepurnyi)

Ivan Chepurnyi was a special guest at our partner day. In his presentation, the Magento expert reported on why excellent full text search and multi-level navigation are crucial for good conversion. He addressed common implementation problems and offered solutions for a better user experience.

Expectation Management (Stephan König, Technical Consultant maxcluster)

During his presentation, Stephan provided insights into the topic of expectation management in the context of complex e-commerce projects. A key aspect was how a RACI matrix with clear roles and responsibilities contributes to planning and successful project completion.

Future Learning - Personnel development at maxcluster (Jasmin Rück, Personnel Development maxcluster)

In her presentation, Jasmin addressed the importance of sustainable personnel development. She introduced various aspects that need to be considered and presented how personnel development is practiced at maxcluster.

Conclusion

We were very pleased that so many partners accepted our invitation and that we were able to spend two days with intensive exchange on e-commerce topics. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the speakers for their contribution to our partner day and all the service providers for the smooth running of the event. Last but not least, we would like to thank all participants for their interest and time. All together they have made our first maxcluster partner day a complete success and we are already looking forward to a continuation next year.

Published on 23.10.2023 | LR