Setting the 4 Pillars of the Magento Association

During the process of forming the Magento Association, the original task force developed a three-year guiding plan and selected the initial Board of Directors. As a Board, that group — myself included — was charged with executing on that three-year plan; however, like many organizations, in March 2020 we realized our plans were based on a reality and set of assumptions that had been permanently altered by COVID-19. And, like many organizations, we spent most of 2020 responding to the constant changes in our environment and trying to find ways to assist our stakeholders as they each navigated the global pandemic. 

This spring, in conversation with our association management company, we realized that we needed to develop a new plan, and approach the planning process a bit differently in order to react to what we know will now always be a rapidly changing world. 

Thus began a series of brainstorming meetings among the Board officers (me, Slava Kravchuk and Danny Verkade) during which we thought through the needs of each aspect of the Magento Association ecosystem and which of those needs were being served by other efforts and which still needed more attention. Through this process, we developed a document and mental model that we're calling the “Four Pillars of the Magento Association.”

4 Pillars as a Guiding Structure

Each of the four pillars represent the lenses through which we view every opportunity and decision that comes before the Board. In a world of infinite possibilities as to how we serve our diverse, global community, the pillars help us determine what we will spend our finite resources on. Experience has taught us that focusing on “everything” can lead to making progress on nothing, so these pillars are how we are acknowledging that we cannot always do everything that each member of the association would like us to do. Our hope is that the pillars will allow us to efficiently convert the resources we have available into the greatest results towards our mission to...

Advance and empower the global Magento community and commerce ecosystem through open collaboration, education, and thought leadership.

This has been our mission from the start and it remains our mission as we establish the four pillars to help us work toward it.

Once we developed this mental model of the four pillars, the officers began testing and refining each pillar by gathering and applying feedback received through conversations with individuals throughout the ecosystem. We then took the pillars to the full Board of Directors and repeated that process. Through conversations over the summer, we developed specific bullet points under each pillar to make it clear what our efforts will be, and then highlighted how potential efforts in the future might look.

Presenting the 4 Pillars: A Process of Feedback and Refinement

The pillars were then presented to the members of our various Magento Association committees in an all-committee meeting with the Board of Directors. This meeting had two objectives: (1) to allow committee members a chance to provide feedback for refining the pillars before sharing them with all members, and (2) to help committee members understand where the association is headed at present so they are able to contribute to these efforts.

The pillars will be presented to all members during the Magento Association Connect event on Thursday, October 21 in an effort to give everyone a clear picture of where the Association is headed, and will be posted to our website following the event. The four pillars will then inform and shape the budget for 2022.

Once made public, we will constantly gather feedback on potential changes to the pillars and the Board will review them annually before each budgeting cycle to ensure that the pillars continue to represent the best path toward our mission.

Please register to attend Magento Association Connect so that you can learn about the pillars during the Town Hall presentation. Stay tuned to our website for future articles about the pillars, upcoming Board elections and other topics.