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Adobe has cancelled Magento Imagine 2020, the annual Las Vegas conference scheduled for May 2020. The content moves into a fully digital Adobe Summit experience instead, in response to the global situation around COVID-19.
What's changing
Imagine has been the fixed point in the commerce community's year — merchants, developers, partners and Adobe in one place, arguing about the future of eCommerce and swapping what actually works. Cancelling it is a big call, and the right one.
Rather than lose the content, Adobe is folding it into Adobe Summit's digital experience: keynotes, technical sessions, product announcements and networking, delivered virtually.
For businesses currently working out what the next quarter looks like, taking part from your own desk instead of a flight to Las Vegas has some obvious practical value.
What merchants and agencies gain and lose
Going digital removes the geography and the cost, which should widen participation across the global Magento community. Sessions can be recorded and watched on demand, so a scheduling clash no longer means missing the thing you came for.
What you don't get is the corridor. In-person networking, one-to-one time with Adobe product teams, and the unplanned conversations between merchants and partners that tend to produce the good ideas — those don't translate to a video call, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
What to expect
Adobe has committed to a digital summit that carries the substance of Imagine: product announcements, technical content, and access to its teams.
For the rest of us, this is a period that rewards thinking about digital transformation priorities, and about how a platform like Adobe Commerce helps you trade through conditions nobody planned for. The digital format may well end up as the template for hybrid events after this.