Highlights from Unlock Boston 2022

For just about ten years now, Akeneo has hosted a yearly conference known as Unlock (or Akeneo Partner Summit, if you’ve been around from the start). It’s held every year in Paris and is one of the most highly anticipated PXM events of the year, featuring engaged audiences with expressed interests in collaborating toward the future of omnichannel commerce.

And just about a month ago, in early October, Unlock expanded to the States. That’s right, Akeneo hosted its first-ever Unlock Boston event, and let’s just say it was a big hit; from keynote presentations to technical workshops to networking opportunities and even karaoke, our inaugural Unlock Boston conference brought together leaders and experts from every part of the PIM community to share challenges, lessons, achievements, and breakthroughs.

Though there were many notable moments during the full day of activities and sessions, here are four of our favorite parts of Unlock Boston 2022.

1. The customer and expert peer panels

Throughout the day, the Akeneo team hosted a number of different panels featuring guest speakers from massive global companies, including Chico’s, Sleep Number, and Thrasio. Covering a range of topics from the future of eCommerce to utilizing product information as the foundation for your growth strategy to creating the right mix of people, processes, and technology to create a PXM revolution, our engaging peer panels shed insights on some of the most important topics in the industry today.

Forrester VP and Principal Analyst, Brendan Witcher made an appearance as well, giving an electric presentation on combining the right people and products to create success for your business. He dug into the real reason why consumers choose the brands they do, and how organizations can collect and organize the right information to better understand their consumers.

Our favorite part? Seeing Francois Silvain, digital CTO at Havianas International, rock a pair of Haviana’s sandals on stage while providing thoughtful answers on the importance of omnichannel product activation.

2. Akeneo Product Cloud & Product Updates

We may be a bit biased here, but unveiling our newest product release and vision for the future was one of the most exciting bits of Unlock Boston 2022.

First and foremost, we announced Akeneo Product Cloud live on stage, the solution for product activation across any and all channels that accelerates commerce growth for businesses. Akeneo Product Cloud drives exceptional product experiences across owned and unowned channels that exceed the expectations of customers while eliminating chaos and delays from siloed operations. This type of composable SaaS solution enables teams to increase revenue, optimize internal operations, and reduce returns, creating lifelong customer loyalty. You can check out our article on the topic for a deeper dive into Akeneo Product Cloud and product activation.

Unlock attendees were also treated to a sneak peek into new releases in the Akeneo product as well, including a walkthrough of Tailored Imports and Shared Catalogs.

3. Meet & network with people

PIM, PXM, DAM, OMS – all the acronyms can make everything feel so robotic. What’s more, remote and hybrid working models mean that most of us have limited face-to-face, or even camera-to-camera, interactions with others in the industry. Unlock Boston offered up the perfect excuse to get to meet others in person, and gain quality time learning and speaking with each other.

Whether it was roaming the partner marketplace, stopping by the Akeneo Genius Bar, or booking a one-on-one meeting with someone from the Akeneo team, there were plenty of opportunities to connect with one another and exchange ideas on the future of omnichannel eCommerce and how to get started with PIM.

The day before Unlock, we even hosted our very first Customer Advisory Board (CAB) and an in-person Akeneo 101 training, hosted by our internal educational team.

4. Fun!

Here at Akeneo, we consider ourselves to be people first and employees second. Sure, we’ve all gathered to exchange ideas and discuss important topics, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves! With plenty of food and drinks for all, retro arcade games scattered throughout, a killer DJ playing 80’s hits all night, and a karaoke machine that barely saw a break, we had an absolute blast partying with all of our customers and partners.

We could go on and on about all the great things that happened at Unlock Boston this year, but we’ll cap ourselves at our top four here. At the end of the day, Unlock is an opportunity for leaders and experts in the world of commerce to come together and honor the art and science of creating omnichannel product experiences, forging alliances and meaningful connections along the way.

We’d love to take a moment to say a big thank you to the wonderful Akeneo employees, partners, and customers who made this event possible. We couldn’t have done it without you, and we’ll see you back in Boston next year!

If you don’t want to wait a whole year for the next Unlock event, Unlock Paris will be taking place March 8-9, 2023. It’s our ten-year anniversary of the event, you won’t want to miss it! Stay tuned for more details to come on how to register.