We are going to Shopify Unite 2018!
I’m thrilled to announce this year we are going to attend one of the most exciting e-commerce conferences. Today our tech lead Dmitry and I are flying to Toronto. We’ll be visiting Canada for almost 3 weeks. Below is a little story behind our upcoming trip.
Last year we launched five Shopify apps on Shopify App Store, a few private apps and built many interesting things. We are interested in growing our Shopify app development business further, finding more business partners and clients. The best place and time for this, I believe, is Shopify Unite 2018 which is held this year in Toronto, Canada. We hope to meet a lot of Shopify app developers, Shopify Experts and Shopify merchants to expand our business network and learn from each other.
Best industry experts will attend this conference. A few of them we already know remotely by being active in online communities (like John Paul Hayes from Brehon Technologies) and doing some business together (hi Sam Henning from Union Works). Those guys kindly supported us with letters which we attached to our visa applications. This shows how important is to have friends in the community :) Majority of attendees are not acquainted with us at all though, there are a lot of opportunities for business networking.
I wish we had such a conference or events somewhere near us, but Shopify related events are usually held quite far from our country of residence. That’s why we had to purchase conference tickets, pay accommodation fees and fly to Canada.
Previously there were only two Shopify Unite conferences in 2016 and 2017 both held in San Francisco. Sam said it was amazing experience last year.
So the primary purpose of our trip is to visit Shopify Unite and meet other Shopify Partners before, at time of and after the conference.
Schedule
We want to meet local Shopify entrepreneurs and spend some good time at the most attractive sights. Canada seems to be a wonderful country with fabulous nature, notable architecture and great open minded people. During our trip we plan to visit 4 cities — Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec:
- Toronto: May 2–13.
- Ottawa: May 14–15.
- Montreal: May 16–18.
- Quebec: May 19–21.
If you want to meet us during those dates in your city — let us know. Return tickets are booked for May 22nd, so there is a deadline for us :)
In Toronto we plan to attend the main conference event, meetups organized by Shopify Partners and meet many amazing Shopify entrepreneurs. Ahmad Iqbal from Scout kindly offered us two desks in his office, so you may find us working there some days.
In Ottawa and Montreal we plan to meet local Shopify Partners.
In Quebec we don’t plan any business activities, just sightseeing, exploring the city and it’s neighborhoods.
We already rented a car in the airport upon arrival for the whole stay, so we can move easily and be mobile.
Sightseeing
While the main purpose of our trip is related to business networking we plan to take a few days off to go sightseeing. On May 6th my colleague plan to participate in Toronto Marathon and we plan to visit Niagara Falls the same day. Last 4 days of our visit we want to explore Quebec with its neighborhoods and drive back to the airport to depart from Canada.
Difficulties
I can’t say everything went smooth during our preparations.
First problem was finding a good apartment in Toronto for an affordable price. It appeared Toronto is an expensive city with huge rental prices — Shopify offered reduced-rate hotel rooms for $309/night which would cost us $3399 for our 11 days stay. Pretty much, but all good hotels appeared to be pricey.
After I booked an apartment I got my visa application refused. I had to wait about 35 days for GCMS notes, fixed my application, reapplied and got approved. This brought some hassle and postponed important preparation activities. I know another Shopify app developer who got his visa refused recently and he won’t be able to make it to Unite. That’s a pity. Hope to meet him the next year.
Another unpredictable hassle was renting a car. We found all major car rentals do not accept debit cards in Canada, but we don’t use credit cards in our country. After relatively a lot of research and almost going desperate we finally found out Canadian credit cards look exactly like our debit cards and they should be accepted actually.
After all time and money we invested into our trip we really hope to meet great people and companies to form beneficial partnerships. If you want the same – drop me a message. And see you there!
