The horizon is just the beginning

Frederik is Google's Chief Innovation Evangelist and Adjunct Professor at Stanford University.Frederik’s passion is to develop the capacity to innovate in everybody and he believes creativity exists in all of us.

He initiated and leads a community of 350 Innovation Evangelists, which champion Design Thinking and help 500+ teams/year across Google to develop a culture of innovation, risk-taking and experimentation. He is co-founder of “The Garage”, Google’s hacker/designer/maker space and creator of the Google Innovation Laboratory, which is used by various teams across the world to solve big problems creatively, generating and testing hundreds of new-to-the-world ideas, fast.

As an Adjunct Professor at Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (they call it the d.school), he feels lucky to unlock the creative potential of students in graduate classes like: “Hacking your Innovation Mindset”.

The “Pope of Creativity” (Focus Magazine) currently acts as Innovation Consultant to the United Nations (UN) and is German Football Association’s (DFB) Innovation-Coach. He currently lives in Silicon Valley with his wife and draws inspiration from the playfulness and explorer mindsets of his three children.

Ben Hammersley is a pioneer in Internet technologies and the digital future. He is an author, consultant and technology expert, focusing on the impact the Internet and digital networks have on business, politics and society.

Ben Hammersley was the first special reporter to write about the Internet for The Times and The Guardian. Hammersley is also the inventor of today's popular term “podcast”. He was deputy editor-in-chief of British Wired magazine and is the author of five books. His latest book, 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then is an indispensable guide to all that is worth knowing about life in the 21st century.

The UK Foreign Office, the European Commission and numerous organisations all consult him for advice on digital developments.

Peter Wippermann is one of Germany's most renowned trend researchers. From 1993 to 2016, he was Professor of Communication Design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. In 1992, he co-founded the company Trendbüro as a “consultancy for social change”.

Trendbüro is a strategic think-tank that deals with social trends, consumers and brands. Its findings are translated into innovative, creative and effective marketing strategies for companies. Peter Wippermann co-founded several agencies and has sat on the advisory board of numerous associations and well-known institutes. In addition, since 2014 Wippermann has been the publisher of the trend magazine “inspire” which belongs to the ProSiebenSat1 Group.

Johannes Altmann is founder and managing director of Shoplupe GmbH. Since 2003 he has advised companies on the design and optimisation of their online shops. As a usability expert, he has been dealing with the wishes and needs of customers on the Internet for over 15 years and has developed user experience concepts for retail, industry and publishers. Since 2014, he has focused on the branding effect of customer experience and has held numerous lectures.

In recent years, Johannes Altmann and his team have developed the Customer Happiness Loop. Using the method of Design Thinking, they work to develop new customer insights, transform perspectives at companies and develop new ideas for digital commerce. Altmann and his team have become a pragmatic source of ideas for users and provide input for complex problems.

“Enthusiasm is the start of something new” is the motto of Felix Thönnessen. Since completing his degree in marketing, he understands that it takes more than standard consulting to drive ideas forward. He sees himself in the role of developing people as entrepreneurs and supporting innovations in an orderly manner.

Since 2015, several winning start-ups from the Vox TV series “Höhle der Löwen” (based on “Dragons' Den”) owes their success to his coaching. He himself is involved in promising start-ups via his own company.

With his best-selling book Erfolgreich Unternehmen gründen (Founding a Successful Business) and Arbeitsbuch Start-up: Das 7-Stufen-Programm (Workbook Start-up: The 7-Step Programme), he has fulfilled his personal dream of becoming a writer. His work is considered a how-to guide for all founders who want to channel their enthusiasm in the right direction.

André Morys is the author of the book Conversion Optimierung (Conversion Optimisation) and CEO of Web Arts AG, Germany's leading agency for conversion optimisation with over 40 employees at three locations and a supervising lead / retail volume of more than 7 billion euros. André Morys is the initiator and founder of the international alliance for conversion optimisation.

Articles by André Morys appear in both specialist and general media publications. Articles and interviews by André Morys have been published in t3n, AdZine, iBusiness.de, webselling, Website Boosting, InternetWorld and many other magazines.

He also works as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg and holds numerous keynote speeches and lectures at national and international congresses on the topics of eCommerce, optimisation strategies and conversion optimisation.

André Hirsinger is Technical Chief of Application Service Providing at Neofonie and enjoys working with new technologies that simplify and automate the use of software.

The container technology “Docker” is an excellent tool in his view. In Entwickler (Developer) magazine, André Hirsinger has written a quick introduction for Docker newcomers with an article entitled “Getting Started with Docker in 11 Steps”.

Martin has worked in the payment industry for more than eight years. As Senior Partner Manager at Amazon Pay, he works with shopping cart systems and agencies on the development of Amazon Pay in Germany.

In earlier positions as a management consultant and manager at Mücke, Sturm & Company and Dr. Thede Consulting, he led various payment projects at telephone companies, banks and start-ups. As a co-author, he published several papers on payment, including the Mobile Payment Study.

Julia Rehme has been a product designer at shopware AG since 2016 and an important driving force for the Shopware front-end. She is able to apply not only her empathy and knowledge of human nature to the role, but also her great enthusiasm. That was also the reason why Julia, a trained photo lab assistant, was offered the branch manager job when visiting her favourite boutique. In her spare time she turned herself into “Photoshop Julia”, doing further training as a media designer at an online games publisher. After several years in a full-service agency, the move to Shopware followed in 2016. Since then she has been part of the product design team and deals with the various facets of the front-end on a daily basis.

Graduate economist Markus Fuchs heads up the partner business for the DACH region at PayPal. He has been working in the e-payment world for 17 years and has been with PayPal since 2008, following positions at Deutsche Post and ClickandBuy.

At PayPal, his responsibilities included Enterprise Sales and, following PayPal's acquisition of BillSAFE, in 2011 he switched to the latter where he set up the sales and existing customer business. In 2014, he moved back to PayPal as part of the merger of the two companies.

Since 2016, Markus Fuchs heads up the partner management of the DACH region, with a focus on shop systems and payment service providers, as well as the development of new market segments, such as eGovernment.

Christopher is a developer, writer, and speaker. He lives in South Africa, with his wife Liz, and a pile of kids. You’ll usually find him working on application architecture, though sometimes he’ll build compilers and robots.

As Managing Director at hmmh, Gerd Güldenast drives the development of innovative eCommerce solutions and supports companies in their digital transformation. With a degree in economics and computer science, Gerd Güldenast has worked for renowned management and technology consulting firms, including Accenture and Roland Berger & Partner, as project manager, consultant and management consultant.

In his lectures, Gerd Güldenast presents specific examples from agency work as well as trends and perspectives in connected commerce. He demonstrates innovative business models and shows how the latest technologies and marketing approaches can be used to optimise the business result.

Anna Marquardt has been working for web-netz in Lüneburg for over five years and has dedicated herself to the subject of content. As deputy head of the SEO department and head of content, she lives her desire to think cross-divisionally about online marketing strategies and identify usable synergies. She passes on her experience with the same enthusiasm to customer training courses as she did as a speaker at top events in the industry such as the OMK – Online Marketing Conference Lüneburg – or the Campixx.

Nicole Mank is one of the top experts in the web-netz SEO team. With over six years of professional experience in this area, she has a wealth of knowledge and the necessary intuition that is indispensable for SEO. No wonder, as it has already helped brands such as Rosenthal, VOLVO or CASIO achieve better search results. True to the motto “sharing is caring”, Nicole regularly passes on her technical knowledge to the next generation of SEOs. She has already spoken at various online marketing conferences, such as the agency's own OMK, the Campixx, the SEO Cruise and the SEOkomm Salzburg. Prior to entering the agency world, she packed her craftsmanship into exciting articles and lectures as an author for onlinemarketing.de and seo-united.

David Odenthal has worked independently in the field of digital customer communication for more than ten years. His focus is mainly on websites and eCommerce platforms. He soon realised the importance of user tracking: the better this data was evaluated, the better the Internet presence could be adapted to user needs. His aim: “to turn visitors into customers!”' As companies focused more on successful Internet marketing and targeted customer communications, Odenthal developed an analytics tool that focused on data critical to the commercial success of an Internet site. This “heatmap” is now a full-blown conversion suite.

Stefan Hamann laid the foundations of Shopware in 2000 at the tender age of 16. Today, as the founder and CEO of shopware AG, he is responsible for research, development and finance, as well as all administrative processes. As an enthusiastic inventor and programmer, he is the mastermind behind the development of our future-oriented eCommerce solutions. On the Community Day, Stefan will present the latest developments of Shopware in his opening keynote speech and will share his thoughts with us about everything that future eCommerce solutions have to achieve and the role Shopware will play in this.

Sebastian Klöpper has been with Shopware since 2007 and knows the depths of the software like the back of his hand, not least because he has been in charge of development since Shopware 2. Today, as Director of Research & Development, he is responsible for the Shopware product roadmap, release planning and the implementation of new features and improvements. The areas of support, quality assurance and documentation for all Shopware products also fall within his remit. At Community Day, Sebastian brings you all the latest news from the Shopware universe.

Having started working with the web from its very onset, you can call Phil a digital native in every regard. At 12-years-old, he published his first website and since then hasn’t looked back. He’s particularly fascinated by how people interact with the web. As an early adopter, he tests the latest technologies in order to create an even more forward-thinking user experience.

Nicolas has been active in the implementation of innovative software and marketing projects in the online segment for well-known companies and start-ups for more than 20 years.

After studying business informatics at the Otto Friedrich University Bamberg and the renowned University of California in Santa Barbara, he founded BONDIS GmbH and AdBill GmbH, among others, and worked as a consultant for companies of United Internet AG.

As CTO at INPERA, Nicolas Fritsch is responsible for the development and expansion of the system architecture and the creation of innovative digitization concepts in the very conservative construction industry. For Nicolas, breaking up old structures is both a challenge and a joy.

Volker Will read cultural studies with a focus on philosophy, music and the media. Back in 1996 he set up the Polydor website for Universal Music. In 1998, Will won the start-up competition with his music software Klangster. One year later he founded superReal GmbH. Together with his partner, he founded Mobileo AG in 2007 and HotGloo GbR in 2009. The father of four and passionate tennis player is today considered a digital & eCommerce evangelist.

“Standing still means giving up! Anyone who is not already looking to tomorrow today cannot understand the present. Everyone can learn something from everyone else. Always think just a bit ahead.”

These words describe the attitude of Daniel Höhnke, managing director of Pixup Media GmbH and long-standing companion of shopware AG. Having been in eCommerce for more than ten years, he manages companies of all sizes on a daily basis and works practically around the clock on new ideas, concepts and technical solutions for ever better shopping experiences.

With the knowledge that new, significant technologies are emerging every day, he is constantly looking to analyse, experiment, develop and then use them effectively.

Daniel is a developer specialising in the PHP Symfony framework in the field of eCommerce solutions. He has gained experience with the established shop systems such as Shopware, commercetools, and Oxid.

For several years now, he has maintained the PhpStorm integration of the Symfony framework. In addition, he provides further integrations on this basis, including Shopware and Laravel. These plugins have now become standard for many developers. They support everyday work, increase productivity and are quite widespread, with several million downloads.

Kathleen Jaedtke is an author and speaker. The graduate economist has been involved in search engine optimization and content marketing for seven years. In her last job, she was responsible for the content marketing activities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland at a leading European e-commerce group and successfully built up several international SEO teams. In addition to content optimization, she is fascinated by new technologies and artificial intelligence. She is currently looking into the field of voice search and its influence on the SEO of tomorrow.

Tina Nord has been involved in content marketing for more than seven years. In this context, she led multidisciplinary teams and developed digital content strategies for international e-commerce companies. The communication expert is also co-author of the book “Content Design” and speaker at various conferences. In the past six months, she has initiated research projects on the impact of booming technologies - such as machine learning - on content and the customer journey.

As head of eCommerce, economist Daniel Buchberger has been responsible for eCommerce at the designer fashion label DOROTHEE SCHUMACHER since 2015. In 2017, he was responsible for the relaunch of the B2C and B2B shops on Shopware Enterprise and React Basis.

Previously, he had worked in the music industry for six years as a sales manager and branch manager at session music in the areas of eCommerce, retail and logistics. Here, too, he accompanied several webshop relaunches in the enterprise sector, as well as implementing omni-channel solutions and setting up a central warehouse for eCommerce and retail logistics.

Thorsten is co-founder and CEO of epoq.

With his Karlsruhe-based company, he has been personalising online commerce for over a decade.

Through the use of various self-developed software services based on artificial intelligence (machine learning), he creates one-to-one communication with online shoppers.

Under strict observance of user privacy, he personalises the digital customer journey of online shoppers, relying on the latest data science procedures. This creates constantly new and sustainable shopping experiences, which at the same time increase sales in the online shop.

Early on, he dealt with self-learning systems that were used in a wide range of industries.

For over twenty years, Frank Puscher has worked as a freelance journalist in the areas of eCommerce and online marketing. He trains c-level managers on how to enrichen their personal digital competence on a regular basis. Since 2000, Puscher also worked as a conference moderator and holds talks throughout the European conference scene. Due to his journalistic background, his speeches are neutral, critical and often casual and entertaining. Puscher has published seven books on web design and usability.

Jan Bömer works as enterprise relations manager at shopware AG. In this role, he acts as contact person and consultant for eCommerce projects and supports customers and partners in the implementation of their online business. The business administration graduate is also currently pursuing a part-time master's degree in sales management. Prior to joining Shopware, Jan worked in project management for Vodafone, Miele, Santander, Innogy and RWE, among others.

Thomas Lohner is an expert in performance and scaling. He is co-founder of SysEleven and managing director of ScaleCommerce. With these companies, Thomas has helped shops like Baby-Markt.de, Amorelie.de and Zooroyal.de become fit for TV advertising. Thomas' goal is to improve the performance and stability of online shops in manageable steps. To avoid constantly reinventing the wheel, ScaleCommerce offers turnkey best-practice solutions from 17 years of eCommerce experience.

Dirk is Head of Sales Cooperations & B2B Marketing at moebel.de, Germany’s largest furniture portal. From 2007 to 2009 he worked as a sales specialist at Aschendorff Verlag in Münster. Afterwards he founded the company DESIGN MEETS HOME, in which he still acts as managing director. In addition, Dirk was the area sales manager in NRW and Lower Saxony at planmöbel GmbH & Co. KG. Dirk has been a permanent member of the moebel.de team since 2017.

Marco van Herpen is Director Business Development at ISAAC. After nine years with the Boston Consulting Group, Marco continued his career at HiM Retail, where he was deputy director of finance, human resources and eCommerce. At ISAAC, Marco advises and supports customers in the areas of eCommerce, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. Marco is also in the process of expanding the ventures department at ISAAC.

Thomas Eiling has been familiar with the Shopware universe since version 2 and has brought several well-known enterprise customers live using Shopware with his previous employer, where his main focus was on the integration of ERP systems, the automation of deployments and performance optimisation of large web shops.

Since 2016 he has been working for Shopware and is actively involved in the development of various Enterprise Accelerators. Here he delves into his preference for DevOps topics and introduces you to the current possibilities of Shopware deployments at the Community Day.

As a software developer, Samuel Vogel founded the agency from which Pickware developed. Over the course of several projects, an even closer partnership with Shopware formed, ultimately resulting in the official merchandise management system “Shopware ERP powered by Pickware”.
br/>Through innovative approaches towards merchandise management and close cooperation with customers and partner agencies, the software is being constantly developed to evolve alongside the new requirements of eCommerce. Samuel presents the latest from Pickware in the feature keynote of the Shopware 5 ecosystem!

Jens has been a computer scientist at heart ever since he can remember. In his early days as a developer, he was sometimes a little late with innovation because he was busy developing a news service that worked similar to Twitter - unfortunately, after the platform already existed.

Shortly after completing his studies, he joined Shopware in 2017 as a core developer and is known as one of the first developers to jump on technologies of the future. A born innovator, he tackles modern topics, such as the integration of AI or the experimental construction of the Shopware core.

Mark has been working in ecommerce since 1997 when he built and launched his first ecommerce website, he founded GPMD in 1999 as a website development agency working with luxury retailers in London and UK. Over the years he has has held many roles including Developer, Online Marketing and Project Manager.

Today GPMD works with retailers across Europe and he focuses his time on Ecommerce Strategy and helping our customers achieve success online.

He lives in London with his wife and three children.

Having started his career as Project Manager in 2000 Ermes has gone on to hold numerous roles as Head of Ecommerce at Luxury Fashion and Editorial retailers both in Italy and the UK, most recently joining mywalit to set the companies’ strategy for ecommerce over the next 5 years.

A technical lead, able to translate business requirements into technical solutions, inspiring high­performing teams to meet organizational goals. Successfully directed high­value (in excess of euro 20m) ecommerce projects.

Motivated and passionate about how technology and communication can help businesses to thrive, sourcing new opportunities with creative but affordable solutions. Champions testing and user experience to improve conversion rates and build a solid loyal customer base.

David Sandström is Chief Marketing Officer at Klarna, one of Swedens five digital unicorns and former CEO at DDB Stockholm, the leading digital communications agency in the Nordics. He has a strong proven track-record with digital marketing, organisational transformation and brand building. David joined Klarna in 2017 and has since lead the company's successful rebranding journey. The aim is to communicate Klarna as a lifestyle brand rather than portraying the profile of a typical tech company. Klarna's global advertising concept “Smoooth” is constantly updated with new surprising ads with an emotional brand-building communication.

David Kaiser is Country Manager Germany, New Technologies at Amazon and heads the Alexa Skills Kit Business in Berlin. When advancing the topic of innovation, David is able to draw on his extensive experience in cross-divisional positions. It all began with the development and distribution of Palm and Pocket PC software in the world's first app store. David later built up the end customer business for the leading European weather service, MeteoGroup, and managed products such as WeatherPro and MeteoEarth. Prior to joining Amazon in 2016, David was responsible for the product strategy at one of the largest dating platforms.

Tobias Häusler is a moderator for Germany’s popular WDR television station, where he covers current political, economic and cultural topics. His long journey as a reporter began with his first radio show when he was 16-years-old. Later, at 22, he was awarded an Axel Springer Prize and recently received a coveted Grimme nomination for the best radio interview on his own talk show. Another highlight comes when he acts as the common thread on the main stage at the SCD18.