Shopware in conversation with Stefan Martens, part of the PayPal Agency Relations team.
By 10 a.m., we have sticky notes covering the board, and by the afternoon, a room full of Shopware community members is talking about anything from Shopware tips and tricks to the future of ecommerce in Europe and the competitive platform landscape. Stefan Martens, who is part of Agency Relations for the German-speaking market at PayPal, is absolutely fascinated by the mix of in-depth and honest conversations and someone's kids running in the hallway, livening up the conference. Now he was hearing honest but forward-looking conversations about the next three years in European ecommerce.
And that mix is exactly the Shopware Community UnConference (SCUC for short) in a single frame. It is also, arguably, the reason the format matters more than ever. The Shopware Community UnConference is organised by FireGento e.V., a community-driven initiative, built by the community for the community.
The agenda is set in the room
The UnConference format flips traditional event planning. Attendees arrive with topics they think the community needs to discuss, propose sessions, put sticky notes on a board, and vote. The agenda emerges from whatever the room deems relevant.
"For most traditional events, the agenda is pre-prepared and attendees are passive consumers of content," Stefan explains. "Here, everyone has a voice in what gets discussed."
The democratic part has a side effect: some proposed topics don't get picked. Stefan points out that those get promoted to the hallway track. "Even if a topic doesn't get selected for a formal session, you can still have a side conversation with the person who proposed it." In his experience, a striking amount of useful knowledge moves that way, because no one is playing to a crowd.
The inclusion of a Shopify session is a case in point. In a typical event, that moment wouldn't happen. At SCUC, it surfaced because agencies wanted to talk about it, and the tension was instructive rather than taboo.
Meanwhile, PayPal played a small part in making that room possible. By taking on the cost of the evening event and contributing a handful of tickets distributed through a Discord raffle. Stefan explains: “We love these kinds of events at PayPal, and we are happy to contribute to the evening event, where the best conversations happen.
Local trust, local language
So why does an Agency Relations Manager at PayPal show up at a community-driven Shopware event with, arguably, a relatively low number of merchants to do direct sales to? Because this isn't about sales targets. It's about trust.
There's a gap that global companies often underestimate. German agencies don't automatically feel connected to a large US company, especially not through a generic Zoom call in English. And that gap widens the moment conversations stay surface-level.
Stefan Martens sees this firsthand.
"And that’s what makes my role so powerful. Speaking the German language, offering a conversation and even support to agencies, and individual developers alike". It sounds simple, but it isn't. Many developers work in English every day, yet still prefer to discuss complex decisions, frustrations, and trade-offs in their native language. That's where real conversations start.
And those conversations often reveal a second gap.
"I have the same discussion over and over again," Stefan said. "People have no idea of what PayPal is actually capable of. For most of them, we are just that lovely blue button. That perception leaves a lot of value unused, such as alternative payment methods PayPal supports, marketplace solutions, the tracking API, which reduces disputes and automates post-purchase flows, and even simple but underused tools like payment links".
None of that comes up in a polished pitch deck. It comes up in conversations – the kind you only have when you're in the room.
Open moments, then action
This is, again, why the UnConference format works. After an impromptu session, Stefan gave a talk on underused PayPal features. Someone from MaxCluster messaged him days later about an error message. He routed it to the right internal team. No ticket queue, no form, no support portal round-trip, just a direct connection between the people who needed each other.
Stefan keeps coming back to one thing: the honest moments. Kids wander through sessions. Families are part of the space rather than parked outside it. As a parent, he values that his child sees work as human interaction, not a laptop screen.
What to take from this
For agencies and developers working in the Shopware ecosystem, especially in the DACH market, a few practical takeaways from the room:
Ask your technology partners harder questions. Who is your dedicated account manager? Which capabilities of the tools you integrate are your merchants not using? What breaks when order volumes double and sales channels fragment?
Set the fundamentals now: data, payments, catalogue, and OPS, before the next platform shift forces the decision for you.
And show up where the agenda isn't pre-written. The UnConference format strips away the sponsor gloss, leaving a signal. In a market where platform gravity, buyer behaviour, and local-versus-global trust are all in motion at once, that signal is worth more than another polished slide deck.
