A recap of the Statamic Meetup 2025 in Alkmaar

A flying start.

Our Statamic gurus Mike, Mart and Stijn joined the meetup via the Statamic newsletter and went mainly because they were keen to take away new insights and learnings for our projects. As an official Statamic partner, we regularly deploy the CMS at Cube for a variety of projects so attending the meetup was a perfect fit. They left at 11.30 from Oldenzaal station. It started off exciting: running to catch the train, delays along the way, and finally a quick Uber to be on time. They arrived at 15.40, just after the official walk-in from 15.00 to 15.30, but were immediately warmly welcomed. The best part? The organisers had even waited for the "Cube guys" to arrive, making it an immediately welcoming start to the meetup.

The right mix of knowledge and community.

At Cube, we use Statamic because it fits perfectly with our stack: it is built on Laravel, which gives us familiar and flexible development. The CMS is clear, intuitive to set up and allows us to set up projects quickly. Moreover, we can easily extend it by writing our own extensions, which means we can always provide customised solutions for our clients.

The meetup showed how Statamic's strengths come into play in practice. The atmosphere was informal, but incredibly informative. Just over 50 developers from the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland attended, from freelancers to Statamic Core members. Between presentations, there was plenty of room to talk, exchange experiences and have a beer. For us, this showed perfectly how knowledge sharing and community reinforce each other, exactly the mix that makes Statamic so valuable.

Opening by Pim Ruiter - JustBetter

Pim, oprichter van JustBetter, trapte de meetup af. JustBetter is een Nederlands bureau dat zich richt op webontwikkeling met Statamic, en het bedrijf zet het CMS in voor verschillende projecten, waaronder complexe webshops en klantportalen. Pim nam ons mee in het verhaal van JustBetter, hun aanpak met Statamic, en hoe deze meetup tot stand kwam. Vooral interessant was hun nadruk op community: leren van elkaar staat bij hen centraal.

Runway in action by Roy Duineveld - Rapidez

Roy from JustBetter demonstrated the Rapidez package, a tool that links Magento websites to the CMS via Statamic's Runway package. This makes it possible to set up pages and content from the clear Statamic CMS, while Magento's backend handles the ordering process and stock management. For Cube, this was a relevant insight, as we often work with the Runway package in a similar way on our projects. It nicely shows how CMS and e-commerce can work together without getting complicated.

Cargo by Duncan McClean - Statamic Core Member

Duncan McClean, a Core member of Statamic, presented Cargo, his e-commerce addon for Statamic. He showed live how to easily set up a webshop with Cargo. The demo made it clear how flexible Statamic can be and how you can quickly create a functional webshop without much additional tooling. For us at Cube, the practical tips on structure and integration were particularly valuable.

Takeaways in connecties

• Tools & Add-ons: Rapidez and Cargo make working with Statamic easier and more powerful.

• Project Inspiration:JustBetter showed examples of web shops and projects they have realised with Statamic.

• Networking: The meetup provided ample opportunity to make valuable contacts and exchange ideas.

• Community spirit:It was clear that Statamic is not just a CMS, but an active, learning community where knowledge is shared.

• Community spirit: It was clear that Statamic is not just a CMS, but an active, learning community where knowledge is shared.