Good golly, what a day! So much ground was covered today. It would be really hard to talk about every single thing that happened today, but we'd like to share we you some cool & interesting highlights from the first day of the Innovate Developers Conference.

Good golly, what a day! So much ground was covered today. It would be really hard to talk about every single thing that happened today, but we'd like to share we you some cool & interesting highlights from the first day of the Innovate Developers Conference.

This conference is not just a Magento or a PayPal conference. We've got developers, vendors and users from across the whole X.commerce sphere: eBay, PayPal, Magento, X.commerce, marketing, SEO... you name it. Truly a huge cross-section of individuals and companies. It has been amazing getting to meet with people from across the globe to share ideas and discuss all sorts of topics.

Of course, the main reason we came here is to learn about the newly released X.commerce platform. Operating system. Fabric. No really, fabric. What is it, and what does it mean for you?

Well, the X.commerce fabric is essentially a platform-independent intermediary that allows you to write one integration for your service/cart/application/etc and then allows you to provide that service or consume other services from anyone else who also talks to the fabric. Perhaps the easiest analogy is to languages. Right now, each cart/service/API speaks own language. In order for your cart to "talk" to Mailchimp (for instance) you must "teach" it to speak that the Mailchimp "language" by writing a module for it to "translate". With X.commerce, though, you let your service (say, Mailchimp, again) to "speak" X.commerce and you teach your cart to "speak" X.commerce and the two will be able to talk to each other. Not just that, but any other cart that can "speak" X.commerce can also "speak" with Mailchimp, since it speaks X.commerce.

Another angle: let's say you run a small business and you use Magento Go for your website. And, for the sake of the example, you use three services to help you: Mailchimp (for E-mail), Kenshoo (for advertising), and Shopon (for social). You decide to go with Magento Enterprise. Instead of having to find 3 modules that implement each of these integrations separately, you can use the built-in X.commerce fabric that is a part of Magento Enterprise to talk to these services automatically. No extra time involved. They'll just work. That's the power of X.commerce. (It's explained in more detail, here.) Note that the platform/fabric itself is not generally available yet, but you can download the Developer Package now.

It's worthwhile to note that although Magento and GSI Commerce are both a part of the X.commerce Magento really stole the show! All but one of the demos of X.commerce were done on Magento Enterprise. Lots of Magento love today!

What else? We heard about Magento and X.commerce. The X.commerce team has learned a lot from the Magento team. There will be a version of the X.commerce fabric available for Magento when it becomes generally available. We heard about the growth of the industry and how eCommerce will be a 10 trillion (yes, trillion) dollar industry by 2013. Magento unveiled their revamped Magento Connect 2, which easily links Magento store owners with extensions. Magento U, Magento's training unit, will now offer courses online. Finally, Magento 2 was announced to be released in 2012 and a certified module program (which certifies modules for Enterprise) was also talked about.

As we were leaving tonight, the X.commerce folks formed a human fabric. It went all the way from Moscone West to Moscone North. It was quite a site!

Well, that about wraps it up for today. We're pretty beat from all of the excitement. Check back tomorrow for more news and highlights from day 2.