Week Ending: January 10, 2014
TYPO3 CMS
Steffen Ritter, of TYPO3 CMS Team fame, has announced 9 TYPO3 CMS code sprints for 2014 in an effort to improve organisation and give developers and companies the opportunity to participate. Besides in Germany there will also be a code sprint in The Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.
The team is building a list with possible code sprint locations (with available utilities like projector, wifi, supermarket). The list should also provide other teams with possible locations.
If you have a conference room/location available for TYPO3 project code sprints then do not hesitate and get in contact with the team through <link>info@typo3.org.
Details on the code sprints can be found in the article “<link http: typo3.org news article planning-typo3-cms-codesprints-and-meetings-in-2014>Planning TYPO3 CMS CodeSprints and Meetings in 2014”.
Open Fundraising for TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS
Ingo Schmitt from <link http: www.marketing-factory.de>Marketing Factory and Matthias Schreiber from <link http: wmdb.de>wmdb <link http: wmdb.de>Systems have started an Open Fundraising campaign for TYPO3 CMS 6.2 LTS and have within days practically managed to reach their target. Close to 40 TYPO3 companies and individuals contribute to this initiative, which is a great sign of support.
Six specific area's have been identified that need extra attention. Fundraising is necessary, because the usual budgets cannot cover these special engagements. On top of that the usual rates paid for development are too low to sustain this effort.
Of course the fact that TYPO CMS 6.2 is the next Long Term Support version contributes to the fact that this extra focus is put on development.
Details and workpackages can be found on <link http: workpackages.org>workpackages.org.
At the end of this article we have a special interview with Matthias Schreiber, co-organiser of the campaign, where he talks about his motivations for being involved In the TYPO3 community and about the fundraising initiative.
Nominate yourself for a position in the TYPO3 Association
Several positions in the Board, the Expert Advisory Board and the Business Control Committee will be vacant for the next period and the TYPO3 Association asks the members to nominate themselves for a position.
Anybody can nominate himself/herself for the vacant positions. You can use the <link https: voting.typo3.org>official nomination form on voting.typo3.org to submit your nomination.
Check out the <link http: association.typo3.org>TYPO3 Association website to check out what the Board, the EAB and the BCC do to support the TYPO3 community.
CMS Garden: TYPO3 on Cebit 2014 – Support Now!
<link http: www.cms-garden.org _blank>CMS Garden is an initiative where you will find all the relevant open source CMS-es in one place. On the website and in the wild you will find the CMS Garden at events like CeBIT, LinuxTag or FrOSCon. You can compare, evaluate and decide. CMS Garden is a community driven event where attendants are not shy to share ideas and help each other out.
Like in 2013 TYPO3 will engage itself in CMS Garden for the coming year. The marketing team has funded the project with 5000 euro's, the Joomla Assocation supports the initiative with 10.000 euro's, but we are not there yet. The coming week will be crucial to find the necessary funds to show Open Source CMS community power at one of the biggest IT events in the world.
The main source to acquire funding for the CMS Garden initiative is the CMS Gardener's Guide 2014 (second edition). Sponsoring, like the TYPO3 Marketing Team does, and advertisements in this guide will supply the funding for a booth at CeBIT.
You can already buy a directory entry for a mere 100,- Euro netto and advertisements are available from 550,- Euro netto. You can book your entry into the Guide until January 24, 2014 straight from the <link http: support.cms-garden.org _blank>CMS Isotopes Garden Shop.
As a TYPO3 company you can also benefit from this initiative with the opportunity to present your company on a minimum of 4 square meters stand in the direct environment of the CMS-Garden at prices that are far below the regular CeBIT fees.
The <link http: cmsgarden.org>CMS Garden website provides you with further details.
Extension Development News
Two things were quite prominent this last week in the TYPO3 extension universe.
Fabien Udriot has published version 2 of his media extension. Fabien let's us know that media is a tool for managing Assets for TYPO3 CMS and built on the top of the File Abstraction Layer, which is one of the main features of the coming TYPO3 CMS LTS version. FAL handles files in centralized way across the CMS. Basically, Media provides the following set of features:
- Advanced metadata handling of Assets
- A user friendly BE module
- Mass upload of files and post processing of files
- Automatic Metadata extraction upon upload provided by EXT:metadata
- Integration with the text editor (RTE)
The backend of version 2 is way better integrated into TYPO3 CMS. Amongst the new features, are advanced searches by multiple criteria. Another improvement, is the ability to edit inline title, category or whatever metadata in the Grid without opening the detail view of a file. A big improvement is the ability to use this module everywhere in the BE where files are to be picked and to top all this another powerful feature, multi-storage, comes with the 2.0 release.
More details can be found in <link http: buzz.typo3.org teams media-team article release-of-media-20>Fabien's BUZZ entry on Media 2.0.
Rebel without a pause, Joey Hasenau, <link http: www.startnext.de typo3-grid-elements-2-0 blog>reports about his crowd funding campaign for Grid elements on startnext.de. The new version 3.0 we will lay the foundation for our new project THEME PACKAGES as well, whose campaign you can find here: <link http: www.startnext.de en typo3-theme-packages>www.startnext.de/en/typo3-theme-packages. The theme packages project is in cooperation with Kay Strobach. Check out the project page and support this great initiative.
Joey also support the workpackages initiative with 10 person days, because he feels that without a stable and modern new TYPO3 version even the nicest themes would be quite useless.
Interview Mattes
Please tell us a little bit about yourself
I'm 35 years old and live in Düsseldorf/Germany with my fiancée Karolin and our Golden Retriever Hektor - who seems to be broken, he never retrieves any gold.
Besides running a TYPO3 focused company with friends rather than business partners I play the drums (lousy according to Rupert Germann) in our recording studio and try to spend a lot of time on the water, either wakeboarding, surfing or snowboarding.
Apart from that I recently got active again within the TYPO3 community which I am part of for a very long time.
Back in 2003 we had the very first developer meeting - I guess you would call it sprint nowadays - at our place. After the T3A was formed I was one of the Active Members and had my focus on community work, outside communication and so on. I remember Rene Fritz actually bringing a tent and camping in our backyard instead of sleeping in the house. Good times.
Since then and mainly through the inspiring attitude of people like Kasper, Daniel Hinderink, Rene Fritz, Robert Lemke, Chris Jul Jensen and many more I somewhat consider TYPO3 my baby and act accordingly - not necessarily always in a politically correct way - though I try hard to change at least being so edgy.
Together with Ingo Schmitt from Marketing Factory you started the workpackages initiative. Can you give an overview of what the aim of the initiative is?
I think it is more helpful to talk to people instead of trying to assume what they think. I applied this principle in Altleining at the Marketing Sprint Week which I luckily and surprisingly got invited too. Berit's idea of inviting me was the spark that ignited my current, massive involvement in TYPO3 as a whole, be it within the Neos team or right now within the TYPO3 CMS Team.
When talking to the CMS team in Altleiningen it quickly occurred that right now the main problem is manpower. They suffered some losses staffing-wise which made the delay of 6.2 necessary. Since I consider myself a sub-par coder, I still think that people like me can be more helpful when taking the non-development workload off the shoulders of those who actually do write code.
Funny enough this would be totally normal thing to do when you'd run a company but for some reason I cannot fully grasp right now this didn't happen enough within TYPO3.
So in order to deal with the manpower problem we first came up with a rough outline of the workpackages themselves and I asked the CMS team to attach estimates to these. We discussed the estimates and corrected them here and there so that they are truly realistic.
When these were in place, we did all the marketing related stuff like building a Flyer to send around, gathering addresses for me to call and so on. Actually the idea with the website came up on Monday at noon and we launched it Tuesday at 13:30 - another great example how fast you can achieve things using a TYPO3 product.
Once we have the sponsoring in place Ingo and I will start taking over classic project management tasks and we will work close to Ernesto and Olly to keep things flowing nicely.
Workpackages is a good example that you do not need to wait for anyone's permission to start making your dreams come true. What is different these days that makes this initiative and for example Gridelements by Joey Hasenau possible?
There is the phrase "scratch your own itch".
To be honest I really hate that phrase since it is totally misinterpreted as "if you want something changed, do it yourself - I won't help you". While some parts of this hold true it's still not my idea of how open source should work. There is nothing wrong with giving something to other people or with helping out other people.
This is basically what Joey or we do right now.
We indeed do scratch our own itches; it's a totally selfish thing - much like surfing.
We want something done so we can use it. But instead of just doing it ourselves we include the community in what to do and give all these things back to the community.
And it clearly shows that the market has lost contact to TYPO3's development to a certain degree - but that's next on my agenda anyways so stay tuned
But the overwhelming feedback we and also Joey received shows that there can be groups of interest besides the T3A coexisting happily next to each other and even feed off each others energy.
The activity in the TYPO3 project is on a very broad level. Just recently having had the release of Neos 1.0 does not seem to distract attention from our enterprise workhorse TYPO3 CMS. How do you view the relationship between TYPO3 Neos and TYPO3 CMS? Will they both live happily ever after?
Everyone keeps asking this question.
Unfortunately I left my crystal orb at home today so I can't really foretell the future.
But seriously:
I think Neos has huge potential and within its market share it does excel. If our team can keep up the pace I think it will eat off quite some market share from competitors of TYPO3 CMS - but not really off TYPO3 CMS itself. You called it "workhorse" and I think this term is 95% precise. The other 5% are that TYPO3 CMS can also be a race-horse if you know what I mean.
It is also important to understand that Neos and TYPO3 CMS grow together more and more so I personally project some really exciting times ahead of us.
You have had strong criticism in the past in the TYPO3 Association. That does not seem to stop you from participating in quite some projects. What's the deal?
Are you addressing the politically correct Mattes now?
In general the TYPO3 Association has changed from its origins into something that truly makes sense now. Important mechanisms are in place like the open budget application votings, having a dedicated community manager or even restricting paid work to certain limit.
Yet, a lot of people look up to the T3A for approval of their actions like talking to their parents asking whether they may stay up late.
The T3A on the other hand understands itself as an organizational unit, not an operational unit within the TYPO3 project. This leads to some tension because people simply have different expectations of who does what.
After all, the community is doing the operational work and the T3A is there to support and foster this development. They spend the water for the flowers so to say.
The only thing we need to be cautious about is people not understanding their place within TYPO3's ecosystem or freaking out about the powers they now possess. If such a thing should happen it is important to clear this up fast... like really fast... since otherwise it will poison the entire project.
But I trust in those involved in the current positions - and if things should go south... I gotta do it myself.
With the wise words of Der Mattes This Week in TYPO3 comes to an end. I am looking forward to doing a news series of articles in this year on what moves the TYPO3 community and of to report on new developments. If there is anything you would like to contribute then let me know.
Regards Ben