TYPO3camp Munich 2011

Categories: Community Created by Sacha Storz

TYPO3camp Munich was held for the fourth time this year from September 9-11 with an unprecedented Core-Dev-density, great speeches, a great atmosphere and a new location. A small, personal report by Sacha Storz.

<link http: typo3camp-munich.mixxt.de _blank>TYPO3camp <link http: typo3camp-munich.mixxt.de _blank>Munich is the second oldest TYPO3camp. TYPO3camp Hamburg started just a few months earlier. 2011 is also the fourth time this event was organised. In the meantime TYPO3camps have become high-profile events with top-class lectures by core developers and other professionals. The networking aspect is super valuable at these meetings. Here is some information Sacha gathered at the event.

Changes in the TYPO3 Association and New Professional Listing

<link http: twitter.com alinbu _blank>Peter Proll gave an interesting talk about the structural changes within the<link http: association.typo3.org _blank>TYPO3 Association which will take effect in February 2012 at the General Assembly in Basel, Switzerland. The major budget proposals will be presented at<link http: t3con11-frankfurt.typo3.org _blank>T3CON to ensure the budget process transparency. Starting in February 2012, each TYPO3 Association member (any category) is eligible to elect members in two bodies, the Business Control Committee and the Expert Advisory Board (which then in turn elects the T3A Board). The Steering Committee in its current form is omitted. This way there will be more democratic decision-making in the Association, which as established by Swiss association law, did not provide a lot of opportunities for influence "from the bottom up".

Important for agencies and freelancers: The <link http: typo3.org community service-offerings _blank>list of professional TYPO3 serviceson typo3.org, which was outdated and was not maintained anymore, is being rebuilt with the relaunch of typo3.org. The listing will carry a fee and will be governed by clear criteria such as references, T3A membership, etc. You can find a <link support professional_services.html _blank>preview of the professional services listing on typo3.org. The newly cleaned up listing will be meaningful and valuable to the listed agencies from a marketing perspective. The TYPO3 Association will provide more information in an official statement soon.

Kanban is coming

<link http: de.wikipedia.org wiki kanban _blank>Kanban apears to be gaining ever more traction in the TYPO3 community. While<link http: twitter.com multanifx _blank>Volker Graubaum has already held his -by now famous- kanban lecture a number of times (unfortunately I have yet to see it), <link https: twitter.com typo3franz _blank>Franz Kratochvil  showed how this change management system was introduced and works in his agency. Because Kanban is less dogmatic and more easily adaptable to existing processes, it’s gaining popularity among the agile approaches. Other agencies at the camp also expressed their interest in introducing the system. Anyone who is not quite satisfied with their own workflow processes should definitely give Kanban a look.

The TYPO3 caching framework

<link https: twitter.com stgebert _blank>Steffen Gebert gave a very interesting lecture about the <link http: wiki.typo3.org caching_framework _blank>caching framework, which will finally be the default from TYPO3 version 4.6 onward. Steffen could, he said, halve the server load by using Redis instead of the DB backend and has hinted that he would maybe write a detailed article on the caching framework (we should definitely encourage him!) The trouble with the DB backend of the framework is that, due to administrative overhead, it may -for the time being- be a bit slower than the old "normal" cache tables (which TYPO3 4.8 will presumably drop altogether), so it is important to promote what the Caching FW is capable of and how to achieve optimal TYPO3 performance.

Ext Direct and Extbase - a powerful combination

Last but not least I want to mention <link https: twitter.com sgalinski _blank>Stefan Galinski’s  talk about <link http: www.sencha.com products extjs extdirect _blank>Ext Direct and<link http: forge.typo3.org projects show typo3v4-mvc _blank>Extbase. Ext Direct is a techology / specification of <link http: www.sencha.com _blank>Sencha , which allows in Extbase and Sencha Touch (unofficial port), to unify JavaScript client-side methods with the server, enabling transparent communications between the client and the server from a unified codebase. I have not understood everything, I admit, because Galinski qualifies everything that is not rocket science as "trivial", but the marriage of the user frontend and backend infrastructure through Ext Direct is really a great thing. You’ll find working examples in Stefan’s dF Tools extensions ( <link http: typo3.org documentation document-library extension-manuals df_tools view _blank>dF tools in TER , <link http: forge.typo3.org projects extension-df_tools _blank>df tools in the Forge ).

This selection is topics was highly personal and shouldn’t be taken as a ‘best of’, to avoid any misunderstanding. Naturally I wasn’t present at all the talks as I needed quite some time to socialize and also to play some football.

TYPO3camps everywhere - what next?

TYPO3camp the concept has become an established and recognized brand, and although there are already four regular ones, there’s still room for more. Next year there will probably be two more TYPO3camps added to the existing ones in Hamburg, Munich, Berlin and Stuttgart. One will probably be in the Ruhr area and one on - wait for it -  Mallorca. <link https: twitter.com spooner_web _blank>Thomas Loeffler, fellow-founder of the TYPO3camp in Stuttgart, is planning to bring all of the numerous camps together under one roof at <link http: typo3camp.org _blank>typo3camp.org (The domain currently links to the Hamburg camp. Volker Graubaum was simply the first to it).

My take: visiting the Munich TYPO3camp paid off 150 percent, just like the other TYPO3camps I've been to. It was a great event, thanks to the organization and all who participated. Who wants to be convinced of the beautiful location and the great atmosphere, many find <link http: www.flickr.com search _blank>many photo galleries on Flickr (under the tag t3cm11 ), on <link http: www.slideshare.net event typo3camp-munich-2011 _blank>Slideshare there are also lecture presentations (stay tuned, some of them are yet to be uploaded over the course of the few days).

It was the fourth and last T3CAMP this year in Germany. Word on the street is that we will see more T3CAMP’s next year also outside of Germany. How are your experiences with TYPO3camps? Do you think that the growing number and density of camps could become a problem, or will this simply sort itself out regionally as long as there is any interest?

Original article on t3n.de: <link http: t3n.de news typo3camp-munchen-2011-personlichen-highlights-329945 _blank>t3n.de/news/typo3camp-munchen-2011-personlichen-highlights-329945/

Translation: Bas van der Wiel