Meet Daniel Homorodean, TYPO3 Expansion Leader, Romania (Application Podcast S2E03)

 
15 Years of TYPO3

Asked what one word he would use to describe TYPO3, Daniel replies “Reliability.” And his favorite feature? “TYPO3’s multi-domain capacity.” Daniel would know—his company, Arxia, has been using TYPO3 since 2005. It all started when a German client wanted their project done in TYPO3, and, as Daniel says, “We were a young agency, so we were open to everything.” Despite not knowing anything about TYPO3 at the time, they said yes to the client.

As Daniel learned the intricacies of the capabilities of TYPO3 on the job, he and the rest of his agency started to get into it. “We started to realize that compared to other content management systems, TYPO3 really has some very neat technological advances and advantages. It was also opening a new market for us.” They liked TYPO3 so much that 5 years later, they became an exclusively TYPO3 agency and have remained so for the past ten years. Asked if it was a good decision for them, Daniel responds, “Definitely yes. Focusing on the technology that you can really master is something that pays off.”

Daniel’s Passion Aligns With His TYPO3 Contributions

Daniel considers himself an explorer at heart, both in his love of travel and in his attitude toward work, projects, and community-building. That’s what makes him so perfect for leading the TYPO3 Community Expansion Committee, established in 2018. The Expansion Committee’s main focus is on promoting TYPO3 in various countries, but it also includes a mentorship program and event organization. 

Of all the countries he works with, Daniel is especially enthusiastic about Africa, calling it “his sweetheart”. He says, “The potential of Africa is fantastic. ​​The continent will double in population in the next 25 years and surpass 2.4 billion people. The digitalization of Africa is still very low, but we want to help accelerate that transformation.” The Expansion Committee can point people toward training, certification, and employment opportunities, and TYPO3 itself has a lower barrier to entry since its software is both free to use and generally easier to operate on older technologies.“The Expansion Committee can help enable people in developing countries to do their own projects, build local communities, teach and share knowledge, and provide a direct economic opportunity.” says Daniel. 

Expanding TYPO3 Across Countries and Markets

Daniel believes that in order to further grow the adoption of TYPO3, the Expansion Commitee needs to foster the development of two factors.

• The market itself—by this, Daniel means the clients who take up TYPO3 projects, which especially includes governments, developing countries, universities, and city halls
• The developers and agencies who could benefit from TYPO3—Daniel says, “As they embrace and learn TYPO3, we need to help them convert their knowledge into business opportunities.”

Daniel says the Expansion Committee is hard at work on these two factors. “We are working with the community on empowering and enabling local agencies, and cooperating with the local champions. We are also engaging relevant stakeholders, like governments and international development agencies, and trying to bring them as allies into this world. It’s accelerating now, and I’m happy to say that people from the community are saying they want to be a part of it and contribute to these efforts.”

Dive Deep Into Advanced Projects With TYPO3

Daniel’s 15 years of working with TYPO3 CMS has given him a high opinion of it. “TYPO3 enables you to develop more advanced projects that you couldn't touch before, like multi-language, multi-domain, high security, large scale, complex workflows, kind of projects.” He adds, “Once you grasp TYPO3’s capacity, it’s actually easier to use.”

Jeffrey A. McGuire  0:02
Okay, so if the gods of connectivity are with us today, you know, this is gonna work. And if they're not, then, you know, there's always another day, thankfully. And, you know, it's early 2021, and I still don't have many other places to go. So how some how was, how was your 2020? Daniel?

Daniel Homorodean  0:30
Well, my 2020 was actually quite, quite busy. And despite the pandemic, and despite the fact that I could not travel anymore, and I've lost a lot of international and cross continental tickets, for that, I think that I've managed to, to make up for these and actually prove that we can build up relations and we could build up partnerships, remotely, even over Skype, zoom, and the other means. So it's, it may be it was a lesson to be learned for everybody. That actually, you don't necessarily have to put your hand or put your Put your foot in a place in order to discuss with somebody relevantly, although I presume that we all miss those gold all times, when we could clink cheers with a beer and enjoy the moment together in any event, or, or in an evening. I,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  1:37
I think that's great. And I think that might help us try to balance I think that might help us try to balance things like the environment or, or time efficiency, now I can or I can tell my team, Hey, why don't you submit a presentation to this conference, because, you know, take a day to prepare it and two hours on the day to give it and and you know, you don't have to sit in an airplane for a day, don't have to pay for a hotel don't have to do jet lag. The efficiency of presenting oneself is quite exciting. And and I presented at a Frankfurt user user group meeting the other day, and I never would have gone otherwise. And it was really interesting because it was supposed to be the Frankfurt user group. But there were people from at least all over Germany, and maybe maybe some from outside, I can't remember right now. So I think there are silver linings. And I think that I would like to see, I would like to see a post pandemic world at all. But I would like to see, I think maybe there's some some we've there's some silver linings and some things that we could learn and, and things that we should keep. I think we should make user groups streaming all the time, I think we should always have a remote presenter option for conferences, you know, on the other hand, the question, and this might be relevant for you to my question is my network I've been doing versions of what I do for a long time. So I know a lot of people already I already had a beer with you. I already had, you know, a beer with a lot of people. So I already have some some feeling right. But I'm not sure about meeting new people have you? Have you been meeting new people and building new relationships over the last year?

Daniel Homorodean  3:20
Definitely jam definitely. So not to anticipate a topic which might might go a bit larger into the discussion, but go for it over a 16th of December, you know that we've organized the TYPO3 international meetup days where we have participants from 42 countries. So never in the history of TYPO3 was it possible to actually bring such a diversity of peoples representing so many places, so many spaces, from faraway as to New Zealand or Australia, all the way to us, Costa Rica, Canada, Chile, going through Africa and all Europe and the Middle East. So no way could have been done physically, because you couldn't gather all the people all together.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  4:19
That's so exciting. I'm like my heart is, is actually racing a little bit at the idea of that, that that so there's a real chance to spread the word and grow our community better than before even.

Daniel Homorodean  4:41
Maybe so maybe. So I think that that we have managed to to convert the blockage that we had in in the lack of traveling into finding other means. So the TYPO3 International meetup This is one the international mentorship program is another And he's based again on the same principle that the world is while then the that you can find people who are interested to learn the new things, and you can engage them remotely. And you can actually do this type of, of knowledge transfer and of assistance, over oceans over continents, feasibly. So Indeed, indeed, we've opened up discussions and relations with many new countries with many new communities, especially in the Latin America, and in Africa, that was the conjecture of the development or for relationships in last year. However, we managed also to go go go, yes, we managed to rekindle some of the relations that we knew that they existed, but we didn't maybe cultivated too much the ones that I've told you in Oceania, or in North America, we knew that there is something there. But it was hard steel to to get the people in, or to get the people engaged. And now we, it was possible. And we saw that it was possible. And, you know, Jim, everybody that we talked with, I mean, from New Zealand, to US, and Canada, said that they want to contribute more. I mean, that was their declaration of, of willingness. And it's up to well, also up to us to, to kindle this, and to foster this involvement. But all they all said that, now they feel they can be closer to the community, now they feel that they want and they can contribute. And in this way, you know, I think that we made the leap forward already, in thinking more international with, with TYPO3. Although there is quite a way to go still.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  7:05
I am taking a note, so that I don't forget a cool thing that I'm going to ask you in a minute. Um, so so that was fun. I was I was actually trying to, you know, get the warm up questions, but we turned straight into hard real stuff. That was neat. Um, but let's, let's some, let's, let's get into this thing. And so it'd be great if you could tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your name, who you are what you do, maybe, personally, professionally, and in the TYPO3 context.

Daniel Homorodean  7:39
Absolutely jam. So my name is Daniel Homorodean. I'm coming from Romania, I'm coming from the city of Cluj napoca. It's a historical city is the second city in size of Romania, and also is the biggest it hub technological hub of the entire region, not just for Romania, but for the entire Southeast Europe, we have more than 20,000 IoT developers in the city, in in our close area. And that considering that the total population is a bit over 300,000, so you can do the math and see and see exactly the proportion of the IT guy said here in our city, I mean, you can bump into an IT specialist at every corner in all the bar, and not into one but in quite many. And and this actually fostered a very good growth of of our expertise, both in terms of technology and also in terms of our ability to, to build up products and to go into new markets. And for me as an IT entrepreneur for almost 20 years now. The International Business Development and selling internationally and working with foreign customers was something that was ingrained in from the beginning. Because the regional markets Romanian mark is is not even around it now. It's not yet big enough or mature enough to absorb the entire capacity that I've told you about. So it was normal for us to to move well to Western Europe first, and then further and further away. And now, aside from our European customers, our company arc sia is also having clients in web development, consultancy and training in many other places of the world, including Africa. And that is, let's say, my year, my sweetheart of a continent. And for me, it's, let's say is the epitomizes The idea of exploration, because I consider myself to be an explorer. So an explorer in geography in terms of, I love traveling. And that's, that's the best thing that that I could do with my money and with my time traveling and exploring, you know, geographically people, countries cultures. But I will consider myself a an explorer, also in terms of projects of getting into new ideas, new and diverse, new products, risking a bit or more. And in trying to build up, you know, communities, partnerships, things like this. So always, you know, in a rest, restless mode, in which we can do things better.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  10:49
And in the TYPO3 community, you are in charge of the intern, or you are a big part of the international expansion efforts. And so a lot of your contribution and your focus is, is actually very well aligned with your passion, right?

Daniel Homorodean  11:08
Absolutely, absolutely. Since 2018, when the TYPO3 community expansion committee of the TYPO3 Association was established, it took the leading role of this committee, and starting initially to travel and promote TYPO3 into various events in various countries. And further on expanding, as also the theme of the committee has expanded, expanding also the focus of the committee by introducing other activities like the mentorship program, or organising events ourselves, things like this, as I've said, but this started in 2018. And it has accelerated since. And it's it's not something that came out suddenly, actually, I mean, from my perspective, personally, as I'm coming from Romania, and we don't have steel, and we didn't have much TYPO3 in the market, it was clearly an experience on which we've, I build before that we need to grow the market and we need to grow the community locally. In outside that, say, the court German speaking TYPO3 area. And the it was also something that was somehow into the TYPO3 community at large. I mean, many people were were thinking about the fact that they probably should be more international. So it's, it fits quite well with my year. experience with my year, my interest and also the interest at large of the community.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  12:55
Nice, my, my professional involvement with TYPO3 has been very, very active since 2017. I've been in and out of the community and watching from the outside for much, much longer. A lot of what I discovered when i when i really dove in a few years ago was that this project is ready to be out in the world and and has so much to offer to people in terms of up to date, ways of coding, great functionality that applies to real business cases for a lot of kinds of organizations around the world. Great release cycle, great teams, great democracy, great nonprofit structure. I mean, the project is really well thought out, in my view, and is executing very well. And so I really thought it was time that more people heard of it. So I got very excited when you told me that people from Chile, people from Latin America, people from Oceania, know about it. And and I am. My my company has worked with the TYPO3 company and with a TYPO3 association to do community building activities to help with marketing sprints to help write communications to help determine strategy and so on. And we also were had the privilege of putting together the TYPO3 guidebook and I losing my thread a little bit on my question, but

so anyway, I think it's really time to push beyond our traditional borders. And I was wondering, you said that you had interest from Latin America in your event and you have, you know, your sweetheart in Africa. Could you talk about the situations there, and especially because as a co author of the TYPO3 guide book, I'm trying to convince a press to bring out The book in Spanish and French right now, and I need to find local publishers to help with that.

Daniel Homorodean  15:09
Well, you know, it's, it's a continuous exploration to this emerging and developing countries, which actually, even if we call them, regions, continents, there are huge expanses, which with the high diversity themselves. So I'm saying that Africa and just to make it clear, Africa in itself is my sweetheart, you know, and the continent that colors, the smells, the energy, the the people at large, but Africa is 54 countries, and there is so diverse, some are very, are quite well developed, others are still very poor, and still still have a lot of problems which come with, let's say beyond a B before the digitalization. And so in order to, to move there, and in order to bring in the new technology, and in order to bring in the technology transfer and capacity building, and everything that we can do for we have to first understand and understand it is a follow up of, of exploring and of, of getting to know people. So that's the first phase that we should do, really, really getting to know people getting to discuss with them getting to understand further on making the plan with them, how we can actually help. So in general, and I would, I would take Africa as an example. It's a It's a special example, because the future of Africa is fantastic. I mean, the continent will double in population in the next 25 years, it will surpass 2.4 billion people. So imagine that, and imagine that the growth of GDP growth is in it's seven, eight net per year, in the same time, the digitalization at the level of a continent is way low. And the acceleration of this transformation has to rely on their, their internal capacity of non their local people. That's a big hurdle. Because you'd see, for example, country of 100 million like Ethiopia, which actually have, I would try to let you guess how many programmers a country of 100 million would have.

So I will make it easier for you, but it's about 4000. So no more than 5000. So can you imagine that the country of that size?

Jeffrey A. McGuire  18:11
There are more than what I think really do? I think that there are more than four or 5000 programmers in, in Cologne, which is a city of 1 million. So

Daniel Homorodean  18:24
Gosh, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So in in my own city, we have the number of programmers that probably surpass the the older programmers in all East Africa, for example. And that's something that that have to change, otherwise, those countries will not progress. And that is, that is exactly one of the points that I think that we can work on this right.

Unknown Speaker  18:54
capacity.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  18:56
As an open source project as an open source community, we have some unique advantages for helping people and for helping people in developing economies, especially because we can write and maintain software that works across computers and on older technologies, and doesn't necessarily rely on the latest iPhone and the highest biggest broadband connections and we can give them those tools, all of the software tools. We can give them those for free. We can contribute education and training and then that gives people employment opportunities that gives them empowerment opportunities that gives them the chance to to grow and govern and help everything for themselves better. There we go. So that's my connection. Broken dadadada turn that hey, so how much did you hear?

Daniel Homorodean  20:05
Well, I've heard that we have a community that can help others.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  20:13
So so so I'll, I'll cut this together, right anyway, as an open source community as maintainers of open source technologies, we have the chance, on the one hand, to give people actually free tools to improve their lives and improve their communities and improve their governments. And we have the chance to give people employment, to stimulate their economies, to let them work for foreign clients for a while, until, while they're maturing their own markets, and they can help their own countries, you know, it's a, it's a completely virtuous cycle in my view, and we can pay attention to making technologies that work on lower bandwidth connections that don't rely on smartphones, whatever it is, we have so much to contribute, and so much of it we can do, even if there's a pandemic, for example, we can create good documentation and and tutorials and, and video materials, and so on, and give that to people and really make a difference in the world.

Daniel Homorodean  21:13
Definitely, and I think that you've touched the exact points that we can do, especially in the developing countries, to enable them to do their own project rather than project governmental and for their own private, to enable them to build local communities through which they can share knowledge in between themselves and teach others and also to provide the direct economic opportunity. And by these definitely we we mean, the opportunity for them to work with more experienced partners in Europe or the US or other places with which are more developed than themselves. So let's,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  21:56
let's shift gears a little bit. Tell me how did you get involved in TYPO3? How did you discover it?

Daniel Homorodean  22:06
My company Arxia is doing TYPO3 since 2005. And back then, as younger Web Development Agency Romania, you know, as many others, we were open to everything, open to everything, meaning that we didn't refuse any client who would come to say, I want this done in this and this technology. Yes, okay. Well. So it was one time that German customer came to us and say, Well, I have this portal, which has to be done in TYPO3. Can you do it? We said, Yes, of course, of course, we have no clue at that moment about TYPO3. But, but we did learn it, we did manage to finally do this project. And we started liking it, we started to realize that actually compared to other CMS is that we work at that moment. TYPO3 really has some very neat technological advances and advantages. And also for us at that moment is was opening a new market, a quite a quite a good market for us. So then we grew and grew the TYPO3 capacity until in 2010, we decided that we should be a full TYPO3 agency. I mean, giving up the other CMS is that we are still doing and concentrate fully and end completely and exclusively on type three.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  23:47
And has that been a good decision? 10 years. So

Daniel Homorodean  23:51
definitely, it was, I mean, focusing your business focusing on on the technology that you can master, and really master them. It is something that pays off definitely. And right, then we've started also to explore our position into the community. We were among the first in the Eastern Europe, at least, to start doing these tend to start engaging. And we are looking very much into building the national community building the regional community and also relating it to the international community. So in the first years of the last decade, we've done several national events, national wide events in Romania. And then in 2013. We did the first edition of the International Conference. TYPO3 is Europe. Maybe you've heard about it because it it went on seven editions. So until the pandemic stopped us, it was another form of COVID either way, In a way, but I don't see it as a victim because it allowed us to actually shift the gears. As I was saying in the beginning from from a regional event, of course, it was. Always we have guests from Germany, Switzerland, and so on. But from a regional event, we actually be able to have to move it to a much broader international event, like the international days, it was still initiated by us and still around by year, mainly by the team that has run the TYPO3. East Europe before. Hmm.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  25:42
Yeah, that's a fantastic opportunity. And actually, as we already said, the the the, the fact that people from all over the place, stay up late, get up early, you know, to come and be a part of these online events is it feels like, it feels incredibly empowering. And I really want to capture that going forward. Whatever the situation in the travel in the world is, in the future. What's the coolest thing you ever built with TYPO3?

Daniel Homorodean  26:16
Jim, I have to ask you to repeat because I've lost it for a while. Just repeat the question.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  26:23
Sure. I'm so glad that this thing is recording us independently, because this would never work on on Google meet right now. What is the coolest thing you've ever built with TYPO3.

Daniel Homorodean  26:40
So build in terms of in terms of projects, you mean, so we've built quite a lot of quite a lot of projects big and small. I think that in terms of, of the wideness of the projects, it was something that we've built for a Regional Development Agency in Romania, which became a place into which all the stakeholders of the larger community original larger community could congregate. I mean, from universities, to startups to businesses that could look for opportunities to visitors who would look for investment capacities and possibilities. So it was a project which proved again, that TYPO3 is an enabler or can be an enabler as a platform for complex interaction and complex opportunity accesses. Though, that's one thing and the other, maybe it's what we've managed to to help me Rhonda. I mean, maybe you've, you've heard that three years ago, we've started this, actually, it was yet three years ago already, in the march 2018, we've engaged for the first time, the Rwandan government, and managed to convince them this TYPO3 is the right technology for them in order to rebuild, or the institutional websites. I mean, more than 300 websites of the institutions from the presidency, government ministries, embassies, city halls, everything, everything on paper three. And it took us quite a while to actually go through a system through the benchmarking of the CMS is so that TYPO3 became the victor of in competition with with the other contestants, and build up their strategy also, for multi instance, multi domain installations, which means that one installation of TYPO3 can carry all their 20 something ministries, only one installation, one installation can carry all their embassies in the world. So that's, that's something that really convinced them that it makes sense to continue with a patriot and it makes sense to build up their own capacity. And the nice thing was that we've helped them build these national capacity through coaching, so that the people came to learn TYPO3 came to build up their own website, and came for the first time in a cafe in the country for the first time to congregate into a technological community. They didn't have this as a concept, that technological community and last year in in February, where they've managed to have the first national convention on TYPO3 for the for TYPO3 community. That's I think that that was a good thing not just for me, of course, but for for for all the TYPO3 community at large

Jeffrey A. McGuire  29:55
and and bringing open source empowerment To a place that is that has been doing better and better. It's a it's a perfect moment to introduce that there. How did you how did you discover? How did you find out that they were looking to replace the infrastructure and get in on that process?

Daniel Homorodean  30:16
I think that it was a very lucky conjecture in which the first action actually the very first action of the expansion committee was to send me to Kigali to the capital of France, to a conference, it was a conference there, a CMS Africa summit in 2018. And there, I have presented TYPO3 to the audience. And from their own, there were some people from the government in the audience. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. But they they came to me and they said, Well, you know, we are actually looking for a technology to serve us. Our our scope, and we feel that this TYPO3, could be the one. What do you think of say? Of course, it is, of course, it is, of course, what you are looking for?

Jeffrey A. McGuire  31:13
This is the CMS you're looking for.

Daniel Homorodean  31:16
Exactly, exactly. Well, it took a while, of course, from that moment until, until all the stages were done in order for for the project for the implementation to start, but that is how it started.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  31:29
Wonderful, wonderful.

Could you could you sum up maybe the state of typo three outside of the Western European core, and the potential that you see in different parts of the world?

Daniel Homorodean  31:55
Well, in general, the potential is definitely huge. The state is definitely poor. And I will, I will start with, with the first one with the potential, I believe that in order to, to grow, TYPO3 and TYPO3 in the market, you need to foster the development of two factors. One is the market itself, meaning the clients who could take up the project the projects in TYPO3, and on these, especially in the developing countries, government, universities, city halls, are a very good target. Because we have we have quite, quite good portfolio at the level of the community at large in those sectors. On the other hand, you need to foster the growth of the local developers, the local agencies who embrace it, learn it, and who find the way in which they can convert their knowledge into business opportunity. And that at first, you have well, us as a community, I think that we have to help in order for for TYPO3 to get a foothold. So that's, that is something that as a plan as a logical plan, we're trying to do in the TYPO3, committee expansion committee. Coming back to the second part of of your question, or the answer at that v is rather poor, outside its core areas, well, the numbers themselves of the agencies and of the people who are using TYPO3, outside the dock area is is rather small. And throughout the last years, it has not grown significantly. So that means that is quite quite quite a good potential here that we have to foster so that these these grows, and maybe the the hurtle into this is exactly in helping them the local players to sell TYPO3 better to sell TYPO3 betters to their market. I mean, you know that we have TYPO3 agencies in Spain, in Italy, in the UK, even. But the penetration on the market of TYPO3 in those countries is still very, very small. So it's not enough just to to expand the knowledge at the level of programmers. We also need to help them to expand their market. That is gross.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  34:43
Right, and what do you think would help?

Daniel Homorodean  34:49
Well, what I think and not not just me, is better correlation of the activities of the association into this direction. And the better cooperation with those local champions, let's say, and I'm glad to say that it happens, or at least it's accelerating now, because maybe you've heard about where, you know, you've heard about, of course, you are part of it, of the cockman project, which is run by the TYPO3 Association. And it's exactly done for this purpose, I mean, to empower and to enable the local agencies to, to push forward TYPO3 on the market, and all the actions that our committee or International Committee is doing into, into working with the community, and doing what we call strategic business development. What does it mean, actually is, is that we are engaging, relevant stakeholders, like governments, for example, or international development agencies, into trying to bring them as allies into this world. So it does happen, and I'm so happy that, that we see in the last years, and especially in this pandemic here, you know, especially in last year, we saw the foster of of the interest, and of the people coming from our community to say, I want to be part of it, I want to be part of it. So there are so many, as you know, who want to contribute to that.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  36:26
Are you involved in the mentoring as well?

Daniel Homorodean  36:30
Definitely. So, in our committee, we've started the mentoring programming last year. And it was started. I think it's almost one year ago, when we realized that actually, the funding for traveling is not going to be spent, clearly it was not going to be spent. So okay, what other thing should we do in order to, to help convert the possibility that we have, and that was engaging local communities of programmers and bringing in mentors, so it was quite an effort flow quite an effort to, to bring in and assess the developers and also to identify and incentivize mentors, you know, to do it. So I did call the nighties. This project last year and in the committee, we do have implant another batch for this year, which will start in in a couple of months.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  37:35
Terrific. I could see a lot of alignment between between mentors and mentees and finding or creating or helping local champions, I think that that that all is is in must be in the same stream of efforts.

Daniel Homorodean  37:53
That is definitely and that is why we see the cockman project. And the TYPO3 community expansion committee is definitely convergent and complimentary. And working together on on all the areas.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  38:13
So how would you right now try to convince someone to learn TYPO3 is a developer or take on TYPO3 agency?

Daniel Homorodean  38:28
Well, in both cases, I believe that the arguments would, would be the same. On one hand, that TYPO3 enables you to develop project projects more serious that that you couldn't touch before, like multi language, multi domain, high security, large scale, complex workflows, projects, for which TYPO3 in all these respects outshines any other open source, PHP based cms by far, and on the other hand, working both for freelancers or for agency, TYPO3 is providing business opportunities on one hand, because we know that is in high demand in its core area in the to the central European Western European countries. On the other hand, because we are convinced that it will catch up especially in in the governmental administration area, and this will open up open direct work opportunities for any

Jeffrey A. McGuire  39:43
console, whether I'm an individual developer or an agency. One. The baseline is hey, this is PHP. This is standards compliant, this is very similar or the same if You've done web stuff already. So it's not hard or are that different? in its core? Oh, you're offline again, I'm gonna wait. The third that. Are you back? Can you hear me? Now I can now allow okay. Yep. So I'll start that, again, you have a baseline argument that this is a technology that's not that different from things that you might know if you've been on the web already. And fundamentally, it's really good PHP with supporting technologies. So it's learnable. And usable, then you have, if you learn it now, if you take it on now, as an agency, you can probably find business now because there's a high demand for TYPO3 developers and TYPO3 project work. So that's an immediate motivation. And then in the longer term, I guess or, or in parallel to that, you have a well tested proven technology that gives you the power to deliver really big, really reliable, really scalable, secure projects. So and then a career path beyond that. So that's cool. What do you think about the need for learning materials and documentation in local languages?

Daniel Homorodean  41:26
from country to country? That depends, but the need in general exists? It's clear, we have to identify exactly the languages and exactly the countries. And I would say that the first of all, I would consider focusing on the say, the most important languages of the world, which are actually covering quite quite large areas, I would say Spanish, French, Russian, maybe. And that is because Russia still has quite quite a stronger technological capacity, however, quite a low English penetration.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  42:15
Hmm, I've met a lot of Russians, but I guess the ones I've met all do speak English, so I wasn't aware of that.

Daniel Homorodean  42:25
Um, so starting with starting from the third countries, countries, which are smaller actually have, have managed to somehow relate to the larger speaking languages. So right.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  42:42
I mean, if you look at the history of the world, multilingual regions like Europe, or, you know, there's historically people who spoke quote, unquote, minority languages or who were ruled by external powers have long traditions of being multilingual, right? I imagine most Romanians speak a couple languages, most Dutch people speak a few languages. And, yeah, and so. Okay, so what if we take a list of how many peoples become many languages and choose where we think that we can be effective and go down that?

Daniel Homorodean  43:20
That that could be in my opinion, I would approach Mm

Jeffrey A. McGuire  43:24
hmm. You know, I'm also working on my pitch for the publishers to translate the book that I'm working on. I could see French being great. One, because we have a great French community that could really support getting it right. And to that Francophone Africa is such an interesting place. And plus, you want to be able to go to more countries in Africa and do your work. So you need them with the documentation that they can manage that. And then I really want to visit Costa Rica again. So I think that we need the documentation in Spanish. And then, you know, probably Portuguese is up there somewhere as well. In the end,

Daniel Homorodean  44:07
it is definitely the Brazil is like a continent, you know, 200 million people make a continent.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  44:16
Yeah. So let's do some, let's do some TYPO3 quick questions. Yeah.

Daniel Homorodean  44:26
Please,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  44:27
what one word would you use to describe TYPO3?

Daniel Homorodean  44:34
reliability.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  44:36
What is your favorite feature of TYPO3?

Daniel Homorodean  44:42
multi domain capacity.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  44:45
What feature Would you like to see added to TYPO3 core

Daniel Homorodean  44:55
maybe stronger document management company. Sitting

Jeffrey A. McGuire  45:01
in controversial, because because there's a lot of talk about about better integrations with with with digital asset management right now but Okay, good. Good. I could see that. What feature Would you like to see removed from typo three? Well, nothing came to talk to my view yet. I let you know. So where do you think typo, three could and should go next? what's what's something on the horizon? Maybe that you're excited about?

Daniel Homorodean  45:37
more towards? So from the from the usage and capacity perspective, I see a bright future into the government, the administration. That's, that's a place to go, which is beyond the presentation, and goes more in depth to support the more complex workflows in between stakeholders.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  46:01
Yeah, I'm very excited about the push towards more functionality explicitly directed at governments and really selling into helping good governance around the world. I'm also really excited about that. What is something that people you that you wish people knew about typo? Three, but they don't seem to

Daniel Homorodean  46:28
that? Actually, once you, you grasp its, its capacity, it becomes easier to use. I'm not sure if easy, but easier.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  46:45
I don't know if easy, is actually needed, per se, right. I mean, if you are solving web publishing, right, it that itself is quite complex, there are not necessarily very many easy answers. So, you know, if it's learnable, good enough, I think, if it does its job well, in the end, then, you know, that's the best. What's one cool trick that you've learned that you want to share?

Daniel Homorodean  47:25
And that is not the Well, I'm not going into the technical tricks, although I'm, I'm an IT guy. But I'm still more into the business development. And the trick that I would like to share is that I found again, and again, people who went empowered, want to step up and to learn to learn the others. I mean, that's, that's something that, that we don't really naturally figure out when we are in an agency. But I think that for the promotion and for the, for the expansion of of any technology, that's something that we should take care of, I mean, really empower people to become more than programmers, technical project managers, and become the real sharers, mentors, coaches, sculptures for the others, and they love it.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  48:23
So in your experience, when you give people the tools to do this, they have a natural instinct and inclination to share that with others.

Daniel Homorodean  48:34
I think that some have, are more natural than others. Some might need a bit of push, and everybody needs a bit of encouragement.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  48:47
And for that, I think having a supportive and friendly community has got to help.

Daniel Homorodean  48:52
Definitely, it's a it's the continuous example that everybody sees and with whom everybody can can engage.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  49:02
Nice. We do a little thing on this podcast that I like to call this suggest a guest. Who is it that you think should be on this podcast and talk with me?

Daniel Homorodean  49:17
Well, I'm thinking to about two people that with whom I've shared this very nice experience of bringing TYPO3 further, and these are the Moto moto dylewski from Marco pedia Poland, Semak demek together with whom I've also been in Ronda to, to help the rondon people and I'm also thinking that Mateus balls Lesniak who's doing quite a job in Running and managing the cocoa mon project. And he's very, very keen not only to promote the TYPO3 into the Scandinavian area, but actually to promote it in all the world. So I think this, these two guys, which I'm very happy that they are our teammates in our committee, this, this would make very good guests for you.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  50:25
That would be cool. I haven't. And I haven't seen or spoken with timok in. I mean, honestly, more than a year, so it's a great excuse for me to give him a call to thank you. That's fantastic. I have I, I'm lucky, I think I speak with Mateus a couple times a week, which is great. Um, and we have multiple ongoing conversations. But yeah, Tim, it would be great. That's a super idea. Could you please, could you please, I'm trying to find my mouse. Can you please read this, but with your name in it. And it's actually a it's actually three read it in three pieces. The format is not great there. But the three sentences

Daniel Homorodean  51:12
Hi, my name is Danielle Homer Rodin, and this is application the TYPO3 community podcast. She said sharing your stories, your projects, and the difference you make. Celebrate the TYPO3 community on application, the TYPO3 podcast, meet the humans behind the technology.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  51:31
Now say it like you're excited about it.

Daniel Homorodean  51:34
Haha. All right. Hi, my name is Daniela Homura them. And this is application, the TYPO3 community podcasts sharing your stories, your projects, and the difference you make. Celebrate the TYPO3 community on application, the TYPO3 podcast, meet the humans behind the technology.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  51:56
Wonderful. That's what we're talking about. That's what we're talking about. So we talked about a little bit about your history in TYPO3 and about your situation in Romania, and online events and the pandemic and Africa and Rwanda and mentoring and the expansion committee and so on. Was there anything else that you especially wanted to talk about today? Anything that you feel would be worth sharing?

Daniel Homorodean  52:29
I think, Jen that we've been covering quite, quite well, the topics that I was thinking of. So it was natural, it was flowing. It's fine. I was quite happy with with the conversation that we have.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  52:43
Nice. Now I I I have a strong interest in spreading the word about TYPO3 and about open source around the world and helping people I really care about good digital government, I really care about enablement. How often do you think I could check in with you to get an update about the international expansion and the mentoring efforts?

Daniel Homorodean  53:16
I think that once a month is is a good recurrence, because things do happen.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  53:26
Now, if we made like a, like a, like a quarterly, special interview to put on the podcast, you know, with you, maybe with Timex maybe with MBL one time, you know, just to say okay, hey, so in TYPO3, international expansion committee, here's what's been going on. And this is what we've been doing. And this is what we've been thinking about. And, and, you know, here's some wins or successes or what would that be good? Would that be a good rhythm?

Daniel Homorodean  53:56
So maybe into this respect? Well, I love the idea. And I think that sort of, let's say the newsletter into this form will help the community a lot. Maybe once a month is a bit too often. So maybe once a quarter is, is more more condensed to so. So full disclosure,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  54:18
I'm I'm working on something similar with folker now as Chief Product officer and with pennymac, probably together because they're working so closely now on the roadmap. So I think that the international topic and expansion and mentoring and all that stuff would be also really great to have. I think every three months or so would be would be nice. And then if it's 10 minutes, if it's half an hour, you know, I think it would be really cool.

Daniel Homorodean  54:46
All right, all right. Yes, yes, yes, I support it. Yes. Very good.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  54:51
You're You're very hard to convince me. Hey, thank you. Thank you so much. For all of your contribution and all of the work that you do, I am so proud and excited to be involved in, in communities of people who, you know, all of this is contribution. All of this is important. All of this is interesting. And it's not just code, there's so much to do. And there's so many ways that that starting from code that we can make a real difference in the world. And I'm, you know, so thank you for all of your contributions. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. And I really look forward to the next time we get a chance to talk and what if, what if we had a beer together sometime?

Daniel Homorodean  55:40
Looking forward to that and to, let's say, getting together physically, but one of the next events in the TYPO3 community