Meet Thomas “Spoony” Löffler, TYPO3 Freelancer and Contributor, Germany (Application Podcast S02E13)

Jeffrey A. McGuire  0:00
Welcome to Application, the TYPO3 Community Podcast!

Thomas Löffler  0:07
Hi, my name is Spoony and this is application the TYPO3 community podcast, sharing your stories, your projects and the difference you make. Celebrate the TYPO3 community on application the TYPO3 podcast meets the humans behind the technology. One, two

Jeffrey A. McGuire  0:30
Welcome to application the TYPO3 community Podcast. I'm Jeffrey A McGuire, you can call me jam. And this is where we celebrate the typo three community sharing your stories talking about your projects and the difference you make in around and with typo three CMS. In this episode of application TYPO3 community podcast I had the great pleasure of talking with Thomas Leffler, widely known as spoony Spooner Webb sooner or later, I was fascinated to talk with him about his history and tried two or three and his appreciation for the community. But I think one of the things that makes this particular conversation special is the fact that spoony is a solo practitioner who wants a one person agency himself and talking with him about how he relates to customers and how he solves problems, gave me some real insights that I hadn't had before. So I really hope that you get as much out of listening to this episode, as I got out of talking with Thomas today.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  1:49
Thomas Leffler, welcome to application that TYPO3 podcasts. I'm so glad to be talking with you. And why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who are you? And what do you do?

Thomas Löffler  1:59
I am a guy, one on one guy, a geek with Lego. And I'm living in Stuttgart, born in Vienna and Austria, and living in Stuttgart doing TYPO3, like TYPO3 and like the community there. Working with TYPO3 the whole day, I have my own company alone. So my office is empty. And yes, I'm doing it for my own since about four years, and I never thought it works. Like that. So I have enough money to, to live.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  2:43
Hmm. So that's, um, congratulations that you can that you can earn a living that's, that's a tremendous, you know, being independent is fantastic. Even in the pandemic, the digital skills in the pandemic have generally been, you know, pretty much in demand. And for us, the beginning of the pandemic was tough because all of the budgets disappeared. And everybody thought that was the end of the world. And then, you know, by the end of 2020, they realized that, as I would say in German, not spending money is also not an option. Right? I guess it depends on what sort of clients you work with. But what were you doing before you became your own boss and your own team and why did you want to go? Why did you want to go independent?

Thomas Löffler  3:23
It was first coming from my study. I did a TYPO3 during my study with a friend. And we move to Stuttgart and I found a job in a three man company and to build a shop in TYPO3. So yeah, I was there half a year and during this half a year and the agency called lightwork I don't know it's it's not existing anymore. Um, called me on thing crossing. I don't know the English word foxing.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  4:01
Oh, Xing thing is the the German, the German LinkedIn,

Thomas Löffler  4:04
that German LinkedIn. Yes. And they called me and said, We want you as a TYPO3 developer and I was not very happy with the booth, my first job building a shop in TYPO3. Today, I've both be happy to build a shop in TYPO3 as well. So and, and I moved to the agency, I was there for three and a half years. And then I moved to University near Stuttgart where I developed a temporary website. I wanted to move to away from an agency. It was not really nice in the agency, whenever there's an issue or an error. The developer was the reason and

Jeffrey A. McGuire  4:59
yeah, You understand that?

Thomas Löffler  5:02
So I wanted to go away to company where there is no time hassle for projects, and where I want, where I'm able to create an own company next to the job I have. And that was not possible in the agency, because the agency chef said, You You're stealing our projects when you're doing your own company. And I said, I am not doing doing that big projects you have. I'm doing small projects. And so I went to the university was there for about eight years. I finished my job there because my chef just doing 10 years of TYPO3. Now, let's move to WordPress. Yes. I looked like that. I asked him how he was wants to do this. And it was not very cool for me. And I said to my chef, I'm doing TYPO3. I'm not doing WordPress. So here's my PayPal, and I'm gone. Yeah. So this was my last migration. Yeah, it's it's not done yet. And currently, they're moving to the removing two TYPO3, okay? Because it's not there anymore. And they didn't, they analyze the current situation. And they said, doing TYPO3 from scratch a new version, because there is they're on TYPO3 6.2. So this is really old stuff. And it was last about years to upgrade it to the current version. So just start with a new one with new requirements. And

Jeffrey A. McGuire  7:09
so they they worked on the migration for four or five years. And then and then said, Oh, well,

Thomas Löffler  7:15
nope. And two years after that, after not doing any stuff in the system. Two years later, they say, oh, let's do TYPO3 again.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  7:28
Are you gonna? Are you going to help them with that?

Thomas Löffler  7:31
Maybe? Yes. So as I have quite an expert, I'm still an expert in this system. So yeah, small agreement with them. So

Jeffrey A. McGuire  7:44
does that feel good?

Thomas Löffler  7:47
Currently, it's not feeling good, because I have to work with the old system. Okay, yeah. Let's see how it goes. For the next years.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  7:58
You said something in there about, you weren't going to compete with your old agency, because you weren't, like as a single freelancer, you're not going to take the size of project that they do anyway. And, of course, I know from agency experience that I'm, you know, below a certain number, every agency can't really justify putting in the work. Do you specialize in smaller things? Perhaps? Or? Or how's it going to be a one person company? And do you want to, like grow that

Thomas Löffler  8:29
my intention was to add a feeling not not to be only developer. So I cannot speak good to the customers, I have some ideas, I can build a website together with them. And in the agency only was a developer have to do stuff that I felt not good about. So doing stuff, and the project manager said, and I said, maybe there's another way, an easier way. But now, I have to do this. And that was also my intention to be a freelancer and doing stuff I want to do during projects I like to do.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  9:17
So you build you build the relationship with the customer and you understand their needs, and then you also develop the solution for them. Yes,

Thomas Löffler  9:28
I have developed the complete solution. So if the customer often says I want this in this way, often there are there are ways to do it easier. And maybe you met with more usability for the for the visitors of the website, right? Some people thinking straight, but it's not cool to the visitors or it's not, not usable for them. Think that that's my point of view. Often I see it as a visitor. And I can say to the customer, that's not good that maybe this way is fairer. Maybe it looks not better, but it's more usable. And you want to have a website, I think

Jeffrey A. McGuire  10:13
that there's an anti pattern. And I, I don't know if it has a name, but um, you know, when someone comes to you, and they say, I have this problem, and I think it's absolutely giving me the problem. So that I definitely need why. So like, and I've researched why, and tell me about why. But it's like, all of that, when working with an expert, or as a leader, I think working with my team, rather than saying, go do this thing exactly this way. Because that's what I say. I tried to say, I need this outcome, how do we get there and encourage people to, to come up with their own ideas. And I think the anti pattern is not understanding the problem, and then coming up with a not solution, because you don't understand the problem and then telling someone to do it without telling them why. Right? And I client training is important, right? But getting them to trust us with the problem and then coming up with the solutions together.

Thomas Löffler  11:13
Often, when I get projects, TYPO3 projects from another developers and agencies, I see that often there's one way they know, and they are doing it every time again, it doesn't matter which solution or which problem you have, you have one way to do and often it's not a good way. So we have a really big extension, really much code and many code lines, and it's doing stuff you'll never know about. Sometimes it's a black box for me. And I need really hours to get what the extension is doing. And that's not the way I want you to I want to work as well. I want easy solutions. I want smaller, tiny things that make to make big things. Small combs, big impression.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  12:09
There's a saying in English, if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Right? So somebody has their favorite hammer. And if you want to pound in a nail, it's perfect. But if you've got screws, or fabric or a block to water pipe, a hammer is not going to be your best idea. Right? Yeah. So cast your mind back. How did you discover title three?

Thomas Löffler  12:32
And that was a friend of me. He pushed me to tap three because he have seen a video of it. I don't know exactly anymore. So he said, That's a cool thing. It was, I think 2005 We both had our own company during the study, we went to shops and supermarkets and selling internet connection,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  13:00
you're going to need this crazy new thing. Yeah. And

Thomas Löffler  13:03
we not only sold them, we asked them to connect it at their homes. We have technically know how to connect to them and connect the Internet to them.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  13:18
And then they said, Why do I need this? And you say, well, there are websites? And then someone said, yeah, how do I get one of those? And you said TYPO3?

Thomas Löffler  13:29
No, it was? Yeah, there were many, many computers, we had a Windows Millennium addition and stuff. And it was really hard to to connect them to the internet providers. We know it was hard to to integrate the whole modem and stuff. So we asked them to not only to to buy the one at one contract. And we went to them and for small sign of a small amount of money. We connect them.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  14:05
Yeah, interestingly, I mentioned Windows Me because you know, Johan byland really started contributing by publishing instructions on how to install TYPO3 on Windows, right? So Windows got in everybody's way and then made everybody creative. And here we are.

Thomas Löffler  14:23
Now we're happy not to use Windows anymore. Well, then for fresh air.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  14:32
So selling internet connections and learning to install them and make them work on 2005 technology. Then Was that was that actually a natural path to to then building the websites for people as well? Did it just sort of grow out of that?

Thomas Löffler  14:49
Now we didn't build websites for the one one customers and we were really Enjoying the internet, the new technology 2005 websites were growing and and domains were not that expensive that everybody can afford it. My first domain, I paid about 70 marks, German marks a month for my first domain. Yeah. And I still have it to the mind. But it's not. I'm not paying that much anymore. But we are, we were building websites and we doing stuff in the jungle study, we learned HTML and CSS a little bit. And my first website was done with frames. The real stuff. Yes. I have a free still using frames. There are frames, but yeah, yeah, TYPO3 was a really nice tool to make websites to grow websites and to that the customers can easily change their content without knowing HTML. That was the main thing.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  16:15
If you didn't need the web master anymore, yes. It sounds

Thomas Löffler  16:19
really crazy language.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  16:24
I missed the blink tag. But other than that,

Thomas Löffler  16:27
Markieff if you know the McKeon tech. Yeah,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  16:31
yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I remember spacer gifts, okay, that's what layout was. So like, oh, boy, and but if you, if somebody came to you now looking to get into technology to get into websites, and so on, I'm presuming that you'd suggest typo three to them? How would you go about learning it today? What would? What would you do? How would How should they? How would you help them?

Thomas Löffler  16:56
In the first part, I would look into YouTube videos. There are many YouTube videos formed from the tbh or from TYPO3 users, which are really good. Yahoo, you mentioned him has a really good video part on his website. Yeah. How to do how to act in the backend and stuff. That yeah, that's, that's another thing and small, small videos, big effect. If you want to, yeah, you want to, I'm trying to have one one special issues, you want to upload the file and TYPO3 packet. So you go to the video section. And then you can see, okay, there is a video how to upload files in TYPO3 back end, so I can only watch this, it's about two or three, three minutes. And I know this now. But if you have a video about fun one or two hours, and chapter 26 is about uploading first, you can jump to the chapter as well. If it's a good video,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  18:03
it's easier to help people if you break the things up into smaller pieces, though, because you can label them and name them and tag them and all that good stuff. I record. So that's J violent, dotnet JW, Ei, LA, and the dotnet. The videos are good. They are in German, German, only in German. Yeah, the YouTube Subtitles the YouTube translations into English are okay. And really, you can still learn a lot and trying to convince them to work on the new series in English, because I come TYPO3 can help a lot of people. And if we can make that more accessible, I think I think it's a good idea. So anyway. And

Thomas Löffler  18:44
another thing besides YouTube videos is attending TYPO3 events as well. So I learned really lot on top of three events TYPO3 camps. Nowadays, not not that much on conferences, but right TYPO3 camps is really affordable. It's about between 10 and 40 euros or 50 euros for a whole weekend. You get the whole food, you get drinks, you get really big knowledge about TYPO3. And I like the Balkan stuff. Yeah,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  19:20
I hope that we can start to meet in person. Again, it's been a difficult couple of years, as much as you can learn from videos. And that's, you know, if you're in a part of the world where you can't come to a live event. In any case, of course, this is going to be a great resource and online conferences and recordings of presentations are great, but I miss the in person interaction. The differentiation just the the high bandwidth communication and connection between people

Thomas Löffler  19:49
by drinking a beer together.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  19:51
It's very, very valuable. Right. That's been some of my best investments. I have to say, shifting gears a little bit. So tell us about that cool TYPO3 Apache Solr integration that you built,

Thomas Löffler  20:02
we wanted to have data and different graphs on the website. And the customer had an old MySQL table where they updated the data every hours. And we should put the data on the website, we didn't want to connect to the MySQL database and do big SQL queries with it. So my suggestion was to create a solar server, which is indexing the whole table. And we get the data from the solar server. When you go on the website, there are many graphs. And behind them, there are Ajax requests, but you don't know that there's that there's a solar instance behind it.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  20:51
Right. So the solar result is really quick, right? And did you set them up to ping to query the table in in a regular cadence? Like every hour or something to update themselves?

Thomas Löffler  21:02
Yeah, it's the solar servers connected to the MySQL table. So if there was a change, it's reindexing. Yeah, there's a connector, MySQL connector from solar, you don't use when you're doing TYPO3 solar as a default, right. But solar has a built in MySQL connector. So you can connect to a MySQL database doing the SQL queries you want to have for a document in, in XML structure, when there is a data update. It automatically re indexes, the document re indexes,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  21:40
has the new queries ready, update the dashboards, and it's completely transparent to a visitor of the website, there's no click and wait. There's no giant theory query cost? Yeah, right. In the front, that's fantastic.

Thomas Löffler  21:52
And nobody knows that there's a solar instance behind it, because we, when we're doing Ajax requests to TYPO3, and tonight, we mainly direct them to solar. So nobody knows there's a solar instance. And it's pretty fast. We do some small stuff on TYPO3, and in the proxy class, but mainly it's from

Jeffrey A. McGuire  22:15
a lot of us, when we have our hammer, right, which is a content management system, then we want to solve every problem with that with our hammer with our with our CMS, and solve the business logic and whatever. But there are some problems where you have a special specialized technology like Apache solar, and knowing how to use it right, you can save all of the query cost and all of the load time. In the end, your content management system is grabbing and presenting the content exactly like it should. So it's nothing to be, you know, embarrassed about that. i Oh, I didn't do it with typo. Three. It's like a perfect use case for an integration. And it sounds really awesome. Thank you. That sounds super cool. Tell us about the TYPO3 community what you do a lot in the community. And I mentioned you get a lot from the community tell tell us about the TYPO3 community?

Thomas Löffler  23:03
Yes, I'm getting more from the TYPO3 community that I'm putting in and was on my first TYPO3 camp 2008 in Munich. And that was my first really touch with the community. Before that. I was on top of a conference but conferences like conference and not very socializing, and was my first appearance in the in the top of three events. And there was Wow, and stuff. And a there's Casper and there's this guy, and you're the best. And I was at a camp. And there was a sea session planning at the beginning from the park. And there are many questions and many solutions. Many people wanted to talk holding a session, and it was really enjoying it. And after the first day, I thought a you can you're really good and TYPO3, you're quite half as good as you're quite quite as good as half of the people here. And I wasn't aware of it. I thought I'm totally new. So I knew things that some people didn't know. I thought they know it, but they didn't know. And that was my Okay, cool. Now I'm in the community. I'm not a noob looking from the outside and inside the community, I know things and I'm in the community in the middle of it. And that was the first first TYPO3 Camp and I was on every TYPO3 Camp in Munich since then. except the online camp in the last two years, but on every On location events, I was in Munich, and that was my immediately.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  25:11
What about the other ones?

Thomas Löffler  25:13
Why Munich, Munich was the second TYPO3 Camp ever. The first one was in Hamburg. But Hamburg was tomorrow for me. It was it's two and a half hours by car. Yeah. What's my first approach to the community. And then every TYPO3 can be Munich, I visited TYPO3 Camp on Majorca as well, that was really cool with pool sessions and stuff. But I never was on top of weekend handbook yet, so Photoville be angry. But yeah.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  25:54
The thing is that the conversation that I've had with with people over time, and I'm, I'm completely convinced, if you have developers working for you, or people who want to be involved in the open source technology that you that your business relies on, it's not sustainable, if you're not investing in that technology, and since you don't have to pay a license fee, you need to figure out what your investment is, what sort of contribution or sponsorship or whatever, but even sending your people to community events, that starts to help the technology and you need expertise in the technology to be able to to plan your business properly. And then it turns out, when you send your more junior developers to an event like that, they're going to be able to listen to and hang out with and go to a code sprint, or whatever kind of contribution session with the most important people, the most experienced people in that region in that community. And oftentimes the best people in the world and you're getting, you're getting a weekend of training, and a weekend of motivation, and a weekend of really great employee retention, by sending your people that you're helping them be better and you're getting you're getting someone better backhand. It's an incredibly good return on investment. I'm convinced that it's the best sort of training possible. I mean, nowadays, they get to like, they'd get to work with Thomas Leffler, for example, if they want to

Thomas Löffler  27:17
hear your session for me, yeah. But there are two parts. First part is the agency who say, our our people need to go there, and we pay for them, they should go to the Developer Days, 30 days in Holland, in Sweden, or new back. The other part is, the developer or the employees should have the motivation to go there as well. So I know many developers who do their part, their job from nine to five, and then no TYPO3, no developing no thinking about just doing their job. And I see the there are not involved, evolving. There are they're doing their own stuff. There are the people with the hammer, doing everything with the hammer, and not going to events. And they don't learning about solutions. In private, doing an extension besides the chop spending spending half a weekend for I want to do an extension of of my own. And I have this, this solution for all problems on the world. That's the difference between the two developers. The first one is doing just doing his job, and the other one wants to improve yourself and getting better and getting really cool solutions. These developers doing the best job and doing top three core development, for example, other stuff, we need such people who want to do this next to the nine to five

Jeffrey A. McGuire  29:02
job, part of what you're describing is some curiosity, right and a desire to grow. So I think on the one hand if you if you have the curiosity, right and you go to an event, then you can learn about the screwdriver extension. And then you can learn about the stapler extension, and you can learn about glue or whatever right to use that metaphor. But that's interesting. So the other thing that I heard is there are kind of sharp developers, and they're kind of maybe developers at heart. I think that maybe the ones that heart are the ones that can last longer or or develop further because they are curious about what's behind and around what they do. That's really interesting. I hadn't thought of it in those terms before. What is your favorite thing about the TYPO3 community

Thomas Löffler  29:45
I found many friends in sub three community, get to know each other? There are some people I know them as a developer, now they are agency owners. We have a good relationship and I found really friends. I want to say, close close to family status.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  30:09
Talk about a time that the community helped you.

Thomas Löffler  30:13
They're helping me every time. I'm helping them mainly via slack, or Stack Overflow. There are some questions, I help them. But I have questions too. today. I have a question. I got a respond. Response very fast. And it helped me. So my problem was, and I think, yeah, so not every developer, not every TYPO3 guy can know everything about TYPO3 even have record core developers know, doesn't know anything, everything about the core. So my experiences are that you need to know who to ask, not asking the community. So who knows that that you who knows your solution? So if I have a problem with power, male, for example, in ascension, I know the extension developer, the main extension developer, and I can ask him, he gives me free support. Right? That's not for everyone. But if he has a question I give, I give him free support as well. So that's a giving and taken now.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  31:25
Yep. Yeah. Karma. It's called goes around comes around. Who in the TYPO3 community do you turn to for advice, or or vision or perspective? When you have questions? Yeah, there

Thomas Löffler  31:37
are many people. Thomas Nava is a special guy who I love to work with him. And he was on the first podcast and he, I thought, I think he said that you should do a podcast with me.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  31:57
I don't know. Yep. And here we are.

Thomas Löffler  32:01
Wasn't it the first podcast or the second?

Jeffrey A. McGuire  32:03
He was? He was within the first three because I think the first three were Rochelle and Thomas. And Louisa Fassbender. I think that's, I think that's how it went.

Thomas Löffler  32:15
Yeah. Just take a look into your podcasts. So you have two people who to follow. So they're very important people. Jochen Weiland is a very special guy. I like him. I am doing a TYPO3 Camp with him over the years. With the TYPO3 Camp Stuttgart we implemented, we found and we're doing it over years since until the pandemic, I wish his user group is doing the TYPO3 user group in Stuttgart in his rooms since years. And really, every month I was there. And often is really special guy or of yours a special guy. I like him very much. Stefan Guzman and the girls as well, the Louisa you mentioned Sybilla is really impressive. So, Nicole, Nicole and Helmut the two

Jeffrey A. McGuire  33:22
helmet still on my list too.

Thomas Löffler  33:23
Yeah, yeah, helmet is is really impressive. And if you want to follow anyone in the community, you should he should be in the top five.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  33:37
You went to the big contribution sprint in India a couple of years ago before the pandemic right?

Thomas Löffler  33:44
Yes, it was 2019 How

Jeffrey A. McGuire  33:47
was that I I have I have gone to community events for other communities in India and I found the energy incredible. And I found that the Indian culture, right and Karma is a word from from Hindi from Sanskrit about destiny and paying it forward, back and all that stuff. I found that they understood this concept of giving of yourself very well and I loved I loved what they were doing there. How was it? How was India for you? How was the event?

Thomas Löffler  34:16
It was it was really impressive. Cool. Big, many people. Really big city I was in. We were in the sprint up, I think six days in Bhavnagar. It's a small town in India with about a million people. And we were in the agency of Newton who were who are a big play on top of the community as well and doing having the first extension shop and we were six days there and after that we said okay, we were saying we Adding two days of holidays in India. And the last few days, we put five star in India in Mumbai in the cellphone part, which is the, the, the rich part, and

Jeffrey A. McGuire  35:18
counting the down by the down by the water down there down by the gas.

Thomas Löffler  35:23
We were we were in the same hotel as the local cricket team. So it's quite a if we went to Munich, for example, and go to a five star hotel and Bayern Munich, the football team is there as well, or Barcelona, at the same visit was in Mumbai. The hotel was really cool. And we don't know the people that the cricket stars. And I was, was really funny. And we did a nice trip to the Elephant Island, inside Mumbai. So we moved with, with a ship with a small ship about an hour. And we were still in the middle of the town. So Mumbai has more more people. And then but the whole the whole country, your whole state I'm living.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  36:27
Yeah, many people live in Baton Wittenberg.

Thomas Löffler  36:30
I think it's 10 10 million. I don't wait too long by next next to your recording.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  36:37
Yeah. And then the last time I looked, Mumbai had an official population of maybe 16 or 18 million, which is incredible, but they think it's they think it's more than 20. Because it's really hard to count people there as well. But how was the six days of Sprint is really massive? How many? Like how was that?

Thomas Löffler  36:58
It was really cool. Because the people wanted to they, they had a need for know how they wanted to have know how they wanted to know, how do how do we develop websites? How do we manage TYPO3? How do we integrate it? How do we deploy it? How do we use our local development, for example. And they were really, once the knowledge there were from from beginning to the end, where everybody was there was in the sprint, everybody of the agency, no customer projects. For days completely sprint, the whole agency. We did some teams, and every team was working on another stuff. And another issues or epics, and two or three people are did manage the whole thing. And next week we visit many restaurants. We are not eating everything. Let's say it like that. Okay, and your Yeah, if it's the word Yeah. Then it's me, Spooner and fatty. Yeah. Okay. And I thought, Okay, we are going to location where there's only wedge parents. And I said, Okay, let's see. And it's really cool. So if you go to the street, you go outside of the office, and their street, the street is really good. Where the where the cars can can can drive. But the pedestrian was a mix of garbage of stones look. And, and some cows said sitting there as well. So you go on the pedestrian, you, you cross the street, and you see a house where they say okay, there's a good restaurant in it. And you see the house from outside. It looks like Okay, let's see how, what kind of restaurant is this? And you go inside there and it's like, you're like you're stepping into Europe's five star hotel. From outside. It looks like one star hotel restaurant. And you're waiting on. You see the Michelin stars come out to you. Wow. It looks really good. The food was really good, really nice. It was eating with the hands mainly. It was it was impressive. There were really big menus, the agency paints, all of the stuff and it tastes a taste Got it? Yeah, yes. And it's especially also the sweet stuff. What's really cool, ah, we were in the restaurant one day or what to dinner. And we, we got a big silver plate and with small silver plates in there. So in every single place they put in fruit, different food in there. And in the in the middle of the plate we got, for example, rice. And they told me how to eat this how to mix which to mix. And they said have to do after take this sauce, put it on the rice, mix it up and then eat. And I tasted the sauce and it doesn't taste very good for me. And next to the source. I had vanilla sauce. So I took the vanilla sauce and said, Okay, I take this sauce, put it on the rice to do a milk rice, something like that. Like I'm eating. Yeah, rice paddy. And they say, oh my god, what are you doing? Yeah, and one one of the guys did it as well. I said, Oh, it tastes really good. And I didn't know the rice paddy. So I made rice. Yeah, that's, that's really cool. So if the food was new for me, but I made something new for them as well with their food. Nice. Yeah.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  41:37
Nice. Um, that that kind of meals called the dolly. And okay, dolly with with a hard T Dolly. The Indians care about food and family first. And if you gave them a new food experience that they liked, then maybe you maybe you got to their hearts a little bit. Changing gears, we'll do a round of quick questions. Okay. What one word would you use to describe TYPO3?

Thomas Löffler  42:04
Flexible?

Jeffrey A. McGuire  42:06
What are your favorite features of TYPO3?

Thomas Löffler  42:09
The Page Tree? Especially for you, Benni?

Jeffrey A. McGuire  42:14
This answer has been dedicated to Benni Mac, what feature would you like to see added to TYPO3?

Thomas Löffler  42:21
Some of my extensions

Jeffrey A. McGuire  42:25
and what feature would you like to see removed from TYPO3

Thomas Löffler  42:28
removed? Oh, hmm. I don't know. Any feature. I want to okay have removed

Jeffrey A. McGuire  42:36
enough. Can you tell us something that you wish people knew about TYPO3 but they usually don't

Thomas Löffler  42:42
have a free has a built in shopping basket for yours. I don't know if it's it's in there yet. But there was a shopping basket built in? Over 10 years ago. I found that out. So you have the possibility to add items records and remove records and clear baskets as well. That's wild. I don't know if it's in there yet.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  43:10
But you don't know if it's in there still or it's been taken out something.

Thomas Löffler  43:15
Maybe it's taken out in the meantime? Mm hmm. I don't know exactly. Okay. I've only used it once. So. Alright,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  43:24
who else should we get on the podcast? Number two, just

Thomas Löffler  43:29
to talk to Nitin. He's maybe maybe everybody knows Sanjay giovane. From from India from the agency, you need some. But these are two brothers. And neaten. His name, the different the first part of the name of his brother and of him. So knitting and Sanjay. And Nitin is the CEO of the agency. And Sanjay is the CTO. So he's part of the HC. And Nitin is the executive the stretch guy, maybe it's, it's a good suggestion, because he has nothing to do with development. He he is doing stretchy. He comes from India is not located in Europe. So he has another state of mind.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  44:24
Regarding TYPO3 effect, I met them in Berlin, in fact, recorded a video with them for some thing a few years ago. I would love to I would love to talk with Ethan, that sounds like a great idea. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. It's been really, really great to catch up with you. It's been really, really nice. I would love to see you at TYPO3 camp Munich or at a user group in Chicago or something. I'm, yeah, I'm really ready

Thomas Löffler  44:51
for this conference. I take every event next year that isn't in location. So yeah, I think Don't like this, this remote conferences. I tried it one or two times. And then I said, I like it to be there to meet the people to do not not looking on the computer whole weekends to see a 30 people and you don't have the possibility to talk to one special guy. You want to talk with him? Yes. I like to socializing and the whole stuff around the TYPO3 Camps. Yeah, I really hope we can manage it. Yeah, a friend of me is not doing TYPO3 anymore. I learned him. I get to know him in on top of weekend music. He's not doing TYPO3 anymore. He's doing on the front end stuff. He's responsive guy for me. If I need some responsive stuff or fronted stuff, I call him. But he was attending TYPO3 camp Stuttgart every time he he was able to and to have the socializing. He doesn't he doesn't need to know anything new from TYPO3. But he wants to know the people who wants to meet the people. Community is

Jeffrey A. McGuire  46:16
really important. Community is really, really important. All right, so I hope to see you in person in 2022. Yeah, it's been great to talk with you. Yeah, stay safe.

Thomas Löffler  46:28
Stay safe. Stay healthy. Next

Jeffrey A. McGuire  46:30
pruning. Thanks to the TYPO3 Association for sponsoring this podcast. Thank you, B 13, and Stephanie coisa for our logo. Now see, buku petite como TYPO3, developer and musician extraordinaire for our theme music. Thanks again to today's guest. If you liked what you heard, don't forget to subscribe in the podcast app of your choice and share application that TYPO3 community Podcast with your friends and colleagues. If you didn't like it, please share it with your enemies. Would you like to play along and suggest a guest for the podcast? Do you have questions or comments? Reach out to us on Twitter at TYPO3 podcast? You can find show notes links and more information in our posts on typo three.org Remember, open source software would not be what it is without you. Thank you all for your contributions Thomas

Thomas Löffler  47:29
Leffler Yeah,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  47:31
how do you handle it every day that you have the world's coolest nickname?

Thomas Löffler  47:36
I waiting and waking up every every day. My My. My alarm was a big him for me. And I'm setting up my cat. I'm walking outside of my sleeping room and everything is cool. So no, okay, I know what I don't have the coolest nickname.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  48:01
I think you have the coolest nickname and when I was becoming active in the community and digging back in and everything, how everybody talks about spoonies booni. This and spoony that and then, you know, on Twitter you were Spooner web one day and Spooner or something else the next day and I just it's just so delightful and so cute in English, to call yourself Spooner when the literal translation of your name is Spooner, right look. I've just been a person who's been it's a harness

Thomas Löffler  48:30
realizing it now.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  48:34
Carl gets drumming lessons and other it's a whole educational opportunity cutting these podcasts And

Jeffrey A. McGuire  55:36
So bye. My room is also really echoey I think because because it's still our new office, and we still haven't put in all the furniture yet. But um, what did you say? Thomas? You're So Rick, you can pay people to put in a new floor in your house?

Thomas Löffler  55:49
Yes. That there was a water damage in in Spring this year. And we had water damage and the walls were full of water. And it's rising up and the floor was we have we don't have a room below us. So the water was Yeah, since yours, I don't know, there was a small leak in the water pipe and the water goes down the ground. And the ground was full of water now and then it raises up the words. And they make the mate holes into the floor to remove the water. So I have holes in my hole in the floor here in the office. And in the and in another room. And in the in the bathroom as well.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  56:57
That's so funny. I just had had it. That's so crazy. Because if you had had a basement, then you wouldn't have this problem. But you'd have a flooded basement. But you have a really special interesting problem now. Have they? Have they put in some drainage or something to fix it in the long term now?

Thomas Löffler  57:16
I hope so. No, no, exactly. And they are some machines of three weeks, which which point the ground below us. So hopefully it's no water anymore. Then the laws were done two weeks ago. So we have new balls, then but the floor isn't not new. We've only done this week, first and Friday. So I have to move out to the living room again to work holidays. And next week. Hopefully I have a new office with a nice backgrounds. Some some legal spaceships behind me. Yeah, I like it. Oh,

Jeffrey A. McGuire  58:05
we um, yes, we're we're getting some we're getting some Legos. And I think that then once you have Legos, you can really qualify as a as a prepper. Geek, you know? Because otherwise

Thomas Löffler  58:20
without legal it's not possible to be big. Right.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  58:24
Exactly. Exactly. So um, well, cool. And yes. So here we are. It is it is early December 2021 that we're speaking, and still in a Corona pandemic and such a strange, weird time. People fighting about Christmas markets and sentences I never thought I'd hear myself say anyway. So apart from water damaged, how aren't you Thomas? It's been a very long time since I saw you.

Thomas Löffler  59:01
Yes. I think two years maybe more. I don't know, the TYPO3 conference in Berlin. I think

Jeffrey A. McGuire  59:13
you weren't in Holland.

Thomas Löffler  59:14
No, I weren't in Holland. Last conference was in Berlin, where I had a really good burger, the best burger in town. And after that, we found a really nice, a cocktail location. Yep. Yeah. With a verb champion of cocktails. We serving cocktails there. I didn't know I was aware of wasn't aware of that. And we found this by by accident within Google Maps and what's really crazy what's really nice and we were there and the next evening we go there we went there as again. So it was really good.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  59:57
Yeah. Now ready to go. Everybody knows if we can ever traveled again. What bar was that in Berlin?

Thomas Löffler  1:00:06
It's it's called the sponsor Tober. I have it in my Google Maps in the Favorites. So nice. Okay, when we met when we will meet in Berlin again, we go there. Yeah. But if it's open replace and replace first Baker place and then the cocktail place. And okay. I don't know. Forget

Jeffrey A. McGuire  1:00:34
it doesn't Yeah, at that point we won't remember anyway. Carl, you look concerned. It's everything okay?

Thomas Löffler  1:00:43
Yeah. All right right.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  1:00:55
Okay. Yep. You've consented Now Thomas, that's it.

Thomas Löffler  1:01:02
The last in the last minutes I did. Was my was something to do? I don't know. Oh, my God.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  1:01:11
As a German you need to you have a natural instinct to follow. You know, like to, if this is the rule, that's what you do. Right? So, my daughter, my daughter is very much like that. I'm

Thomas Löffler  1:01:24
a procrastinator.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  1:01:25
Oh, my new gimmick is my new gimmick is talking with Carl on the podcast, but editing him out. So it's only ever me talking to him. And never his. That's, that's gonna be that's gonna be old Season Three called Get used to it. And right now, we don't know if this is going to be the last episode of season two, or the first episode of season three. As we would say, in German, it's been GarageBand. And it's impossible to translate that into English. So there you go.

Thomas Löffler  1:01:57
I'm curious. So I'm looking forward to it. I don't know.

Jeffrey A. McGuire  1:02:02
Nice. Tell us. Oh, wait. I've got it. I've got a special question saved up for you. Um, okay. But in any case,

Thanks to the TYPO3 Association for sponsoring this podcast. Thank you b13. And Stephanie Kreuzer for our logo. Merci beaucoup Patrick Gaumont, TYPO3 developer and musician exraordinaire for our theme music. Thanks again to today's guest. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe in the podcast app of your choice and share Application, the TYPO3 Community Podcast with your friends and colleagues. If you didn't like it, please share it with your enemies. You can find show notes, links and more information in our posts on typo3.org. Remember, open source software would not be what it is without you. Thank you all for your contributions.