TYPO3 Agency Meetup Days 2015 – A report on the Hamburg meeting

Categories: Community, Association, Marketing Created by Naike Schulthess
The third of the 11 TYPO3 Agency Meetup Days (T3AMDs) planned for 2015 took place on August 19 in Hamburg.

Participants

At the Hamburg meetup 12 different agencies have gathered, with a total of 17 representatives. They have met Alain Veuve and Patrick Lobacher from the TYPO3 Marketing Team, Benni Mack from the TYPO3 CMS core team, and Naike Schulthess from the TYPO3 Association. This meetup has been the largest so far. Just like at the previous TYPO3 Agency Meetups, the agencies' representatives had varied roles within their organizations: project managers, marketing managers, business owners, and sales managers. Some of the present agencies work exclusively with TYPO3, others operate with other content management systems as well.

The Agenda

1. Introductions

Just like any other event, each of these two T3AMDs have started with a general introduction on the event, of the participants, and of the agencies they represent.

2. One-year retrospective

Since the beginning of 2014 the TYPO3 Association and the whole TYPO3 Community have been going through an era characterized by changes, focused on improving TYPO3 as product and as ecosystem on both the management and technical aspects. Being one of the big changes involved the decision of stopping funding for community management, Benni Mack could briefly introduce what the Community Working Group (CWG) is, as he is one of its members. Another key change has been the split of the TYPO3 Community from the Neos one. The feedback on this has been positive: the present agencies understand the reasoning behind this decision. Some of the participants did not know what the strategic direction of the TYPO3 Association is now; Alain Veuve summarized therefore the plan behind the "Scenario 3". For those of you that might want to read more about it, find <link http: typo3.org fileadmin t3org images fm-news t3a typo3_strategy_final_d.pdf>here the news from February. 

3. Marketing Material

Patrick Lobacher has presented the development done within the marketing team since the beginning of 2015. The style guide has been presented, together with the created marketing collaterals, and with the idea of the merchandise shop. Each participant received a copy of the marketing collaterals and could give spontaneous and open feedback to the team. The Hamburg group confirmed the need expressed by the Berlin team of having the brochures and flyers translated into German. The marketing team reminded that the <link http: t3marketingsprint.org _blank>marketing sprints can highly benefit of the agencies' support. Should anyone from your agency wish to participate in one of the upcoming sprints, get in touch with Fabian Stein (fabian.stein(at)typo3.org). 

4. A look into the future

This section of the agenda has been shaped in form of a workshop. Each participant could write down a list of things he or she expected from the TYPO3 Marketing Team. Quite few ideas have been expressed here, to name few: aim at stronger visibility at big events and at a stronger focus on the international visibility, spread the message that "TYPO3 can", hire a sales representative for TYPO3 that can support the agencies on their selling activities, orient the marketing to more specific audiences (decision makers, developers, editors, etc), and use emotions to communicate about TYPO3.

5. TYPO3 CMS

Benni Mack has presented TYPO3 CMS 7 to the participants, explaining that one main focus of the core team was to make the life of a TYPO3 editor a bit easier and the participants had the possibility to ask questions and get direct answers to their concerns and feedback. Benni has also reminded the agencies that there is always space for contribution within the TYPO3 CMS core team as well, and that anyone is welcome to join the team at the upcoming sprints. If you or the developers of your team want to spend some time with the core team, just get in contact with Mathias Schreiber or Benni Mack, they will be happy to have them on board (benni.mack(at)typo3.org - mathias(at(typo3.org).