TYPO3camp Venlo is an international camp that is conveniently situated on the Dutch German border and thus brings together both nationalities and even some from Belgium, France and Switzerland. Just like last year Friday was in conference format filled with scheduled talks and Saturday in barcamp (unconference) style. The barcamp format lets the attendants create the schedule themselves with a session planning early in the morning.

DAY 1: Diversity amongst participants
At around 9:30 am the first participants entered for registration. Not long after that most of the 80 participants were catching up with each other or meeting new people in the central area of the camp. The participants were diverse this year, as we learned from Edward Lenssen’s (<link https: www.beech.it>Beech.it, organizer) introduction while opening the first day of the camp. Not only users and developers of TYPO3 were present, but also students and developers who had never worked with TYPO3 before but are interested in the CMS. Even a few participants who are looking for new outstanding frontend or backend developers for their company were present.
Edward Lenssen opens T3CV (@Davy74/Twitter)“Why not take all the data out there and use it one way or another”
Han Stoffels (<link https: www.8vance.com>8Vance) opened the camp as keynote speaker. Han spent almost 20 years in top management at companies like Wacom. A few years ago he decided to start his own company. During his time in management he came across a few problems. “Finding new people to hire is a real problem. Originally I’m an engineer. I try to hide it and pretend I’m in management but really I’m an engineer. So I thought, why not solve this in a different way. Why not take all the data out there and use it in one way or another. Try to combine it and do stuff with it”, Han started his talk.
Han Stoffels talked about Big Data, smart machines and the changes it will cause in HR and the job market as a whole. Han stated that: “It is a blessing that smart machines and automation will take away half of the current jobs, as most people are not happy with their job anyway!”
HR virtual assistant saves time and money
With a team of people he built an algorithm that collects data that people publicly post on the internet. Think Facebook, Linkedin and other social media platforms. With this data he creates profiles where he can connect employers with employees and basically creates a virtual HR assistant. “With this, you can create the perfect team or even organize internal mobility in companies. After our beta test we found that the costs go down for about 70% of the recruitment process. The recruitment time went from 8 to a little under 2 weeks and the companies could see about 50 times more candidates for a position,” Han said.
Nowadays they are not only active in HR. They also help insurance companies with searching for lost or stolen items on the internet and they are active on the housing market with an automated real estate agent. “We started out with HR but we already found ourselves with two spin-offs in 1.5 years,” Han claimed.
12 sessions throughout the day
At 11:30 am the parallel sessions started. The sessions consisted of four rounds which took about an hour each. Participants could choose between 3 different categories: End user, beginner/student or experienced developer.
The first batch of sessions consisted of talks by Mathias Schreiber about the future of TYPO3 v. 8, Student Jurian Janssen and his PHP journey and Michiel Roos about how to easily review TYPO3 changes using TYPO3 Homestead and a Chrome extension.
Mathias told us about the focus groups which are planned in TYPO3 v. 8:
Editors:
- New richt text editor
- SEO / Accessibility guided help - support
- Easier multi channel publishing
- A/B tests
- Etc.
Developers:- Easier to use for e.g. frontend integrators
- Doctrine
- Reduce time to market
- Etc.
- DevOps
- Full composer integration
- Simplify deployments
- Etc.
“We’ll make something first to help the world. Then we’ll find a way to make money out of it.”
After a well provided lunch most of the participants joined Google Hamburg’s Head of Strategy & Digital Innovation Thorsten Hermes giving his talk about the micro moments in a digital world. “Google's prime intention is not to make money. We make something first to improve the world. To determine if we want to work on something we use the toothbrush method. If people will use something two or more times a day it’s worth investing in. If it works and proves that it does help the world, we’ll find a way around it to make money with it,” Thorsten said during his talk. “Just like the Google search engine. Google made it to help people, but through advertising they found a way to monetize it. Same goes for the self driving cars. They don’t know yet if it will ever happen and what will happen or how they will even make money off of it.”
At the same time Tobias Derksen, a student at Fontys Venlo, taught us Composer & Frameworks and how they make development easier. Gernot Schulmeister (TeamWFP) talked about the principles of software architecture with regards to TYPO3.
“We want to ensure the development of TYPO3 CMS at a pace that fits the market”
The next two sessions Ruud Silvrants (Beech.it) taught students and beginners how to build a website in TYPO3 while Helmut Hummel gave a talk about the security in web development.
Alain Veuve (Managing Director AOE Switzerland) summarized the latest status of TYPO3 Inc. This new organisation will be founded in Düsseldorf. “We want to ensure the development of TYPO3 CMS at a pace that fits the market. We will do this for example through full time employees who can establish permanent development at a high pace.” Alain said about TYPO3 Inc.

Ruud Silvrants (Beech.it) teaching students and beginners how to build a website into TYPO3.
At the end of the day, during the last round of talks, Boris Hinzer (Web-Vision) talked about content marketing for online shops (with TYPO3 - Magento integration). He introduced a few features where it is possible to optimize pagination for SEO and content marketing. Last but not least Thomas Deuling showed us how to use themes in TYPO3.
After four rounds of inspiring and informative sessions it was time for socializing at Café Central while having dinner and a few drinks.