Planning TYPO3 CMS CodeSprints and Meetings in 2014

Categories: Development, Community Created by Steffen Ritter
The TYPO3 CMS Team reviewed the code sprints of last year, and planned all sprints in 2014 upfront. Read about those plans in this news.
Dear TYPO3 enthusiasts,
at the TYPO3 CMS Team Meeting in Stuttgart in late December 2013 we reflected the code sprints we had last year and how to improve their organisation. We recognized the following points:
  • There are so many code sprints, it's just not possible to attend every sprint
  • Often CodeSprints are on short notice so it is hard to arrange accordingly with the projects / employers / family
  • There are people who need their weekends for some family time
  • We are meeting at he same places regularily and did not consider much new locations
  • The same people join the sprints
  • CodeSprints concentrate on Germany
  • Different starting times because people arrive one after the other on the first day kill productivity
  • Virtual Kanban Boards do not work on sprints, Paper ones really do
  • There are alway requests for single rooms by many people
  • We never used up our budget allocated for Sprints
In order to professionalize our code sprints and improve this, we decided the following:
  • Plan all CodeSprints of the Year upfront, so people can prepare, plan their projects and family time as well as vacations
  • Have CodeSprints about every six weeks during the whole year
  • Checkout new CodeSprint Locations and distribute them so everyone once in a time has the benefit of a short journey
  • Make some Sprints outside Germany
  • Put half the events on weekends, the other half during the week
  • Pre-reserve hotels for the maximum amount of attendees in order to benefit from cheap early bird prices and cancel/upgrade them later if needed
  • As far as possible book single rooms for everyone - if the price is reasonable
  • Always book a night more in front of the sprint and encourage people to travel the day before the sprint starts
  • Make sure the locations have whiteboards or flipcharts and the CMS Team Members have moderation cards and stickers at hand to create a proper Kanban board
  • The attending CMS Team Members will prepare and lead the event
As a result of that we already came up with the following plan having seven CodeSprints and two real life Active Contributor Meetings (ACME) at several locations during 2014.
Not all of these dates are fixed or confirmed by our hosts, yet. So locations might switch or dates will be moved a little bit. We will try to keep the dates, but confirm them at last one month before each event.
To join and register for the sprints just have a look at the wiki <link http: wiki.typo3.org codesprint _blank>wiki.typo3.org/Category:Events/CodeSprint/2014 where we will put up a Wiki-page as soon as the the date, location and accomodation have been confirmed.
  • 30.01 - 02.02 - <link http: wiki.typo3.org cms_codesprint_2014>Sprint Cologne/Germany (at <link http: www.denkwerk.com>denkwerk GmbH)
  • 10.03 - 12.03 - <link http: wiki.typo3.org cms_codesprint_2014>Sprint Venlo/The Netherlands (at <link http: beech.it>Beech.IT)
  • 31.03 - 02.04 - ACME Nuremberg/Germany (at <link http: www.kjr-nuernberg.de>DELTA, "red seminar room" of the KJR Nuremberg)
  • 01.05 - 04.05 - Sprint Bremen/Germany (at <link http: www.hmmh.de>hmmh multimediahaus AG)
  • 10.06 - 12.06 - Sprint Zurich/Switzerland (at <link http: www.snowflake.ch>Snowflake Productions GmbH)
  • 24.07 - 27.07 - Sprint Stuttgart/Germany (at <link http: b13.de>B:13 or at <link http: www.cron.eu>cronIT)
  • 08.09 - 10.09 - ACME Munich/Germany
  • 23.10 - 26.10 - Sprint Linz/Austria
  • 08.12 - 10.12 - Sprint Berlin/Germany (at <link http: www.cps-it.de>CPS-IT)
Many other agencies / locations offered to host us but it is just impossible to do a code sprint everywhere. We currently are building a list with all possible code sprint location (including some facts like projector, wifi, supermarket nearby) we always can refer to. Furthermore there are other teams (documentation-, server-, typo3.org-, marketing-, logging-, ter-, flow-, neos- ... ) which need code sprint locations we aim to assist with that list. As last year, the Security Team will most probably also host a sprint in Hamburg/Germany, which is the reason for Hamburg not being included in the above list.
If you wanna offer your conference room/location and want to be put on that list, get in touch with us.
In conjunction with all the TYPO3camps, the DeveloperDays and Conferences we have a pretty amazing year of TYPO3 Events ahead of us.
Happy new year,
in behalf of the CMS Team
Steffen Ritter Edited 2014/01/09 (Steffen Ritter):
Rephrased point point four of the findings and elaborated on other offers for code sprints.