What I want from a TYPO3 Barcamp

What I want from a TYPO3 Barcamp

Photo by Valery Tenevoy on Unsplash

There are moments when I realize why I’m doing all this. Not the project deadlines, not the quarterly figures, not the roadmaps – but the conversations. The short, unexpected, sometimes digressive conversations with people who ask similar questions to me but have found completely different answers.

For me, a Barcamp is one such moment. Or at least it can be.

I say „can“ because it’s not a given. A Barcamp doesn’t just happen by bringing people together in a room and leaving the agenda blank. It happens through willingness – the willingness to bring something to the table. Not a finished presentation, not polished slides, but a genuine question, an unresolved tension, an idea that doesn’t yet know where it belongs.

What I want is exactly that: for us to bring this willingness to each other.

I have been part of the TYPO3 community for many years. I know the faces that keep coming back. I look forward to seeing them. And yet, time and again, when the Barcamp begins, I find myself waiting – almost shyly – to see what others will contribute. As if the room only belongs to me once someone else has opened the door.

I want to change that. In myself, and perhaps also in us as a community.

The Barcamp I want begins with the courage to be incomplete. With the admission that you don’t know something. That you have a problem you can’t solve on your own. That you are looking for someone who will honestly disagree with you because you have become blind to your own blind spots.

The most valuable encounters in my professional career have almost never taken place at conferences – they took place during the breaks in between. Over coffee. On the way to lunch. At the moment when a conversation should have been over, but no one wanted to stop. I admit: I have been late for lunch more than once because of such conversations. Sometimes even very late. And I don’t regret it once. Because what I took away from those moments – a new perspective, honest disagreement, the feeling of really being heard – is exactly what I came for. Not as president of the TYPO3 Association, but as a person who is still learning and who needs this community to move forward.

These are exactly the moments that a Barcamp is made for. It is the format that does not leave this space to chance, but makes it structurally possible.

What I specifically want is for us to talk less about our solutions and more about our questions. That we not only show what works, but also share what keeps us awake at night. That old hands are not afraid to be beginners, and that newcomers are not afraid to ask uncomfortable questions.

I believe that we veterans have a special responsibility here. Those who have been around for a long time, who know the shortcuts, who know how things work – they also have a silent duty: to lower the barriers. Not by simplifying everything or explaining things that no one has asked about. But by showing that every contribution is welcome. A half-baked idea. A naive question. A session that may not lead anywhere. These are not disruptions to the program – they are the program. Our job is to keep this space active and to confirm to everyone in it that their voice counts. Sometimes a nod is enough. Sometimes a „That’s a good question“ – and really meaning it.

And that brings me to a wish that is particularly close to my heart: young people. Time and again, I see how much energy and how many fresh perspectives are waiting outside our community – people who don’t yet know TYPO3, who don’t yet understand open source as a way of life, but who are precisely the voices that will carry us forward in ten years’ time. A Barcamp is the ideal place to make this encounter possible. It is low-threshold, open, human. It requires no application, no specialist knowledge, just curiosity.

That’s why I would like to see organizers actively inviting young people – not as a gesture, but as a strategy. And I would like us to ask our sponsors to get involved in a concrete way: by providing tickets specifically for students, trainees, or young professionals. This is not a major financial burden for companies that benefit from this community. But it would send a signal – to young people that they are welcome, and to ourselves that we believe in our future.

And I hope that we take time. Time for each other. Not just for the sessions, but for everything else – for the tables where no one is sitting because everyone is standing and talking. For the evenings that go on longer than planned. For the connections that arise when you stop being professional and just be human.

The TYPO3 community has something that cannot be taken for granted: genuine warmth. I experience it again and again, and I need it – more than I have admitted for a long time. I want us to nurture this warmth – consciously, intentionally, without an agenda. And I want us to pass it on to everyone who doesn’t yet know that they could belong.

So: come. Bring a question you haven’t been able to solve yet. Bring an idea that isn’t finished yet. And if we both end up late for dinner because we can’t stop talking – then it was a good Barcamp.