Inside TYPO3 – December 2024: T3CON Special

Welcome to the final Inside TYPO3 episode of the year! Join Tom and me as we travel to Düsseldorf for T3CON24. After an action-packed three-day conference and an unforgettable awards gala, we’re here to bring you all the highlights from TYPO3’s grand finale of 2024.

In this episode, we speak with Nikolai Jaklitsch from ITZ Bund to go in-depth about the Government Site Builder. We also catch up with Janus Boye from Boye & Associates to discuss the changes necessary to keep open source moving. Lastly, we hear from Stefan Barac on the topic of accessibility. Between the daily recaps and the compelling interviews, we're ending the year on a high note!

Join us for the noteworthy moments of this year’s TYPO3 conference. We extend a big thank you to everyone who's listened and supported the podcast—especially those who took the time to speak with us or give us feedback. We wish everyone a happy holiday season and look forward to bringing you new content in 2025!

Warm wishes,

Kendall and Tom 

 0:05: Welcome back to another episode of Inside TYPO3. 
 0:09: And this one is a special episode because we are in Düsseldorf for T3CON. 
 0:15: And in this episode, Tom and I are going to walk you through the conference, 
whether you were here with us in person or to catch up on everything that happened. 
 0:25: We'll break it down day by day. 
 0:27: We have some interviews peppered in there so you can get a feel for the speakers 
and the content and yeah, take you along the ride with us. 
 0:36: So Tom, welcome to Düsseldorf from Wales. 
 0:39: Hello there, nice to be back. 
 0:41: We've got some really, really good interviews to share with everyone today. 
 0:45: We'll start off with a recap from day one, followed by our first interviewee. 
 0:50: Then we'll follow that up with a recap of day two, another interview and then 
a recap for day three. 
 0:55: And we'll also talk about the awards gala which took place on the very last day 
of the event as well. 
 1:01: So yeah, without further ado, let's get into our day one. 
 1:04: Recap. 
 1:08: Day one was our public sector day which featured a range of talks and discussions 
aimed purely at those who work within government and higher education. 
 1:15: After the opening ceremony, which was delivered by Frank Schmidt. 
 1:19: The first talk of the day was given by our very own Daniel Fau, Luisa Faßbender 
and Frank Nägler in their talk TYPO3 for the public sector and education. 
 1:27: The dynamic trio provided an update on how TYPO3 is being used in this market. 
 1:32: It's well worth pointing out TYPO3 is being used on more than 35% of German 
government websites. 
 1:38: And during the talk, we learned about the different ways government departments 
leverage TYPO3. 
 1:43: I think for most people including me, the big highlight for day one was the 
government site builder or GSB based on TYPO3. 
 1:50: The GSB is a service that is available to all government departments and 
integral to the Federal Information Technology Centers. 
 1:57: Long term goal to standardize all federal websites so that they use a single 
CMS solution. 
 2:02: Silke Spielkamp, the project lead for GSB 11 and Nikolai Jaklitsch who is 
head of the government Basic Services took part in a panel discussion where they talked 
about the GSB project in detail and also took questions from attendees. 
 2:15: After the panel discussion, I sat down with Nikolai to find out more about the 
project. 
 2:19: And as a relative outsider, I had plenty of questions for him. 
 2:24: So this afternoon, I'm joined by Nikolai Agli, who is the head of Directorate at 
the ITZ Bund, otherwise known as the Federal Information Technology Center here in 
Germany, Nikolai. 
 2:33: Thank you very much for joining me today. 
 2:35: I'm really grateful for your time and I supposed to get right to it. 
 2:39: It's part of my role. 
 2:40: I spent quite a bit of time this year talking about the government site builder 
and the work you've been doing on behalf of the ITZ Bund. 
 2:47: And it certainly sparked quite a lot of interest outside of Germany in terms of 
what you're doing. 
 2:52: So, from the perspective of an outsider or for our listeners who aren't aware, 
could you give us an overview of the government site builder project, please? 
 3:01: Of course, I can do. 
 3:02: Thank you very much for having the opportunity to be here. 
 3:05: It's really a pleasure for me, for us. 
 3:08: The government site build. 
 3:09: The project has, let's say two or three main goals. 
 3:14: The first goal we have a standardization. 
 3:17: It's important to know in Germany, we have a federal state organization and 
within the federal governmental body, we have, let me guess 18 ministries and each 
ministry is trying to do its own thing regarding I T and all that stuff. 
 3:31: And a couple of years ago, the Ministry of the Interior started an initiative 
to standardize that stuff, to reduce costs and to align the, the requirements and to 
align the development and  continuous integration processes. 
 3:48: That's the main thing we do. 
 3:49: Our main struggle is to convince people from this part of path of standardization. 
 3:55: And I guess the the main reason for this change was driven by cost or reducing 
costs. 
 4:00: Yeah, it was on one hand driven by reducing cost. 
 4:04: On the other hand, driven by reducing complexity. 
 4:08: Because prior of using TYPO3, we had about 100 and 80 websites. 
 4:15: We had to manage A T the I T Z boon which have all been with, which have all been 
individually developed. 
 4:21: And when you have to do a main when you have to set up a major release, you're 
struggling quite a lot regarding the technical processes. 
 4:29: So on one hand, it was the reducing of cost. 
 4:32: On the other hand, was facilitating  C inc D pipelines, which is pretty important 
for us. 
 4:37: We want to automate as much as we can and I guess there was a tender process where 
you looked at multiple solutions briefly, could you tell us some of the reasons why you 
opted for TYPO3 in the end? 
 4:52: Yeah, we opted for, we've checked the market in 2020 looked left and right 
regarding other content management systems. 
 5:01: We had two main reasons why we opted for TYPO3. 
 5:05: The first reason was that a lot of organizations within the federal government 
were still using TYPO3 in different versions, but they were using TYPO3. 
 5:15: And the other thing was we found quite a lot of extensions which we could use. 
 5:21: We, so we didn't have the necessary to do our own developments, but we could use 
and we could use these extensions, these were the two main points. 
 5:31: So for any similar organization in another country who's looking to embark 
on a similar process of standardizing their digital solutions, what would you say would 
be the largest challenges they're likely to face in what I would imagine be a very 
difficult task. 
 5:46: From my point of view, a very difficult task comes from the independency we have 
especially in Germany regarding the different ministries as they have their own IT 
departments, they have their own budgets. 
 5:58: So we have to convince them by reducing costs. 
 6:02: That's one thing and we have to convince them by reducing the time to market. 
 6:07: Let's call, let's call it time to market. 
 6:09: So to go to go live with the website and when you have a website with a lot 
of extensions which is easy to use, it's way easier to use than you have to do your 
own development. 
 6:20: I guess these are the main points where we have to convince and or or depends 
on the view where we have to struggle the most to convince those guys. 
 6:30: So I remember from my time working in the public sector, open source was often 
seen as almost like a taboo word. 
 6:37: It was seen as something where support wasn't available. 
 6:40: You were kind of on your own and you're always better off opting for a 
proprietary solution or system with support. 
 6:46: Would you say in your experience, at least the attitude towards open source 
software particularly in government has changed over the last five or 10 years. 
 6:54: I'm not sure if it has changed within the last five or 10 years. 
 6:57: But what we definitely noticed is that it has changed within the last two years. 
 7:02: We also had the same, had the same issues in Germany, like there's no support 
in the open source community and so on. 
 7:09: But  meanwhile, digital sovereignty is a key goal for the German government. 
 7:15: So that's why, that's why we have a lot of open source initiatives. 
 7:18: One of them is the GSB with type 03, but there are others so to, to shorten it 
up, it, the attitude is in this change, the change is ongoing and it's a pretty good 
thing I think pretty cool. 
 7:32: So if you could talk me through, if I'm a federal agency and I'm looking to move 
away from whichever CMS I'm using to the government site builder which is running on, 
which uses TYPO3. 
 7:44: Could you talk me through the stages involved for me to switch over and start 
using the GSB for my project. 
 7:50: Yeah, your first contact is you have to get in, you have to get in touch with 
the Ministry of Interior, with the guys who are also present here. 
 7:57: And you have to, you have to let's call it. 
 7:59: You have to apply for. 
 8:00: You just have to tell them that you wanna use the government site builder and 
then you're, you're taken on, on the planning. 
 8:06: So they will tell you when a roll out will happen. 
 8:10: Depending on, can we do it this year or is it a bigger website? 
 8:13: And then we have to do it next year. 
 8:15: But the first contact is always the Ministry of Interior because the Ministry of 
Interior has, is in charge for the entire project. 
 8:23: Once I've been assigned by site, will I be given support or training? 
 8:26: What kind of things can I expect? 
 8:29: Yeah, you can, you can expect  different things. 
 8:31: You, you'll get the support throughout the entire process from the first contact 
until the go live. 
 8:37: We'll supporting you with our team ITZ Bund. 
 8:40: And you can also, we have also contractors to offer, to offer trainings and we 
have also contractors to offer content creation if you don't wanna do it on your own, 
of course, you can do it on your own. 
 8:52: But we have, we have  ministries who are used to talk to other agencies and we 
also offer, we also offer that light. 
 9:00: So in one phrase, we're, we are guiding you throughout the entire process. 
 9:05: From the beginning till the end. 
 9:08: Could you tell me about some of the larger projects you've got that are using 
GSB in terms of traffic and volume. 
 9:13: One of, one of our, the largest projects, we are having are, some, some sites 
at the Ministry of the Interior. 
 9:22: So we are changing different sites here from proprietary systems to the to the 
GSB. 
 9:27: Of course, we changed our own, our own website, the website of Z Bund. 
 9:32: And  we have, we have, we had a couple of go go live in the recent, in the 
recent days for different ministries for Ministry of Health and for the ministry who 
is responsible for migration. 
 9:44: And they also, they also launched their sites on the GSB 11. 
 9:50: The last one was launched yesterday. 
 9:53: Oh, wow, very, very busy then. 
 9:55: And the Ministry of Health. 
 9:56: So that must be in terms of traffic. 
 9:58: That must be a very, very busy  website. 
 10:01: Yeah, it is a, it is a special website. 
 10:04: It's only for, for a, for a smaller organization which is, which belongs to 
the Ministry of Health. 
 10:10: It's not their main website. 
 10:12: It was, it was an agency who is in charge of biological safety. 
 10:16: That's what I learned yesterday during the goal life. 
 10:19: I didn't, I didn't know that before, to be honest, but now I know it. 
 10:23: So that was the website we, we launched last, I briefly wanted to find out what 
the, and I'm, I'm, I'm just fishing for compliments 
at this point. 
 10:30: But I wanted to find out what the feedback was from your editors or members of 
different organizations. 
 10:36: We using TYPO3 day to day. 
 10:38: I'm assuming they're happy with the product and they're happy using it for 
their regular work for, for what we, what we got, what we got back as feedback from 
tho those agencies, we changed the websites recently. 
 10:49: They are pretty happy because the processes are getting way easier, which is 
not only for the content creators, but which is also of course for my colleagues who 
are responsible for the application for the, for the applications running because for 
them, it's pretty easier to, to develop or to deploy what, what, what has been 
developed. 
 11:10: Just, just to let you know in the, in the older proprietary CMS, we had, 
we had, we had the issue to do all the, all the steps manually. 
 11:18: Meanwhile, we have a continuous integration and continuous development 
pipeline. 
 11:22: So that's, that's pretty nice to see that we can get faster here and of 
course cheaper. 
 11:27: So even the teams that are using the government site builder, they can 
also write their own extensions to run on top of their sites as well. 
 11:35: Yeah, they, they in general, they can. 
 11:37: But of course, we, we would like to use, we would like to use extensions 
which are already given to the community because, because 
we don't want to have, want to have, we wanna have that less, less own developments 
as possible. 
 11:51: We would like to, we would like to keep our, our website closest to 
the standard than as possible. 
 11:58: And  and so this means you have the opportunity but you should think 
twice or even triple if you really wanna do this. 
 12:06: Because the closer you are to the standard, the easier it is to use for you. 
 12:10: Fair enough. 
 12:11: Thank you. 
 12:12: Have you had any interest from any other countries about this project who want 
to try and mimic it or try and implement something similar where they are? 
 12:19: Yeah, I had a couple of interesting talks, talks today also with, with  guys 
from the digitization  agencies from Rwanda or Papua New Guinea, which is not quite 
close to Germany, but it's none. 
 12:32: Nonetheless, it's really interesting to hear their approaches and their 
struggles because the struggles are similar on one hand, standardization is our key goal. 
 12:43: It seems to be the key goal all around the world, but the approaches are quite 
different. 
 12:47: So this was this talk and this connection, this networking was really interesting 
for me. 
 12:51: Today. 
 12:52: I've really enjoyed today as well. 
 12:53: It's been really rewarding if we can look ahead to, to say 12 months from now, 
where would you, or what would you like to achieve 
in the next 12 months with the government site builder project? 
 13:03: Where would you like to be in a year's time in a year's time for us? 
 13:06: It would be really great to, to move forward with our rollouts. 
 13:10: We have a, we have a lot of rollouts planned in the next 12 months, which means 
bringing the GSB 11 much more to the public sector world in Germany. 
 13:19: So, so if we could meet again in 12 months, and I could tell you, we're 
not only having six websites, currently, we're having six websites. 
 13:27: So when I can say next year, let's say 30 or 35 or 40 of course, to be fair, 
it always depends on the f financial conditions. 
 13:36: Unfortunately, in Germany, our government broke down a couple of weeks ago, 
I guess everybody noticed that. 
 13:42: So, so it's quite, quite struggling to, to see what's the financial condition 
next year. 
 13:47: But our main goal is to, to, to have much more websites rolled out. 
 13:53: Thank you. 
 13:54: And from a personal perspective, I, I wanted to ask about, you've been, 
I guess a part of this community or, and somewhat involved 
in the TYPO3 community for, for well over a year or maybe two years now for you 
personally, have you enjoyed it? 
 14:06: What have you taken from it so far? 
 14:08: What I have taken from us, what I have taken so far is that, that, that 
it's really important to connect to each other. 
 14:15: Because when you do, when you do that, you realize that the, the challenges 
we have, they are quite similar. 
 14:22: So it always makes sense, in my opinion, not to, to, to develop a solution 
five times. 
 14:27: But if somebody has developed a solution, which other other community members 
can use, so we should do that and that. 
 14:34: And that's quite, that's quite a positive effect of the community, in my opinion. 
 14:39: That means a lot. 
 14:40: Brilliant Nikai Yakish. 
 14:42: Thank you ever so much for your time. 
 14:43: Thank you for speaking to me today. 
 14:44:  I, I really enjoyed spending time with you today as well. 
 14:47: Have a enjoyable T three on and I will hold you to that and I will see you next 
year. 
 14:52: I will say 30 sites minimum. 
 14:54: All right. 
 14:55: Thank you very much for your time. 
 14:56: See you next year. 
 14:57: Take care. 
 14:58: Bye bye day two. 
 15:01: Kicked off with a spirited keynote from open strategy partners, Jeffrey McGuire. 
 15:05: But we all know him better as jam. 
 15:08: He roasted the TYPO3 community in a fun and loving way. 
 15:11: Hitting on all the memories and inside jokes that make the TYPO3 community so 
unique. 
 15:16: He even concluded his talk with a dedicated TYPO3 song to the tune of Enter 
Sandman, which was a hit with the crowd. 
 15:24: Cue the sound bite [...] Another highlight was the keynote from Janus Boye 
about the current state of open source and what needs to change in order to survive. 
 15:49: We'll hear more from him in a bit. 
 15:51: And last but not least we heard from the TYPO3 family, both the GMB H and the 
association. 
 15:57: They closed day two off with their ask me anything session which included, 
speaking from both perspectives about the current state of TYPO3. 
 16:04: And what's on the horizon? 
 16:06: Accessibility was a hot topic of T3CON this year and for all the right reasons, 
Stefan Barac and his colleague, Clare gave an incredible talk on accessible experiences 
and together, they highlighted the fact that over 20 per cent of the population in 
Switzerland have some form of disability and face significant and real challenges when 
using the web to purchase goods and services in their talk. 
 16:27: They told us why it's so important and potentially lucrative for organizations 
to take this demographic and their requirements more seriously up. 
 16:35: Next is a quick fire interview with Steffan who gave us a short summary of 
his talk and his thoughts on T3CON in general. 
 16:47: Hi, I am Stefan Barac. 
 16:48: I am from Zurich and I represent incluthon.com. 
 16:52: Our initiative to include more people with disabilities into the workforce 
of product and service teams. 
 16:59: The TYPO3 conference has been really great in the past few days because it 
was an exchange of like minded people, people were really interested into accessibility 
and inclusion and asked many questions. 
 17:12: And it was also interesting to see where they stand currently because the 
law makers have made accessibility an obligation. 
 17:22: The TYPO3 conference the last three days was brilliant because many people came 
to our stand asked about inclusion and accessibility, how the laws are inflicting on 
them, how everything works. 
 17:35: And it was interesting for us to see where they are all standing because  we 
see that a lot more people are getting curious about it and that's great. 
 17:44: I have never been in touch before with the TYPO3 community, but a friend of mine 
referenced me and he had been working with TYPO3 before and I have to say the first 
encounter was great. 
 17:55: Everyone is, yeah, brilliant, like like minded people, as I said before in my 
other statement, sadly, attending talks was a little bit off the menu for us because we 
are only two people on our small stand and we had to guard the stand because there was 
a big interest into accessibility. 
 18:14: So, but generally like all of the speakers who were talking, we talked in 
private with and  yeah, mat for example, a great guy, his topic is close to our heart 
and we had a great talk  with each other and also some jurors like Hamid and it's just 
great to exchange about those topics that people are interested about. 
 18:37: So, yes, on day one, when it was German Day, we were  on the stage. 
 18:42:  I don't know how to say it, but it has become quite a routine to go on stage. 
 18:48:  It is very nice to have a shift because a few years ago I asked following 
questions like who has already formulated a budget for accessibility efforts and out 
of 100 hands, zero hands would go up. 
 19:04: And these days when we ask, it's more like 5 to 6 hands go up. 
 19:08: So it's a very big improvement already. 
 19:11: The three words that come into mind when I think about T3CON is like intimate, 
brilliant and striving, striving towards a better goal. 
 19:26: Next, we'll speak with Janus Boye who gave a keynote to T3CON about why open 
source needs to change in order to survive. 
 19:33: He provides us with his unique insight and perspective from his 20 plus years 
within the industry. 
 19:43: So we're joined here with Janus Boye,  who was one of the keynote speakers at 
T3CON. 
 19:50: This year, Yiannis gave a talk about what open source CMS needs to do in order 
to change or how rather. 
 19:58:  So Janus, if you could introduce yourself, give us a little bit of your 
background and then let's do a recap of the talk and Tom and I will have some follow 
up questions. 
 20:09: All right, good. 
 20:10:  Just please tell me to stop. 
 20:12:  It's a long big question, but let me start briefly with introducing myself. 
 20:18:  It's a pleasure to be here. 
 20:20:  Thanks for making it possible. 
 20:21: I was also very happy to be back in Düsseldorf for the TYPO3 conference. 
 20:25: I've been working in this field that's finally now settled on calling it CMS. 
 20:31: For over 25 years, I started my career at an agency in Munich back then 
building cobb websites. 
 20:39: But I think today you would look back and say those were glorified brochures. 
 20:43: Then I went to Frankfurt and worked for a software company that had an 
internet publishing system, which is what you today would call CMS. 
 20:51: And I felt back then it was being at the forefront of innovation trying 
to solve this problem of large global complex organizations having chaos on their 
websites and putting a little bit of governance and control into it. 
 21:08: I then moved back home here in Aus Denmark in 2003. 
 21:13: And since 2004, I've been organizing this vendor neutral community that 
really stands on two legs. 
 21:21: The one part is our groups as we call them really 1520 people typically in 
each which meets around a given role or topic, something to do with digital could 
be digital communication or project management or CMS and then try to address this 
problem of organizational loneliness that even though you're in a large complex and 
global organization, you can still feel alone because who can you talk to about search 
engine optimization or open source CMS or whatever it is? 
 21:52: And then the other big part of what we do is annual conferences. 
 21:56: We've done the oldest running one here in Aus and European conference 
focused on CMS and digital things. 
 22:04: We had the pleasure back in 2005 of having Kaspar Skarhoj here, the TYPO3 
project founder who gave a live demo of TYPO3 back then. 
 22:13: So they're next to Interwoven, which was a big player back then. 
 22:15: And Sitecore which was also a big player back then and still is today similar 
to TYPO3. 
 22:22: So I've been following the TYPO3 community from a different viewpoint, but 
at least over quite a period of time. 
 22:29: And so my keynote in Düsseldorf was really also   from a friend if you like 
of the community, giving a message of change. 
 22:39: And I started like a management consultant would do even though I'm not one 
to build the case for change, why does CMS open source CMS specifically have to 
change at the moment? 
 22:51: And I there said in particularly that it's necessary because customers expect it. 
 22:57: So that's the one side of the answer. 
 22:59: There's a lot of things happening at the moment with A I search. 
 23:04: And thankfully finally also progress due to legislation in terms of accessibility 
and sustainability. 
 23:11: So we are finally making progress on some of these frontiers where we haven't really 
done so much when it comes to the digital experience side. 
 23:19: And when you then look behind the scenes, it feels to me that there are some 
discussions to be fair that we're still having, even though we've done this for 20 years, 
even though TYPO3 has been around for 20 years and Drupal and wordpress and similar, and 
it feels a little bit like perhaps the pendulum has swung too much to the developer side 
for better parts of the last 20 years. 
 23:40: So there is room for improvement when it comes to a better editorial interface 
for the marketeers for those creating quality authentic human creative content. 
 23:51: And then last but not least there is change afoot in the open source CMS 
ecosystem with turmoil at the moment at wordpress and kind of like a reinvention of 
Drupal with them, releasing Drupal CMS at the beginning of next year. 
 24:08: So in summary, it's an interesting time to work with CMS. I think there's a 
lot of good opportunities at the moment. 
 24:16: But it's also a time where if there's anything I can see clearly in the crystal 
ball for 2025 it's, it's that changes afoot. 
Well, I think that's a very thorough recap and I appreciate you giving the listeners 
a little bit about your background for those who don't know you or haven't attended 
one of your CMS experts meetups and also those who weren't at T3CON. 
 24:41: So I'm looking at the conference, we had a digital or graphic recording artist 
giving some of the key takeaways and I don't know if you've seen yours from your talk. 
 24:52: It was amazing. 
 24:54: It's amazing and it's, it's really impressive and an interesting way to extract 
some of the big points. 
 25:02: So as I'm looking at it and I'm seeing buzzwords, like look beyond Europe, 
speak the language, follow the money be part strategy is easy execution is the point. 
 25:11: Could you in terms like that? 
 25:13: Give us some of the key takeaways, just bullet points on from your perspective, 
which I find to be very unique since you work with a lot of different CMSs and you're 
very familiar with the open source topic. 
 25:28: What are the big changes that you think just in a bullet point form that you 
think really need to be implemented? 
 25:34: I know one of ours from a previous conversation was talking about getting a 
younger generation involved in open source and keeping it alive. 
 25:42: But how would you distill that down into a brief summary? 
 25:46: Yeah, why don't we start there? 
 25:47: I think that just because something is 20 years old, plus a few years perhaps 
doesn't necessarily make it uninteresting to the next generation. 
 25:56:  And I think also because it's 20 plus years old doesn't necessarily make it 
less trustworthy. 
 26:04: TYPO3 has never, and again, I'm saying this as a friend, never had the reputation 
for being the fastest moving with innovative new features or perhaps the system with 
the sexiest or easiest to use interface. 
 26:19: But it's clear that it's come a long way in the last 20 years. 
 26:22: So progress is there. 
 26:23: It feels like customers are selecting TYPO3 for, for the same reasons, same 
good reasons that they selected TYPO3, 1015 years ago for the stability. 
 26:33: Plus also the ability to scale to handle multiple sites, multiple languages, etc. 
 26:39: So TYPO3 already has quite a lot of what you need to be a healthy and 
vibrant community of the future. 
 26:48: For me, it stands kind of on my answer to the community of the future is 
a, you've got to continue to do events I've seen from the distance how the TYPO3 
community has been reenergized in the last couple of years, in terms of events, in 
terms of whether it's surfing, snowboarding, bar, camps, whatever local events, bigger 
events, smaller events, events that sometimes feel a little bit like a good family 
reunion, but also events where I could go if I was new to the community attending for 
the first one and perhaps not ready to drink all of the Kool aid at once and hear all 
of the anecdotes of Kaspar Skarhoj or the TYPO3 is that's normal in any project that's 
been around. 
 27:34: So that's number one, keep doing good events  that can lower the bar so that 
anybody can feel like coming. 
 27:40: And this is a good place, fun place to be. 
 27:43: The second one I think comes back to the early days of the creation of all these 
systems that we're talking about. 
 27:51: And my point there is keep looking at better solutions to the problems that 
customers are facing. 
 27:57: Even though we've done this for a while. 
 27:59: As an industry, the constant arrival of new entrants on the CMS market is to me 
at least a testament that the marketplace is still, still have a hunger for better 
solutions, whether it's to solve technical problems or business problems or anything in 
between. 
 28:17: Keep looking at that. 
 28:19: How can we solve some of these problems better? 
 28:22: And then third part, but not least, and I'm seeing also signs of progress there. 
 28:27: And that's probably the one that takes the longest to bring back home. 
 28:31: That's this refresh or renewal of the community. 
 28:34: Also when it comes to inclusivity diversity, how do we get moved beyond that 
stereotypical Danish German? 
 28:43: We all look the same stereotype and welcome new voices, whether they're coming 
from America or the UK or anywhere else in the world. 
 28:51: I'm really happy to see the activities that TYPO3 is doing in the global South. 
 28:55: And there's clearly a huge potential down there also. 
 28:58: Digitally to solve problems in a better and more democratic way. 
 29:02: So keep at those three things and I'm pretty sure TYPO3 in the community will 
be in good shape for the future. 
 29:10: Janus. 
 29:10: You talked about the need for existing open source projects to kind of evolve 
and adapt and change to the new world we live in today? 
 29:20: From your perspective. 
 29:21: Are there any other projects out there that you're keeping an eye on that have 
done a good job of this in terms of changing and adapting? 
 29:28: That is a really good question, Tom, thank you so much. 
 29:31:  To be honest in this market over the years, I feel like there's more of an 
early move of disadvantage than then a big advantage of coming first. 
 29:40:  And again, perhaps that also speaks to some of the strengths of TYPO3 that you 
don't need to be first. 
 29:46: I have looked so far and I think that's totally fine also for an open source 
community to see. 
 29:51: OK, what's already there in the market that we could learn from? 
 29:54: And if you start with workers, which is a little bit the elephant in the room in the 
bigger marketplace, they've done really well when it comes to going from zero to block and 
actually also down the road to to big enterprise websites in a really, really short time, 
giving people a good experience and their interface has also come a long way. 
 30:15: I've looked also at them in recent years with their work with the so called Gutenberg 
editor, which was an attempt make it easier for editors communicators to create a better 
storytelling online. 
 30:28: Recently, this year, we've seen that, OK, looking behind the scenes where governance 
was clearly not the role model. 
 30:34: On the other hand, if you look at Drupal, which is also one of the widely adopted 
systems, what I feel that they've done well, is this use 
case of or, or actually this ability to be a framework that's not entirely an empty box but 
is  enabling customers to do edge cases quite well, large media sites or whatever it is. 
 30:57: And so I think there's an opportunity to look at them to say, how do we put even 
more power in the hands of agencies so that our partners, our agencies can be even 
more successful when it comes to them building a business and in turn them having happy 
references. 
 31:21: I hope that helps a little from  inside CMS Land. 
 31:24: I think there's also a lot actually, you can find from outside CMS land, I would 
say in recent 5 to 10 years, the whole arrival of the, of the mach  quadrant or the the 
marketing technology explosion where we've seen that actually CMS might be the elder 
statesman in the bigger picture. 
 31:45: But there are so many other vendors and never ending seeming explosion and other 
vendors that are doing marketing technology really well, all kinds of marketing technology 
for campaigns, for everything you could think of online. 
 31:59: And if you look at the big map of 15,000 plus vendors, CMS is there, but there's 
been a lot of movement around that space when it comes to the usage of A I when it comes 
to the availability of data. 
 32:13: And then last but not least in this super collider, you have this compos thing 
which as a data can't help but connect to Lego bricks enabling you as a customer to build 
things on top of each other and have these tools play nice with each other. 
 32:29: But so as you're taking a look at the landscape of  open source and how the CMS 
are adapting to staying relevant, you know, we have AI in the conversation and all these 
other evolving technologies and moving pieces. 
 32:45: I'm curious from your perspective, what do you think? 
 32:48: TYPO3 is doing well? 
 32:50: So we're talking about how they've invested in, in person events and the value 
of those. 
 32:56: And one of the things throughout the conference that was mentioned multiple 
times was we kind of lost or forgot the value of in person events with the pandemic. 
 33:05: We had a bit of a surge and now we're getting back into, you know, realizing how 
important it is to connect in person and collaborate. 
 33:12: We also have now talked about bringing the younger generation. 
 33:15: And so, you know, TYPO3 is doing surf camps,  really recruiting younger or 
diverse talent for the marketing team to have different perspectives and voices. 
 33:25: So I'm curious, you know, being adjacent or a friend of the community, what 
you think they're doing, right? 
 33:31: And maybe what a few suggestions of where you think they could continue 
pushing to really  yeah, solidify themselves as part of the, of the future in the 
conversation. 
 33:43:  Sure, I think that it's a good point. 
 33:49: One of the things I liked the most that may be the happiest when I came 
to Düsseldorf was seeing all the buzz and the attention around the government side builder. 
 33:57: And it was a point actually also in the talk I had prepared when I came down 
and then I added a photo of this packed booth that was more or less nonstop packed 
for, for all the time. 
 34:07: I was in Düsseldorf. 
 34:09: And so the reason why I find this so good and also the direction for the 
future is this arrival of vertical solutions or industry specific solutions. 
 34:20: So the value I see with something like the government site builder is that 
it enables customers in this case, the German government but potentially also others 
to go from zero to value much quicker, not having to rebuild the same things as so 
many customers have experienced in the last decade or 15 years is once you go from 
the first CMS to the second, you're finding yourself, rebuilding it all new templates, 
functionality, rebuilding it all and that you then implement the third CMS whatever a 
decade later, you're doing it one more time. 
 34:51: And the idea of having something that's specific to an industry or a vertical, 
other vendors are doing it for higher education. 
 34:57: I think there's huge potential here. 
 34:59: But I, but it's super meaningful on the customer side. 
 35:03: And yes, in the short term, it might take a little bit from the agency's 
revenue who are being paid to rebuild again and again. 
 35:11: But I do think that there is a build up need there from customers and also 
from agencies who want to specialize, who actually don't want to build the same 
things over and over again. 
 35:21: But who wants to say, give us something that's 80% done, not 0% and just a 
powerful toolbox, but give us something that's 80% done. 
 35:29: And then we can build on top of that for these few but specific requirements 
that the government have or the different branches of the government will have. 
 35:38: So that's one thing I see in the future that hopefully  will be much more of. 
 35:43: I think it's slightly overdue as some of the other things that made me happy. 
 35:47: Also at the TYPO3 conference was this focus on accessibility, designing with 
the people that have disabilities or have these requirements, not just for them. 
 35:59: And so I was really happy to see that. 
 36:01: And with legislation coming, that's a huge opportunity. 
 36:04: Again, it's change and change is not always fun, particularly not when other 
people tell you, you have to, but it represents a huge opportunity. 
 36:13: And that was some of the excitement I felt throughout the conference from 
different agencies that yes, they need to do work in a different way. 
 36:20: I think actually to be honest, agencies are probably going to get hit harder 
and, and earlier by A I than on the tech side or on the CMS side. 
 36:31: But these things like doing website building websites better that are inclusive 
from the beginning, having the ability to take industry solutions so 
that they can win happy referenceable customers faster represents a huge opportunity 
for the entire TYPO3 community around the world. 
 36:50: Well, your response marries this topic perfectly because Tom also  did an 
interview in this episode about the government site builder. 
 36:59: So that will be perfect to  align with everything that we're talking about
 here. 
 37:05: And lastly before we let you go, we want to talk about. 
 37:09: So you have ACMS kickoff coming up in the US in Florida in January. 
 37:13: Can you tell us a little bit about it? 
 37:15: I know that Daniel from  TYPO3 GMBH will be  attending. 
 37:20: So I'm, yeah, just to give listeners a little bit of insight about what the 
CMS kickoff will entail. 
 37:26: Yes. 
 37:26: Really happy to have  Daniel and Mathias with us  next month already. 
 37:31:  this year, almost a year ago in January when we did CMS kickoff 24 we had 
Benni there for the first time. 
 37:37: Benni being super well known, friendly guy in the TYPO3 community who if I 
remember correctly, also won an award personality of the year. 
 37:47: And the idea with the kickoff is really this need or this suggestion we heard 
from several of our members both in Europe and North America is that this industry is 
missing a vendor neutral conference where we can get together from across the ecosystem 
of analysts, agencies, vendors, practitioners on the customer side and not just hear 
presentations from each other but work together to make progress and see how do we do 
these, how do we solve these thorny content management issues and move forward instead 
of everybody developing essentially often the same solutions in their own chamber, 
naming it with Drupal Iss in the Drupal world and TYPO3 is in the TYPO3 world. 
 38:32: So that's the idea of a kickoff. 
 38:34: It's  two days of working together. 
 38:38:  really interesting to see also how these people who may be really feed it in 
the seor ecosystem or like Benni, really well known. 
 38:45: Everybody wants to talk to him in the TYPO3 community. 
 38:47: They come over there and they don't know anybody else. 
 38:50: But then after just a few hours,  if we've done our, our preparation done well, 
then shoulders are down sleeves are up and we can really 
work on these things. 
 39:02: And I'm really happy to see a lot of good deliverables coming out of the past 
Kickoffs where as an industry, we take the first baby steps 
towards the some of the missing standards. 
 39:12: There was a Canadian vendor which changed some of the naming to line with 
industry standards based on some of these conversations. 
 39:19: And these might all individually be small steps. 
 39:22: But I do think that they make a big difference for the customer side who was 
ultimately paying for all of it. 
 39:29: And so I think that's really rewarding and really happy to have a TYPO3 with 
us. 
 39:33: Janus. 
 39:34: Thank you ever so much for speaking with us today. 
 39:36:  We're really grateful before we do say goodbye. 
 39:39: I was wondering if I could ask a very small favor. 
 39:43: As Kendall mentioned, Daniel, our our boss will be attending the event with 
you in January next year and I'm a little bit worried about Daniel because he's very, 
very fair skinned. 
 39:53: And I know you guys are going down to South Florida, I believe where it's 
going to be rather warm and rather sunny. 
 39:59: As well. 
 39:59: So I was just wondering when you're out there and when you're connecting with 
the community and really taking part in what looks to be quite an important event. 
 40:08: Can you just make sure for me that he put some sunscreen on as well and he 
stays covered up in the sun because we don't want him burning up in January. 
 40:17: So if you could just keep an eye on him and Matteus as well, just keep, make 
sure they covered up, we'll keep them air con inside. 
 40:25: That's right. 
 40:25: We'll do our best. 
 40:26: Absolutely. 
 40:27: They're very sensitive to heat. 
 40:28: So yeah, if you could take good care of them for us, I hope we'd be most 
grateful we do it. 
 40:32: It's a common problem to us. 
 40:34: Vikings that go into the song for too long. 
 40:36: So thanks for reminding me Tom, much. 
 40:38: Appreciate it. 
 40:39: No, you're very welcome. 
 40:39: And thank you in advance. 
 40:41: So yeah, also sensitive to air conditioning, air conditioning. 
 40:46: So we'll have to be very careful. 
 40:47: And since with the American in the room, I, I'll give you some, I'll give 
Daniel some tips for his trip, his trip to the United States. 
 40:58: Well, thank you so much, Yanni for joining us and for, well, not only 
joining us here on the podcast but also at T3CON and for all,  all that you do  
in the community and involving us. 
 41:10: I had such a nice time with you at the CMS experts meet up in Berlin and 
really was impressed with the kind of conversation and dialogue that you facilitate 
and bringing people together. 
 41:21: So thank you for being a part of it. 
 41:23: And for, as you said, being a friend to the TYPO3 community. 
 41:26: Thank you for having me much, appreciate it. 
 41:30: The awards gala was a very special evening. 
 41:33: You could tell all the attention and love that went into the planning for 
this event. 
 41:37: From the menus to the music and the details in the award creation. 
 41:41: The hosts were fantastic and really captured the essence of the TYPO3 
community and spent time with award winners to learn more about their projects 
and client relationships. 
 41:51: Throughout the night, there were 13 awards given for the traditional 
categories and there were two additional categories which included accessibility 
and performance. 
 42:01: Then there was the big award, the TYPO3 website of the year. 
 42:05: This award was given to lime soda for their work on the Vienna City card 
website. 
 42:10: A big congratulations to lime soda. 
 42:13: Then there was a category added for the best TYPO3 camp of the year, 
which was given to TYPO3 camp Vienna Needless to say Austria was a hot topic at 
this year's awards. 
 42:25: During the evening, we spent a few emotional minutes as TYPO3 GMBH CEO 
Daniel Fau gave a speech to thank and express his along with the community's 
appreciation for TYPO3 core team lead Benni Mack. 
 42:39: Benni was awarded the TYPO3 personality of the year, which was unanimously 
supported. 
 42:44: Given the long standing ovation and shouts from the crowd. 
 42:48: It was a very special moment to be present for after the awards, we all 
gathered upstairs for midnight snacks, drinks and dancing. 
 42:56: There was even a large surprise. 
 42:57: Yes, a huge TYPO3 logo hanging from the ceiling. 
 43:01: And as the night went on, it began orchestrating a very entertaining laser 
show. 
 43:05: Truly, the icing on the cake. 
 43:07: A big thank you to all who attended, submitted their projects and of course, 
the ones behind planning the event. 
 43:15: Ok. 
 43:16: So that's it for December's episode and that's it for this year on the inside 
TYPO3 podcast, Kendall. 
 43:23: What has been your favorite episode this year? 
 43:27: Oh, ok. 
 43:29: That's a good question. 
 43:30: I think I would have to say probably the developer days mostly because we were 
together in person and had our own little room. 
 43:42: So it felt very official. 
 43:45: Also the one that we did in in the office in Düsseldorf was nice too, but I 
would have to say the developer days because it was more fun. 
 43:52: Yeah, it was good. 
 43:53: What was yours? 
 43:54: I think mine was the Sebastian Bergman interview. 
 43:57: I got a bit excited meeting him for the first time and he was a really good 
guest. 
 44:03: He was a very good speaker as well. 
 44:05: So I think that episode is my favorite. 
 44:08: I think this might, this episode might be up there as well just because 
of the quality of people we've had on today, we've had some really good talks of 
people. 
 44:16: So yeah, between this episode, I think it may be the Sebastian Bergman 
interview from I think it was June, June or July. 
 44:21: So yeah, it's a tough one. 
 44:23: But other than that, I think it's just time for us to say goodbye and 
thank everyone for listening again to this month. 
 44:30: We hope to be, we will be back next year. 
 44:32: I hope with more episodes and more content to bring you. 
 44:35: And as always, if you have any comments or suggestions, you can always 
email us at podcast at TYPO3 dot com. 
 44:42: But from me, I have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and from 
Kendall. 
 44:47: Have a good, yeah, have a good holiday break and we'll see you as we ramp 
up for another exciting year in TYPO3 next month. 
 44:56: Cool. 
 44:57: I'll see you then.