How to Connect to the TYPO3 Community

Thanks to Sanjay from NITSAN for sharing!
Editor's note: This article is a repost from Sanjay's blog.

Welcome to the TYPO3 Community! Do you want to connect with TYPO3 friends online as well as offline? If so, then I would like to be your guide through 10 ways to connect you with the fantastic TYPO3 Community.

In my humble opinion, the TYPO3 Community has lovely, supportive, and friendly people compared to other Open Source projects. I've been in touch with other communities. Still, personally, I just love the TYPO3 Community more than any other, they are simply loving, welcoming, and helping people.

In my decade of experience with the TYPO3 Community, one thing is evident: if you stay in touch with the community, you will definitely improve yourself.

By connecting with TYPO3 Community members, your learning curves, and knowledge will remarkably improve. You can explore and gain experience from the TYPO3 Core Team as well as other experts.

The list of benefits connecting with the community is long, but here are some of mine:

• Improve your technical TYPO3 skills
• TYPO3 solutions up to industry standards
• Keeping up-to-date with the latest TYPO3 news
• Communicate with the TYPO3 Core Team
• Improving social-networking and communication skills
• Getting together and having fun at events

Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, there will be very few TYPO3 events in 2020. In the world, the near future is going to change how people connect, most of the time people will connect on digital platforms.

Notice from the TYPO3 Association:

As of March 29, 2020, no in-person TYPO3 Association meetings will be held until further notice.

Due to the Covid-19 virus crisis, the TYPO3 Association Board advises the organization's officials and team leaders to stop physical meetings in the TYPO3 Association name until further notice.

 Grab a cup of coffee and get ready to find out in how many ways you can connect and interact. Digitally or face-to-face - get together with TYPO3 Community members.

Very easy, all the TYPO3 events can be found on the TYPO3 events page on typo3.org. You can also use the filter on the right-hand side to only see particular events.

First of all, I suggest a TYPO3 Community Membership. For as little as 7.92 EUR per year (of course, this is not mandatory), you can become a member of the TYPO3 Association.

Join the TYPO3 TYPO3 Association and get the following benefits:

• Participate in the yearly T3A General Assembly
• Participate in official votings for boards (EAB, BCC)
• Learn about and discuss the annual budgets
• Use the TYPO3 Association membership logo on your website

Personally, T3DD is one of my favorite TYPO3 events and one of the longest-running official TYPO3 events. If you are a TYPO3 developer or integrator, you should participate at least once.

Here are some quick highlights:

• Annual four-day, developer-oriented event
• Filled with frontal talks, dynamic sessions, and workshops
• Meet and get to know the TYPO3 core team
• Share and gain knowledge and experience
• Explore new ideas and problem-solving
• Explore new culture
• Enjoy food and have fun

Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the annual TYPO3 Developer Days have been canceled, keeping everyone healthy and safety as the top priority.

NITSAN attended T3DD twice and documented their experience in 2018 and 2019. The attendees were speechless, they're hoping to visit this event more often, and they want to make it their annual ritual.

The international TYPO3 Conference (T3CON) is an exceptionally well-designed and organized event for TYPO3 business owners, decision-makers, and marketers.

Here are some quick highlights:

• Annual two-day event
• Business Talks
• Meet the team of TYPO3 GmbH
• The awesome TYPO3 Awards

NITSAN's business executives attended T3CON twice and documented their experience in 2018 and 2019.

One of the coolest event formats is the TYPO3 Barcamp. Locally organized two-day events, all across Europe to learn and talk about everything TYPO3.

If you are eager to closely and regularly connect with the TYPO3 Community, join your local TYPO3 user group. Basically, it is a small group of people who regularly meet on a weekly or monthly basis. 

Here are some common activities.

• Exchange know-how
• Introducing TYPO3 to newbies
• TYPO3 tutorials
• Talk about how we can support the TYPO3 Community
• Ideas for new extensions

Check out all existing TYPO3 User Groups and join one of them. Many user groups post their event at TYPO3.org

NITSAN is proudly organizing iTUG - India TYPO3 User Group.

One of the oldest TYPO3 events blended with sports like snowboarding and skiing, and in the evening, there are amazing talks about TYPO3. Take a look at the official website of T3BOARD.

The teams and committees of the TYPO3 Community take on tasks within specific areas, such as core development, education, communication, and security.

Join a TYPO3 team

Take a look at the different TYPO3 community teams like the TYPO3 Core Team, Marketing Team, Education team, and Security Team.  

Connect at TYPO3 sprints

Each TYPO3 team organizes sprints regularly with specific topics and goals. Anybody can join and contribute to their best abilities. Last year, we held a TYPO3 code sprint at our office. If you want to catch a glimpse of how the first-ever TYPO3 code sprint in India went, read about it in the NITSAN blog. We hope to be able to organize another code sprint in India soon.

TYPO3 initiatives

An initiative consists of people with a common interest in making long-term improvements in a specific area of TYPO3, including strategic plans, goals, task-breakdown, and monitoring of progress.

Join your favorite TYPO3 Initiative.

If you are looking for a business-level professional TYPO3 partnership and help, then you can connect with TYPO3 official partners and freelancers. We are also proud partners of TYPO3.

Now let's talk about how you can become part of the TYPO3 Community by using the available digital platforms.

The fact is that, due to the Covid-19 crisis, the world is going through changes. More and more people will prefer to work remotely and interact with others through digital platforms.

Live chat with TYPO3 + Slack

To connect with any person, team, or group, the TYPO3 Community highly recommends using Slack for TYPO3.

Some of the popular TYPO3 slack channels are:

• #announcements - the TYPO3 Project announcement channel
• #typo3-cms - the TYPO3 CMS support channel
• #typo3-cms-coredev - TYPO3 CMS core development channel
• #random - have fun, share anything you like

Reach out to ask your questions, share your ideas, provide or ask for help, or offer support to newer users.

Stack Overflow for TYPO3 Questions and Answers

Although Slack is an excellent channel, I also highly recommend using Stack Overflow for TYPO3 for help, questions, and answers.

The persistent format of Stack Overflow ensures that other users benefit from already answered questions.

Proposals or Issues

Do you have any proposals to contribute to the TYPO3 core or any questions you can't find an answer to? You can explore and add to the TYPO3 core at TYPO3 Forge. Find out all the details in the TYPO3 Contribution Guide.

TYPO3 Blog

Many TYPO3 Community members write fantastic blog articles. You can keep in touch with news on basically any topic, ask your questions in the comments, or request articles for particular topics of interest.

Here are some of the popular TYPO3 Blogs:

• Official TYPO3 Blog
• TYPO3worx
• Use TYPO3
• TYPO3 Manual
• NITSAN
• T3 Terminal Knowledge Hub
• Reelworx
• Doc Core Insight
• Scripting Base
• Blog by Daniel Siepmann
• Blog by Torben Hansen
• Blog by Richard Haeser
• Blog by Sebastian Klein

TYPO3 Discussion & Decisions

The platform decisions.typo3.org is meant for discussions and votings on strategic topics of a more significant impact on the TYPO3 core development.

Thanks for reading this article, I hope you enjoyed reading it.

I want to emphasize again, you will feel amazing because the TYPO3 community is awesome, friendly, lovely, and supportive. Try to connect with them from one of the channels mentioned above, and I bet you'll be happy with the response!

Let's have a quick recap to stay connected with the TYPO3 community:

• Understand the importance of why you should connect with the TYPO3 community
• Try to attend at least one major TYPO3 event like T3DD, T3CON, or TYPO3 Camp
• Join the TYPO3 user groups near you
• Explore and join one of the TYPO3 teams with an area of your interest
• Stay connected with TYPO3 enthusiasts through digital platforms like Slack, Stackoverflow, and social media.

If you have any questions or need help, feel free to write a comment down below, we are happy to answer you.

Have a happy TYPO3 get-together - Inspiring people to communicate!