BigBlueButton (BBB) or: How we managed an online conference with OpenSource programs

This year's TYPO3 Developer Days unfortunately fell victim to the Covid-19 virus, commonly known as the Corona virus. Since we have been practicing social distancing for over eight weeks now and we had gotten to know a lot of new video conference systems, the idea of designing a replacement event that we could hold online was born quite quickly. TYPO3 is an open source system, and punkt.de has been committed to open source software since its inception. So what could be more obvious than to use an open source product for such an event? We quickly found what we were looking for: BigBlueButton has been on the market since 2007 under the LGPL license. The name says it all: Participants should be able to take part in such an event as easily as pressing a big blue button. Mind you, "for the participants". The technical infrastructure is not that easy to implement, but dedicated employees were quickly found at punkt.de who jumped in at the deep end and installed the software. In addition to the automated installation via ANT scripts, the installation also includes monitoring the infrastructure in terms of utilization and performance. Since all internet users are used to YouTube and television is also quite simple for consumers, we were already aware that the bar was set relatively high for such an event.

Short preparation, stable monitoring

But we didn't have much time to prepare and we were pretty sure that we would manage it "somehow". However, we didn't want to start the event completely without a test, so it was fitting that we had our "5-minute talks" shortly beforehand, in which employees present their favorite tools to all other employees in five minutes. So the baptism of fire was complete and our setup passed with flying colors.

#t3kudos to @punkt_de and @bennimack for the great idea of #TYPO3TechSummer! Even with some audio problems and a spontaneous Darth Benni appearance 😌 pic.twitter.com/6L7xEWHTYe

— Luisa Sofie Faßbender (@luisasofiexoxo) May 28, 2020

Let the games begin

And so the evening of May 28th soon arrived, when the first TYPO3 Techsummer event took place. Fabian greeted all the participants who were already present relatively punctually. This was our first chance to help the speakers: Bluetooth connections seem to have an increased susceptibility to connection problems on the Mac. The next speaker was Lars Liedtke, who presented his favorite command line tools to the attendees. With vcsh, the inclined console user can manage his or her git $HOME directories.(https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh) The next tool Lars presented was "Ondir"(https://github.com/alecthomas/ondir). This is a small program with which certain things can be executed automatically when you change to a directory. For example, you can have the environment variables set individually or execute any commands. Although programmers are said to live on coffee, Lars then introduced us to gitea(https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea). A tool that expects nothing less than to be the simplest, fastest and least painful tool when it comes to running your own git repository. Since Lars owns a studio microphone, he was crystal clear to hear. According to our monitoring, the BBB server was bored around the area, even though there were over 50 participants online at the time.

After Lars, Luisa from the TYPO3 marketing team reported. After the sprint in January, which took place before Corona times, the team met online afterwards and continued the work they had started. Like every team from the TYPO3 universe, we are constantly looking for reinforcement; if you have the desire and know-how, you can quickly find the right contact person after a little googling: https: //typo3.org/community/teams/marketing

Why are we actually doing all this TYPO3 stuff?

Benni's presentation was less about the latest features of TYPO3 V10 and more about the question of why Benni spends a large part of his work and free time on TYPO3. As a developer, Benni's output is always visible; but Benni also emphasized that in addition to the developers, there are many other helpers who gather in the TYPO3 community. There are certainly a wide variety of motivations, but everyone is united by the open community and the opportunity to learn and grow again and again in a great project with new challenges. Certainly, the features of a CMS system are what are most visible to users, but without the other contributions, TYPO3 would not be what it is today: a system with which large web installations can be handled, based on a committed broad community and therefore so successful!