TYPO3 Techsummer: First Event

BigBlueButton (BBB), or: How We Pulled Off an Online Conference Using Open-Source Software

Unfortunately, this year’s TYPO3 Developer Days fell victim to the COVID-19 virus, commonly known as the coronavirus. Since we’ve now been practicing social distancing for over eight weeks and had become familiar with a whole range of new video conferencing systems, the idea quickly arose to design a replacement event that we could hold online. TYPO3 is an open-source system, and the punkt.de has been committed to open-source software since its inception. What could be more natural than to rely on 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: participating in such an event should be as easy for attendees as pressing a big blue button. Note that this is “for the attendees.” The technical infrastructure isn’t quite as easy to set up; however, we quickly found dedicated staff members at punkt.de who jumped right in and installed the software. For us, the installation process involves not only automated installation via ANT scripts but also monitoring the infrastructure for load and performance. Since all internet users are accustomed to YouTube and television is also quite straightforward for consumers, we were already aware that the bar was set relatively high for an event like this.

Short preparation time, robust monitoring

But we didn’t have much time to prepare, and we were pretty sure we’d manage it “somehow” anyway. We didn’t want to launch the event without any testing at all, though, so it worked out well that we had our “5-Minute Talks” shortly before the event—a series where employees present their favorite tools to all other employees in five minutes. So we had our trial by fire, and our setup passed it 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 28 soon arrived, marking the first event of TYPO3 Techsummer. Fabian welcomed all the participants who were already there, right on time. This gave us our first chance to help out the speakers: Bluetooth connections on Macs seem to be particularly prone to connection issues. The next speaker was Lars Liedtke, who introduced the audience to his favorite command-line tools. With vcsh, the avid console user can manage their git $HOME directories. (https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh) Next, Lars introduced “Ondir” (https://github.com/alecthomas/ondir). This is a small program that allows certain actions to be executed automatically when you change directories. For example, you can have it set environment variables for you or execute any commands you like. Although programmers are said to run on coffee, Lars then introduced us to Gitea (https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea). A tool that claims nothing less than being the simplest, fastest, and least painful way to run your own Git repository. Since Lars owns a studio microphone, he could be heard crystal clear. According to our monitoring, the BBB server was just sitting idle, even though there were over 50 participants online at the time.

After Lars, Luisa from the TYPO3 Marketing Team took the floor. Following the sprint in January—which took place before the pandemic—the team met online afterward and continued the work they’d started. Like every team in the TYPO3 universe, they’re always looking for new members; anyone with the interest and know-how can quickly find the right contacts with a quick Google search: https://typo3.org/community/teams/marketing

Why are we even doing all this with TYPO3?

Benni’s talk focused less on the latest features of TYPO3 V10 and more on the question of why Benni spends a large part of his work and free time working with TYPO3. As a developer, Benni’s contributions are always visible; but he also emphasized that, in addition to the developers, there are many other contributors who come together in the TYPO3 community. While people’s motivations certainly vary widely, they’re all united by the open community and the opportunity to learn and grow by tackling new challenges time and again in a great project. 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 capable of handling large-scale web installations, based on a broad and dedicated community—and that is precisely why it is so successful!