T3CON 2015 Amsterdam - ENGLISH VERSION

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The TYPO3 agency anders und sehr from Stuttgart is part of the TYPO3 Conference 2015 in Amsterdam and is reporting live. We are looking forward to many interesting sessions and announcements regarding plans and future goals for TYPO3. Have fun reading!

It starts now - the first day of the T3CON 2015

Same as last year Javier Salas, CEO of anders und sehr and head of the Pluswerk AG, is taking on the introduction of the conference. We are looking forward to two amazing days and one of the highlights: the prize giving ceremony of the TYPO3 Award 2015.

Keynote - Think beyond digital transformation

Alain Veuve started off the conference with the topic “Think beyond digital transformation”. He mentions Ray Kurzweil according to whom technical progress runs exponentially. As an example of this theory he talks about the development of computational power since 1900. We are on the verge of having the computational power of a mouse’s brain in our computers. If the development goes on, the computational power of a human brain will be purchasable for 1000$ in 2023 and for only a cent in 2037. At the same time the population development also runs exponentially, thanks to modern medicine. These two developments go hand in hand.

In the last hundred years our daily life has changed drastically and rapidly due to technical innovations. For three weeks Alain for example made his payments in Europe solely through Apple Pay – with just a fingerprint as seen in the movie “Back to the future”. He supports this statement with other examples like Smart TVs and Augmented Reality Apps. Bottom line: People tend to overestimate progress in the short term while underestimating it in the long term. In the next twenty years the world will change again like it did 100 years ago.

Alain assumes that in the future we will interact in a completely different way with computers. As an example he mentions light bulbs. 100 years ago light bulbs were controlled by humans through light switches. Today light bulbs can already control themselves, for example when you enter a room. In the future computers will behave in a similar way: we will not control them but they will control themselves partially. To think further we will not be able to recognize computers – they will be working in the background.

Human kind is still at the beginning of the digital disruption. It will come. It will be dramatic. We do not know for sure how it will look like. Every company has to ask itself how business will look like in 20 to 30 years because competitors who use new technologies will provide better solutions. How does a company survive in such an environment? Companies have to become agile companies (which has nothing to do with Scrum). In this area of tension consisting of technology, society and business agile companies have to extend their antennas to anticipate changes early. And they have to build a business culture which welcomes such changes.

How to set up your bug tracking workflow

Thomas Pehan from Usersnap provides secrets regarding the “Do’s and Don’ts” of dealing with bugs. He discusses the problems of bugs and shows how you can deal with them best.

In the last years there were big changes in the development of web-projects. The way we handle bugs stayed the same though. The session by Thomas starts here and shows what to watch out for in four steps.

Step 1: Defining rules

What is a bug and what is not a bug? How do you even find bugs? These questions have to be clarified and communicated at the beginning of a project.

How do you find bugs?

Automatic testing
Advantages: Fast and reliable results
Disadvantages: Big initial investment, the feeling of a real device is missing

Manual testing
Advantage: low initial costs, agile, human perception can be used
Disadvantage: high expenses for employees, humans make mistakes

“Crowd test” (e.g. through platforms like Testbirds):
Advantages: Low costs, human perception can be used
Disadvantages: Special target groups (e.g. Seventy-year-olds with an iPhone 5) can be difficult

Step 2: Documentation

The following questions have to be documented for every bug:

• What: What is the problem exactly? 
• Where: Where does the problem occur (on which site, in which browser)? 
• When: When does the problem occur 
• Who: With whom does the problem occur 
• Why: Why does the reporter think the problem occurs?

Step 3: Reproduce

A bug you cannot see is hard to fix. An ideal interface with the client (e.g. through screenshots, screen-sharing, …) displays bugs for everyone.

Step 4: Fixing bugs

Who decides that a bug has been fixed and who reports it as fixed? This question is crucial for the client’s satisfaction and has to be clarified and communicated at the beginning of the project.

Content strategy is about experience, not products

Advertisers and clients like to talk past each other. Sophisticated consumers who read internet reviews do not trust advertising messages anymore. For these consumers the product matters less and less – the experience counts. Since more and more information is available it gets harder and harder to reach the target group in this noise. He calls to put the consumer in the center of the content to actually reach them. The focus is on the user’s needs, not the technical implementation. Babak presents a five-step framework with which you can create relevant content.

Let's get RE.A.L. // No offers, No Contracts, No Sprints

Sven Dietz from sitegeist talks about the best project ever made

• How do projects proceed? 
• You write proposals 
• You write specifications 
• You fight about the expense 
• You get worked up about change-request
• You discuss “It can’t be that complex, can it?” 

Why do people do projects in such a way? A project with a volume of 100,000 Euros has additional costs of roughly 30% for contracts, discussions with the client, planning, … Why?

• #NoEstimates? #RawEstimates! But how do I explain it to the client? 
• No discussions beforehand: Why should you discuss estimations of a task when you debate that it took too long later? 
• Only pay when satisfied: The client only pays for tasks which satisfied them 
• Search for the right client: Why should you work for a client who does not value your work? #RawEstimates: The client receives a rough price and a list of all the modules/ functions 
• Forecasts: The client receives status reports regularly. Which expenses have come up, where are we right now? Taking fears away: We start now, no proposals, no contracts. “We convince the client with work and results”, the client only pays when satisfied 
• Focus on the essentials: What does the client want? What does the client need? You must not implement functions that are not necessary

Pecha Kucha - 20 Slides in 400 seconds

Seven agencies present their projects in the Pecha Kucha format.

• Thomas Heyen (sitegeist media solutions GmbH) - www.sysmex-europe.com 
• Javier Salas (anders und sehr GmbH) - www.lorch.eu 
• Patrick Broens (Freelancer) - www.tue.nl 
• Boris Hinzer (web-vision GmbH) - www.fliesenmax.de 
• Ingo Schmitt (Marketing Factory Consulting GmbH) - www.heimwerker.de 
• Robert Lindh (Pixelant AB) - Create more than 400 Websites for Media 
• Christian Bülter (Pluswerk AG) - it-zoom.de

How the Social Intranet frees the working place

In his session Rio illustrates how the working environment has changed for example through Home Office and globally distributed teams and which requirements on Social Collaboration Intranet platforms it presents. In times of skill shortage companies have to be attractive to potential workers to find suitable employees. One way to achieve this goal is to offer flextime and home office. To enable this, the internal system of corporations has to be able to. He presents a project which he planned as a consultant through close collaboration with his client. The most important part of the result was the reduction of the displayed information. This also applies to editors, who have to provide the content. At first the system was implemented agilely with minimal possibilities so that more functions could be added when needed. The lesson: only a few requests emerged. For instance in the text editor with minimal functions only tables and bullets were requested additionally.

Case Studies

Now it is time for three very interesting Case Studies (and each of them gets 25 minutes :))

• Sven Dietz & Andreas Kräuter - Hapag-Lloyd Cruises 
• Benny Mack & Tracey Peers - Texere Publishing & TYPO3 
• Andy Kräuter & Berti Golf - BLSV

Social Median in New York

Rouven Kasten (GLS Bank), longstanding consultant for digital communication, was told again and again that Americans are 2-4 years ahead of Europeans in terms of social media and online marketing. When he had the chance to visit New York in May 2014 he wanted to verify this personally. Upon arrival at the JFK airport he already noticed through several Yahoo posters that things were wired differently here. He took us on a short journey through the city, to various companies and cultural institutions. His examples made clear how interconnected on- and offline advertisements can already work, how casually one can handle one’s data while accepting it in exchange for convenience. The flood of social media offers brings up one question: “Is this still social? – Or is this social spam?” Rouven Kasten likes to compare networks like Facebook to private gardens of clients and companies to disturbers which stomp through their flowerbed. Whether clients can tolerate this and whether they are capable of filtering this flood of information could be debated in the final discussion.

[Guest-session by Rouven Kasten, Photo Copyright by Robert Lindh ]

NoDev, NoOps, NoIT: Defining Community Software

Hussein Badakhchani introduces three principles for IT-decisions: No software development, no operation, no IT. At first this sounds like a revolution. This is based on a simple idea: organizations should only develop software and operate IT-systems themselves or even have an own IT if it serves the added value. Therefore he speaks for the usage of Open Source software. Hussein emphasizes that this is only his personal opinion.

Management in agile, fast changing, large organizations

How can you fight the chaos? For this purpose Dr. Johannes Mainusch has a few ideas. Using the example of large corporations, which have grown rapidly, he illustrates which problems can occur in his session at the T3CON in Amsterdam. There are e.g. veteran programmers, who have to be brought out of their pension, because nobody can maintain the code they have once written.

As a consequence IT-companies should focus on one thing: Changes. One component is deployment. The goal should be to deploy a system into the live-environment in ten minutes which is then accessed by one hundred thousand visitors per day. Independent teams, which have their own software stack, are also important. As a method he recommends Scrum with cross-functional teams. All in all a very interesting session spiced with funny anecdotes at the T3CON.

[Guest-session by Christian Bülter]

Hot or not - who are TYPO3's competitors?

Patrick Lobacher, chairman of Pluswerk AG, introduces different content management systems. Did you know that 25% of all the websites around the world are hosted by Wordpress? These numbers are impressing and presumably unexpected for many people. TYPO3 is 5th place on the CMS ranking worldwide with a percentage of 1.6%. In Germany the market share of TYPO3 amounts to 10% which makes it 3rd place. When you only consider market-listed companies in Germany, which often host significantly large websites, the market share of TYPO3 amounts to roughly 30%.

Over 50% of all websites are hosted without a CMS leading to tons of potential in the market. To show the differences Patrick segments the market by project size and suggests using TYPO3 for the following case: It is the most suitable for project sizes between 25.000€ and 500.000€.

In analyses by market researchers, for instance Gartner or Forrester, TYPO3 however does not show up. Therein systems like Sitecore or Adobe Experience Manager are mentioned. What does TYPO3 have to incorporate for it to be able to gain market shares in the competition for high-end appearances? An important feature: Frontend editing for easy edit of content, just like Neos implemented. Many providers offer functions for Customer Experience Management. These include functions, which display precisely customized content to the user. Partially these systems react to the behavior of users in real-time and adjust their online experience accordingly. Partially the online experience adapts to the user automatically and shows conversions and their value directly in the CMS – without using an external tool. The content is specifically delivered so that the value of the conversions is maximized.

If TYPO3 wants to gain market shares in the future, these functions have to be implemented into the system one at a time.

Day 2 - Keynote

Benni Mack & Mathias Schreiber took on the introduction of the 2nd conference day. Their session “TYPO3 CMS 7 – How we got here” showed their goals for TYPO3 7, what they have actually accomplished and how they did it. Objectives of development were to raise reliability and quality, to program new features and to shorten the time of implementation of TYPO3. Other goals included easier editing of content, maintaining the unprecedented flexibility and at the same time leaving room to grow. Old braids were cut off in TYPO3 7 and the base of the code was made more consistent. So what was achieved? Clients and agencies welcomed the advancement with open arms. Promptly the backend was reworked, the performance boosted and the usability improved. The new image editor was well received by both clients and agencies. All in all 270 developers have contributed to TYPO3 7. The amount of open tickets was reduced by roughly 80%. TYPO3 7 LTS will be released on the 10th of November 2015.

The future of Rich Text Editing

Frederico Caldeira talks about “What has been, what is now and what is coming” regarding editing of content. Many of us are still familiar with the first Rich Text Editors for web. Formerly a revolution, its output was dreaded by developers. How can information regarding formatting and actual content be separated? The answer used to be editors which were used in many WIKI-systems. They were good from a viewport of a developer, but for the regular user? Topics like devices, accessibility and speed have gotten into the focus more and more over the last few years. As a result editors like the Aloha Editor, which is used in NEOS, have emerged.

And what does the future hold? Frederico thinks that content will be device-independent in the future. There will be standards which define how content is created. There will be systems and services which are responsible for putting together content; dependent on the user, the time, the device etcetera. Systems like TYPO3 CMS will integrate editing of content further. Functions like “Collaborative Editing” will be implemented. Wizards in the CMS will help the editor to create “ideal” content.

T3-Kit

The T3-Kit by Robert Lindh & Jozef Spisak from Sweden makes it easier for developers to get into TYPO3 while also making it faster. T3-Kit provides frontend-editing (based on Aloha). A neatly arranged dashboard has also been integrated. Hence Google Analytics can be used in the TYPO3-Backend directly. Now the T3-Kit will become Open Source and be offered on Github. A Vagrant Machine is available.

Accessible TYPO3 distribution

Jo Hasenau announces that he will request a budget for a TYPO3 Package, which unifies all requirements: Responsive Design, accessibility and much more. Kickoff is supposed to be 2016.

Technical view on content strategy

In his session Christian Müller talks about content strategies and how they can be supported by a CMS. Functions which are currently not available in TYPO3 and Neos but support content strategie processes were introduced. Most of the suggestions are relatively easy to implement since required data is already available in the CMS. Ideas introduced:

• The structure of a site can be exported directly out of the CMS to work with during a relaunch or advancement. 
• Functions which allow you to attach meta information to sites are very useful to create a profile of every site (for example “This is a product site” or “This is a linkbait” etc.).Functions which allow you to attach meta information to sites are very useful to create a profile of every site (for example “This is a product site” or “This is a linkbait” etc.). 
• Guidelines for editors can also be put directly into TYPO3 and can be opened with just one click when needed. 
• Content, which has to be updated regularly, is labeled with a date and appears in the ToDo list automatically. 
• Hints to content which has been changed in a different language. 
• Images can be converted into different formats automatically. However this does not work for all image content. 
• A function to add notes to content (analogous to PDF-comments) would provide helpful meta information.

T3CON 2015 Amsterdam - Semantic Annotations within TYPO3 CMS

Johannes Goslar from DKD talks about the ForgetIT project, an EU research project and part of the “Seven Framework Programme”. He tries to support users with handling large amounts of data and integrating those into TYPO3. Basically the following steps take place:

• Managed Forgetting: There is a process which initiates “Forgetting” 
• Synergetic Preservation: There are two systems. An “active” and an “archive” one. 
• Contextualized Remembering: meta information is saved to a document. 

Through extensions content can be expanded through data to connect those with a “Knowledge Graph” in ForgetIT. Via information retrieved through here the “Forgetting” can be controlled.

How to get your web site ready for the future - web interoperability

Malte’s session focused on websites and web applications and how you can get them ready for different devices and browsers. Of all things browser sniffing leads to falsely displayed websites. When browser updates are released, for instance the new Edge-browser, browser sniffing does not work how it is supposed to. This is where browser manufacturers can help: One approach to fixing this problem is supporting CSS-prefixes of other Browsers (e.g. Webkit) additionally to the standards. Moreover since Windows 8.1 the Microsoft Browser sends a different user agent string so that websites with user agent detection react in the right way. The new Edge-browser even pretends to be Chrome to maximize compatibility. Malte recommends moving away from browser detection and instead enquiring features. http://caniuse.com lets you find out easily which features are supported by which browsers. Developers can retrieve browser features with the tool https://modernizr.com. Malte appealed to not support old versions of browsers anymore and in return received applause. Applause also followed the announcement that ActiveX will not be supported in Edge anymore. Microsoft’s focus for the Edge browser is now interoperability. Microsoft will implement the officially approved standards as well as techniques, which have not been standardized yet but are widely spread. The roadmap for the Edge browser built the conclusion: Starting January 2016 only Edge, or Internet Explorer 11, will be developed further. Microsoft will call their clients to not use old browsers anymore.