It was a great comeback of Baden-Württemberg on the map of TYPO3 community events!
Location #
The camp took place at the SRH Campus in Heidelberg. It nearly was a perfect location for such an event. The location is built for teaching, learning and community. All the technical equipment exists here and works; there are enough rooms for multiple sessions; the restaurant can handle hundreds of people with different needs who want to eat at the same time.
The weather also was perfect to be outside during the breaks and enjoy Baden-Württemberg's blue sky and golden sun.
Topics #
As always at a barcamp, there is no predefined agenda; the sessions are proposed and held by the participants. The most sessions, of course, addressed developers as the target group. But there also were sessions for non-techies. The organization team explicitly encouraged the participants to bring sessions for editors and other daily users of TYPO3.
In recent months - or even years - most topics at the events, I attended, were about Artificial Intelligence (AI): Vibe coding, MCP server, MCP in the browser, how AI changed and may change our work, risks of using AI, ... But there also were numerous other topics about workflows, build pipelines, accessibility and so on.
My Sessions #
Here is a short list of the sessions that I attended (original titles as they were named on the schedule):
- SEO GEO mit Schema.org (Chris Müller)
- Neues in der V14 (Flix)
- Extension AI Generator (Martin Helmich)
- Visual Editor für TYPO3 (Matthias Vogel)
- Web MCP - Wie kann man KI Agenten effizient auf der Website steuern (Florian Gaa)
- Warum du dich wandeln musst (Frank Nägler)
- Austausch Barrierefreiheit testen (Lukas Fritze)
Community #
There were 164 sold tickets, which is a great number for an event that did not exist before. I met several good old friends. TYPO3 events always feel like a family meeting with the best parts of the family. But there also were a large number of participants who were at their first TYPO3 event ever. I talked to some of them and they really enjoyed being there.
As always I can say that the TYPO3 community is open-hearted, warm-hearted, and welcoming. You really should visit a TYPO3 event if you have not yet!
Room for Improvement #
The event was nearly perfect. But there were two things that I think could be improved next year:
Too many parallel sessions: There were seven rooms for sessions. Even at camps with three rooms, I sometimes cannot decide where to go and would like to attend multiple sessions. With seven rooms this is even harder. There were too many interesting sessions in one time slot. I always had the feeling of missing too much.
The social event: Maybe I'm too spoiled from other TYPO3 events. But I expected more from the social event. You had to book an extra ticket if you wanted to join and received an extra wristband during the event check-in. This raised my expectations. In the evening there was: food in the campus restaurant. I didn't notice any special program or activity. — Don't get me wrong, it's OK that I had to pay for the food. And it is OK to give people an extra wristband to ensure everything runs smoothly. I just expected more, because there have been really great social events at camps in the past: fancy dinners, quizzes, BBQs and others.
Outlook 2027 #
The organizers promised, "THE CÄMP" will come back in 2027. And I promise, I also will!
