Joining the crew

By: François

T3DD08 is over and I'm going home with my head full of wonderful memories. Being part of such a community brings that much more to my job.

Waiting at Hamburg Airport and still drinking the stuff. Have I developed a habit?

If you use open source software you can be a simple consumer. You download the software, install it and use it. If it's in your line of business, you will probably make money out of it. And you may want to give something back by participating or donating. But there's another important aspect of open source: the community. And that's what events like T3BOARD and T3DD are for. I've never been at T3BOARD, but I can tell you about T3DD.

I have attended T3DD ever since it started in 2006. My main reason for going the first time was that I would learn a lot of things. Meeting people was a nice touch but was not central to my decision to attend. In 2007 meeting people became quite important, because I had started benefiting from those contacts in the meantime. This year it was absolutely central. I knew I would learn new stuff anyway, the main point was that I would be meeting old friends and making new ones by the dozen. Even before going my list of people to meet was pretty long and spontaneous talks started all the time. Some days I felt like I had been meeting people non-stop from 8:00 am to 0:00 pm (or is that "am"?). All these exchanges were incredibly fruitful no matter whether they were directly related to TYPO3 or not.

The very existence of a community and the possibility of meeting bring increased pleasure in my work, a chance I would never have if I were using commercial software. If you are staying alone in your little corner, you should definitely get out of it and meet other TYPO3 users. Events may be a bit far apart and far away for you, but you can always join a TYPO3 User Group, or start one if there's none. If you can, join the community and enjoy the feeling.

You may even get addicted...

Oh no, my body is shaking!