My TYPO3 Year 2014

It is already end of January and I wanted to write this post since weeks, but struggled with the words and details and if I wanted to write this at all. But finally decided to just do it. The main part is my retrospective of TYPO3 and me in 2014. In the end is a short request for support, which makes more sense if you read the rest first :).

In my article I will talk about my code metrics score. I refer to Andy Grunwalds project and specifically these scores (http://metrics.andygrunwald.com/statistics/gerrit/activity-monitor/). The page also explains what the score means.

In January not too much happened. We had just launched Neos 1.0 and everyone was busy with other things. But I met a few times with Gina, Ben and Benni prior to us becoming the Community Working Group officially.
Additionally I worked a bit on the TYPO3 Neos and Flow team communication and was helping out in the chat. I only earned a meager 117 points for January in the global code metrics.

Beginning of February I joined a performance code sprint for Neos (http://typo3.org/news/article/report-on-the-typo3-neos-performance-code-sprint-february-2014/) and we had our Community Working Group meetings throughout the month. My metrics score was 970 so it seems I was busy coding on Flow and Neos.

I don't want to bore you to sleep with repeated information, so you can just assume that I was helping out in the Flow and Neos chat channels and met with the Community Working group the rest of the year as well.

In March a lot of coding happened, with my metrics score of 1175 I was still not in the top 10. End of March we had another Neos code sprint prior to the Inspiring Conference that I attended to give the Neos 101 talk that became my signature talk at barcamps in 2014. Additionally I gave an interview about the TYPO3 project for the FLOSS weekly podcast (http://twit.tv/show/floss-weekly/287).

April gives me a metrics score of 2710 which was the highest of the month. Also we finally unveiled the Community Working Group (http://typo3.org/news/article/always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life/) and met more regularly.

Beginning of May I joined the LinuxTag in Berlin to join CMSGarden for TYPO3 and also the small Community Leadership Summit that happened there. Additionally I visited TYPO3Camp Stuttgart to present the Community Working Group, Flow and Neos. I came in with a code metrics score of 1703, which was third place.

In June a lot has happened. We had a code sprint prior to the Developer Days to finish Neos 1.1 and I was appointed Release Manager. With that responsibility on my mind I tried to push the team through the last few bugs to get it done and  indeed released Neos 1.1 (http://neos.typo3.org/news/typo3-neos-1-1-released.html) During DevDays I gave some workshops around Flow and Neos.
The week after I went to the OpenExpo in Madrid to present the TYPO3 project to a group of spanish open-source enthusiasts and business people. From there I flew straight to TYPO3Camp Berlin to represent the Community Working Group and Neos. Again I came in third in the overall code metrics with a score of 1855.

July saw a drop of activity from me as I tried to get some actual work done. My code metrics show 590 points. But in the middle of the month I joined the (My) Community Manager hangout (http://mycmgr.com/cmgrhangout/) together with Ben to talk about communities.

At the beginning of August I went to TYPO3Camp Bremen to present the Community Working Group as well as Flow and Neos and also won the "Wanderpokal" for the best session(s).
End of August we had another full week Neos code sprint and could get a lot of things done. My code metrics score says 1438 points, again 3rd.

In September I also tried to get some actual work done, but joined TYPO3Camp Munich to present Neos there. Code score was also down to 501. On behalf of the Community Working Group I organized a hangout with expert Ashe Dryden to talk about diversity in Open Source communities and how we can proceed.
End of September the team had another Neos code sprint that I didn't join this time, Mainly because of the amount of travelling I had done up to that point and already had planned for after that.

Which brings me to October. This was a very busy month indeed. The first week was filled with presenting at T3CON and from there flying to the Internet Festival in Pisa to give a talk about TYPO3.
A week after that I flew to San Francisco together with Christian Jul Jensen to represent TYPO3 at the Google Summer Of Code Mentors Summit.
Did I tell you that I organised the participation of TYPO3 in Google Summer Of Code this year? This took quite some effort for the application and project ideas earlier in 2014. We stayed a full week even though the Summit was only 4 days.
No wonder my code score was pretty low at just 424 points.

In November the Neos team had the opportunity to work on a code sprint with some financial support from the association (https://typo3.org/news/article/a-big-leap-for-typo3-neos/), I worked a lot on a brand new resource management for Flow, still my code score is "just" 1677 because big changes do not count more than small ones. Additionally I joined TYPO3Camp Rhein-Ruhr again to represent Neos there.

December was pretty short, I continued to work on Neos in wake of the sprint, still my code score is just 911 points. But apart from that not much happened before the holidays.

That was it, my personal retrospective of last years TYPO3 engagement. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed investing so much time in TYPO3. But...

The code sprint in November didn't exactly work out as expected. We wanted to do something similar to the workpackages of TYPO3 CMS (http://www.workpackages.org/metanav/faq/) but due to communication issues this didn't work out, which we realized only after the fact. So I invested a lot of work time in November for a lot lower rate than expected and of course couldn't make up for that in December. Together with the huge amount of hours I put in for free during the rest of the year that means I am actually short of money now. For those people working in agencies that participated in the code sprint these agencies took over the "missing" bit. I don't have that luxury and hope to find a sponsor for at least the missing amount from the November sprint (which would be 110 hours x 45€). I will of course publicly thank all sponsors and tweet about them. Besides that I can only pledge to keep my work up. Should there be sponsoring for more than the missing amount I will reinvest that by freeing up additional hours this year. So if you got the impression that my work helps the TYPO3 ecosystem it would be amazing if you could support that by sponsoring it.

Thanks and a great 2015 for TYPO3 and you!

You can contact me via christian(at)kitsunet.de or @daskitsunet on Twitter.

Update: I received sponsoring from dkd Internet Service GmbH and elementare teilchen GmbH so far covering part of the mentioned amount, big thanks to both of them! :)