Thursday night, we had our first day of San Francisco TYPO3 Camp. We were joined by Joachim Mathes who gave a well-organized tour of List generator (pt_list) and showed how it can efficiently display large, complex lists in a user-friendly manner--very impressive. He also will forever have my respect for doing on-the-fly the typoscript for an advanced search based on a question from the group. Nerves of steel.
After his presentation we had an informal discussion about the local TYPO3 community and what we need to do to get more developers involved. We were all in agreement that there is a lot of excitement in the Bay Area about TYPO3 and that having events and sharing experiences is helping. But for TYPO3 to move to the next level here we need to reach a critical mass and to do that we need to grow the local developer base. So we will keep doing what we are doing: running regular events, sharing information, and strengthening relationships, and the community will grow naturally.
Last weekend, a few blocks from us, Wordpress ran WordCamp, a one-day event attended by about 800 people; three weeks ago Twitter had Chirp with attendance of over 1000; and about a month ago Drupalcon had over 3000 attendees at the Moscone Center. So how fast will TYPO3 grow in San Francisco? There is only one way to find out, come join us.