Mr. King, please proceed to Gate 3

By: Robert Lemke

The old king just walked through the passport control and as my flight goes some hours later, this leaves me behind in Starbucks' public living room, concerned about the usability of my Banana Java Chip blended "Frapuccino". It's not that I ordered it due to some unsatisfied desire for coffee - how could I after drinking one "Emmy cafe latte" after another between our T3DD sessions here in Zürich. No, it was rather the curiosity for how one can possibly consume this mixture of solid cream, chocolate chunks, crashed ice cubes, milk and coffee. And I'm still undecided after trying to suck half of the cup through a straw which gets blocked by the chunks on every pull.

So I'm sitting here at the very same place Kasper and I reflected the 5.0 brainstorming sessions in a video podcast after last year's Developer Days. How different the TYPO3 world is in comparison to back then and how much it remains the same at the same time.

It's only four years ago that I met Kasper for the first time - we had a ride together to the T3BOARD03 in my hopelessly overloaded VW Golf. It was a great trip which gave me the opportunity to passively join the "Accelerator Meeting" which took place in Snowflake's office one day before the snowboard tour started. As I wasn't part of the inner circle at that time, I was stunned getting to know the people who sat together, discussing the future of TYPO3.

By the time I became more involved in the development of extensions and ultimately TYPO3 itself. I finally had the chance to work with Kasper for his favorite client, Dassault Systemes, which among other things led to our famous TemplaVoila coding session on the Eiffel tower.

I can say that TYPO3 really changed my life and I would never have guessed that I'd get to know some of my best friends through an Open Source project (as I don't consider myself matching the cliché of a pale-skinned coding-junkie, well not pale at least). Some of my TYPO3 fellows really inspire me to explore new fields of life and fortunately these acres are not limited to the land of computers and software development.

And what brings the future? Well, one thing is for sure: many new TYPO3 versions. And what the crystal ball reveals for Kasper personally surely won't stay a secret for long. I am convinced that Kasper will find the right choice for a challenge which allows him to bring in all his creativity and passion for tasks which make a difference.

We can count ourselves lucky that the TYPO3 community provides enough room for a variety of projects and initiatives and even allows us to work on 4.x and version 5 at the same time. Without the community, the financial and infrastructural support, the brand and the spirit it would be incomparably more difficult for even the best system architect to create a successful product like we plan for TYPO3 5.0.

I am glad that Kasper ignited the firework which eventually became TYPO3 and inspired us to share what we love most: our tt_news extended plus plus extension ;-)

Thank you Kasper!

 

PS: This blog entry was written at Zürich Airport on 29th of April but I only found the time and Internet connection to publish it today.

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