Our recap of TYPO3 Developer Days 2025!

Our journey began on Wednesday directly from the office. Seven of us set off together. What would a train journey be without the classic problem? That's right, train delays. So we missed our first connecting train. But hey, that didn't dampen the mood. On the way, we picked up Marcus in Munich and later, completely unplanned, Tina on the train to Stuttgart. In the end, there were nine of us and we arrived in Karlsruhe a little late. We ended the evening in a relaxed atmosphere with our colleagues who had already arrived and many familiar faces from the TYPO3 community!

The first official day kicked off with a powerful keynote speech by Benni Mack and Benjamin Kott under the motto “Own What You Build”. It was about the responsibility we bear in software development—not only for the code itself, but also for its maintenance and promotion, especially in the age of AI.

This was followed by exciting insights into new TYPO3 features from Oli Bartsch. A particular highlight for us was, of course, the talk by our colleague Florian Froidevaux: Entitled "Beyond SEO: Practical Artificial Intelligence Optimization (AIO) for TYPO3", he showed how AI summaries are changing search and how you can make your websites fit for this.

Another highlight was the presentation “Return to Kong Mountain” by Christian Heilmann. Using the story of cartographer James Renell and the non-existent Kong Mountains, which were blindly copied onto maps for 200 years, he drew an ingenious parallel to blind trust in AI. A well-deserved winner of the Best Talk Award!

The evening was all about getting involved: At the Contribution Night our colleagues have been involved in various aspects of TYPO3. Our trainees have contributed to the TYPO3.org ecosystem, and our colleague Dennis proudly contributed his very first TYPO3 patch.

Friday was packed with deep dives. We dove into topics such as content blocks, the Schema and Record API, and the DataHandler. Simon Praetorius also gave us an exciting update on the future of Fluid. Benjamin Kott presented the redesign of the dashboard and impressively demonstrated how much effort was required to make the interface completely accessible.

After so much input, it was time for some action in the evening. Florian took part in the kegel night and earned a lot of points. At the same time, Andreas demonstrated his knowledge at the quiz night together with other community members.

On the last day, the focus was once again on best practices and new technologies in combination with TYPO3. In his talk “Little Gems of TYPO3 v13/v14”, Jigal van Hemert presented small but subtle changes that make our everyday work with TYPO3 easier.

The interpersonal topics were also particularly valuable. In her talk “From Holding Back to Stepping Forward – Taking Space and Owning It”, Dr. Darina Schkolnik motivated us to step out of our comfort zones more often. Helmut Hummel, well known in the community, gave us deep insights into life as an open source contributor in his presentation and showed us how to get the most out of it for ourselves and our projects.

The crowning finale was the social event in the evening. We brought the Developer Days to a close together with fantastic food, lots of snacks, and countless good conversations.

What an event! We were there with a total of 14 colleagues—a strong presence among 378 participants. It was the first time for four of our team members, and the feedback was unanimous: exciting topics and an incredibly open and warm community where you immediately feel welcome.

We were particularly pleased to be able to sponsor Contribution Night again this year. Initially, we were somewhat skeptical about the new format with only two parallel slots, but the first-class selection of talks won us over. This meant we were never “spoiled for choice” and could concentrate fully on the high-quality presentations.

The TYPO3 Developer Days 2025 were a complete success. We are returning with tons of new knowledge, fresh motivation, and many great memories. See you next time!