TYPO3 Talk with Daniel Homorodean - TYPO3 will conquer the world!

I like to explore, to involve myself in projects that can change the world for the better and to help people develop their potential. I also like challenges, a lot. Running my own software agency gives me the support to always get into new challenges :) Arxia ( www.arxia.com) is based in Romania and TYPO3 takes a major part of our activity, including development, consultancy and training.

From 2011 we got involved more and more in the TYPO3 Community.  
Initially, we supported the growth of the Romanian community, then we started to promote TYPO3 in other countries.
We have established the international event TYPO3 East Europe in 2013 and organized code sprints in our city. From 2018, I am very involved in bringing TYPO3 to new markets, I lead the TYPO3 Community Expansion Committee and the newly launched TYPO3 International Mentorship Program. Through these initiative, TYPO3 became known by many IT communities in different countries, it was embraced officially by the government of Rwanda and already people from 7 countries where TYPO3 was not known before are learning it from experienced technical mentors.

We believe strongly in the power of communities, the advantages of collaboration and in building partnerships. We believe in open source as a catalyst for technical communities and as an enabler for better value development in the markets. I encourage my colleagues to contribute technically on TYPO3 and they have been actively involved in various sprints. Our most visible contribution is in promoting TYPO3 and the collaboration spirit in the web development communities from our region and other parts of the world.

We have still a lot to do in order to bring TYPO3 on its deserved position in the global scene: the well-known, widely adopted enterprise open source CMS of choice for government, universities and corporations. We are working with a fantastic technical tool, developed by wizard programmers, but our beloved framework is not yet globally embraced and this is what I want to contribute in changing. I am not surprised, nor feeling lucky, but feeling eager to help achieve the goal of having TYPO3 all over the world.

Operating in a country and a region where TYPO3 is not well known, we had to invest more effort in presenting TYPO3 to our local market and to the developers that we wanted in our team. Since there were no knowledgeable TYPO3 people in the workforce market, we had to train every new colleague ourselves. But we gained something from this effort: it helped us to become more competitive in promoting TYPO3 and in training and coaching people how to use it.

TYPO3 will conquer the world, it will be the enterprise CMS of choice in every market and the community will grow steadily and globally. We are deeply involved to make it a reality. This is the common effort of our TYPO3 community and partnership between the TYPO3 agencies is the key.

Some might think that we are not in a global competition and might take comfort that  TYPO3 was constantly strong in several countries in Central Europe. Still, we live in an interdependent world, where if we are not pushing for market development we are at risk of losing also what we already have. The coordinated business drive and the expansion operational focus is instrumental to acquire market share. Both were relatively recently adopted by the TYPO3 Association. We will not take over Wordpress but we can become an active presence in every country, the choice for complex strategic projects. This, I believe, should be our goal, and we are now better prepared to make it happen.

A perceivable weakness can be turned into an advantage. I do not see TYPO3 as being business-driven.  Most of our competition is focused on selling. This focus generates results but we can go a different way. I see TYPO3 instead to be community driven. Properly capitalized and fueled by passion, this can generate adoption, at a level that business focus alone cannot.

If you would want to change something in your ecosystem, you would work on it and do it, isn’t it? Like you do it yourself, with T3Planet. I want TYPO3 to be a global force, adopted world wide by clients and developers. That is what I am actively working on.

The sustainable business results come from the value that we create. Concentrate on value creation, on contribution, on cooperation and on helping others and the business results, and revenue and profit will come naturally.

Most of my answers so far touched this topic. We still need more people and companies directly involved in global expansion initiatives. There are plenty of reasons to get involved and each reason is good: do it for your image, do it for your business, do it for TYPO3, do it for fun.

A TYPO3 marketplace was needed for a long time. I admire the people who act to make things happen instead of waiting and you did well in taking the initiative.

The technical support has to be top notch and the content has to be constantly kept up to date. It could also be an added value if the marketplace would be open to curated contributions developed by various TYPO3 agencies.

To think that TYPO3 “sells itself”. Successfully selling TYPO3 services requires continuous focus on bringing more clients towards TYPO3 and no agency should be comfortable just because the demand for TYPO3 is at a good level in several countries in Europe.

I love discovering new places and cultures, I am an avid mountaineer and I collect old coins and African ritual masks.