TYPO3 Talk with Ric, Ex vice-president of the TYPO3 Association

I’m a serial entrepreneur working on digital transformation and digitization. I’m living in the southern part of the Netherlands, with my family and our black cat. 
Next to that I’m responsible for the TYPO3 trademark, globally and member of the supervisory board of the TYPO3 GmbH.

I have a strong opinion on how people want to work, where they want to work, and how companies can deliver an excellent employee experience. On a regular basis I write articles around that subject on my website and on the Dutch magazine Management Tribune. In the last year, I have been driving how T-Mobile employees worked with digital tools, resulting in a satisfaction score of 80% this fall.

Last but not least, after being asked by the current Board of the TYPO3 Association to run again for a position, I will nominate myself for the upcoming year to have an active role again.

I think it was around 2003 or something, at that time I was one of the owners of a small internet agency, and we were struggling to find the right tool to create more advanced websites to fulfil the needs of our clients.
We started with some evaluation of proprietary software and open-source solutions. TYPO3 was eventually chosen, mainly because of the possibilities and flexibility of the system.

Until april 2020 I was vice-president of the TYPO3 Association, and I have been actively promoting the use of TYPO3 CMS by presenting the business value of the product at conferences and events. Next to that I have been in close contact with agencies to understand what their needs are and in some cases what they need to do to arrange for instance budget requests. 

I’m also the host of several TYPO3 LinkedIn groups, like TYPO3 Professionals Worldwide. 

One of my tasks is still handling all TYPO3 trademark matters. Things like maintaining the trademark registrations, or working together with our trademark lawyer on trademark cases regarding infringements. Next to that, I am also part of the Supervisory Board of the TYPO3 GmbH. That way I’m helping the company prosper in a way that benefits the whole community.
With regards to my encouragement of open source, I always value the fact that it is a possible solution for my daily work.
When working as a digital transformation and digitization consultant, I always consider open-source software as a viable option to create more value for the customer.

I read an interview this weekend with Derek Roos, one of the founders of Mendix. Mendix is a software company that has been sold to Siemens. When Derek was younger, he worked for a small software agency as a sales professional. One of his reasons to start Mendix and create the solution that Mendix offers is that at that time he was the one talking with the customer, and translating their wishes to the developers. Each time the developers created something, his clients were surprised that it was something completely different than they expected.

I recognize that. It has always been one of the hardest parts to first of all translate the ideas and wishes of the customer into something we could build. And also, quoting it for the right and acceptable price.

With the arrival of agile methodologies, like the Scrum framework, I was able to solve some of those challenges, but new ones popped up. For instance, how can you convince the customer to buy sprints instead of a finished product?

If I look at what is important, my advice would be to focus on quality. The TYPO3 CMS is a product that can only be seen as one of the most quality-driven products within the CMS market. As a TYPO3 professional, it is better to refuse a project, than to ignore quality.

It definitely evolved. I can mainly look at it from a business owners perspective. It has evolved from a mere technical tool to a more user friendly tool. It’s still not there where it should be. Technically it is still very advanced, but that’s not always what the customer requests.

I think it has been a good step from the Association to set up the TYPO3 GmbH. I see the role of the Gmbh as a partner for the agencies becoming more important and to help them in reaching more clients and larger projects.

At the Supervisory Board we have many interesting talks regarding future strategies for the company, and the way the Association and community are collaborating. 

With the current pandemic, we proved to be an agile company and organization to change. In our future visions we will use that experience to improve the product and the offered solutions.

80% of all websites are varying from personal, hobby, or small and medium-sized companies. TYPO3 CMS is not the best choice for those sites. With TYPO3 CMS we have chosen the path of offering an enterprise-level solution that is a stable application that can run in complex situations.
Looking at WordPress, it’s easy to set up, average complex to maintain, but difficult to optimize for complex situations.

We lag in marketing at the enterprise level and offer a level of guarantees to enterprises who simply need a solution that is chosen by the international consultancy agencies like Gartner, Enterprise organizations not only look at the quality of the software, but simply the fact that applications are on someones shortlist.

It’s simply a matter of looking at how you want to earn your money. Selling licenses or subscriptions is easy. If your customer base grows with 20% each year, you know exactly what your profit is.

With open source, you do not have the possibility to sell licenses.But, you can see that many agencies who stay true to their ethics and offer a solid and quality driven solution, thrive.

Three things:

• More easy entry into educational material in English
• More localized marketing spearheaded by the local agencies
• An even stronger position of the TYPO3 GmbH as party who can give assurances to companies

First of all, any marketplace helps grow market share. So the initiative T3Planet is excellent. Many of you probably know about the successful marketplaces like Themeforest and Templatemonster. Those two marketplaces have been a large contributor to the success of solutions like Wordpress. 

Building a site starts with selecting the tool (a CMS), a design and some functionality. TYPO3 has the label of a difficult to develop CMS. If you take out that complexity by providing templates for instance, you lower the barrier for agencies to start with TYPO3 and also, you create the possibility that people are quicker in picking up TYPO3. And that will foster the growth of users worldwide. (combined of course with more documentation and the new book).

With marketplaces providing ready to use material, we target the market for DIY and agencies building small sites. That is a market that is also targeted by Wordpress and to a lesser degree WIXX and the likes. That is a market where revenu is low and profit thin. As such the business model is focussed on quantity. So, if standard components built with quality can help agencies in that part of the market, it sure helps.

It helped when TYPO3 wasn’t a big brand by itself. For the end user or company choosing a CMS solution, it’s not always that important to know in what language it is developed. In most RfP’s where I was involved in, it was never an important criterion to select the solution.

ELTS by far, multisite and the consistency of the backend even when you install an extension.

I don’t have anyone specific. If I name some people, I know that I forget to mention someone else. I can only say that it’s easier than ever to reach out to open source heroes, and if you have something interesting to ask them. Simply do it. I have asked several open source leaders in the past (even recently) about their products, and I always got a straightforward answer. 

So, who is the hero? It’s any open source community!

Our Slack channels. Our new book ‘The TYPO3 Guidebook (typo3book.com)’ and all our events (online and when possible IRL)

If you have a great idea, submit it when the Association introduces the budget request round.

I rather see some more active contributions of native English speakers on documentation.

NextCloud. I have introduced NextCloud at one of my customers, and it’s one of the most versatile and stable solutions for file-collaboration. And yes, it can fully compete with OneDrive.

Like many more in the community: BBQ with a nice piece of meat. Watch a good movie with friends. Going to restaurants.