TYPO3 Surfcamp 2025
Recap
TYPO3 Surfcamp 2025
The TYPO3 Surfcamp is a special event for "TYPO3 newcomers", where young people with different IT backgrounds from all over Europe come together to make new contacts and write code for TYPO3 together - but not in any ordinary congress location, but in the surfing paradise Fuerteventura. Because the name says it all: At the camp, not only code is created under the open sky, but the participants also receive surfing lessons on the waves of the Atlantic. We sent our two webits Yasmin and Florian to the island and summarized their impressions in this recap.
Code, surf, more code
Although the TYPO3 Surfcamp took place where others go on vacation, it was a real workation. Not only because surf lessons mean muscle soreness, but also because the participants worked a total of 1,000 hours on projects in one week. They were divided into teams, each under the professional guidance of someone who has been part of the TYPO3 universe for a long time and has a lot of expertise. Each team then worked on an extension and had to present the current progress to the rest of the camp daily. Our webits were in different teams and were able to contribute to two new extensions at the same time.
Current content in just one minute
Yasmin's team dedicated themselves to developing an extension that provides data from an interface for use in content elements with just a few clicks. It allows to specify exactly which data should be used, for example, to populate a table or an overview on a website with current information. The extension simplifies the daily work of editors as they no longer have to maintain content from third-party applications individually. With the right configurations, it is also possible to easily switch the interface as a data source and thus quickly provide the content element with different content. The plan is to release the extension soon, simplify the configuration workflow, and offer a pool of standard templates for content elements to further reduce additional development effort thanks to the greater selection.
Online surveys without programming skills
The goal of Florian's team was to develop an extension that enables the creation of online surveys in the TYPO3 backend even with little technical understanding. With 'Surfey', an extension was created that uses popular TYPO3 components such as the Form Builder from 'ext:form' and leverages existing styling by using the ext-form rendering, so that just a few clicks are enough to publish a survey online. A module was added to manage the surveys in one place and view statistics. Also with Surfey, the team primarily focused on the editorial staff, who can achieve results more quickly with less effort in this way. In the future, the creation and evaluation of surveys should be further simplified, for example by using a creation assistant or a more detailed presentation of the results. In addition, in the future, it should be possible, among other things, to view real-time data in ongoing surveys or to receive help in answering questions through AI support.
Our TYPO3 Surfcamp 2025
Besides coding late into the night and surfing waves, the TYPO3 Surfcamp was above all a team-building event. The groups were put together in an interdisciplinary way and had to demonstrate their communication skills in order to work effectively together. Our two web developers not only improved their teamwork, but also learned to independently design a project outside of their usual structures, avoiding pitfalls such as overengineering and lack of prioritization. Skills that will enrich our client projects.
Other highlights included working on a patch for the TYPO3 Core, which will be part of the next release, and a live broadcast to TYPO3 Camp Vienna, where the development progress of the extensions was presented.
As they continue working on the projects to successfully implement them in the long term and make them available to the community, Yasmin and Florian are already looking forward to seeing many of the participants from the surf camp again at the upcoming TYPO3 Dev Days in Karlsruhe. We thank the organizing team for this great opportunity to support the TYPO3 newcomers!
)
Share this post