Contao Developer Conference 2010 in Stuttgart DE

Hey guys!

Some of you might have already heard about it.
The majority of the most active extension developers will meet in Stuttgart DE this weekend to talk about several very interesting topics.
I thought the non-German-speakers might be curious about what we're talking about too, so I'll try to give you some insights via Twitter.
I'll use the hashtag #cdc2010en for this purpose. Maybe there are also other devs who'll be sharing information with you.

Please keep in mind that I'll be focussing on discussions, not on sharing every single word :)
You're warmly welcome to follow my/our tweets 8-)

Thanks Toflar.
Very much appreciated.
Seems I've finally find a reason to visit Twitter :D

I'll be following to!

Think they should rename it again: Germano CMS.

(a) it's not an official conference - this is a German community project
(b) Contao is a German software and the German-speaking user base is still way bigger than the English one

what do you expect?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thyon

Think they should rename it again: Germano CMS.

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Haha, you're right! :lol:

@Toflar
And you still wonder why the english community is smaller than german one, if all conferences are in deutsch?

Looks like you and I are on the same wavelength Mr. Qzminski... :lol:

More like: http://www.theycanttakeajokeCMS.org.

PS. You forgot about all the books that are in German too...

The conference is in German because it's a German community project. The books are in German because it's their native language. You shouldn't blame the German community for this as long as you native English-speakers don't write English books either, hm? ;)

Well, we are allowed to blame, as we are not a part of the Contao team but a regular users.

That's the choice of the Contao team whether they want to have a cms popular worldwide or not. But that, everything related to Contao is german, is little unserious. Besides, you don't have to be a native english-speaker to write an english book, do you?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tru

But that, everything related to Contao is german, is little unserious.

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You are kidding ... I hope.

But I really don't want to discuss this again. There's already this thread.

To give you perspective:

For the Contao Partner price 99 Euro which is a lot of money in South African Rand for just a listing on the main site http://www.contao.org (I don't see myself buying anything off the shop). For almost 3/4 that price I renew my yearly 20GB MobileMe membership, or become an official iPhone Developer (as we all know how much documentation there is for that).

Looking through that listing, you will only find 3 "First Language" English speakers:
Ben and Blair from the US and Gary from UK (I think).

EDIT:
Also, what people do is go to the main site, look through the pages. And they just see books in German. Most people will then assume (incorrectly) that this is mostly a German CMS and it's documentation will be in German and support in German. That's the core issue for me. If there are books on Contao and it's Conferences, etc. in English as well as German, then people might not bypass this great CMS so quickly. After these conferences, you guys say things like: "Would you like me to translate the slides into English?" -- ouch!! :o

PS. Tru meant that anything that delves in-depth into Contao and explains things in detail.

No reason anyone can't get an English speaking group together. Or Spanish. Or Swahili. I was thinking of doing something via Skype for anyone who is interested. We all speak the language of Contao!

I think the real key here is going to be getting some good summaries of the conference in a bunch of different languages and solicit some feedback. That way everyone can participate and contribute. I know Yanick is tweeting in English but I would really love to have some comprehensive summaries of the discussions...

That said, I think the project overall has motivated me to take some German classes :)

Guys, don't get me wrong, but I think this discussion moves in a circle. We already told you the reasons and also that we can do only so much for the english community.

Do you know why the german community is that strong? NOT because most of the team members are German native speakers, but because community people started to participate and wrote tutorials. People also wrote the books because they wanted to, not because we told them to.

So yes, we - as a team - try to get more english informations online, but if we all want this to also work out for the english community, please stop complaining and help us.

@Thyon: You are not seriously comparing the Apple dev-membership (a major corporation with a revenue of $42.91 billion) with an open source project like Contao? Leo offers the partnership through his small company and you get everything that he tells you at the partnership-application. So what are you complaining about? You can't compare apples and pears, as we say here.

So are you guys really going to wail over everything the German community creates (btw. not created by the official team, but organized by people like you from the community!)? Or are you interested in a better tutorial/information base for the english community? If it is the latter, help us and work together with us.

And yes, we'll of course try to get you an English summary of the DevCon in the next few days.

Everyone is missing the boat. Don't think of it as personal. I don't care about English documentation, as I know Contao backwards and use it everyday. I don't care about Developer documentation, as I know the system pretty much backwards as well. I don't really care about the connections, communities or anything like that, because I'm already on the team, working and contributing.

I'm looking at all of this for someone coming from outside trying to decide on the CMS. If I wasn't this dedicated, committed and self-sufficient, I would not have stuck with Contao, as I mostly had to figure things out myself, and still do.

Therefore, along the way, and in my small way, I've added quite a number of features to Contao, which you're all using today. And that is merely because I get deep into the code, and use the system myself, so I know what's wrong, what needs to improve and what still needs a bit of polish. I have my ways of working on Contao to make it even better than it is now, it's just not on documentation.

PS. Remember my TypoGrams?

Hi all,

you'll find some images from the Contao DevCon here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tru

Besides, you don't have to be a native english-speaker to write an english book, do you?

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Writing a book that should be published and taken serious is IMHO not possible if you are not very firm in the language. I have seen people not writing perfect english being named fool and idiot in chats and forums, and that is nowhere near to the high demands that publishers put on book manuscripts.

Well, yeah, but I meant that the biggest problem is to provide the content for a book. The language mistakes could be corrected by native-speakers then.

Actually, this native stuff is nonsense. The correct term is to say: "English as first language" or "fluent in english"
:lol:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thyon

Actually, this native stuff is nonsense. The correct term is to say: "English as first language" or "fluent in english"
:lol:

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Hehe, so we label us as "not fluent in english" by using the wrong term ;)

But I am not sure if this is true. I see the term "native speaker" in my Oxford dictionary:

Quote:

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native speaker(na¦tive speak¦er), noun: a person who has spoken the language in question from earliest childhood

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Maybe it's "british English"?

South Africa is chosen by many News stations all over the world including CNN, who has poached almost every news reader we have that has been good, because of our neutral english accent. Actually this forum is the first place I have heard this "native" term before, and most of our media and workplaces use english here. We are also closer to British English than American English for our spelling and other pronunciations.

Well I'm a native English speaker, because English is my native language, and I use terms like "native English speaker" and "English is my native language" all the time. :shock:

Quote:

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Maybe it's "british English"?

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Its just English!

I guess here in South Africa it would be "racist" to use a word like Native.... LOL... :roll:
We have 12 official languages... although websites almost never get made in other languages than English (except for government ones, and you need to be BEE-EE verified to get those jobs).

We tend to use terms like: "mother tongue" and "home language".

Actually more people speak Afrikaans in South Africa than English, which is strange as the entire country uses English as the primary language of business, media and advertising. Top languages are Zulu and Xhosa, then Afrikaans and English.

Here's some info on South Africa and all it's languages.
http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/language.htm

I learnt a lot about South Africa and all these languages because of the soccer world cup and I think it is fascinating that you use so many languages :)

But back to topic: I am still collecting the information from the developer conference. I'd love to be faster but the guys tend to be a bit slow with sending their informations. :roll: