In 2004 a structure for raising funds for the further development of TYPO3 was setup by active members of the TYPO3 community, which resulted in a board and a steering committee, in full called the TYPO3 Association. This structure has become obsolete with the steady growth of the Association. February 3rd and 4th saw the last Combined Steering Committee Board meeting (CoSCoB) followed by the General Assembly of the TYPO3 Association. The meeting was held in Basel and featured the initiation of the newly elected Expert Advisory Board (EAB) and the re-election of the Business Control Committee (BCC). Three members of the board exchanged their position with new faces. All in all a total refresher of the TYPO3 Association.

The board: Peter Pröll, Stefan Busemann, Adrian Zimmermann, Juergen Egeling, Gina Steiner,  Mario Rimann, Søren Schaffstein

I joined the steering committee (sc) in 2008 and held the position of chairman until March of last year, not replaced by anyone. As community manager I wanted to focus exclusively on the community. Being chairman of the sc meant getting an agenda together for every meeting and reminding the members to get their issues into the agenda and following up on issues discussed in the meetings. You could regard the sc as a cross section of community members and leaders of companies or projects within the community. The sc never went public with the stuff they discussed as the teams do now with their protocols. Most of the time the sc discussed ongoing business. Any 'decisions' made in the sc were presented as guidelines to project leaders or to me, the community manager. When I joined the sc it was still unsure what the position of the sc in the whole TYPO3 eco-system would be. It seems that the clearer it got the more there was the need for another structure like effectuated at this years General Assembly.

The most recent line-up of the sc was: Kian Gould (owner of AOEmedia), Christian Julle Jensen (CEO of Moc systems, co-initiator of the TYPO3 Association), Eike Diestelkamp (CEO of HDnet), Robert Lemke and Karsten Damblekans (Lead programmers for FLOW3 and Phoenix, co-initiators of the TYPO3 Association), Ingmar Schlecht (budget responsible for V4), Michael Stucki (Leader of the INfrastructure team and long-time contributir), Daniel Hinderink (CEO of Dpool, co-initiator of the TYPO3 Association) and myself.

The past few years the steering committee dealt with matters ranging from communicating TYPO3 to the structure of the Association. The last meeting might have been most significant of all. With the TYPO3 Association structural changes comes the need for a more organised structure of the community. Organisation not as in regulation, but in the sense of providing a basis for communication and growth of the teams. As community manager I have already seen that setting up regular meetings and communication sets up a solid basis for teams. Like the half yearly release cycle we intiated a few years ago, the regular meetings provides trust and confidence throughout the community. In the sc we discussed an organizational form that provides a platform for the 'official' teams. Through the years there was a now and then active RnD committee (Research and Development) consisting of leaders of the V4 and V5 branch. The commitee was not blessed with a mission, but started to recognize it's significance in the past year. The sc discussed a renaming of the RnD committee, it's function and composition. It will not be a committee anymore, but more likely a board consisting of, by the teams appointed representatives to this new body. Along side of this community board there will be a community counsil, where community issues can be escalated. The composition of it's members is not known yet. A community counsil is quite a common thing in communities, although I must say that the TYPO3 community seems to be very balanced and friendly with little need to escalate issues. There are a lot of Open Source communities around that have major problems to deal with. Partially that also has to do with the size of these communities. The TYPO3 community is a mid-sized community largely concentrated in Germany. That makes it a lot easier to deal with then communities that have large local communities.

As the steering committee is dissolved as per now, the founding of these new bodies will take place in the RnD committee. It is an ongoing process and your input is appreciated.

I would like to thank all members of the steering committee for their dedication and participation in the meetings we had over the years. I am excited about the changes we contributed to and I hope these changes will spark of the same amount of enthusiasm as there was criticism back then about the lack of democracy and transparency.