“That’s where my career started. People answered my silly questions on the web forums. They were helpful and friendly, and after some years I realized I had reached a level where I could help them back.”

Now, himself a TYPO3 Core Team member and head of development at Polish agency Macopedia, Tymoteusz sees mentoring others as a central part of his contribution to the CMS: “Helping others learn TYPO3 is building the community.”

Building National Competence in Rwanda

As he tells his story, it becomes clear to me that his mentoring is not limited to Poland—or even Europe. His most recent mentoring experience, in collaboration with the TYPO3 Association, brought him to Central Africa with Alina Fleser and Daniel Homorodean.

“We coached a team of ten people from the Rwandan government’s web team. They were responsible for relaunching some 200 official websites for the government. Together, we established a great workflow and got the team on track, and the first few TYPO3 websites went live not many weeks ago.”

Handling projects of this size and impact can be a challenge to anyone, and Tymoteusz’ work went beyond TYPO3, covering best-practice infrastructure, security, deployment, and project management.