Kirby Konf, finally!

The Kirby Community is amazing! That's hardly surprising news to anyone who spends time around this CMS. So of course, I was really looking forward to the first Kirby Konf. For one thing, many people had announced they would be coming whom I had already met in person at Kirby meetups or the beyond tellerrand conference and I was excited to see them again. For another, lots of Kirby enthusiasts I had been in touch with online, on Discord, in the forum or on Mastodon, would be there as well. I have to admit that my expectations were high. But the two days delivered everything I had hoped for. And I was lucky enough to experience it all up close!

The story of Kirby Konf is a long one. It was already planned back in 2020. And I don't mean loosely planned: everything was ready! Tickets were sold, attendees had booked their travel and accommodation and everyone was full of anticipation. Back then, it would have been a much smaller event. We would have hosted around 50 people at our agency in Mainz in a relaxed atmosphere. But then a pandemic came along and brought a lockdown with it, almost exactly two weeks before the conference. That was it for the time being. Everything was cancelled. And since the world took quite a while to recover from the pandemic, the Kirby team kept facing challenges other than organizing a conference. The Kirby Konf that never happened turned into something of a running gag.

Instead, the community simply organized itself. Local meetups were held in Nuremberg, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Munich, Berlin, Bremen, Leipzig, Mainz, Karlsruhe and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. By the time the first Kirby Konf finally did happen, there had been 44 of them in total. And that is amazing!

As the many meetups across Germany proved so popular, the topic of Kirby Konf kept coming up again. And since Bastian and Sonja were always there at our Mainz meetups too, we stayed in touch. Somehow it seemed only natural that we would eventually make the second attempt here in Mainz as well. Even though the space at our agency was no longer enough for the Kirby community, which had grown considerably in the meantime, we found a fitting venue with a great atmosphere in the Gutenberg Digital Hub, which was even located in the same building. At first, there was some thought of using our rooms as well and offering talks or workshops in parallel. But over time it became increasingly clear that a single-track conference with talks was probably the best option. That way there were no scheduling conflicts at all and everyone shared the same breaks, leaving as much time as possible for conversations. Looking back, I would say this was a very good decision by the Kirby team. Still, I stayed involved in the organization and was able to help out here and there.

I started several times to summarize the talks from the two days, only to realize again and again that I wasn't really doing them justice. So let me just emphasize, that the selection and the schedule were exceptional. Almost all the talks came from people you knew from the community. And even those who didn't have much conference experience yet did a fantastic job! Two talks, however, I enjoyed in particular.

Justus really struck a chord with me with “Embracing the impostor.” I still remember how it took me months to work up the courage to publish my first small plugin for Kirby 2. I was far too afraid that it might not be coded well enough. Looking back, that seems absurd to me, considering that all the plugin did was move an already existing feature to a different place. It was impressive how well Justus mastered a situation on stage that probably wasn't easy for him. Bernd, der Bremser (a.k.a his inner critic), did seem to be around, but he couldn't possibly stop Justus from delivering a great kickoff to two inspiring days. And as it turned out, Bernd was also familiar to quite a few other speakers …

It was pretty clear beforehand that I would enjoy “r12y” by Yoshie and Thomas. I had already met them both in person at beyond tellerrand 2025. Thomas had also helped me with numerous bug reports and by tracking down edge cases while I was developing my Focus plugin, so we'd been in touch online for much longer. I really appreciate their quiet but wonderful sense of humor. Combined with their design skills, the result could only be great slides and an all-round great talk about our responsibility as web developers when it comes to accessibility. I wasn't disappointed!

But as I mentioned, the rest of the speakers did a great job as well and so it never got boring at any point. Thanks a lot Chris, Bruno, Sascha, Johanna, Markus, Fabian and Matthias, too.

There were plenty of opportunities to chat with the many people from the Kirby community between talks, over lunch or in the evenings. People whose plugins you had been using for years, or with whom you had already exchanged messages online countless times, had all come together. That's what I had been looking forward to most right from the start. And despite all those seemingly many opportunities, you somehow still come away with the feeling that it was all over far too quickly and that you would have loved to talk to everyone much longer. So I hope there will be a sequel in the not-too-distant future. And that actually doesn't seem all that unlikely … let's wait and see.

• Kirby Konf website
• #KirbyKonf on Mastodon