Kirby Meetup Mainz #3

Last Wednesday some folks of the Kirby community joined us once again to chat about Kirby CMS and other more or less web related topics. We met at the 3st kommunikation office in Mainz for the third time and almost exactly one year after the first event. It was very nice to meet some of the regular guests again, but also to get to know new people in a relaxed atmosphere with cool drinks, snacks, and pizza. Sonja and Bastian from the Kirby core team came around, too.

After a short introduction, I took the chance to get some feedback on the latest Kirby hacking stuff I did recently. Based on the custom view modes with content representations, I created some more view mode variants including fields, files and even page collections. I was a bit completely unprepared due to time constraints but the others were forgiving. I'll try to sort things up and put everything into a new blog post. Nevertheless the feedback was very helpful for me.

Afterwards, Bastian talked about how a database could be (optionally) included into Kirby. It sounds strange at first, since Kirby is a file based system. But if you have huge amounts of custom data it could be really handy. There are several problems to solve to have a straight forward and Kirby like experience in the panel in the end. But it was very interesting to discuss different ideas all together. And I’m sure, Bastian got some helpful feedback, too.

It had happened quite spontaneously that Jonas Pasche, the founder of Uberspace, joined. Thanks again Nils for the great idea to ping him on Mastodon. We took the chance not only to talk about hosting stuff, but also about company culture. Jonas shared some insights and (suprise, suprise) we discovered that there were many similarities between Uberspace and Kirby from a company/business perspective. Thanks Bastian and Jonas for this “behind the scenes”.

AI is currently the dominant topic – it’s everywhere. We exchanged views on the use of AI support in our daily (programming) work, discussed the risks and concerns we have in general, and learned how Uberspace has gradually attempted to protect itself against the excessive traffic generated by AI bots. If you are interested, there’s a Uberspace blog post from August 2024 which is still somehow valid.

The next meetup will probably take place in January 2026. What now feels like an eternity will be here sooner than you think. That's the impression pretty much all of us had this time. Would be awesome to see you there! Let me know if you are interested or join the Kirby Discord server to find new meetup events or chat about Kirby in general.

Thank you to everyone who participated. Thanks Bastian for the pizza. And a special thank you to 3st kommunikation for making such events possible by providing rooms and by sponsoring drinks.