Practical tasks that Benni works on include business coordination and management, backend development, server setup + maintenance, and plenty of coding.
Benni uses some key terms when he thinks about his leadership role at the agency and helping clients:
- “Taking the hits” - Frontline coordination of clients and client projects
- “Think” - find the best ideas on how to solve technical issues
- “Listen, Translate” - Turning client needs and requests into useful development tasks
- “Dig deep” - Analyzing hard-to-fix issues, looking for their source and solutions
- “Engage, Encourage, Unblock” - Finding the right, constructive next steps for any and all development- or ‘human’ issues that arise in the course of our activities
Tools Benni can’t live without:
- TYPO3
Though b13 co-founder and TYPO3 CMS Core Development Lead, Benni Mack, is something of an unstructured genius, he gives us the structure we need to succeed in many areas. He’s part of coordinating the business side of our agency and winning new clients. He handles setup and maintenance of our technical infrastructure. And though he’s one of our key resources when we’re solving new problems for clients, he uses a classic “salami tactic” when he can get away with it: Any problem you bring to him, he slices into even finer pieces and gives it back to you. Watch out for leaving with more questions than you came with! Little-known facts about Benni: he was a German national semi-finalist in Olympic Greco-Roman-style wrestling and he can’t swim.
Expertise
- Ansible, Apple, Blackfire, Cloudflare, database, PHP, PSRs, SQL
- TYPO3, v10, core, custom, extensions, workspaces
- Caching, CDN, CI-deployment, regular expressions, web servers
- Contribution, community, enablement, sharing knowledge
- Delivering value, exceptional experiences, international, multilingual, partnership
- Family, listening, learning, sharing, teamwork, trust
Benni and TYPO3
Using TYPO3, we have a tool that has some flaws, but almost no limits. With it, we can make our lives and our work easier. It is predictable, powerful, flexible, and transparent. I can extend and improve TYPO3 on my own. Other tools might not allow that. It’s up to me what I do with it.
I believe that the more we know, the more we should share. As Core Development Lead, it is my responsibility to share as much about TYPO3 as I can. I know a lot, so I can pass on a lot. And yet, this project is SO BIG that I am always learning how to do things easier and faster. It’s delightful how often I see solutions and uses for our project that I never would have thought of. I draw a lot of inspiration from contributing and participating in other projects and technologies, too.
Benni on working at b13
I am humbled and grateful that we’ve built an agency where we get the job done well while caring about each other … and having fun! We’re open to new ideas while focusing on doing one thing and doing it right. There’s a powerful feeling of being in it together with each other, and making a difference for our clients and the world. We identify their needs, we’re there to help them work better and succeed.
Benni’s Dos and Don’ts
- Always understand, build things to last, and maximize your efficiency
- Always ask for the reason and the need before doing something (“understand”)
- Always find a clean, future-proof solution that keeps you out of trouble in the future (“build things to last”)
- Always automate (“be efficient, don’t do the same thing three times”)
- Always be optimistic and see the benefits of bad situations, look for the silver lining
- Always look for a long-term solution or strategy
- Never give up!
- Never blame others!
- Never waste your time!
Latest articles by Benni Mack
How CDNs and TYPO3 offer Superior Speed, Uptime, and User Experience
Today’s world is global, and content distribution networks (CDNs) bring content closer to users around the world for lightning-fast performance wherever they are. TYPO3 is ideally adapted to modern CDN technology, reducing the load on your server, and even taking caching off your to-do list!