Maintaining programme data in one place
Talks shift, speakers are added and rooms change: the programme is continuously adjusted until the start of the festival. In the first festival year on TYPO3, the editorial team maintained this information directly on the website.
For 2026, we connected the external event platform to TYPO3. The festival team edits the programme data there; the website takes it over automatically.
A custom TYPO3 extension for the import
Our extension uses the API provided by the event platform. It imports speakers, talks, topics, formats and rooms at defined intervals and creates the required links in TYPO3.
This allows, for example, talks to be assigned to the respective speakers and rooms. The imported information is shown on the bilingual website in the corresponding programme and speaker views.
Changes to this data are made in the event platform and applied at the next successful import. The editorial team continues to maintain the other website content in TYPO3.
The programme remains available locally
The imported data and images are stored locally. To display the programme, a new request to the event platform therefore does not have to be made on every page view.
If the external platform is temporarily unavailable, the website can continue to display the last successfully imported state. New changes are then only available after another successful import.
Further development for the next festival year
After the rebuild on TYPO3 in 2025, the automated programme connection is a further step in ongoing support. The festival team no longer has to additionally update changes to speakers and talks on the website. This reduces the maintenance effort and the risk of diverging information.
You can find more about the system change and the further development of the website in our project presentation on the Big Bang AI Festival.
