On the first evening in Lüneburg, people arrived at different times.
Some had been traveling most of the day. Others had already found their rooms, explored a little, or bumped into familiar faces in the hotel lobby... Then came the next morning.
Breakfast finished, laptops opened, coffee cups in hand, and there we were again. One room full of people who spend most of the year scattered across countries, offices, home desks, and video calls.
That feeling never really gets old.
In September, we met in Lüneburg, Germany, for the 18th edition of the XWiki Seminar. It was our first Seminar in Germany and our first time discovering Lüneburg, a place most of us knew very little about before arriving. We left calling it a hidden gem.
Why Germany? Honestly, it already feels a little like home. Many of our open-source partners and friends are based there, including Nextcloud, OpenProject, and Univention.
Sustainability also played a part in the choice. Our internal travel app calculates the CO₂ emissions for each possible Seminar location, so we could take the environmental impact into account before deciding where to go. Germany also made train travel possible for more colleagues.
This year, 61 XWikiers met on site and 11 joined online. That's 72 of us, up from 66 last year. We've welcomed quite a few new faces over the past months, and you could feel it. More people, more stories, and more opinions about which board game we should play next.
Welcome to the Guilds of XWiki ⚔️
This year's theme was the Guilds of XWiki. Day-to-day, we work in guilds already. We just call them squads, because it sounds more modern.
During the Seminar, we also got to leave our usual squads and form new guilds and alliances with people from other teams. No treaties were signed, but we suspect a few of those alliances will last until next year's game night.
These cross-team guilds got real work done. We improved some of our existing extensions and brainstormed ideas for new ones. We also helped our HR team develop the internal tools we all rely on during the year.
Not every session was about the product, though. We also made room for conversations about ethics, sustainability, and neurodiversity. These topics shape how we work and who we want to be as a team, so it felt right to talk about them together, face-to-face.
Then came the hackathon, a seminar tradition by now. With a focused list of topics, it was easy to pick a project and dive in. Small groups formed, ideas turned into prototypes, and a few features got their very first lines of code.
To keep the week lighter, we held our squad status updates a few days earlier during our Virtual Team Status Day. That left more time in Lüneburg for what matters most when we're together: actually talking to each other.
Like every Seminar, our week had clear goals in mind:
✅ To connect with colleagues we don't usually work with or only meet online
✅ To get an overview of the company and each squad
✅ To innovate and improve the way we work
✅ To enjoy our time together, recharge, and come back with fresh energy
Lüneburg, the town that kept surprising us 🏘
Lüneburg won us over quickly. A large park sat just a short walk from the hotel. It soon became the place for morning walks, quiet chats, and bike rides. The hotel pool, slide included, was a big hit too, especially after long sessions.
Yes, there was a slide! Yes, XWikiers used it!
The best part was probably having enough free time to decide what to do with it. Not every hour needed an activity or a schedule. Sometimes a few people went for a walk. Sometimes a group headed to the pool. Sometimes you just stayed talking long after the session had finished.
And then there was Lüneburg itself: small streets, beautiful brick architecture, a slower pace, and little surprises around corners. Including a unicorn coffee shop, which we obviously had to investigate. 🦄
A Saturday in Bremen 🎶
On Saturday, we took a day trip to Bremen. Some of us joined a guided tour, and others explored the city at their own pace. Either way, we came back full of stories about narrow streets, secret passages, and old legends.
Bremen is home to Univention, one of our partners. A few of us travel there every January for the Univention Summit, so it felt great to see the city in sunnier days for once.
The biggest surprise was a Christmas shop that stays open all year round. And yes, some of us gave in to a bit of September Christmas shopping. With a little guilt attached, of course.
Totems, Kegeln, and a medieval party 🎳
Our HR activity stuck to the guild theme. Each guild collected natural materials and built its own totem. It was simple, but it turned into one of the moments we enjoyed most.
Being in Germany at the end of September also meant a Bavarian night at the hotel. We had pretzels, hearty food, and a bit of beer. Some of us discovered new combos, like beer mixed with cola. Some cultural discoveries are better tried than reviewed.
The medieval party brought out some impressively creative costumes. We even spotted a Don Quixote. Karaoke stayed the highlight of the night, joined this year by a guess-the-song battle between guilds. And of course, no XWiki party is complete without a round of Romanian aerobics, also known as dancing the sârbă.
The serious business of games 🎲
Board games have always been part of Seminar evenings.
This time, even more people joined.
For years, President has been one of the unofficial classics. In Lüneburg, 6 qui prend! suddenly seemed to be everywhere. Whether we witnessed a permanent change in the XWiki card-game hierarchy remains to be seen.
We also tried Kegeln. At first, we thought it was a kind of proto-bowling, a beta version if you like. Our German colleagues quickly corrected us. Kegeln is a proud, traditional fork of bowling, and we now respect it deeply. (One bruised finger later, we had fully absorbed the lesson.)
Why we keep doing this
Most days, we work together through screens. The seminar lets us see the person behind the knowledge and the expertise. We learn what makes our colleagues laugh, what they do on weekends, and how they take their coffee.
For XWikiers who have been here for 15 years or more, it's a chance to share memories and stories from the early days. For our newest colleagues, it's a chance to meet everyone and feel what holds us together. That means shared principles, a passion for open source, care for the planet, and a serious appetite for board games.
It also gave us a calm breather before a busy Q4.
And when everyone finally leaves, with suitcases rolling through the hotel lobby and a series of "see you on Monday" goodbyes, there's always the same strange feeling.
We're going back to exactly the same people we just said goodbye to.
We could tell you more, but the photos below do a much better job.
Want to join us at the next Seminar?
Next year, we'll meet again somewhere new. There will be another theme, more hackathon sessions, probably another game that becomes unexpectedly competitive, and stories we can't predict yet.
We're also hiring, so there may be a few new faces in the room by then. Take a look at our current job openings.
Maybe we'll see you at Seminar number 19.