It is a Thursday evening, on the 3rd of November, 2016 – the evening of an experiment in the byte5 office. The young company's decision to append an expert team for the also young technology Laravel to its largest team of Umbraco experts in Germany had already been made after our visit to 2016's Laracon in Amsterdam. By hosting the first Laravel meetup in the Rhein/Main region one of the foundation-stones to this project is ought to be laid. And this is why the lights are still on in our office, while many computers have already been shut down in the busy district of Frankfurt-Ostend.  

There's a large group of guests that combines experienced developers, computer science students and people who work with Laravel for private projects. The young age of the framework, created by PHP developer Taylor Otwell, is also mirrored by the short time Laravel has been used by many of us. A large part of the group just started working with Laravel in the last couple of months. 

Still, the enthusiasm is remarkable, which is for most of our guests based on the fact that the framework can be used in so many different projects: About a dozen developers in the room have worked with Laravel in order to create online games, web applications, e-commerce systems and mobile apps. An example of what Laravel can do is demonstrated by attendee Craig Weiser who has written the online strategy game "Your Election" (an alpha can be played here: http://testgame2016.yourelection.net) that makes its players dive into the world of US election campaigns. His spontaneous demo of Laravel's talents is proof to us that the potential of framework users in our region is a great base for more evenings like this one. 

This is also shown by the fact that many ideas have been collected for the next Laravel events: One plan that was created by one of our attendees is to begin with the development of a group app that will serve as a basis for workshops and commonly worked out problem solutions. In short: What we experienced with our experiment is a kind of community engagement that proofs to us that our step towards another great technology is definitely worth it. Why we believe that? What we have witnessed with Umbraco is that it's an important step to success to cooperate with a strong community. And as it seems this is something we can trust in with Laravel, too.