Greetings Umbracians,
I’m Emma, the Director of Developer Relations at Umbraco HQ, and I’m super excited to welcome you to the latest edition of The Umbraco Community Quarterly. This is your go-to read for all the latest happenings, exciting initiatives, and celebrations within our amazing Umbraco community. And it’s the place if you want to see what you or your team can do to take part in the friendly Umbraco community - our door is always open!
Codegarden 2024 was a phenomenal success! As our biggest event in our calendar, not for the community but for Umbraco, we are always delighted when it comes around. We welcomed over 1,600+ attendees, with a healthy mix of in-person and online participants from around the globe.
It was fantastic to see a diverse representation from the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, the US, and Sweden. Our speaker lineup was impressively inclusive, with 41% non-male speakers, surpassing our goal of 35%. Across 65 sessions, insightful discussions, and engaging workshops, the energy was palpable.
We also saw a wonderful influx of 65+ new members on the Umbraco Community Discord, who actively participated in Codegarden discussions and other Umbraco topics, including a bit of Wordling. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who attended, spoke, and contributed to making Codegarden an unforgettable experience.
As ever, we love to read all about your experiences at Codegarden. A few attendees who put pen to paper in the days after the dust settled are Amy, Paul, Corné, and Rick. Read all about their experiences here and if you were there too, maybe consider telling us all about your time too. And if you’d rather reminisce, fear not! There are recordings for many of the talks over at the Umbraco Youtube channel. Enjoy watching this year’s keynote from the comfort of your own office - all other sessions will be available on YouTube in September.
Finally, this time around, we welcomed so many newcomers to Codegarden that we felt it was only sensible to welcome them in a newcomers Community Kick Off we hosted online June 25th. THANK YOU to all of you newcomers joining Codegarden and the Kick Off event! We can’t wait to see what they do next.
We are proud to announce the release of Belissima in Umbraco version 14! This major update is the result of extensive collaboration between our community and Umbraco HQ.
With the release, we can celebrate a total of 255 contributions from the community - and it has been a long time in the making. The RFC launched back in 2020! Thank you to everyone who contributed.
Special thanks to the early adopters from the community, such as Markus Johansson, Kevin Jump, Warren Buckley, and Richard Soeteman, for their incredible work in sharing their journeys and insights with everyone. Another special mention goes out to other package developers who have already released Umbraco 14 versions, such as Rick Butterfield (Sustainability package) and Jeavon Leopold (Slimsy). The community's involvement has been vital in bringing this release to fruition, and we look forward to continued collaboration as we move forward.
If you want to know more about Umbraco version 14, check out the release blog post here.
We are excited to announce the completion of the AstroJs documentation. This significant milestone helps spread Umbraco beyond the "in-crowd" and into the wider world, making it more accessible and easier to integrate with other technologies. The comprehensive documentation will allow developers from various backgrounds to leverage AstroJs with Umbraco, promoting greater innovation and adoption. By expanding our resources and making them more user-friendly, we are committed to supporting our community in building cutting-edge digital experiences.
We are delighted to witness this community initiative evolve from a hackathon idea to completion, thanks to Richard Jackson, one of our new Umbraco MVPs. Skrift has a great article detailing the process. We hope it inspires others to follow Richard’s footsteps and take similar initiatives.
To better reflect the diverse nature of our community groups, we’ve renamed our community teams to Community Teams, Advisory Boards, and Guilds. This change ensures each group’s purpose and focus are clear, fostering better collaboration and engagement.
This new structure aims to streamline our efforts and enhance our ability to support and grow the Umbraco ecosystem effectively.
We are opening up applications for a number of our Community Teams, including the Package and DEI teams. Additionally, we are excited to announce the formation of a new Community Advisory Board. This board will focus on all things community, helping us make the right decisions to represent you better.
We're thrilled to introduce our new Cloud Community Team, which will serve as an advisory board to provide valuable insights and guidance. This team is just one of the ways we're ensuring that our community's voice is heard and integrated into our decision-making processes.
We are delighted to celebrate reaching 100 MVPs in our community. This milestone is a testament to the incredible contributions and dedication of our members. Remember, you can nominate MVPs all year round, so keep those nominations coming!
Our community has been bustling with activity, with over 1,200 attendees participating in 67 meetups in 2024 alone. We were delighted to announce these numbers during the Codegarden Keynote. These events have been instrumental in fostering connections and sharing knowledge and we are just delighted to be able to say that there’s so much more to come.
This year we have enjoyed meetups where participants have worked together to learn all about the latest release, with participants from the HQ Product and Engineering team as well as folks in the community who have been hacking away. It has been instrumental in informing and inspiring people who are getting to grips with the new release. It’s a great way to get eyes and hands on Umbraco 14 for both developers and HQ engineers. If you’re keen to get involved, see here.
We have so many exciting things to look forward to for the last part of this year but one of the things we are really excited about are three of our festivals that are making a comeback this year.
The upcoming Umbraco festivals in Sweden, Denmark, and Chicago, are the first in 5 years, 2 years, and 4 years, respectively. We are also able to give you the opportunity to take part in festivals in The Netherlands and London, UK. You may not need reminding but let me tell you, festivals are a fantastic opportunity to connect with the community, learn from experts, and share your own experiences.
We also saw UMBRAAD hosted, the brilliant Umbraco Accessibility Day organised and run by the Umbraco Accessibility Guild, featuring speakers from around the globe. This 100% community-run event highlighted the importance of accessibility in our projects and fostered valuable discussions on making Umbraco more inclusive for everyone. It was inspiring to see such a strong commitment to accessibility, as speakers shared their insights and best practices, driving home the message that accessible design benefits all users. The event was a testament to the power of our community to come together and work towards a common goal of inclusivity.
Thank you again for reading and as ever, if you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me and the team at devrel@umbraco.com. We can’t wait to hear from you!
Hej hej, until next time.
Emma
The Developer Relations team have been busy engaging with the global community at a number of events, with more to come! Plus, see how a community member contributed to Umbraco's 2023 Impact Report.