Almost new years and the time where you look ahead and dream and
look back and try to understand what you've learned.
When I look back at 2010 it feels like it started just yesterday
and when trying to go through the logs
of all the things that happened in the Umbraco world it's no
wonder. Just a few highlights would be
the hire of Paul Sterling, then almost 400 people in seven
countries in February celebrating the official five year
birthday of Umbraco, the new
visual identity, the release of Umbraco 4.5, then more than 250
people at
a fantastic CodeGarden '10, then the hire of Alex Norcliffe,
the amazing relationship with Microsoft, the new website, the
kickoff of the development of Umbraco JUPITER (aka v5), the
shaping of Umbraco JUNO ending in
a beta last week not to mention the first glimpse of
Courier 2 taking shape. On top of that add dozens of
conferences, endless number of Umbraco
related tweets, local meet-ups, almost 20.000 forum posts,
200+ shared projects
and tens of thousands of Umbraco powered sites gone live.
Umbraco is alive, thriving and for me 2010 has been exceeding my
wildest dreams and expectations quarter by quarter.
It's also been developing on a personal level where I've gone
from a role as mainly a developer to becoming more of a mentor and
fundraiser for the project. It's been a huge surprise to discover
how much I enjoy this new role and how free it makes me feel. Being
able to guide the direction of our wonderful project while being
surrounded by breathtakingly talented employees, core devs and
community people who constantly inspire and challenge me is more
than anyone could ask for yet the reality. What a
blessing!
With everything achieved in 2010 I wouldn't dare to make a guess
at where we are twelve months from now, but I do know some of the
things happening in the next six months and they should prove that
the pace isn't slowing down. The first half will bring a JUNO
release, a release of Courier 2.0, welcoming long time core team
member Peter Gregory on board the HQ team, a Market Place where
3rd party developers can easily sell Umbraco packages as
well as a 350 people strong CodeGarden conference where Umbraco
JUPITER (v5) will be released. It should be a safe bet that you
won't find any laurels in the Umbraco ecosystem in 2011 either…
So bring on 2011. Best wishes to everyone who keeps Umbraco such
a fun and friendly place to be. I'm very grateful to be a part of
this adventure.