As you've may seen, I was given the awesome chance of appearing in the keynote at this years Microsoft
MIX '11 conference. It was an amazing (and terrifying) experience
and a milestone beyond what anyone in the project had dreamt
possible (except for Sir Paul Sterling who made it happen!).
People who've met me knows, that there's (almost) nothing I love
more than talking about Umbraco and I'm proud to be representing
such an awesome project at various conferences. But a keynote at
the biggest Microsoft event for web developers was enormous and I
wanted to find a great way to show that this project is a true team
effort and not an ego one. At the same way it was a great chance to
thank the ones who believed the project when it was 10% great idea
and 90% bugs. So the respect tee was born and I wore it with pride
during the 4 minutes and 30 seconds of fame…
Credit where due
Today Umbraco is a well known and proved platform, but it hasn't
always been that way. Years ago it
was nothing but an idea and some pretty bad code (at one point even
written in ASP Classic and VB6 COM objects!) written in a tiny flat
in Copenhagen, Denmark. But for some reason a bunch of people and a
few agencies could see the potential and believed me when I said
"come and participate, it could be awesome.".
These are the types of people on the Tee above. The agencies who
early on brought clients, the developers who contributed to the
source, the community people who devoted a ton of their time to
introduce new people to the platform. The seeds. The Umbraco
DNA.
They are (in the random order they appear on the Tee):
- Thomas Madsen-Mygdal.
An old friend and inspiration. The guy who introduced me to the
crazy phenomenon "Open Source" and who talked about transparency
and participatory culture before it got devaluated into
buzzwords.
- Anders Pollas. The
first guy (except me) to do an implementation on Umbraco. Poor guy.
That wasn't easy, but he was patient and kept coming back with
ideas and also contributed to the first starter kit back when we
proudly released Umbraco 2.0 (David Hasselhoff, anyone?)
- Kasper Bumbech: The
guy who really introduced me to a better way of doing .NET dev and
a lead driver in porting Umbraco to .NET. Before Kasper I was still
convinced that the best place to do business logic was in sprocs.
Imagine that.
- Ebita. A Copenhagen based agency
who were among the first to believe in Umbraco for their clients
and the first company to contribute directly to the source. And the
company who hired me at a point where I would have gone broke if it
wasn't for them
- Per Ploug
Krogslund. The artist formerly known as Per Ploug Hansen and
the first employee in the HQ (now partner). I'm so lucky you came.
If it wasn't for you, the project wouldn't be where it is
today.
- DGU. The first major client on Umbraco and my biggest client
when I tried to finance Umbraco dev doing implementation. The
probably regretted it as the project really was a mess, but their
big ambitions with their site made Umbraco ambitious too.
- Douglas Robar. Umbraco
MVP all years. This guy needs no introduction. A warmer, more
patient and friendly guy doesn't really exist. I'd love him even
without his
EOS.
- 1508. The other agency who
believed in Umbraco even before it was completed. They've been
generously giving advice, they've contributed, they've brought
amazing clients and last year we became a client as they did our
new identity.
- Jesper Ordrup.
MVP Followed Umbraco before it was released. His teasing blog posts
and comments followed every announcement where I had to postpone
the release of Umbraco and was super motivating. MVP in 2007 and
producer of some of the first packages for Umbraco. And he's still
around.
- Thomas Höhler. His
claim to fame might be as "The
Grillmeister", but like Jesper he was among the first to
contribute packages to Umbraco and also a 2007 MVP. He's also
around still and even started doing official Umbraco training in
Germany this year!
- Dirk DeGrave. MVP
2008, 2009 and 2010. Still today the guy who've replied to most
posts in the forum. A big inspiration for many who've learned that
contributing by sharing knowledge is as crucial to Umbraco as
creating packages.
- Lee Kelleher. 2010
MVP and an instrumental part of the Umbraco community today. In
building an Umbraco ecosystem in the UK, in contributing with
packages and in replying to forum posts. A role model for any
2011-Umbracian.
- Richard Soeteman.
2010 MVP and the Dutch package monster. An inspiration for
realizing that Umbraco could also be a commercial platform for
indie package developers.
- Morten Bock. 2009
MVP. This guy is like an Umbraco cork. He surfaces and disappears
(due to workload). But when he surfaces he brings amazing
constructive criticism and great input on how Umbraco can be
improved for developers relying on the platform.
- Warren Buckley. Aka the Creative Website Starter. An alltime
Umbraco MVP (2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010) and the creator of the most
popular way to learn Umbraco for frontend devs.
- Matt
Brailsford. Contrary to the rest on the list, he hasn't been
around always. He popped out of nowhere last year but quickly
became known by everyone for he's incredible number of packages
(and their incredible usefulness and quality). He's known as the
Karminator and you only need to look at the chart of highest ranked
people on Our Umbraco to realize why.
- Morten
Christensen. Creator of the Google Analytics and Default Values
packages that for many is among the most essential ones to Umbraco
dev (and why some people still begin new development on 4.5.2 -
when is that upgrade coming, Morten!). Also the main driver in the
efforts of building the Danish Umbraco community
- Paul Sterling.
The guy leading the US operations and instrumental in keeping
things professional in the HQ while understanding that our casual
tone is an essential part of our DNA. I can't count how many fires
he has had to extinguish because of me and my bad European
habits.
- Aaron Powell. The one
half of the Australian Code Mafia(tm) and a guy who dared put his
own rumor on stake in the efforts of improving the core of Umbraco
at a time where most .NET developers thought it was more
constructive to stultify.
- Shannon Deminick.
The other half of the Australian Code Mafia(tm). Like Aaron he
dared to go places in the core where no others would risk going and
the quality of the current core gained a significant jump with his
contributions. Also one of the founders of the
uComponents project which really should be default in any
Umbraco install.
- Tim Geyssens. Was
on the first ever Umbraco course (that I teached) and I remembered
how this awesome Belgian guy just got the Umbraco way of thinking.
From there it went fast as he became a 2008 and 2009 MVP due to his
continuous blogging and packaging efforts and in late summer 2009
he became the 3rd employee in Umbraco.
- Casey Neehouse. As an
MVP in 2007 and 2008 he helped countless people back when the
Umbraco community was nothing but dreams and an Yahoo mailinglist
and also the creator of Doc2Form. Unfortunately, my ego scared him
away in end of 2008 but luckily the story got a happy ending this
year when my ego calmed down and Casey returned now in the form of
an HQ employee. A proof that nothing is impossible in the world of
Umbraco
- Peter Gregory. Have
spend tireless efforts in promoting Umbraco down under. Despite
being a kiwi he has know moved to Australia and joined the HQ where
he'll lead our efforts in making Umbraco even more known
- Alex Norcliffe.
Our lead architect on Umbraco 5 (aka JUPITER) who is a rare bread
that respects and listens to people who implement websites and try
to balance the need for keeping it easy while giving the core of
Umbraco the most beautiful architecture known to man. Seriously,
this guy needs to cope with me on a day to day basis. That alone is
something!
- Gregory Roekens. CTO
of Wunderman London and the guy that called me up a Friday evening
in 2007 while I was cooking dinner to let me know that http://www.peugeot.com would move
to Umbraco. I was baffled. It was that evening and because of that
call I finally realized we were on to something. I remember the
whole scene as if it was yesterday.
- Lars Buur. My first
real boss. Hired me straight out of high school in 1998 to work on
the first Danish CMS (Site In A Box(!)), despite I knew nothing
about databases or ASP. He later told me that it was my Delphi
knowledge that got me the job. If it wasn't for Lars (and the
co-founder of the company Thomas Christensen) I wouldn't have known
about CMS, maybe I wouldn't even had gone into web dev and I for
sure wouldn't have been 'raised' in an environment so packaged with
an 'everything is possible' attitude.
So that's the twenty. The MVPs, the biggest core contributors,
the early adopters and motivators. Making a v2.0 of this tee would
be impossible. Even a 6pt font size on a XXXL couldn't fit the
names of the people driving Umbraco forward today. But the project
is standing on the shoulders of these fine people. If you meet
them, give them a hug and a high five! It's easy to recognize them
if they wear the t-shirt. It's exclusively made for them. A very
limited edition for a very rare group of special people.
Love and godspeed Umbraco!