Continuing on in the CodeGarden11 wrap up blog series, in this
post we will introduce the Umbraco MVPs.
Each year at CodeGarden the community vote for their 5 favourite
Umbraco MVPs (Most Valued People) based on the 20 top people with
the most karma over the year. Here at the Umbraco HQ we love to
celebrate with the Umbraco community these outstanding people
within the community itself, and CodeGarden presents an excellent
opportunity to do so. With the voting incredibly close this year we
decided to have 6 MVPs.
The 6 wonderful MVPs for 2011/2012 are as follows:
Darren Ferguson
Darren runs the Umbraco Level 2 certification in the UK and
travels worldwide to teach the course. He is also actively
involved in developing and maintaining the course materials.
He contributes to the Umbraco project in many ways and has been an
active member of the community since 2006.
Darren runs a small company called Ferguson Moriyama in which
his role is a developer, project manager, consultant and teacher of
all things content management and web.
When Darren is not working he likes fast cars, growing
vegetables (especially chillies), eating good food and finding nice
pubs to have a pint in.
Douglas Robar
Four-time MVP Douglas Robar has been building Umbraco sites
since V2 and sharing his knowledge along the way. Doug runs
Percipient Studios, an Umbraco-focused company.
An official trainer, Doug has trained hundreds of certified
developers in all market segments through regional and on-site
courses in the USA and now the UK. ImageGen and XSLTsearch continue to be among the top five
most popular Umbraco packages used in tens of thousands of
sites.
An avid 'explainer', Doug is known for his clarity and
thoroughness in teaching, speaking and writing. 'I still remember
what it was like being new to Umbraco. The amazingly friendly,
humble and helpful responses I got to my noob questions made me
realize the Umbraco community is very special. I want to be that
way and foster that attitude in the community for others who are
new to Umbraco.'
Doug loves photography and you'll often find him behind the lens
at Umbraco meetups (check out his Umbraco photos on Flickr). And though he's a
proud member of the XSLT Rebel Alliance he's also rather fond of
Razor.
Jan Skovgaard
Jan is 28 years old, single, and an Umbracoholic! He lives in
Aarhus, which together with London is the Umbraco metropolis.
He works as a frontend-developer at Kraftvaerk where he is using
Umbraco on a daily basis: He primarily works with XSLT rebellion
but is looking forward to learning a lot more Razor in the
future.
Jan has been using Umbraco since 2006 and has been an active
part of the community since 2008. He considers himself as a
"supporter" on the forum - he likes to help people out and is
learning a lot from it as well. He is trying to make sure that
people feel welcome and experience that Umbraco indeed has the most
friendly community in the world and that Umbraco is really FUN to
work with.
Jan is a part of the Danish Umbraco user group and in 2010 he
arranged the very first Umbraco Meetup in Aarhus with his colleague
Kim Andersen.
Lee Kelleher
Lee Kelleher is a freelance ASP.NET developer from Liverpool,
(now based near Bristol). Having been using Umbraco for the past 3
years he has become increasingly involved with the community and
helped towards building a network of user-groups within the UK. Lee
was also awarded an MVP status back in 2010/2011, as voted by the
community. He has contributed and developed many packages including
the ever popular uComponents project.
With over 15 years of web-development experience, Lee has worked
with a vast range of clients from small to large such as Toyota,
PricewaterhouseCooper, Ernst & Young and JPMorgan Chase.
Matt Brailsford
Matt Brailsford (aka Package Machine, aka Karma Whore, aka
Karminator) is a Certified Umbraco developer and the creator of a
number of top rated Umbraco packages including the Editors Manual and the Desktop Media Uploader. Starting out in early
2010, he has quickly become one of the most active devs within the
community.
Sebastiaan Janssen
Sebastiaan has been a vocal Umbraco enthusiast since he
discovered it in 2009. He loves helping people out on Our Umbraco,
engaging with the community and blogging about his experiences.
Additionally, when the mood strikes him he creates (or contributes
to) packages that will make his life as a developer easier and give
him more karma, to eventually beat the Karminator.
In his spare time, Sebastiaan loves going to gigs of
up-and-coming (indie) bands, enjoys cycling and is interested in
science and gadgets. And whiskey. ;)
Well aren't they an interesting and friendly bunch!
I highly recommend you take a few minutes out of your day to watch
the Umbraco community celebrate these fine fellows at this years
CodeGarden by watching the MVP section in the keynote.
Like the sound of all this CodeGarden fun? Then why not get in
super early for next year's CodeGarden conference with our ridiculously cheap price for
the first 100 people, so be quick!
With that being said I'll wrap up here and tell you that in the
next installment of the CodeGarden11 wrap up posts, I'll talk about
the prestigious Umbraco Awards and who the nominees & winners
were of each category.
Until next time,
Warren & The Umbraco HQ