Umbraco

Community initiatives - Looking ahead

The latest HQ initiatives to support the community

Ilham Boulghallat
Written by Ilham Boulghallat

New community teams, a contributor badge for Umbraco’s most engaged Gold Partners, and a new date for the Umbraco US Festival! These are some of the updates on what Umbraco HQ is working on with the community to help lower the barriers for newcomers and contributors, recognize exceptional contribution efforts by our partnering agencies, and assist and support event organizers. Let’s take a closer look at the specifics:

Future Community Teams 

Today we are happy and proud to see the HQ/Community collaboration thrive in the form of four active community teams:

  • The Documentation Curators
  • The Core Collaborators
  • The Package Team
  • The Unicore Team

All the amazing community team people 🙌

During the second Roundtable discussion which took place in Bristol (notes coming soon), we agreed on the importance of encouraging more formats where the community members can get involved. In this blog post, I would like to present three new teams or concepts of teams and invite you to share your thoughts on how they can make a difference and the best way for them to successfully operate:

Speakers Academy

Purpose: To offer a space for aspiring speakers to practice public speaking, translate ideas into proposals and encourage active participation in Umbraco events.

Goals:

  • Lower the barriers for future speakers
  • Build a support system that enables current experienced speakers to offer mentorship and feedback
  • Coordinate with and encourage meetups and festivals organizers to offer speaking opportunities to new speakers

Training and certification 

Purpose: To provide feedback on Umbraco official training material and input on use-cases that can be included to help the attendees get the most out of it.

Goals:

  • Ensure that the training material covers best practices and relevant information for the trainees
  • Design a process for an active and ongoing feedback system on the training performance

Our website - the community hub

Our has existed for several years in its current state and we know that there’s room for improvement. To be able to unlock the full potential of this community platform, we want to open a discussion with you on its purpose, the content presented, and any other relevant aspects that will help improve Our. 

Share your thoughts 

We would like to hear your thoughts on the new teams we are considering, as well as ideas for other future teams that are relevant to you and vital for the development of your favorite open source CMS. This is not a call for volunteers yet, but a call for your valuable feedback and ideas.

If you have any thoughts on this, please reach out. Your input is important! 

A Badge for Contributing Gold Partners 

We are always humbled by the time and work the community members commit to the Umbraco project and the Umbraco community. At times, these individual efforts could only be made possible by a very supportive and encouraging work environment.

Our close contact with the Gold Partners has shown on several occasions that many make it their mission to offer such an environment and highly encourage their collaborators to get involved and pay it forward.    

To recognize and reward this high level of involvement, we have designed a Contributing Gold Partner Badge which will be revealed shortly. 

What does it take to become a Contributing Partner?  

The badge is to be awarded to Gold Partners which within the last two years have significantly contributed to the Umbraco project. 

We have covered the criteria and requirements on this dedicated page. 

Over the next week, our Partner Managers will reach out to this year’s selected Gold Partner agencies with the good news and include an announcement in the Partners Newscast planned for the 23rd of April (email invitation has been sent to all partners).  

  

More active support Festival organizers

Back in February, we welcomed Arnold Visser as Partner Manager & Umbraco Advocate at HQ. 

 

Arnold’s experience with Umbraco and passion for its community are undeniable. His great work as organizer of the Dutch festival will play an important role in the support HQ offers to Umbraco events organizers. This support will cover different areas; from tips and tricks on attracting sponsorship, to bringing in attendees, and hiring amazing speakers. As their main contact, 

Arnold will make sure the organizers have easy access to Umbraco HQ resources, speakers, swag and everything that will help them make the event a success.

The 2021 Umbraco US Festival

Having to make the tough decision to cancel the 2020 US festival did not stop the dedicated organizers, Marcel Digital, GLG, and Marathon Consulting, from quickly adapting and already setting up a new date for 2021. 

Mark your calendars! The 2021 Umbraco US Festival will be taking place on 14 - 16 April 2021. With a year-plan already kicked off and increased support from HQ, we can only get excited for next year’s #UFestUS.

 

That was it for now. Remember to send us any feedback/ideas you might have regarding the three new community/HQ teams.


- Ilham & Arnold