A round of thanks 🙏
For this team, we had an unexpected amount of 33 people applying. All of the applicants were on various tracks in their Umbraco journey, and each of them seemed very interesting and qualified. This made the selection process quite a challenge! But I think we have a really great team together now, and we’re very ready to get started.
Another huge thank you goes to the team members who are leaving: Joe Glombek, Laura Weatherhead, Nathan Woulfe, and Owain Williams. I’ve very much enjoyed working with you, and your help and input has been invaluable for the past 2 years. As we say in Denmark, a 1000 times thanks!
The team’s mandate
Just to remind you of the mission of the Core Collabs team:
We empower you to influence how your favorite CMS evolves by guiding your contribution, and ensuring the process is clear, simple, and enjoyable.
This means that we work on anything from the contributor journey, to reviewing your code, to guiding people during the process, organizing Hacktoberfest, and doing some admin work (yay!).
Time to meet the new team members
Busra Sengul
I’m an Umbraco Developer at Bump Digital, and previously, I’ve been a Umbraco Documentation Curator for some time, first as an “intern” and later as a full-fledged Documentation Curator.
I wanted to keep my hands dirty and learn a lot more about Umbraco CMS' codebase and help as much as I can. Umbraco is now a work style - like in lifestyle- for me, and I feel whatever contribution I can make for Umbraco to move a step forward is a benefit both for me/my company, and Umbraco itself.
I don't take my responsibilities lightly, and I'm a dedicated helper. Also, my company is very generously letting us have as much time as we need to make any contributions to Umbraco.
Emma Garland
I recently had a break from the world of coding for a year as I became a mother in November 2021. Now my daughter is a bit older, and I'm working full-time, I've dived back into the Umbraco ecosystem. I'd like to gain more experience with the areas of Umbraco I'm more unfamiliar with, and understand the setup of the automated test suites.
I work as a Senior Software Engineer at Rock Solid Knowledge, a Contributing Gold Partner in Bristol, England. I've used Umbraco for about 15 years and have always found it a delight to develop with. I was a member of the Unicore team from 2020-2021, a very valuable experience for me, and I am so proud to be able to say that my CMS of choice runs on the latest .NET framework.
I still remember the excited nerves from that first open-source pull request to Umbraco, and how friendly the team and community were to me. I'd like to continue that experience for others, maybe helping them gain the bravery to push that submit button, and to make sure they feel valued for their time and efforts!
In my free time, I play the drums, and love gardening.
Georgina Bidder
With just over 1.5 years at true as a Digital Operative, I have recently reached my goal of transitioning into software development and becoming a Junior Developer, and I am looking to continue to progress in my career. As well as having the opportunity to learn to write code, a big part of my role has been working on software testing.
I am passionate about making sure the products we create are user-friendly, accessible, and performant. While I see this as an exciting opportunity to contribute to a forward-thinking company, I also see this as an amazing opportunity to learn more about open-source code and community projects. Being new to the industry, I feel like I can bring a fresh and raw perspective, which I believe will be beneficial to the team.
In November, I went to the Umbraco community event – Umbraco Together, and took part in the Hackathon. From this, I have now been able to write my own tests using Playwright. The event was also an excellent opportunity to meet the Umbraco community, where I’d love to be more involved.
Fun facts about me, as a child, I was a huge Elvis Presley fan. In my spare time, I am slightly plant-obsessed; in my flat, you'll find over 30 different plants, and I'm always propagating new ones or attempting to grow vegetables indoors.
Jason Elkin
I've been building things with Umbraco since 2015. At the agency where I worked, I was tasked with trying almost every CMS available at the time to try and work out which one would be the best fit for both our developers and editors to work with - Umbraco won, by a huge margin!
Since then, I’ve built all kinds of solutions with Umbraco and, since joining Bump Digital, have had the time to be able to contribute more to the community - becoming an MVP in 2022.
I’m very much a “full stack” web developer and have a particular interest in the places where frontend and backend development meet - like the Umbraco Backoffice. I’m also really interested in performance and sustainability - especially the environmental impact we have as developers.
ADHD means I’m super sensitive to distractions so, combined with previous experience as a technical lead, I’m also keen on making technical processes smoother and helping developers to focus on the part of the job they enjoy.
Why did I want to join the Core Collaborators team? I still remember the feeling when I installed an 8.x release that contained code I contributed - it was amazing, but I also remember how tricky it felt to get to that point. I’m looking forward to being a part of the Core Collaborators team so that I can help make the process easier, and more accessible, for others that have something to contribute.
Before my career as a web developer, I’ve been a photographer, a designer, and an IT engineer. When I’m not Umbracoing, I spend most of my time gaming, watching sci-fi (I am a standard nerd), and supporting my local Methodist Church as a preacher and part of the leadership team.
Kyle Eck
Joining the Core Collaborators Team meant that I would be able to finally get more insight and be involved on an in-depth level with Umbraco. What makes the Umbraco community so great is the people and what they bring to the table to make the Umbraco CMS the best it can be.
Becoming a part of the Core Collaborators Team not only allows me to refine and progress my skillset but also give back to the community that has given so much of itself to the everyday developer. Having the opportunity to help improve and streamline the CMS in any way seems like a fantastic way to give back and get involved.
I started developing in Umbraco in 2015 while working for a digital marketing agency, where I got thrown in head-first using Umbraco 6. It's come a long way since then, but I still find myself engrossed in all things Umbraco. As years passed by, I found myself moving around the CMS world, working with various different platforms but always found myself coming back to work in Umbraco any chance I could get. Currently, I develop websites and applications from front end to back end and try to integrate as much with Umbraco as I can.
While not developing or writing code, you can find me enjoying the outdoors in the summer or going slot car racing in the fall/winter months.
Laura Neto
Umbraco is evolving quickly. A lot of (cool) significant changes, like the new backoffice, are ongoing or in the pipeline, so these are some exciting times to join the core collaborators team.
The move to .NET (Core) was definitely a motivator for me to contribute, so I’m hoping that Umbraco continues moving forward and keeping things exciting for us all.
I’ve always wanted to be more involved in the community and make a positive impact, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. By being a part of the team, I am hoping I can help make Umbraco better, and encourage others to contribute, while also learning a lot along the way.
I am a .NET developer, based in The Netherlands but originally from Portugal. I've been working at DEPT for a bit over 4 years and using Umbraco since then (from Umbraco 7 to 11). There I am responsible for the standardization of our Umbraco projects and also organizing monthly “Umbraco” meetings where we share the latest updates, events we went to or other cool things we are working on. Hopefully, I will also take some learnings from this experience and share them with my colleagues.
Michael Latouche
I was part of the previous Core Collaborators team, and I reapplied this year because it was such a blast 😊 I initially applied to this team because it was the ideal way for me to get more involved in contributing to Umbraco.
Writing constructive code reviews is not always easy, so I proposed to bring my professional experience in code reviewing to validate and merge the pull requests from the community.
I was selected, and, during the past few years, I really enjoyed writing feedback and cheering great contributions and newcomers. What I also liked is the fact that this team can somewhat have a concrete impact on the direction that Umbraco is taking, through the selection of the pull requests being reviewed.
So, I was very happy and excited to be selected again as a member of the new team, and I can't wait to start working together with my new teammates!
Apart from being a Core Collaborator, I have been contributing to Umbraco in various ways throughout the years (since 2009 - V4!), and, most recently, by writing a few Skrift articles about code review and community involvement. My participation in the team also inspired 2 Codegarden sessions on the subject, and I have been a member of the BUUG meetups organizers team since 2020.
I wouldn't be complete without mentioning that I was nominated for two MVP awards, in 2021 and 2022, which I was very happy and honored about.
On a professional level, I have been a freelance .Net web developer for over 20 years now (!), with some front-end skills like Angular, so "full-stack" as they say but with a broader experience in backend stuff. I started building websites for small/medium companies, doing it all, and then evolved towards team/technical lead roles for bigger companies, mostly in the public transport sector. I quite enjoy being able to mix development work with some management aspects, and this eventually brought me into the code review side of things.
But enough said, now, seriously, when do we merge your next PR 😉
Team steward:
Sebastiaan Janssen
If you’ve encountered me before, then you know I’m passionate about PR (no, not public relations, the other PR work) and contributing. I’ve been stewarding the Core Collaborators team since late 2018, and I couldn’t be more excited to have these lovely new people on board!
As the steward, I will be:
- Managing the team communication
- Providing the necessary support to the team members
- Coordinating with the rest of the HQ dev team and stewards of the other community teams.
Reach out to the Core Collaborators team
If you have any questions, feedback, or ideas, for the team, you can get in touch with us on Discord, where we have a #contributing channel. Alternatively, you can write to me directly at sebastiaan@umbraco.com with the knowledge that I’m really good at Discord, and really bad at email 😉