These blog posts aim to act as a periodic recap which will highlight the great work of the community members, be it by helping newcomers to the community, organizing/speaking at/attending meetups and festivals or even putting together a completely brand new format of Umbraco events and initiatives.
We’d also like to bring attention to the current tools and support that Umbraco HQ provides and by doing so, hopefully, encourage more contributions.
Finally, and as we also work closely with other communities, we will include some relevant updates on the subject in this recap. So get ready for a selection of information and news ranging from the newest addition to the list of Umbraco meetups to the kick-off of a new Coding Pirates season.
… But before we dive in ...
To get more involved in any kind of community, it's important to first understand its structure. This helps to look at the big picture and makes it easier to see where your role as a contributor can best fit in.
Similar to other open-source software communities, the Umbraco community can be seen as a layered structure of different roles and levels of engagement. The roles vary in their nature and impact, but no matter the level and nature of involvement, they all carry a ripple effect that helps the community grow.
Maybe translating this into some kind of graph will explain it better. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words 😉
As most of the contributions overlap and our friendly community members excel at multitasking, the numbers listed here are general estimations based on the data collected from the meetups, festivals, and traffic on Our. The idea is to be able to get a better look at the current size of the community and to follow its progress as it grows.
The beauty of open-source is that you get to choose the role and level of involvement you would like to achieve, based on your interest and the time you can allocate. Our mission is to help you fulfill that role.
… and see who are some of the people who help expand these circles of contribution. For this first issue, the focus will be on meetup and festival organizers.
Meetups are smaller events that are organized by the Umbraco community. A meetup typically takes place on a given day after business hours. It may be hosted by an agency in their offices, or in a more informal setting, like in a local pub.
Starting a meetup group and maintaining it is no easy task, and we can only be thankful to all the organizers who work hard on connecting people and giving them a space to meet, learn, and share knowledge.
The membership to the meetup groups has been growing (see pictures below) and that is thanks to all the organizers, and community members who make sure to RSVP, attend, and help promote the meetups. Please keep in mind that the numbers provided here only refer to the groups that are part of the Umbraco Pro Network. There are currently 33 Umbraco meetup groups across 14 countries.
If you would like to join this amazing bunch of community contributors:
We will help you set up the group, cover the subscription fees, and promote the kickoff meetup. All through the Umbraco Pro Network.
An Umbraco festival is typically a 1-day event that covers all things Umbraco, organized by the community in different locations around the world.
The first Umbraco festival ever, the UK festival, took place 10 years ago! Since then, the number kept on growing and there are currently 8 Umbraco festivals around the world.
Organizing a festival is a lot of work and, as the community grows, more organizers choose to collaborate with other community members to deliver a better experience to the attendees, and to ensure that the event will stay sustainable.
Inspired by the different models that exist and you would like to launch an Umbraco festival in your country?
…but not that far off…
As we do our best supporting the Umbraco community, we also encourage local and international initiatives that embrace our mission and values.
Umbraco HQ works closely with other communities that are active and have an impact in the digital and the open-source world, like Coding Pirates, Coding Class, and WriteTheDocs.
Coding Pirates is a non-profit organization that offers a diverse group of IT professionals, teachers, programmers, and researchers the possibility to work together in order to offer children an outlet to develop their IT and creativity skills.
There are currently 77 Coding Pirates divisions in Denmark, among which the Umbraco division. Umbraco Coding Pirates is the first and only division in the country to offer sessions in English.
Umbraco HQ has recently joined the Board of Coding Pirates and is working actively on promoting access to coding classes and fun learning for the kids aged 8-17 in the Southern region of Denmark. Since October 2018, we have run 2 successful seasons with a total of 14 kids and 6 team members. Next September, we will continue our journey with more kids and volunteers joining in.
Coding Class is an initiative by the Danish ICT Industry Association (IT-Branchen). The goal is to give children the opportunity to take part in the digital world. Besides access to coding lessons and through visits to IT companies, Coding Class offers the kids the chance to hone their presentation skills and get a first look at how IT companies work.
Umbraco HQ has opened its doors to multiple classes of 12-13 year-olds to come and share their stories and showcase the games they developed. Last June, the 8 finalist classes got to compete for the first prize at the Coding Class Grand Finale in Odense.
WriteTheDocs is a community for people to meet and talk about the art and science of writing good documentation and why it matters. It hosts a number of conferences which cover different topics related to documentation in the software industry.
As we value good documentation and we have been in the last years making an active effort to improve the Umbraco documentation, we wanted to work more closely with the WriteTheDocs community.
In September, our own Jesper and Sofie, Documentation Curators at HQ, will be attending the Prague WriteTheDocs conference with the goal of learning from the experts in the field and exchanging experiences. Umbraco HQ is also supporting the event through sponsorship.
There is so much to cover in one blog post; lucky us! Each time we will zoom in on some of the roles and highlight how you can get involved and what we can do to support you.
All the above and more will be periodically updated. If you have any suggestions for what else can be covered or some thoughts you would like to share on how we can highlight the non-code contributions, get in touch! We are always ready to help.
Meanwhile, you can go and explore the Community section on Our to learn more about how to get involved and what the community is working on.
And please remember … All contributions matter! ❤️
Last but not least, make sure to follow the latest updates on Documentation by Sofie and on the progress of Pull Requests by Sebastiaan.
--------------------------
