Team Gibe, the organisers of Umbraco Spark 2024.
We started using Umbraco right from the get-go when we set up Gibe 15 years ago. It was a feature-rich, free-to-use, open-source platform that provided a really nice editor experience so Umbraco was an easy sell for us with our client base.
We’re big advocates of getting all the team engaged with the Umbraco Community, it's a really intelligent, diverse, interesting and fun bunch of people to spend time with.
Gibe Digital co-founders, Steve Temple and Pete Williams
We set up the Umbraco Spark Innovation Conference back in 2019 as an alternative to the London-based UK festival with the ambition of keeping it developer-focused and all about cool new tech ideas for Umbraco. That’s still the broad mandate for the conference today, now we’re coming up to our 5th conference on 7th March 2025.
We also support the team to attend meet-ups and support their local Umbraco community as well as get involved with HQ outreach programmes.
Happy attendees at Spark 2024
Like most Umbracians, the first Codegarden experience was probably a highlight of being involved in the community. Besides all the interesting talks and content, the people you chat with at Codegarden make the event so special. Learning to play Hammerschlagen with 8 other random people, over the odd beer or 3 is what it’s all about.
The famous Bingo evenings are in equal parts astonishing, bewildering and hilarious, with the whole team talking about the evening in the weeks and months afterwards! Steve played a key role in the “car flip” of the 2017 Codegarden which would be his favourite memory demonstrating the strength and dedication of the community in action!
Why do we get so involved? Well, for us it has always been about giving something back. We’ve got an amazing piece of software that we get to use for free on all of our client websites, so it only seems right to contribute back to ensure the continued success of Umbraco.
For us, this means participating in community events throughout the year, attending conferences, contributing code back to the core code base, and being advocates for the technology. We have 5 MVPs in the team who have all forged their own path when it comes to community endeavours. Our company-wide approach to the Umbraco Community mean that directors, project managers, developers and testers all contribute, which helps create a more robust community eco-system.
Group photo of some of the team at Gibe celebrating turning 15 years old in July 2024.
We’ve been coming back for more since 2009 so we can now say that many of the community members are more than just acquaintances, we’re proud to say they are friends and we enjoy spending time together. The community is very welcoming and shares the values of Umbraco HQ around diversity and inclusion, meaning the community is a super friendly bunch of techies with a common interest in doing cool stuff with Umbraco!
We’ve been working on SkrivLet, a package with an alternative to the rich text editor in Umbraco. Matt Begent has been improving Accessibility Reporter and has a few other ideas in the works. Other than that, package-wise, it’s been getting some of our older packages to work with v14+.
There is also Umbraco Spark coming in March 2025 and it’s all hands on deck planning the event, selecting speakers, as well as advertising it. This year we will be in a new venue, which is exciting but also adds some new challenges. Quite a few of the team have been wracking their brains for ideas for talks. If you have a great idea for a talk and would like to speak at Spark, submit here.
Gibe’s first company trip post-COVID takes them to the Guinness Factory in Dublin.
1. Get involved, the real superpower of Umbraco is the community. Don’t be afraid to send the team off to conferences and events, they’ll come back enthused, full of ideas and with a stack of contacts. You’ll find that the more you put in the more you get back.
2. Really work on the back office experience, too many sites we pick up, the developers haven’t thought about the editor experience and you are missing a trick if you don’t spend a bit of time on it. It’s one of the things that makes Umbraco stand out and will make your clients love the sites you build for them. Ask around the community if you want to see what is possible. Any agency I know of would love to show off their sites for you and you could see what is possible with Umbraco.
3. Check out the marketplace, there are some great packages out there, and you can save a lot of time reusing what’s already there. In no time you’ll find there is a set of packages you’ll include on every site.
The Gibe team in front of the Reichstag Building in October 2024.
Annual trips
Gibe are a social bunch and we have been very fortunate to have been on several annual company trips together. They are a great opportunity to get away from the day-to-day and get to know your colleagues better in a more relaxed environment. We’ve most recently been to Berlin for a weekend of history, fun and bonding time. You can find out more about this trip here.
Image 1: The Gibe team in front of the Brandenburg Gate in October 2024. Image 2: The Gibe team river side in Porto with the Dom Luís I Bridge in the background.
Monthly socials
We regularly get together monthly for socials, some of this year's events have included Bowls, Ice skating, virtual games nights (which is great for those who aren’t local to Bristol), pottery making, Glow-in-the-dark painting, Escape rooms, Stand Up Paddle, and summer BBQs. We try to make sure there’s something for everyone. We’ve recently visited the Christmas markets in Cardiff as we now have quite a big contingent over there.
Image 1: Some of the team taking part at Bristol’s Glow in the Dark painting experience earlier this year. Image 2: Gibe take to the water with some stand-up paddle-boarding.
Charity
We are aware of the challenges and pressures of modern-day life, Gibe is committed to supporting (via donating/volunteering and fundraising) local charities that look after those in need. 2024 has been a busy and successful year for Gibe. In July, we raised £1000 by running 1000km for Bristol Animal Rescue Centre, a fantastic charity that looks after and supports vulnerable animals, giving them shelter and training with hopes of helping them find their forever homes. We’re currently underway with our second initiative of the year; The Giving Tree, where instead of our usual Secret Santa, we’ll each buy a gift for a disadvantaged child who might otherwise receive little—or nothing—this Christmas. These children include those fleeing domestic abuse, living with life-limiting disabilities, acting as young carers, or facing economic hardship.
Check out more on what Gibe get up to here.
Team Gibe completing their 1KM for 1K charity challenge
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I’ve been working with Umbraco since v4, we had been using it as a headless CMS for an ecommerce site. We really enjoyed working with it, it made intuitive sense to me and we found it became the only CMS we wanted to use at Gibe. I got involved a little bit with the Umbraco community, from attending the umBristol meetups to writing packages. I attended my first Codegarden in 2013, and since then have been hooked. Eventually setting up UmbracoSpark after noticing that the festivals were getting less techy, and wanted to reintroduce a really tech heavy Umbraco conference back into the line up.
Since then I’ve been getting increasingly involved with Umbraco, I’ve made some amazing friends in the Umbraco community and have run some fun community events, like Umbraco Secret Santa and helping organise Bingo at CodeGarden. It’s such a fun community and very different to most tech communities that I’ve been involved with. I was the first to become an MVP at Gibe and have been encouraging the team to get involved, make packages and take part in conferences and now there are 5 MVPs at Gibe which I think is the most anywhere. It’s been amazing to see people get involved in the community and really get something out of it that they don’t get in their regular work.
As a small start up in 2009 we needed a low cost, high quality, .net based platform for our SME clients and Umbraco ticked all the boxes. At a time when enterprise CMS platforms were easily costing 6-figures, the open source Umbraco platform really delivered for us. I’ve been actively using Umbraco, more as an editor than as a developer for over 15 years!
I’m heavily involved in organising the Umbraco Spark conference and had the idea of setting the conference up while attending a UK Festival in London with Steve. I occasionally attend UmBristol events and often offer our offices to host events. The team is actively encouraged to engage and contribute to the community. Umbraco as a platform has been critical for the development of Gibe’s CMS offering and has allowed us to offer clients excellent solutions for the past 15 years!
I first started using Umbraco when I started at Gibe in 2018 and became involved in the Umbraco community in 2019 when Steve and Pete introduced me to an idea for a developer-focused Umbraco conference in Bristol. Having previously been involved in organising the company's socials and Christmas parties, I assume they thought I'd be the perfect fit... regardless, I jumped at the chance. Since 2019, the Umbraco Spark Conference has become a staple in Umbraco developer's diaries and I am proud to be part of the team that organises it
I like how flexible Umbraco is. From a project management perspective, most things are possible with it as long as there's a budget and it has been simple to demonstrate to clients with it being fairly intuitive.
As a whole; Community, friendliness, togetherness and innovation, mean it's not only a product I want to use but a great bunch of people in a community I want to be a part of.
Getting involved has helped to reduce those feelings of imposter syndrome. As a project manager and someone with no technical background, it's often wondered why someone who organises an event would be awarded an MVP status, so I hope my contribution to the community and recognition encourages others with a similar background to know there is also a place for them and you don't have to be a developer. Through my contributions to the community, I have been fortunate to be recognised as an Umbraco MVP twice and I hope to make that three times next year!
I began working with Umbraco when I joined Gibe, and from the outset, I recognized that the key strength was its intuitive and user-friendly interface. Over the years, I have witnessed Umbraco evolve into an increasingly flexible platform, empowering users to create websites that cater to a wide variety of needs.
In 2020, I saw an opportunity to contribute more directly to the Umbraco community by joining one of its Community Teams. Since then, I have had the privilege of working across several teams, including the Documentation Team, the Backoffice Team, and currently the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Team. It has been an immensely rewarding experience to collaborate with a group of individuals who are not only dedicated to continuously improving the CMS, but who also make the work environment enjoyable and engaging.
At Gibe, we are proud to support the Umbraco community by hosting Umbraco Spark each year. I have had the honour of hosting one of the conference rooms, where I’ve worked alongside inspiring speakers covering a diverse range of thought-provoking topics.
Being immersed in this dynamic community has been both motivating and inspiring. It’s truly rewarding to witness the ways in which others leverage Umbraco’s capabilities and to share in the collective pursuit of evolving the platform to its fullest potential.
Through my contributions, I have been fortunate to be recognized as an Umbraco MVP four times, and I hope to get number 5 this coming year!
I started using Umbraco due to the agency I worked in having a number of projects built using it. I was impressed with how simple it was to use both as an editor and also a developer. It didn’t take long to get to grips with the basics.
I became involved in the Umbraco Community primarily through attending the Umbraco CodeGarden conference. It struck me immediately how friendly everyone was and, although I didn’t know many in attendance, it was amazing to see people come together who clearly had built up existing relationships through the Umbraco Community. Since then, I got more involved with the Community, attending and speaking at Umbraco Meetups and, more recently, a couple of talks at Umbraco Spark. I also attended CODECABIN in 2024 which was a particular highlight and testament to how the community comes together.
Umbraco makes my job easier and has provided me with a large resource of friendly people who are always willing to help. I find the developer experience particularly quick to learn, which makes a big difference especially when onboarding other developers to the community and ecosystem.
Umbraco to me means community. Having previously used other .NET CMS’s such as Kentico and Sitecore it’s by far and away the thing that sets it apart. It’s also extremely flexible, providing a solid foundation as a content management system for developers to extend or build on top of.
As someone who has always struggled particularly with imposter syndrome, Umbraco has provided me with the tools, community and ability to help me feel confident and component in my ability as a .NET developer. It has also provided me with a platform to speak at events which is something I never thought I would have the confidence to do.
I cut my CMS teeth on Sitecore (boo, hiss) a very long ago. However, the agency I was working for at the time had clients which didn't fancy spending the equivalent to their entire build budget on the first year of CMS licensing costs. This is where Umbraco came in; we found it to be flexible, usable, and pleasant to develop for.
Bristol has a strong user group which I became aware of fairly early into my time with Umbraco. I started attending to learn more about Umbraco development, to improve my skills. I’ve continued going to keep abreast of the latest developments, and because the people are fantastic to be around. Since working for Gibe, I’ve also taken part in hackathons, CODECABIN, and of course the highly venerated Umbraco Spark conference.
Many content management systems base their sales pitch around their feature checklist. This seems to usually have the effect of leading the end-user to believe that:
They absolutely need all of the various features listed
They’ll be able to make use of them without investment of time and/or money
I’ve seen several non-Umbraco site implementations which make use of none of the extra (very expensive) features. In those situations, I always find myself wondering “why didn't they just use Umbraco?”
Umbraco presents itself as more of a platform, one which takes care of the basics and allows itself to easily be extended to match bespoke business requirements. You can start from a £0 financial commitment and compose exactly what you need to provide a suitable solution for your client.
Beyond that, the community is weird, wonderful, and full of very bright people. The Umbraco community is extremely supportive and welcoming. Having access to it has allowed me to increase my own confidence in larger groups, specifically when it comes to sharing my own knowledge.
I started using Umbraco back in 2017 when I was looking for a .Net CMS for my own personal blog. I found a couple of options but when it came to asking questions and needing help, I had a very unpleasant experience. This put me off and so I went looking for something else, that was when I stumbled upon Umbraco.
I installed the CMS, got it working and then when it came to asking questions on Our, everyone was super friendly. At the company I was working for I was also encouraged to apply to CODECABIN by my mentor at the time. I’d only been using Umbraco for a few months but my application was accepted and as they say, the rest is history!
2018 I received my first Umbraco MVP award and I’ve been part of the community ever since, organising meetups, setting up the Umbraco Community Swag store, working for a number of Umbraco Gold partners and attending many events.
I love the CMS, the community, the friendliness and inclusivity of the events and the meetups. It really is the Friendly CMS.
I started using Umbraco after being introduced to it while working as a frontend developer. The .NET/Umbraco team I worked with at the time (which included Owain) immediately struck me as incredibly knowledgeable and dedicated to delivering high-quality code. From there, I started to try and pick up as much as possible - I knew it was the path I wanted to follow. My first exposure to the Umbraco community events was attending Umbraco Spark 2024.
I like that Umbraco offers a great CMS out of the box, while also making it straightforward to customise to extend it to fit any need. I also really like how close-knit and helpful the community surrounding Umbraco is - it has been a great experience as someone who is still trying to learn as much as possible. Umbraco means both community and a dedication to quality.
Umbraco - and its community - has helped me improve as a developer. When trying to learn new concepts, everyone is always willing not only to help, but to explain things in great detail.
I only started working with Umbraco when I joined Gibe in 2022, I’d never heard of it before then. I’ve attended the two previous Umbraco Spark events and am planning to attend the next one. It has been a good way to meet people from the Umbraco community. As it is hosted by Gibe, we help with the set up and running of the event.
The thing that I like the most about using Umbraco, is how easy it is to understand and use the back office. It is the kind of thing where it is easy to pick up but worth mastering to take full advantage of what it can do.
To me, Umbraco means a focus on a community based CMS which is easy for anyone to pick up whether you are an editor or a developer. Working at Gibe means I work with a lot of people (Including me) that have a real passion for Umbraco and the community surrounding it.
I used to work at an agency that had its own bespoke CMS which was incredibly hard to make changes to. During some “R&D” time I got the chance to play around with Umbraco and immediately fell in love with how easy it was to customise and build websites with. We never built another site with our internal CMS again!
I once worked on the project to build the Red Bull Stratos site using Umbraco 4 back in 2012. I was asked to do a talk about it at the local umBristol meetup, and that was my first foray into the Umbraco community! Not long after that I went to Codegarden (when it was still in Copenhagen) which completely blew my mind. Sadly I didn’t continue doing much in the community at that point which I regret.
When I began my time as a freelancer in 2016, I started going to the umBristol meetups again and enjoyed it so much that I began going to Codegarden fairly regularly too. Since then I take every opportunity to go to any local meetups and conferences that I can. Not only can I keep on top of what’s going on in the Umbraco world and learn lots, but I’ve made lots of friends and connections that I otherwise wouldn’t have.
I love how flexible Umbraco is to work with; you can do pretty much anything and make the editing experience as friendly as possible for editors. If you come across any issues then the open source nature of it means you can dig a bit deeper into the inner workings, and even get involved in fixes to code and updates to documentation! The emphasis in recent years to embrace the community even more and push development & documentation forward has made a good platform even better.
I think being involved in the community has helped me gain a lot of confidence in who I am and what I do. Everyone is so friendly, welcoming and supportive that you can’t help but want to get involved and see everyone again, even if it’s once every couple of years at Codegarden in Odense! It’s also helped me gain a deeper understanding of the open source community in general and how important it is to give as well as take.
I was first exposed to Umbraco around 6 years ago while working as a developer for a small digital agency. I had previously used other CMS platforms but Umbraco quickly became my favourite to use, thanks to the extensibility and robustness.
I love that Umbraco is transparent - open source means that I can get into the inner workings of the platform to explore and learn that way. The community is also extremely friendly, helpful and unmatched in their passion, which makes it easy for me to recommend to others - it’s “the friendly CMS” for a reason!
To me Umbraco is a shining example of a community coming together to create something great. It represents the potential of collaboration.
Umbraco has helped me professionally by enabling me to deliver many high-quality websites to clients. On a personal level, I’ve learned an invaluable amount both through the platform and the community. I'm hoping to attend my first community event soon and get more involved in person!
I first started using Umbraco when I joined Gibe. Before that, I used other Content Management Systems, and I was immediately impressed by how flexible and easy to use Umbraco was and remains to be. Being in a client-facing role, I often demo new features and functionality to clients as well as train new starters and it is a pleasure to work with such a customisable and user-friendly CMS.
My first interactions with the Umbraco community came from taking part in the annual Umbraco Spark events. The community is diverse, inclusive and innovative and I’ve made lifelong friends through it.
I started using Umbraco in my first ever web job roughly 15 years ago! However, since I joined Gibe 5 years ago I have started using it a lot more and been more active in the community.
I have a keen interest in making the web accessible and have found like minded people in the community. I created an Umbraco package called Accessibility Reporter, which won best package at Codegarden this year (2024). I am also an MVP, which I am very proud of. I have helped out at events including Spark and UMBRAAD and spoken at events and meetups. I am also part of the Umbraco Accessibility Guild.
The main thing I like about Umbraco is its flexibility. A lot of CMS’s can be quite closed off or be difficult to customise, however Umbraco makes it easy for you to do what you want. The community is also super and I’ve never been a part of another developer community like it. It’s helped me to get involved in a developer community and to have an impact on making websites accessible.
I started using Umbraco because it is the preferred CMS at Gibe Digital and I have been to multiple conferences (Codegarden, Umbraco UK Fest, Spark) and enjoy going to the Bristol Umbraco Meetups.
I like that Umbraco is flexible and has a large range of great community made packages to extend the offering to our clients.
I’ve worked in digital or marketing ever since I was 15, something I’m quite proud of. It all started as work experience, became a Saturday job, and continued post-uni working in Digital. My point! Umbraco is the best CMS I’ve used in the past quarter century. During my time I’ve tested, used as an editor and rolled out for clients so many CMS systems - from basic to some huge enterprise. It wasn’t until I started working at Gibe Digital that I came across Umbraco. And it was a breath of fresh air!
Umbraco is intuitive as a platform, it’s easy to recommend because you put it in front of most clients and it just makes sense to them. The fact that it's free helps as well! I’m not actively involved with the Umbraco community right now but many of my peers are (inc. a lot of MVPs!) - you can see their passion to contribute, and this is reflected across the whole Umbraco community.
I started working with Umbraco when I joined Gibe in 2022. I have attended the Gibe hosted Umbraco Spark event and helped run the event with my colleagues.
I enjoy the separation between content editors and developers. I think it is important to give the client control over their content in a way that limits any massive changes.
Using Umbraco represents a way to create structured, user-friendly websites that balance flexibility and control, helping both developers and clients achieve their goals efficiently.
Umbraco has allowed me to develop new technical skills and gain a better appreciation for collaborative and user-focused design, contributing to both my professional growth and confidence as a developer.
My role involves designing websites that sit on Umbraco and working with clients to create the best user experience and user interface for their users. The great thing about Umbraco is that it’s incredibly flexible and the development teams I work with give me slim to no constraints in regards to working with Umbraco!
In the last 5 years, I have helped organise and promote the Umbraco Spark Innovation Conference which has introduced me to the wonderful Umbraco community. The knowledge-sharing, innovation and support that comes from this community is something I’ve not witnessed elsewhere and is a testament to the evolving platform and its audience and is quite special to be a part of.
While I believe it’s already easy to use, the team started exploring how to make the editorial experience more user-friendly, which is something I believe I can add more to with my skill set and will be something I can contribute to the ever-evolving platform!
My first experience using Umbraco was while working at Gibe, which is my first developer job after graduating from university. Since then I have attended a variety of Umbraco meetups and events, which has really helped me to improve my knowledge of the CMS, as well as getting involved in the community.
I like using Umbraco because on one hand it provides a clean and complete experience out-of-the-box, yet is also very extensible and allows the ability to add and customise to fit your needs. Umbraco has been a major part of my development career to date, and has allowed me to meet and contribute to a community that I wouldn’t have otherwise!
I first started using Umbraco when I joined Gibe, it was my first introduction to real Web Development as well as the first CMS I’d ever used. I was impressed with its flexibility and it was easier to use than I had expected. To this day I really like how customisable the Umbraco experience is, but also how simple it can be.
My first interactions with the Umbraco community came from taking part in the first Umbraco Spark event, and I was really impressed with how involved the community is. Umbraco to me is a great example of a community coming together to help build something great, and it has allowed me to expand my scope as a developer as well as grow my confidence as a person.
I first encountered Umbraco when a new client project was handed over to me to support whilst the developer who built it was going on a 2 week holiday. Even though it was built using Umbraco version 6 it was heavily customised, it even had its own markup language! It was eye opening to me seeing what could be achieved by extending the backoffice, something which has only gotten easier with time. I love using the tools Umbraco provides to create a solution that is easy to use and easy to maintain.
For most of the time I’ve been using Umbraco I haven’t engaged much with the community, a handful of forum posts and a single PR are the measly contributions that I gave back. Since working at Gibe I’ve made more of an effort to get involved, attending Umbraco conferences as well as meetups in Cardiff, Bristol and online.
I started using Umbraco because it was a CMS that fit the requirements of a project and have found that it’s flexible enough that it will often fit the requirements for a project that requires a system to manage content. I like that it is flexible and maintained and that it continues to fit a wide variety of requirements.
Is there someone you'd like to nominate for a uProfile?
Do you know someone who deserves a spotlight on their Umbraco journey? To nominate a friend, peer, or colleague, reach out to Lucy Brailsford in the DevRel Team at community@umbraco.com and explain why!
