Name: Ben Szymanski
Pronouns: He/him
Company name: HyperFast Interactive
Job title: Software Engineer
Country/Region: Florida, United States
How long have you been working with Umbraco?: Exactly ten years!
I was blindly thrown into it!
I took my first agency job in 2016, and my new manager happened to be leaving for vacation the week after I started. He left me a laundry list of stuff to do while he was away, and I think it was kind of a test of how I would actually perform, if I was resourceful, if I could work independently and handle the chaos of agency life.
One of those tasks was enhancing the website’s search results by including uploaded PDF media. I had never even heard of Umbraco before, but was quickly impressed with the organization of the backoffice, the ergonomics of how the content is organized and the APIs for accessing the content, and the amount of control the entire system enables for developers.
It was a tall order, as I didn’t even know what a doc type was. Fortunately, I happened to find one of Shannon Deminick’s tweets (https://nitter.net/shazwazza/status/45369082240974848) about how he had implemented multi-search indexing in Examine. I found the commit on GitHub, got an understanding of how it worked and then tried it on the client’s website.
It all worked, and it worked far better than trying to combine two indexes into a single collection or any other approach. I was immediately impressed.
As for what made me stay, I always appreciated how the Umbraco community was over the top (in a good way), had a zany energy, but was simultaneously churning out a tasteful, sophisticated, world-class product. I knew that was my crew.
I was most recently part of the 2025 Community Docs team and was so grateful for the experience! Working directly with HQ and alongside other Umbracians around the world - people I might never have met otherwise as a solo developer - was super cool.
I think for a lot of people, they expect that to “contribute” to Umbraco, you’ll need serious chops to sling code and get it merged into the core Umbraco project. While I love the art of software engineering, I struggle to jump from paid development work to sending in development contributions. I need a little more variety in my daily activities, and working on the platform documentation gave me just that!
I hope this doesn’t seem overly predictable, but I’d have to say my proudest Umbraco moment was being selected as an Umbraco MVP (class of 2026!). I spent years mostly admiring the community from the sidelines, so being recognized by that same ecosystem felt surreal.
I have been burning the midnight oil building a package for Umbraco called FastGooey, and I view it as the most important piece of software I’ve ever written.
The concept itself, server-driven user interface (or SDUI), isn’t particularly new. It has existed in the form of TV Markup Language (TVML) on the Apple TV platform for well over a decade and was later adopted by Airbnb, Lyft and Spotify in their native mobile applications.
This architecture gives native apps the kind of rapid publishing workflow we’ve all gotten used to on the web: updating content, rearranging or redesigning layouts, or changing the representation altogether without recompiling or pushing a new App Store update. FastGooey applies that same idea to Umbraco, so those changes can be managed from the backoffice.
SDUI is a super powerful concept, but we usually only see these kinds of systems being built by large engineering organizations. In other words, it’s been highly inaccessible to most. If we take the same concept and apply it on top of something extremely accessible, like Umbraco, I think it has the potential to change the landscape, at least in terms of how people view the use cases, limits, and purposes of CMSes today.
It took a lot of trial and error to figure out how to apply principles of hypermedia systems on top of Umbraco, and be useful to where I could say “this is good enough that I’d use it myself.” It also took layers of simplification on top of simplification, until I had a system that was “copy-paste” easy.
Dare I say, it kind of feels like magic.
Tip 1: Start showing up to events!
I have been a fan of Umbraco since 2016, but lurked in the shadows, watching events like CodeGarden, thinking that they were too “big” and too cool for me. I finally got myself to Umbraco US Fest in 2024 and was shocked at how awesome and welcoming everyone was in person.
I’d also say that people in the Umbraco community aren’t just friendly, but also intelligent and usually have fascinating personal lives/stories.
Tip 2: There’s Plenty To Do
Get “stuck in” as my UK friends would say. Ask Umbracians, either who work for HQ or visible non-HQ Umbracians around in the community. There’s tons of ways to contribute, give back and find even more Umbraco friends. It’s a great feeling to write code or documentation, or a helpful forum post that other Umbracians around the world use and reference. You can also find these opportunities on the new community website, too.
Tip 3: Subscribe to UMB.FYI
There are so many different online places to visit to keep up with Umbraco news and happenings - articles on Skrift, blog posts on Substack or Medium or dev.to, Discord, the Umbraco Forums… UMB.FYI is the easiest way to stay in the loop!
I’m also working toward joining the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve as a part-time officer. I was originally interested in response missions, like search and rescue and disaster response, both of which are very obviously different from my civilian life (hey, I said I like variety, right?). I’ve also heard the words “digital modernization initiatives” uttered (which I wouldn’t be disappointed with).
It’s a very competitive accession path, and I’m applying again after being placed on the alternate list last year. That was disappointing, but people who have been in the same spot I am right now have said that it’s a great sign to have made any list at all. Nevertheless, I continue to work on this goal.
Plenty! Most people might be surprised that I am trained (and decent) at ballroom dance. I also play piano, and eFoil along the Florida coasts on my weekends.
Yes, more variety!
I’ll take the nerdy route here.
I’m writing this on a 24” M4 iMac (Orange, 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, nano texture), paired with an Apple Studio Display (2022), a magic trackpad and a Matias Ergo Pro keyboard.
I finally let go of my old, tattered Microsoft Sculpt and replaced it with the Matias and I absolutely love it. It’s a split mechanical keyboard with keycaps modeled after the old Apple Extended Keyboard II (but quieter).
On the other/second desk to my right, I’ve got:
Insta360 X5
iPhone 4S (White, still running iOS 6)
24” iMac (Late 2006, Mac OS X 10.6)
15” MacBook Pro (Early 2008, Mac OS X 10.9)
PowerMac G4 Digital Audio (733 MHz, Mac OS X 10.4) + Apple Studio Display (17-inch LCD)
These old machines are all thrift-store or Facebook marketplace rescues that I’ve lovingly deep cleaned and restored to working order. All in all, I’ve collected and restored 24 machines, spanning back to 1990/Macintosh Classic with System 7.
Aside from looking cool and being great conversation starters on video calls, I actually do use these machines as references on software design, information architecture, reading period developer documentation and inspecting things. These machines are actually where much of the inspiration for FastGooey was pulled from.
There’s also a bunch of Umbraco stickers all over the place.
I recently watched the Fallout series after realizing I needed something non-work-related to help me wind down. I knew about the games, but I never invested any time into playing them, so I thought the TV show would allow me a glimpse into the Fallout story in a very low-effort way.
Just how does an advanced society collapse? How and why would the people in the Fallout universe have gotten to such a precarious existence? What does day to day life look and feel like? Why did all of this culminate in nuclear dawn? The game and the TV show pick at these fascinating questions, but in truth, we’ve already seen some of these same patterns throughout western history.
I expected a fun game adaptation and unintentionally found myself thinking about energy systems, resource constraints, peak oil theory, debates around Malthusian economics, and why advanced societies become fragile. I don’t think the TV show always goes as deep as its premise deserves, but that may be why it stuck in my head.
I will warn that the TV show didn’t work well as bedtime viewing, because each episode left my brain racing with thoughts. I’ll have to go back to rewatching the black and white Twilight Zone episodes.
Hmmm. The obvious pick would be flying, but think about when you’re on a rollercoaster and all that air flowing up your nostrils makes it difficult to breathe - just miserable! Now imagine doing that journey from Pensacola, Florida, to Odense like that. No sir/ma’am, I’ll pass! Indeed, the most chill way to get to HQ or CodeGarden would be with teleportation.
A runner up would be time travel. I love finding forgotten details and strange corners of history, which is why I picked Latin on Duolingo.
I like to surf bandcamp every so often, which is a really nice way to escape algorithmic streaming. I’ll usually do this when I’m stuck in airports, and I’ve found gem after gem from tiny indie artists this way. I’ll give you some of the highlights of what I’ve found:
A Million Miles Away - FM Attack
Engage - Hypixi !!!, Jasper De Ceuster
Forever - Stick Figure
Fire on the Horizon (Johnny Cosmic Remix) - Stick Figure
Shelter Song - Temples
Porcelain - The Hip Abduction
The Dreamer - Pale Blue Eyes
Dripfield - Goose
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-s-47b138113/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nanokernel/
Substack: https://ben1777.substack.com/
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