uPofile: Callum Whyte and Marcin Zajkowski
Working at: The Cogworks
Role: Senior Developers and UmbraCoffee hosts! Marcin is also an Umbraco Trainer
Time working with Umbraco: We’ve got a combined 15+ years’(?!) experience with Umbraco! That’s nearly as long a Niels Hartvig, right? 😉 Marcin’s journey began back in 2008 and has continued on and off for nearly a decade. Callum stumbled upon Umbraco by accident after working with PHP and a certain blogging platform/CMS (we won’t mention any names…) and hasn’t looked back since!
Your favourite Umbraco moment ?
It’s really difficult to choose just one!
We’ve both worked on numerous packages, helped community members with issues, attended and spoken at countless community events… and in 2017 both earned our Umbraco Master status, we were among the first few in the world to join the exclusive “5 tick club”!
I think ultimately for me (Callum) the best moments have been organising community events such as the Umbraco BBQ and Umbraco UK Festivals; seeing 300+ Umbracians from all over the world coming together and learning from the event you’ve spent the past year working on is a really rewarding feeling. Last year I also wrote for Skrift, attended my first UWestFest and managed to speak at every Umbraco meetup in the South of the UK (7 in total), plus the Umbraco Poland Meetup - all which I could never have imagined was possible.
For me (Marcin) it was during Umbraco UK Festival in 2015 where my community story started. It was on that day I decided I needed to get out there in the community; show people what I was doing, show that I exist, and with it step out of my comfort zone to achieve great new things - Umbraco helped me do just that!
What about Umbraco keeps you coming back for more?
It’s all about the people!
We love engaging with the community, meeting new faces, and attending all of the events we can. Building software might be boring, but when you’re working with a product that you believe in – and you see all the joy of other people willing to share their knowledge and skills during meetups, festivals, online – it’s exciting and makes you want to do more and more!
What are you currently working on?
For a little while now we’ve been brewing a few fresh ideas for UmbraCoffee… stay tuned for some longer episodes (“Lungo’s”) in the near future! We’re both always working on new presentation topics that we want to share with the community.
Organisation of the Umbraco UK and PL festivals is well under way, plus Callum is busy arranging another series of Umbraco BBQs for the summer after last years’ success. Oh... and continuing to build amazing projects with Umbraco of course! 😃
What are your top 3 best tips for an Umbraco newbie?
It all centres around community...
- Contribute!
- Learn, then share what you’ve learned!
- Get out there and meet people – go to Codegarden, experience first hand the crazy friendly community that everyone talks about!
What is on your desk at work?
Callum: A unicorn stuffed toy (courtesy of the awesome Ravi Motha!), a pile of UmbraCoffee coasters and a ton of random conference stickers...
Marcin: Coffee! And pen & paper to note down any ideas that come to my mind.
Tell us something we didn't know about you...
Marcin used to be a semi-pro basketball player (yes, even despite his height!) He also recorded a hip-hop song with a really famous rapper in Poland as a child! Maybe one day we’ll see one of these hidden skills shine again... 😃
On the other hand, Callum’s talents are slightly less impressive – but he can eat an obscene amount of donuts in a single sitting… We’re talking at least a dozen of his favourite Krispy Kreme donuts! 🍩
What’s playing on repeat on your headset?
We’ve been busy preparing for our Codegarden talk “We got 99 problems and a glitch is one” so we’re listening to a bit of hip-hop to get us in the mood…
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A massive H5YR to Callum and Marcin 😀! If you’d like to connect with them , you can find them on twitter: @callumbwhyte, @zajkowskimarcin, and Marcin on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/marcinzajkowski
But why not meet them both in person at Codegarden 23-25th of May!
They have already mentioned their talk: “We got 99 problems and a glitch is one” - but there's more!
We have made sure you won't miss your weekly umbraCoffee fix as Callum and Marcin are doing it EVERY DAY at Codegarden - live! So come watch them do their live Umbraco talks and updates on stage at Codegarden.
