I haven't blogged for a while and I haven't had any blog posts since 2019 started. I thought of jotting down something but I have been so busy of late that everything has taken a backseat. But its always a pleasure to get back to writing, especially when I have attended a great Umbraco Festival. ANd I think its a tradition in the community as well. When you have attended a festival or CodeGarden at least for the first time you blog about it or speak about it.
The UFD19 happened over 2 days this year - April 4th and 5th. There was a half-day hackathon and a pre-party on April 4th and of course the festival on 5th April. The festival and Hackathon is organised by byte5 digital media GmbH . It was the 7th Umbraco Festival in Germany. It started off in 2012 as umbOktoberfest but was relaunched in 2017 as Umbraco Festival Deutschland. You can read all about it here.
The first day, 4th April, there was a Hackathon and the pre-party. The Hackathon was held in the afternoon. I was there, representing the Pull Request Team and the co-host as well alongside Sören Deger. The attendees had two options - work on Umbraco issues or work on a package. It was a general consensus that it would be the package that we would be working on. The package that was chosen was the Look who's editing package. The one we would focus on during the Hackathon would be a Content App in v8 which lets you have the same information. I think its fair to say we laid the foundation for the package that day and it was a good introduction to some of the attendees who were fairly new to Umbraco.
It was time for the pre-party soon. Callum, Carole and I decided to have a quick snack from the town before pre-party and we were joined by Henk and Ramona. I had to call it a night pretty early as I had to prepare for my talk the next day.
It was time for the afternoon coffee break and I was required to do a small interview for a video. I was supposed to do a solo one but the interviewer had an idea and chose to interview me, Callum and Marcin together. I had great fun doing the interview. It was another highlight of the day for me.
The final talk I attended was Ramona's "Testing... Anyone Can Do It, Right?" . Testing is a topic which really excites me and I love working together with testers. I have also worked with some testers who were ace in what they did which naturally piqued my interest in the topic and it has helped me improve as a developer. The talk was great and was fun! It gave an insight into how testing was a team effort.
The UFD19 happened over 2 days this year - April 4th and 5th. There was a half-day hackathon and a pre-party on April 4th and of course the festival on 5th April. The festival and Hackathon is organised by byte5 digital media GmbH . It was the 7th Umbraco Festival in Germany. It started off in 2012 as umbOktoberfest but was relaunched in 2017 as Umbraco Festival Deutschland. You can read all about it here.
Day 1 Hackathon
The first day, 4th April, there was a Hackathon and the pre-party. The Hackathon was held in the afternoon. I was there, representing the Pull Request Team and the co-host as well alongside Sören Deger. The attendees had two options - work on Umbraco issues or work on a package. It was a general consensus that it would be the package that we would be working on. The package that was chosen was the Look who's editing package. The one we would focus on during the Hackathon would be a Content App in v8 which lets you have the same information. I think its fair to say we laid the foundation for the package that day and it was a good introduction to some of the attendees who were fairly new to Umbraco.
It was time for the pre-party soon. Callum, Carole and I decided to have a quick snack from the town before pre-party and we were joined by Henk and Ramona. I had to call it a night pretty early as I had to prepare for my talk the next day.
Day 2 The Festival
The festival venue this year was at Westendcarree by Design Offices. It was a great space, lots of room for the attendees to hang their coats, get enough caffeine and of course 3 rooms for the talks. The day started off with registrations and securing ourselves the UFD19 t-shirt. We grabbed a tea for ourselves and the festival started off with the Welcome and Warm-up from Christian Wendler and Pete Duncanson . While Christian focussed on the event, the venue and some other details for the day, Pete spoke about how can us, audience, be interactive and help be a part of the talk and improve it. It was delivered in true Pete style! :-)
Next up was the keynote from Kim and Jacob. The stats from the HQ came through and suddenly there was Kim ripping his shirt in context with his talk. It was hilarious and one of the highlights of the day for me. Sorry folks, I don't have the picture.
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| This is one of my favourite slides from the day. Umbraco is 3 things - Software, Company and Community :-) |
We resumed the talks after the morning coffee break. I chose to attend Carole's talk on "Empathy in Tech". It was a great talk, something I could personally relate to. It gave great insight into how the little things we do, little things we talk about can make workplaces and tech communities a better place to be in the long run. She is doing the talk at CodeGarden this year, I would recommend the talk to everyone.
Next, I chose to attend Henk's talk. The title of the talk was "Deep Learning with Unicorns and Umbraco". Another great talk coming from the AI expert! AI is getting so popular these days and this talk was a great showcase of the powers of AI.
It was time to break for lunch and we had amazing food. It was getting closer to the time for my talk as well and I was extremely nervous about it. But having a chat with friends and a good lunch helped me calm down a lot. I must say the food was awesome! It was one of the best lunches I have had at a conference.
It was soon time for me to set-up my laptop and prep for my talk. The topic I chose was "Helping yourself to be a part of the Umbraco Community". I think I did okay considering it was my first time. I shall tell you all about my experience separately but I think I am happy about what I spoke and how I presented the matter. I strongly believe in the community that Umbraco has and for that reason the subject and the talk was special to me!
I was relieved once it was done but I remained excited and happy after that!
It was now time for the umbraCoffee baristas' talks. Callum spoke on "Umbraco with Functions and Logic Apps" and Marcin spoke on "What's new in C#8". Both of them great as usual, great content and delivered in style and with confidence!
It was time for the afternoon coffee break and I was required to do a small interview for a video. I was supposed to do a solo one but the interviewer had an idea and chose to interview me, Callum and Marcin together. I had great fun doing the interview. It was another highlight of the day for me.
The final talk I attended was Ramona's "Testing... Anyone Can Do It, Right?" . Testing is a topic which really excites me and I love working together with testers. I have also worked with some testers who were ace in what they did which naturally piqued my interest in the topic and it has helped me improve as a developer. The talk was great and was fun! It gave an insight into how testing was a team effort.
We had the post-party after the event and it was live music, a lot of food and a lot of chatting and as usual, I had an amazing time! The ambience was absolutely awesome! Towards the end, Damiaan did some impromptu magic tricks where we all sat down! I didn't make it to the karaoke bar but decided to call it a day after what was a really long day. Myself and Carole walked around the city for 10mins before we got a cab to the hotel.
Overall it was a great experience for me. The festival was very very well organised and a #h5yr to Laura and the team at Byte5 for organising the event! It was my first Umbraco Festival outside UK and I gave my first talk - on my favourite aspect about Umbraco - Community and I enjoyed every minute of the two days. It was physically exhausting for me given I have builders at home which means I have not had much rest even back home but hey, who cares when you are off to attend an Umbraco Festival? I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed the Festival and writing about it! I am closing off with some more pics of the day :-) Happy Tuesday everyone! And here is to many more UFD's and Umbraco Festivals!
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| Yummy UFD Shortbread |
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| Mocktail - "Umbraco Drive" it was yum! |
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| The umbLadies at UFD19 |
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