Codegarden is the biggest Umbraco event of the year, organized by HQ themselves, and this year was the third time I got to visit this magnificent event! An entire week filled with friend making, sessions, awards and a lot of chocolate... let's talk about that! ☕
Beating Lotte in Padel 🎾
Sorry Lotte, we'll go for a rematch next time I'm around! 🤗😘 We're starting the Tuesday off early with a friendly Padel tournament, before heading over to the Business Summit! With a group of 10 awesome Umbracians we've started off with some friendly rounds of padel! We were matched together with the kind Simon Buerger & Matthew Edwards from Bluegrass, and Lotte Pitcher from Umbraco HQ, and it quickly got competitive! It was a magnificent (yet tiresome!) start of the day, and after we got all of our aggression out on the court we were ready to head over to the Codegarden venue!
Attachment 1. The padel crew on the court after being warmed up!
After getting to the Codegarden Venue, we were ready for a day filled with various sessions about the future of Umbraco, case studies by partners, and a lot of networking friend making! Without going into too much details, we left with our minds filled with a lot of useful information and it was time to head over to Umbraco HQ for the pre-party!
Each year's Pre-Party has a special theme, and this year we went back to the '90's! With a Rave Cave, and a lot of glamerious, classic and slightly wrong outfits, it's a great way to meet new people before the actual events start! With the amount of Dutchies walking around we couldn't resist taking this glamerious photo as well! 🥳
Attachment 2. A group picture of 9 dutchies over at Umbraco HQ
Package Awards & Renewed Umbraco MVP (3x)
Two years ago I've had the honor to be awarded as an Umbraco MVP, and I am excited to say that I've been renewed for another year! In addition to that, the community was able to welcome 23 new MVPs this year to add to the list, and 77renewed MVPs in total, congratulations to each and everyone of them! 👏
You can find the full list of Umbraco 2024 MVPs over at the official Umbraco Blog!
We are also incredibly proud that uMarketingSuite got added to the Umbraco Package Hall of Fame, 'an honor title bestowed upon packages that are well-established, highly acknowledged in the Umbraco ecosystem, widely used across Umbraco projects, and represent a significant accomplishment! ⭐️
Attachment 3. Jeffrey, Leon, Tom and myself after receiving our Umbraco Package Hall of Fame Award
Legendary Codegarden Bingo
If you've ever been to Codegarden before, you know there is one thing that's a staple for the Thursday evening... and that's Umbraco Bingo! With an evening packed with excitement, good food, and our awesome hosts Jonas, Lasse, Lotte, Nathan, Lucy & Bolette, we were in for a treat!
Not only that, but the theme for tonight was the "Codegarden Elections"! A tought election between which animal is the mascotte of Umbraco. Would it be the Rabbit? Perhaps the Giraffe? My vote went to team Unicorn! 🦄
Attachment 4. Nathan, Lucy & Bolette rocking the stage!
Feeling Inspired
Besides all the friend making, awards and other fun activities, we can't forget about the amazing sessions through-out the various days! The Wednesday and Thursday were packed tight with sessions, at certain times even 4 sessions happening simultaneously. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get even close to the amount of sessions I wanted to follow (I blame all the friend making 😉) but luckily all sessions were recorded this year! A couple of once that stood out to me were:
- Jeffrey Schoemaker, talking about Blending AI with Umbraco.
- Jason Wodicka, talking about Being Human (and the history of AI)
- Lars-Erik Aabech, talking about Unit Testing and Umbraco: 8 years later.
- Joke van Hamme, talking about Remote team synergy: Cultivating connection, comfort and work-life balance
- Westbrook Johnson, talking about front-end development and the choice of when to NOT serve a feature to a customer.
The list could go on and on, and I'm looking forward to watching all the various sessions I couldn't see live, but that's for the weeks to come!
All in all it was another amazing experience, just like previous years! After giving away over a thousand bars of chocolate through-out codegarden week, unfortunately all good things must come to an end. After driving back home (a nice change of pace from going by plane!), catching up some well-needed sleep, and writing down a bunch of new ideas, it was a wonderful Codegarden to look back on and I'm very much looking forward to the various events & meetups that will occur in the rest of the year!
Attachment 5. All the New and Renewed Umbraco 2024 MVPs on stage
Thank you very much for reading, and see you next time! 😊☕
