UK Festival
07 - 08 November 2019
London, United Kingdom
Grab your party hats because this year the Umbraco UK Festival is celebrating 10 years!
The world's biggest community organised Umbraco event is coming back to London this November 7th & 8th for 2 days jam-packed full of incredible talks on development, front end, design & UX, wellbeing, and business, as well as 2 deep-dive workshops hosted by community experts and of course our legendary hackathon.
This year the festival is taking place a brand new venue – Hoxton Docks is the UK’s answer to Codegarden’s DOK5000 venue 😉, an incredible open warehouse space on the famous Regents Canal with space for the Umbraco UK Festival to grow for years to come!
What’s happening?
This year's festival goers got a chance to have their say on what they’d like to see on the agenda, by voting on the talk submissions they were most interested in. This has helped create a fantastic schedule, with over 25 talks from Umbraco heroes like Sebastiaan Janssen, Poornima Nayar, Kevin Jump, and Paul Seal; covering a diverse range of topics including Umbraco best practice, Alexa Skills, .NET performance and Azure, just to name a few. If that’s not exciting enough, after his insanely popular session in 2018, Chris Howard from Intertech will be back to share more tips for helping improve diversity in tech!
The day will be wrapped up with a Keynote from the Chief Unicorn himself, Neils Hartvig, followed by a closing session looking at what the future holds for the Umbraco community in the UK...
Stick around because there’s plenty more in store as there’s a whole evening programme too (you don’t even need to leave the venue!) There will be food trucks serving up delicious food, a bar with some pretty special Umbraco-themed drinks drinks on tap ☕️🍻, and even some spicy entertainment 🌶! Last years festival ended with some pretty impressive karaoke numbers, and this year Dylan Beattie will be on the mic to perform some classic songs with a tech-twist!
Join the festival warm up the day before
In addition to the main day, attendees are also invited to a day of workshops and our legendary hackathon the day before the festival on November 7th at Microsoft Reactor London. The hackathon is a fantastic opportunity to contribute to Umbraco! This year the Umbraco PR team will be on hand to help you bash away some bugs! Spaces are limited so make sure to sign up to secure your place. There will be a pre party during the evening as well, more details to follow so keep your eyes peeled on the site for details.
RSVP
Any Umbraco Festival isn’t possible without the community, and this is no exception! To help make the 10th Umbraco UK Festival the best yet, get your tickets today! https://umbracofestival.co.uk/buy-tickets
08-09 November: Umbraco UK Festival
Join the world's friendliest community on Friday 9th November 2018 in London for a festival packed full of incredible talks, workshops, discussion panels and of course an unmissable after party! Over the past (almost) decade the Umbraco UK Festival has grown from a small meeting of less than 30 web enthusiasts, to now over 300 Umbracians coming together to celebrate Umbraco. This year the festival is going back to the same venue as last year, The Barbican...
There are some awesome tech-talks and workshops lined up on Security, Scaling Umbraco, GraphQL, and even a peak at some of the latest Microsoft Tech like Blazor. You'll have the chance to meet with a number of members from the Umbraco HQ Core team, who will be giving an exclusive look at some new features and changes that will be coming up in the next year (V8, Headless and Cloud). The editor, business, and community focused sessions mean there's something for everyone. Want to learn how to create the perfect experience to make editors love you, how to develop your personal brand, or develop your learning skills? You're covered! Plus, there will be a fantastic talk from Chris Howard, Intertech LGBT+ Diversity Forum Co-Lead, about the importance of inclusion in community. Finally we’ll round off the day with a keynote from the Chief Unicorn himself - Niels Hartvig!
Sound like fun? Or maybe you've been looking for that excuse to visit London... Buy your tickets and get digging out your best vintage Umbraco tees, retro totes and bygone badges, to be in with a chance of winning some incredible prizes! We hope to see you there!
The Countdown to the UK Fest is On!
The excitement around this year's Umbraco UK Festival has been building for some time now, and we’re finally just over 2 weeks away!
Being The Cogwork’s 8th #umbUKfest, and with the release of Umbraco 7.8 coming soon and V8 on the horizon, it felt appropriate to go with an 80’s theme. We’ve been getting our 80’s on, and it looks like the Umbraco community has too – there’ve been rumours galore, and even an 80’s playlist featuring on “The Unicorner”!
We want you to join us on Friday, 3rd November, in your loudest 80s shirt (mandatory) and neon leggings (optional), at London’s Barbican Centre for our very own take on Club Tropicana and prepare for a totally awesome Umbraco 80’s throwback. We have some MASSIVE prizes to give away courtesy of Umbraco HQ, including prizes for the best / worst dressed that you’re definitely not going to want to miss out on!
We’re keeping some things under wraps until November 3, but what can we tell you so far?
We have headline talks from The Chief Unicorn, Umbraco HQ, and some of the community’s finest… Dave Woestenborghs’ “The need for speed” session went down a treat at DUUG recently and he’ll be taking the stage in London to share his wisdom.
Our theme may be 80’s, but we’re thinking forward with our sessions this year… Come and hear about what’s happening with V8 from Stephan Gay, or learn about the future of C# with Umbraco from Marcin Zajkowski.
Andy Robinson will be performing his talk with a great 80’s inspired titled “(I'm so happy to be) Stuck With U” (Huey Lewis eat your heart out!) about his journey to using Umbraco over other different platforms along with a variety of Azure services to build a community news-led employee portal for a global company.
We’ve made sure the workshops we have are world-class, to give attendees the most valuable hands-on experience possible. Not for the faint hearted, Jeavon Leopold will be running a condensed version of his famous “Bear the Load” flexible load balancing workshop, and Lars-Erik Aabech will be running a condensed version of his hardcore Unit Testing workshop.
Last year people loved the new “Community space” format we added, so we’ve extended it this year to include a new “Community panels” feature – a place where members of the Umbraco community will be giving valuable advice on a variety of topics. Come and hear our panels discuss topics including organising meetups and Umbraco Cloud deployment strategies!
With loads of awesome people travelling from Australia, Belgium, Germany, Guernsey, Denmark, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland, and the USA, this year’s Umbraco UK Fest is set to be the most diverse yet! Maybe you’re sitting there thinking this year's festival sounds unmissable and you’ve noticed your country missing from above? There’s still time to get your tickets!
(Pssst… For those who haven’t earned their “Master” certification yet, we are running official Searching and Indexing training the day before the festival too!)
Why this year's Umbraco UK Festival will be different!
by Sam Bailey
When you hear the word Umbraco, the one key thing that comes to mind is community.
Each year there are a few Umbraco festivals held across Europe that offer the opportunity for knowledge sharing and a chance to get together socially with like-minded Umbracians.
While there could be a debate over which festival reigns supreme (we’ll leave that with you), what is different this year is that leading Umbraco Gold partner The Cogworks are hosting the largest Umbraco UK Festival in its seven-year history.
This will mean 325 spaces are available for eager Umbracians to come along and mix with some leading lights from the Umbraco HQ, whilst providing a whole lot more opportunity for socialising, camaraderie and general community spirit.
Got an idea? Bounce it off someone. Can’t fix a glitch? Ask one of the Umbraco experts. Need to show your latest Umbraco dance moves? Join the after party and demo them over a few beers! You get the drift.
And, it’s because of the awesome Umbraco community, that The Cogworks as festival organisers, have been able to take things to the next level and offer more talks, more rooms, more coffee, more workshops and the famous Umbraco UK Festival hackathon.
‘This year’s venue is definitely the largest we have ever had. We usually go for a cost effective venue but it’s always had its limitations - A/V problems, wooden seats, small rooms, bad sound, bad visibility and lack of coffee etc,” says joint CEO of The Cogworks Adam Shallcross.
“So this year we decided to raise the bar and address some of those issues, unfortunately though in order to get a first class venue with all the facilities we need comes at a cost. However, for just £100 a ticket you’ll get a hell of a lot compared to other tech events out there.”
And because The Cogworks truly love the community it’s all done out of love, not financial gain.
“We make no profit on the event, in fact we make a pretty big loss as we don’t budget for the time and resources that the festival eats up as a company. And believe me, we have the whole team of 25 of us on this at some point, attending regular meetings, planning sessions, brainstorming, design etc,” says Adam.
“But we love the Umbraco community so it’s worth it. They are the lifeblood of Umbraco, without them there would be no product or great community packages, so I feel it is our duty to give something back (and I think we do a lot more than most, but I’m biased!).”
And give back they have - if the venue is anything to go by.
“CodeNode is a modern, well equipped new tech-hub in the heart of London. Based on feedback from previous years, we worked hard to ensure the venue was comfortable enough to host our biggest ever festival and this definitely fits the bill,” says Callum Whyte, The Cogworks full-stack developer and part-time event organiser.
As a two-day event, there is a dedicated hackathon day and a festival day but also more workshops & talks targeted at different skill levels all included within the ticket price.
“We wanted to pack as much Umbraco goodness into the day as possible, whilst also offering something for everyone (not just devs) through a mixture of talks and workshops,” says Callum.
“The layout of the venue is split into five rooms: the main room, the community room showcasing some of the best talent in the Umbraco community, the eCommerce room for a workshop showdown from the three big names, our automation room to learn some top CI tricks, and finally our Agile room!”
And there’s the all-day hackathon - a prelude to the festival and a noteworthy addition that continues to resolve more issues every year.
“The number of bugs fixed each year has been growing. Last year 48 bugs in total were fixed during a day of hacking and this year will be no exception. You can expect a hyper-productive, collaborative and fun day, helping to keep the Umbraco Core in tip-top condition,” says Callum.
“75 developers will have the opportunity to sit down together to scratch their heads and help to fix as many bugs in the Core as possible. Be it a typo, pixels of padding for a text box that may not align correctly or maybe something more quirky - all fueled with developer favourites: coffee and pizza!”.
Some key representatives from the Umbraco HQ will also be on hand - including Warren Buckley and Sebastiaan Janssen, to help everyone get to grips with the Umbraco codebase, hopefully creating as many pull requests as possible.
On the day of the festival, the Umbraco HQ will also be in attendance to update the community on the latest Umbraco news.
“It’s amazing that Niels and Per make the commitment to come pretty much every year. This year, Niels will be presenting the keynote and Per is going to be taking us through the HQ’s recommended way of creating a site in Umbraco. In addition, Kris Deminick will also be revealing what the mythical world of the Umbraco HQ actually do on a day to day basis.”
Aside from the main program, The Cogworks can reveal there will also be a new twist on the merchandise and branding.
“This year, we wanted the theme to run through the entire festival. So, after some initial brainstorming we chose a gaming concept that will run through all branding, merchandise and the venue itself,” says The Cogworks UX/Web designer Josh Condie.
“Instead of the usual Tetris and arcade iconography associated with gaming, we’ve gone in a different direction - the indie gaming industry. Within that industry the big names give open platforms and tools to independent developers. This echoes what Umbraco is about - an open source platform and a community of developers.”
“The illustrations on the site show a fox’s adventure towards a shining tower (The Shard) in the mountains. This represents the festival-goers journey towards our festival in London,” says Josh.
There’s also an interactive element to shake things up and create even more community engagement.
“Instead of getting all the merch for free this year (aside from a basic goody bag on entry), as the festival goes on you can collect badges and stickers by going to different talks, rooms, and various other activities on the day. The aim of the game is to explore as much as possible and even earn some prizes.”
And as for the mysterious fox? “He is a playable character in our game world and is a developer on his way to the Umbraco UK Festival, so you can expect him to pop up on the day making an appearance on the badges and merchandise,” says Josh.
And don’t worry, what will be making a traditional comeback is the annual after party. Except there will be one difference this year, compared to usual post-festival bashes...
Rumour has it Adam may be taking things up a notch on the dance floor: “I may dust off the decks and throw a special Umbraco after party set out there!”.
And who wouldn’t want to take some well-earned screen free time and indulge in a few beers and Umbraco themed tunes with the community? All playlist requests welcome!
For more information on this year’s event held on 3-4th November, see the Umbraco UK Festival website. Looking forward to catching some Umbracians in London!
