What do we mean when we say “Umbraco”?

Spoiler: we don’t always mean the CMS.

If you’re attending this conference, there’s a high chance you're acquainted with Umbraco, but perhaps you're not fully aware of the nuance that comes with the phrase. So what exactly do we mean when we say “Umbraco”?

We'll look at the CMS, the company and the community and how they relate, differ and, at times, clash.

Why your search can't be Google

Ever faced the frustration of delivering a seemingly flawless search feature, only to have users dismiss it with a simple "it doesn't work"? Welcome to the complex world where user expectations clash with developer realities. Join me on a journey to understand the puzzle of search functionality, where the way real people search is very different from how techies do. As one colleague put it, “people expect Google, and they don't get that on most websites”.
But why is search so difficult? What factors do we need to consider when designing a search? And should we even have search at all?

Crafting Connections: Elevating your web presence to make friends and get hired

In today's tech-driven world, having a robust web presence is essential for career growth and personal branding as well as friend-making! This workshop will provide valuable insights and practical tips for developers and tech professionals looking to enhance their online visibility. We will explore various platforms and tools to help you create, maintain, and optimize your web presence effectively. From blogs and case studies to AI-powered content generation, we'll cover the 'how' and 'why' of building a compelling digital identity. Join us to take the first step towards establishing a powerful web presence.

PR'ing like a PR Pro

Whether you’re contributing to an open source project or running a project with a team - no matter the size - pull requests are a fantastic method of collaborating on a feature. Having worked inside development teams, lead development teams, contributed to open source and been a maintainer of a large open source repository, I’ve been on all sides of the humble PR. Taking lessons from all of these, we’ll look at the soft skills required when submitting and reviewing a pull request as well as the technical configuration of branch rules and automations and how these might apply to your projects.

DIY DXP: Building your own integrated platforms

Composable Digital eXperience Platforms (DXPs) are all the rage and, simply put, they're all about integrations. There are many methodologies when it comes to building integrations and not all suit every purpose. We'll take a look at some of these methods and look at their pros and cons, assessing which solutions best suit which scenarios. We'll talk about integration concepts and how multiple separate systems can be combined into one composable DXP as well as looking at some more developer-focused examples integrating with Azure and other Microsoft products.

Celibrate you're misteaks

"Everyone makes mistakes." We've heard it time and again. But there's always that nagging voice inside our heads telling us to hide it away somewhere. But this can lead to more mistakes in the future. Would we be here celebrating the openness and flexibility of Umbraco 9 if mistakes around the-version-that-shall-not-be-named hadn't been openly discussed? We'll take a look at some of my mistakes and even look at some extreme cases where mistakes can cost lives.

As well as looking at how mistakes can be damaging, we'll discuss how and when to talk about our mistakes along with success stories and how highlighting past mistakes can help save time, effort and money as individuals, teams, and as a community.

Working on work working for you

I used to live and breathe code but I started to get tired, so I've been working harder at working less. In this world where burnout, unpaid overtime, side projects and open source contributions are the normality I'll explain how we can be successful in our careers while still making time for what's important to us, knowing when to say no (in the office and with open source contributions) and how to escape the stress of work by heading outdoors.

Why am I being such a git about best practices?

Are your git repos a dumping ground for code? I'm really fussy about how people use git - and that's a good thing. We'll take a look at branching strategies, the importance of commit messages and how often should you commit, anyway? Let's investigate how, with 5 simple tips, we can turn a code dump into a glorious archive of software and how this can save time, frustration and money.

Mapping our journey to accessibility: What we can learn about accessibility from maps

Accessibility is a fairly new concept to a lot of us in the tech industry, but Ordnance Survey have been making maps since 1791. What have they done over the last two centuries to make their maps easier to read and understand for everyone? And how can our comparatively juvenile industry learn from their experience?

Accessibility: Baked and delivered!

Legislation, lawsuits and legacy. The impact accessibility can have on a digital product is far-reaching. It's a legal requirement for some, a boost to SEO for others, but most importantly a game-changer for both clients and end-users: increasing market reach; customer loyalty; and driving innovation. But what does it really mean for those of us delivering digital products?
A successful accessible solution has its roots in design, development, delivery and beyond, involving all team members and crucially team leaders. We'll take a look at how we can bake in accessibility as a consideration when building our products right up to treating it as a first-class citizen - the cherry on top!

Delivered by Joe along with fellow Umbraco MVP Danny Lancaster, Accessibility Test Analyst at Nexer Digital.

How to Copy & Paste: Effectively working with strangers (and robots) on the internet

Since the dawn of forums, CodeProject and Stack Overflow - and more recently with Github, Discord, Youtube and blog posts - we've been building applications with strangers on the internet, copying and pasting other developers' code. And now with the advent of ChatGPT, GitHub CoPilot and other AI solutions, it's easier than ever to use code somebody (or something) else wrote... without necessarily understanding the code completely. We all copy and paste code, but a senior developer will often approach the task in different way to someone more junior. We'll look at how to level-up our Ctrl+V game through understanding the problem, assessing suitability and adapting code samples to meet our needs. Together, we can build something better and quicker... so long as we know what we're building.

Cloud-Hosting your Umbraco Site for Free, Fun and (maybe) Profit!

Working in tech having a blog or a portfolio is a fantastic tool for self promotion, but running that site on Umbraco can be more costly than you’re willing to accept and hosting it yourself on a Raspberry Pi? Who’s got time for that?! We’ll walk through methods of cloud-hosting your Umbraco site for free or next-to-nothing, using offerings from Azure, GitHub and Cloudflare with tools like static site generation and Astro. Then we’ll take these performance and costing learnings to apply them to more complex (and profitable!) examples in a work environment.