Codegarden 2024 Reflections

Aimee, Rick and I attended Codegarden 2024 last week. Rick and I have been many times before but for Aimee, this was her first time.

After a short flight to Copenhagen, we hopped on the fantastic, comfortably and efficient train to Odense and arrived mid afternoon on Tuesday. Feeling a bit peckish we headed over to Storms Pakhus to grab something to eat and to meet with some of our friends from the Umbraco Community. Storms is an indoor food market and has a plethora of options. We went with our old Odense favourite and headed over to Burger Anarchy for a delicious meal.

Pre party

Along with a few of our Umbraco buddies, we headed over to Umbraco's head office for a 90s themed pre party! This was another chance for us to meet up with our friends from the community and our first visit to Umbraco's new offices. The office was a mix of industrial and chic with lots of nods to Umbraco's quirky and fun outlook. Umbraco generously provided a free bar. We were (pretty) sensible and didn't get (too) carried away and with a big day ahead of us the following day, headed back to our hotel as the evening drew to a close.

A Warm Welcome

We arrived at the event which is located in Odense's industrial harbour. We were welcomed with high fives all around and grabbed a coffee from the coffee cart.

We found our seats at the main stage and got ourselves comfortable. We received a friendly introduction to what the coming days would entail from the fabulous  Karla Santi who acted as a great host. There were gold confetti cannons shot into the sky which was a theme for the week ahead!

The keynote followed with talks from Filip Bech-Larsen (CTO), Kim Sneum Madsen (CEO) and Emma Burstow (Director of Developer Relations). Filip talked about the progress from the past year with Umbraco version 13 and the development of the recently release Umbraco version 14. We were treated to a couple of live demos from Filip's team to whet the appetite of what is to come in the next few months. Emma gave us an update of what has been happening in the Umbraco community with some really impressive stats about engagement and involvement from all over the world. 

The 2024 Umbraco MVPs were also announced in addition to the renewal of past Umbraco MVPs. Umbraco MVPs are members of the community that are recognised for their outstanding contribution to Umbraco. This can be in a technical or non technical way. I love this part of the conference and its so great to see how so many people are rightly recognised from all of the hard work that they do for the Umbraco community that we all benefit from. It makes both the Umbraco CMS and the community richer. 

Key talks and takeaways

There were so many interesting talks and the mains themes that we saw discussed were; AI within Umbraco - how we can make it easier for editors, sustainability, accessibility, the upcoming Umbraco version 14 and general well being and working practices to keep a healthy mind.

Here are just a few photos of some of our highlights...

Brace Digital are really interested in the sustainability of websites that we develop and sustainability in the industry in general. Rick Butterfield delivered an excellent talk: Green Code: A Blueprint for Eco-Friendly Websites. Rick revealed some stark facts about the seriousness of carbon emissions and how the Internet will have emitted an estimated 140,000 tonnes of CO2 during his 1 hour presentation; the same as 1 million flights from London to Copenhagen. He went on to reveal; 16 million trees would need to be planted to offset yearly Google searches, carbon footprint of our gadgets and software supporting them account for 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions (similar to the airline industry), by 2030 digital will be consuming 21% of global electricity and if the Internet was a country, it would be the 4th largest polluter!

Adam Prendergast gave an excellent and insightful talk on how to use the static site generator, Astro with the clever analogy of a bakery which was a really good way of explaining how it all worked together. Adam started with a simple 'Hello world' example and slowly took us through the various steps for how this could work with an Umbraco website. The talk ended with Adam offering the local delicacy, Kanelsnegle which was delicious. What better way to end a talk!

We attended a round table discussion with some of the members of the Sustainability team. It was led by the newly crowned MVP Amy Czuba but was an open forum for all to talk about the challenges our websites and our client's websites are facing with regards to sustainability. We discussed what the Sustainability team has achieved and what the objectives should be for the next year.

Bingo

Now, there is a golden rule at Codegarden, that what goes on at Codegarden bingo stays at Codegarden bingo but we can let you into a few things to let you into the crazy world of Umbraco. The format of bing consists of a more formal meal where we were treated to white fish ceviche followed by veal with seasonal vegetables. During the meal, in addition to playing bingo, whereby we sticked Umbraco related words onto a tablet, we were entertained by the Umbraco team.

With this year being an election year both in the EU and in the UK, the entertainment consisted of an election between a rabbit, giraffe, unicorn, shark and a narwhal! We all had to vote on who we wanted to win.

For the winners of Umbraco Bingo there was the usual random prizes such as a huge painting that the lucky winner will have great difficulty getting back to the UK!

    

Thoughts from Aimee....

I had the pleasure of attending my first Codegarden last week with my team and wow, was I not expecting the whirlwind. I've been to a few Umbraco conferences around the UK but this was on a whole other level. From the moment I walked up to the DOK5000 where the event was held I was reminded of just how “Friendly” and welcoming the community is. From being greeted by a man on stilts to the balloon making clown and face paints it felt more like a festival than a work conference. I thoroughly enjoyed my time over the course of the few days and definitely made some new friends. Thank you to Ben & Rick for bringing me and hopefully it won’t be my last!

Conclusion

We had a fabulous time at Codegarden 2024. We met with friends both old and new and felt truly immersed in the Umbraco community. We feel energised and enthused with all of the ideas that attending Codegarden has given us. There were many talks that we attended where we know that we'll be taking back learnings and new ideas for our clients. So watch this space!