Our MVP takes to the stage at Umbraco Spark 2023

The Umbraco Spark innovation conference returned on the 10th of March after a Covid-enforced absence to take its place as the ultimate event to guide developers through recent progresss at Umbraco and the wider tech scene.

We were back in Bristol and, despite some forced absences due to the severe weather, eager to find out the latest technology, innovations, and ideas that Umbraco has in store.

Umbraco Spark covered a range of important topics

From Umbraco HQ, Lasse Fredslund and Jacob Overgaard showcased the ’new’ back office and talked about their journey, progress, and the future. A short demo helped them present some simple but powerful ideas and show how the patterns – part of the restructured back office - are now much cleaner and maintainable going forward.

Laura Weatherhead, freelance developer founder at Spun, followed on the main stage, to deliver a thought-provoking presentation about bringing compassion to development. Compassion, accessibility, sustainability and mental health – important topics in the sector – were all covered at Spark over the course of the conference.

Umbraco 7 End of Life

Migrations and upgrades were subjects high on the agenda this year due to Umbraco 7 approaching End of Life in September, as was uSync Migrations, a new tool created by the Jumoo team to help migrate site settings and content from Umbraco 7 to the latest versions.

Other notable presentations included those from Marc Goodson and Jeavon Leopold from Crumpled Dog and Emma Garland from Rock Solid Knowledge, who talked about AI and AI generative art.It also raised questions about how we collaborate with our clients, plan projects, and reasons to use the big bang or agile-ish methodologies.L-R: Laura Williams, Catherine Todd, Kate Parsons from Gibe Digital

How to choose which modern technology for a project

As for my own talk, it covered the considerations needed to make informed decisions when choosing technology for projects. Company values, developer desires and project objectives all contribute to the decision-making process, and these were explained in detail. I hope everyone present learnt something new and your questions were fully answered. It was an honour and it was fun to present again to the Umbraco community.

I want to give special thanks to Catherine Todd, Steve Temple and Pete Williams from Gibe Digital, who expertly coordinated the event, as well as all the event organisers and sponsors.Feel free to get a flavour of the event by watching this video and I look forward to seeing you at Codegarden.