Hello all well I have finally found some time to write up my remaining days from my umbraco codegarden08 trip.
Day 4
Day 4 was the second day we used at the retreat house to do some more openspace meetings. The main topics of interest to me was how we could improve documentation for Umbraco and What can be done to improve the umbraco project.
After all the openspace meetings for the day had finished it was tidy up and the house and get ready to leave. Whilst we was all waiting for the repair guys to come out and take a look at the rental van that had been making some funny noises the day before, we had another kick about.
The "Hohler" was yet again on top form and taking on anyone that would stand his way!
Credit to Douglas Robar for the photo
Some "friendly" football between me and Niels - bloody cheater!
Credit to Douglas Robar for the photo
With football finished and all us exhausted it was a perfect time to BOMB into the pool, to cool off!
Per going for the spectacular BOMB !
Credit to Douglas Robar for the photo
With all the work and fun had it was time for us to all pile into the vans and head back to Copenhagen ready for the main event on Tuesday!
Day 5
On Day5 the group split up and done different things, some went to the venue with Niels & Per to do some preparation on their presentations, but Tim Geyssens and me strolled around the city looking at all the different things before going back to the venue early evening to check in on the guys. I left Tim at the venue as he some work to do and me and Tom went to meet the guys at Tivioli for the pre codegarden meetup. It was quite a big turnout I think about 15 or so of us. It was good to meet people and talk umbraco whilst going round on some rides, such as The Star Flyer and The Demon!
Day 6 - Codegarden08 Conference Day 1
Well OK me and Tim headed down to the venue relatively early to help the other guys who were already down their doing last minute things and help out with registration.
The attendees arriving for registration
Credit to Douglas Robar for the photo
Each attendee received their name tag with 1GB USB drive attached as well as really cool umbraco t-shirt (which my girlfriend has managed to steal already)
With registration done it was over to watch the keynote. The kenyote was a slick and smooth one which version4 beta got released the same day (it was available on all attendees USB drives)
Some of the highlights of the version4 beta
- Copy Document Type
- Firefox Compatibility
- Tab Sorting
- DataLayer support (umbraco can now run of MySQL if you want)
- Cleaner UI
- ASP.NET Masterpages (which are created at file level, so you will be able to have source control templates now)
- Integrated Packager in Developer section to create packages easily
- Package actions - this will allow you to do certain tasks from your package XML file
- Custom hosted package repositories are available for a fee
- Boost & Nitro (a quick building block foundation)
Niels Hartvig the brain behind it all, giving his codegarden08 keynote
Credit to Douglas Robar for the photo
To me an a exciting feature of this release is the package actions, as I plan to create the Creative Website Wizard package using the new package actions and try to drop the custom installer script that creates document types and publishes the site etc.
Another exciting feature for me is the ASP.NET masterpages support asbefore the templates were only accessible through the umbraco ui, but with ASP.NET Masterpages support the template files will be physically created which I can either edit through the umbraco ui or Visual Studio and will be able to check them into source control!
Other items that was mentioned in the keynote was the MVP's for 2008/2009
The umbraco MVPs for 2008/2009 (which includes me)
Credit to Douglas Robar for the photo
Another cool thing that I found interesting to me in the keynote was the announcement of umbraco.tv which is an online screencast area that you subscribe to on a monthly basis to learn either the basics of umbraco or the more advanced stuff such as using REST with umbraco. I think this will be a good alternative to the courses if you are unable to attend.
There was some other stuff in the keynote which I have probably missed, but with the keynote done I attended the following sessions for the day.
- Paul Sterling - E-commerce with Umbraco
- Jesper Ordrup - Autoform Intranets
- Tim Geyssens & Per Ploug Hansen - Ajax and Flash with umbraco
I think out of all these sessions the thing that blew me away was Tim Geyssens demo of his new package that allows you to import an XML file which would then create the document types, properties, content and XSLT to regenerate the XML file from umbraco to be utilised your flash element. This was so cool, all of us attending was just left speechless. Then someone said it could also be used to import existing site content into umbraco - GENIUS !
After all the tracks and mingling done it was time for umbraco BINGO! There wasn't an empty seat left it was a good laugh.
Prizes included were:
Lesley from the UK with her signed photo
Credit to Douglas Robar for the photo
After umbraco bingo some people left, but for those who were still mingling in the evening there was some guitar hero action! Just to let you know I was absolute rubbish I won't becoming a rockstar anytime soon! Niels, Doug and some others left off some steam by jamming out with Guitar Hero.
Doug claims not to own a TV or have played this before, he put me to shame !
Credit to Douglas Robar for the photo
Superstar Niels rocking out after a successful first day
Credit to Douglas Robar for the photo
Day 7 - Codegarden08 Conference Day 2
Well for the second day of the conference it was all about the openspace format which I wont go into here. On the second day I mingled from various openspace sessions that were taking place. One that I was very interested about was mobile blogging that Søren Sprogø had created that allowed him to take a photo with his mobile phone and send it in an email address that would then get picked up by his umbraco site and then published as a blog post. I was impressed and this maybe something that this blog may have soon.
Ismail Mayat from the UK demo'd a cool advanced lucene search with features such as "did you mean ...." when you spell something incorrectly and also the possibilty to display related search results which was all very cool. I didn't manage to attend this session but he showed me the day before, it's good stuff !
The last open space session I remember attending was the How to Create Action Handlers, which was nice to talk about with others.
After the openspace sessions had finished it was time for people to demo their entries for the package competition, entires included the following:
- A google translate package
- A sidebar naviagtion boost
- A dropdown navigation boost
- A package that informs you of any items you are not using in umbraco aka Documentor
- A JW Image Rotator package
- A FTP package
- A Blogger content package
- A multiple file upload tool for the media section
The winners were 3 guys who were behind the www.suzuki.dk website that was built on umbraco, so they were the proud winners of a shiny New XBOX360 with a few games with their multiple file upload tool package.
Then the day was wrapped up with the umbraco awards which was amazing to see what can be done with umbraco, it blows my work out of the water. Congratulations to all the people who won an award.
Well that's all I can remember, I thoroughly enjoyed my week out in Copenhagen down with the guys at the retreat and then to mingle with people at Codegarden speak to people old an new to umbraco. I had a blast and I can't wait for Codegarden09.
//Warren
Warren Buckley
is a Creative Web Specialist based in
Leigh on Sea, Essex
,
UK.