The Umbraco Community
The Umbraco community is ultimately what makes Umbraco what it is today. People give their time, passion and energy to contribute in every way that they can. Everyone is so committed and friendly. I know that sounds so cliché, but honestly, everyone involved holds the same values and the Umbraco community is seriously something special.
There are many ways to get involved and contribute to the Umbraco community, such as attending meetups and festivals, where you can widen your social network and share your knowledge with others. Community teams include people who work at Umbraco HQ and are members of the community who work together to contribute to the Umbraco Open Source, from the Umbraco packages team to the documentation team and accessibility team.
We are very proud to have two Umbraco MVPs at Spindogs. Umbraco MVPs (Most Valuable People) have been honoured by Umbraco for their hard work in the community, including answering questions in the forum and contributing to packages and meetups. Nik (Senior .Net developer and one of our MVPs) and I have been developing websites using Umbraco for several years and both share an affection for the product and the community spirit which encompasses it. As a company, Spindogs are invested heavily in the Umbraco CMS (Content Management System) and its growing community, and as a result, we feel that it’s only fair to find more ways to give back.
Introducing the Spindogs Umbraco Initiative
The Spindogs Umbraco Initiative primarily involves developers who are a part of the everyday Umbraco team. However, we will also be asking for involvement from other colleagues across the business, including designers, project managers, and digital marketers, because there is so much valuable insight and talent that they can offer.
What will we be doing?
Our in-house team will be partaking in a wide range of Umbraco community-driven activities, ranging from coding, blogging, and public speaking. Some activities will be purely internal, such as being responsible for Umbraco CMS base build configurations and maintenance, creating reusable plugins and helping to upskill Spindogs team members. Others will be externally orientated, such as blogging for Skrift (https://skrift.io/), speaking at Umbraco meetups, contributing Pull Requests to the Umbraco Core, and creating public Open Source Umbraco packages, which will be released under the Spindogs brand.
We see the Spindogs Umbraco Initiative as a brilliant way for Spindogs to get more involved with the Umbraco community, bring more value to our Umbraco clients and upskill our Umbraco team, while working towards our goal of becoming Contributing Gold Partners, which is a badge that rewards Gold Partners that go the extra mile for the growth of Umbraco and its community.