Candid Contributions

Live from the Umbraco Spark Innovation Conference in Bristol! Emma, Laura and Lotte were joined by Phil Whittaker, AI Staff Engineer at Umbraco HQ - someone who's been thinking and talking about AI in development for longer than most. Together we talk about play as a superpower for developer learning, what returning from maternity leave looks like in an AI-transformed workplace, why developers app...

All four of us were together in-person - for the first time over two years - at Umbraco in the City, a community-organised event in Manchester. We talked about what contributions look like to a mature open-source product with a team of full time engineers working on the codebase. Are code contributions still the “gold-standard”, were they ever? We discuss this and what other types of contrubitions...

In this episode we get personal about what it means to be part of open source and tech communities while navigating major life changes. From returning to work after maternity leave and balancing "mum guilt", to speaking at conferences while seven months pregnant, we explore the realities of contributing through parenthood.    We also discuss how brain changes in motherhood can affect our work, how...

Last week, we recorded a live episode at the Umbraco Codegarden conference in Odense, Denmark!    Emma and Lotte took to the stage at the end of the first day. Carole and Laura couldn't make it this year, but they were with us in spirit! We were joined by three wonderful guests - Richard Ockerby, Andy Boot, and Eli Holderness - to chat about their Codegarden experience so far.    A massive #H5YR,...

Yes we're back from a break, and delighted to have been the lunchtime podcast hosts at DDD South West in Bristol. We were joined by five fabulous panelists: speakers Dylan Beattie, Jacqui Read and Kevlin Henney, and event organisers Carl Sargunar and Lorraine Pearce. We talk about why we are so willing to give up our Saturdays for events like these, what we wish we knew when we started out in the...

This episode we have a special guestUm, braco MVP and team Skrift co-founder, Erica Quessenberry! We talk all things hacktober (and preptember) ahead of the busiest month in open source. To support Umbraco's Hacktoberfest, Candid Contributions and friends are hosting a virtual hackathon. Join us Fri 10th and Sat 11th October for a virtual hackathon, more info here: https://www.meetup.com/umbraco-v...

Last week we recorded live at the Umbraco Codegarden conference in Denmark!    We were given the honour of closing the show, so we took the opportunity to talk about our highlights of the event, and to invite some friends - old and new - to join us on stage.   Big thank you to our live audience for giving us the energy we needed (it had been long week!) and making the recording so much fun!   Link...

It's been 18 months since Elon Musk acquired Twitter and there's no denying he changed it irrevocably. We discuss how much we still miss the Twitter of old, and whether the Fediverse alternatives are bridging the gap.   We also talk about that most precious resource: time. We share our different approaches to time management and task organisation, from doodle-filled hand-drawn lists to To-Do apps...

... is NOT "don't talk about the Microsoft MVP Summit". Quite the opposite, in fact, as you're actively encouraged to post on social media that you're there ( #MVPSummit ). You just can't share any of the information from the sessions as all the content is under NDA.      Emma and Lotte (aka 50% of Candid Contributions) were at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond for the summit last week. They spent t...

There are many ways to contribute to an open-source software community, such as attending a meetup, giving a talk at a conference or writing a blog post. In this episode we talk to Erica, Janae and Kyle: the team behind Skrift, the online monthly magazine for the Umbraco community. Eight years ago they decided to start this initiative and 100 issues later they're still going strong! Listen to disc...

Last week we recorded live at the Umbraco Codegarden conference in Denmark! Join us as we discuss what we love about the conference and meet our wonderful guests: Jan Skovgaard - an Umbraco community member with 14 years(!) of contributions: forum posts, packages, core pull requests, accessibility team member and 24 days in Umbraco organiser. Jonah Andersson - a full-stack Senior Software Engineer...

Conferences, meetups, coding retreats … we discuss all sorts of in-person events and why they’re so important for a healthy community. Organising them is a lot of work, but perhaps this type of open source contribution is the most valuable... We're delighted to have been joined by Cat Todd from Gibe Digital, and we talk about her recent experience of putting on the excellent Umbraco Spark conferen...

In this episode Laura has a chat with Felienne Hermans, the creator and maintainer of Hedy, a text based programming language with a community of educators and contrbutors. https://hedycode.com/ https://www.manning.com/books/the-programmers-brain If you have any feedback, comments or questions you can tweet us @candidcontribs , email hello@candidcontributions.com or join the Umbraco Discord server...

In this episode we chat about the recent Umbraco Spark Innovation Conference that we all attended in person in Bristol. Plot-spoil: it was awesome! Carole, Laura and Lotte were on the speakers list so we discuss the talks they gave, everyone's highlights from the day, and just how good it is to be with other Umbracians again. Roll on Codegarden! Visit the Umbraco Spark website (includes links to t...

We take a look back at the best of 2022 (spoiler alert, July was THE month for us) and look forward to 2023. We discuss how we plan to spend our energy and how to do so without draining our reserves. Which conferences will we get to this year and what exactly is an 'authentic boundary?' We are also joined by Allen Smith, the newest addition to the Developer Relations team at Umbraco. We talk about...

Having a good workplace culture leads to happy, productive developers. But what makes it 'good'? It’s not the same for everyone. We talk about workplace culture and the different environments we’ve witnessed from Silicon Valley to Denmark via the UK... We also chat vegetables (of course), paddle boarding and the tennis/squash hybrid called padel! We’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts...

We are back and chatting about our (hybrid) attendance at Umbraco Codegarden conference. Join us as we interview some remote conference attendees on how the event was for them. Let us know what you think #theCodegardenEffect is! If you have any feedback, comments or questions you can tweet us @candidcontribs, email hello@candidcontributions.com or join the Umbraco Discord!

We’re very excited to be joined by Maria Naggaga from Microsoft for this episode. Maria has been breaking down barriers both personally, being a woman of colour in tech, and professionally with projects focused on making it easier for people to learn and use .NET. We discuss her achievements at Microsoft, what it’s like working in open source on such a large scale, and what effect we - the open so...

We are back!... and little rusty at this podcasting thing! In this episode we catch up with what we have been up to in open source since last time, discuss Umbraco 9 and .Net 6 releases, real life conference attendance, aswell as the now traditional neuroscience and vegetable updates. * https://umbraco.com/blog/migrating-from-umbraco-8-on-premises-to-umbraco-9-on-cloud/ * https://umbraco.com/blog/...

This week we chat about finishing things - and in some cases struggling to finish them! Tune in to hear us chat about shipping minimum viable products, using to-do lists to get that "finished a task" feeling and navigating side projects when there's so many interesting technologies to try. If you have any feedback, comments or questions you can tweet us @candidcontribs, email  hello@candidcontribu...

This week we get together for a post-codegarden natter. How did we experience the conference from afar and from behind the scenes? Listen to find out. Naturally, we talk veg, because it's us, a bit of football and we also talk about representation, why it matters and how the most recent event fared with it. If you have any feedback, comments or questions you can tweet us @candidcontribs, email hel...

This week we chat about the upcoming annual Umbraco festival-unconference-global-knowledge-share-party, more commonly known at Umbraco Codegarden! We talk about some of the pros and cons of virtual events and how they play out and have a good ol' reminisce about times when we used to see each other in real life at conferences. Join us for a chat about what makes a good conference and - even better...

Over 30 years ago Vanilla Ice told us to "Stop, Collaborate and Listen". Considering Ice Ice Baby hit the charts the year before Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel, Robert Van Winkle (aka Mr Ice) won't have been talking about open source development. But maybe he was onto something... Join us as we discuss why we should all stop, collaborate and listen our way to open source success. If you...

This week we talk about growing. In public! Hw do we grow when people are watching. Is it worth the risk? We also take a look at the recent Basecamp debacle and the missed opportunity for public growth there. Or was it...? You'll also be pleased to learn that we will keep you up to date on our fruit and veg patch because seriously, how can you not when public growth is the theme, eh? If you have a...

Join us this week for a chat around procrastination. Why do we do it? Is it laziness or weakness? (Spoiler: no!) How can we get around it, and what does it mean in the world of technology and open source? Tune in to find out, as well as to potentially answer any questions you may have around growing asparagus! Also, remember to listen out for a cameo from two very special extra guests.... If you h...