Umbraco in the City - Community, Code, and Cuddles

Last Friday, I had the excitement of attending the first-ever Umbraco in the City conference in Manchester—with a twist. My nine-month-old was my plus-one for the day, and honestly, I wasn’t sure how it would go. Would I catch any of the talks? Would the baby cooperation gods smile upon me? And add to that my new role as part of the Developer Relations team at Umbraco, I wasn’t quite sure who to show up “as”: developer, community member, candid contrib, HQ’r, or mother?

TLDR: The baby cooperation gods did smile, the Umbraco community showed up in the most wonderful way, and I got to be all of the above ❤️

Before I dive into the excellent technical talks I saw, I just want to say a really heart-felt thanks to the organising team - Adam Prendergast, Phil Whittaker, Rachel Breeze and Jon Whitter - who created a genuinely inclusive space. Bringing a baby to a tech conference isn’t exactly standard operating procedure, but the organisers made it work without batting an eyelid. From the welcoming atmosphere to the practical accommodations, they showed that “friendly” isn’t just a word we use—it’s a practice.

And this matters. It matters that people at different life stages can still show up, learn, and contribute. It matters that we’re building a community where participation doesn’t require leaving parts of your life at the door.

So, thank you to everyone who made it possible. You set a wonderful example for what tech events can be.

Despite my adorable distraction, I managed to catch some really excellent sessions. Matt Brailsford delivered what might have been my favourite talk of the day—a beautifully illustrated exploration of vibe coding vs spec-driven development and an exploration of when we need to stop exploring a problem space with AI as a copilot and instead write a proper technical specification to use it as a tool.

Matt’s talk hit home because we’ve all been there: riding the wave of intuition, letting AI suggest the next line, feeling productive... until suddenly we’re three refactors deep and not entirely sure what problem we’re solving anymore. He did a super job of explaining where AI sometimes makes a problem harder rather than easier, and I’m looking forward to trying out SPECKL which is a toolset aimed at finding that middle ground between vibes and full specifications.

I also thoroughly enjoyed sessions from Jonny Muir and Matt Wise, both of whom took us on some really fascinating journeys from the land of accessibility in Jonny’s talk to the land of vibe coding in Matt’s.

Over lunch, I had the privilege of joining my fellow Candid Contributions podcast hosts, Carole, Emma and Lotte, on stage. It had been a couple of years since we’d all been in the same physical location together so we were super excited about being there. We talked about the landscape of open source contribution in a project where there’s already significant in-house development happening at Umbraco HQ. It’s a fascinating dynamic—how do we make space for community contributions when the core team is so active?

We had some great input from the audience - and from Paul Seal, Michael Latouche and Kieron McIntyre in particular. Hopefully everyone enjoyed joining for a wee lunch break chat! If you fancy catching up with us, you can give the episode a listen.

Walking away from Manchester (baby on hip, head full of ideas), I felt deeply grateful. Grateful for a community that makes space for everyone. Grateful for organisers who put in the work to make events accessible. Grateful for speakers who challenge us to think more carefully about our craft.

And grateful for a nine-month-old who, against all odds, decided that yes, a tech conference could be fun.