Wow what a conference!  Codegarden was 3 full days of sessions, hacking, collaboration and just all round fun.  We enjoyed Codegarden so much that we have decided to keep the special going!  Which means you are still able to get the Umbraco Level 1 & 2 Package at the special rate of NZD$3000 which is an overall NZD$700 saving. For more information and to register click here.

For those that didn't make it to Codegarden heres what it was all about.

Day 1 was the MVC Boot camp lead by Jon Galloway (Microsoft), Simone Chiaretta (ASP.NET MVP, ASPInsider and author of Beginning ASP.NET MVC on Wrox) and Steven Sanderson (Microsoft MVP, author of Pro ASP.NET MVC).  There were 2 streams.  A Beginner and an advanced stream.  I personally have not done all that much with MVC so decided to go on the beginner stream which was lead by Jon Galloway.  It was really great and I learnt a bunch.   I super excited to MVC in action in the next version of Umbraco (V5) which is in development already.

That evening the Umbraco HQ treated the conference attendees to an Midsummer party on the canals.  We floated our way around the Copenhagen canals taking in the atmosphere and watching the locals burn effigies of witches.  Was a great night had by all and thankfully no one fell in.

Days 2 and 3 followed on from the format of previous years.    This year started with a session presented by Alexander Kjerulf - Chief Happiness Officer on Happiness at work.  It was awesome as it got the crowd interacting and happy. View a short video here. (quality is low as it was shot on my iPhone.)

The keynote followed presented by Umbraco founder Niels Hartvig and Umbraco HQs Per Ploug Hansen and was full of news regarding the community, growth and the success of the previous year but most importantly were the two releases. One was the release of the our.umbraco.org update.  This is a significant upgrade to the community site bringing in many of the most requested features.  Our is the hub that connects the Umbraco development community and has proven to be one of the most important tools for developers.   The other release was version 4.5 which although a point release on the Umbraco framework is major in the fact that so much optimisation work and new features were added such as Examine, Linq2Umbraco, new tree, new datatypes, and an all-round system tune up.

The session for the rest of the day covered topics such as Search with Examine presented by Shannon Deminick from TheFARM Digital Sydney, crowd sourcing via Facebook put together by the guys from SkyBurd A/S, TDD with Umbraco presented by Aaron Powell from TheFARM Digital Sydney, I've downloaded Umbraco what now? presented by Bob Baty-barr, ARR & the Rave Engine which was a session run by Tommy Messbauer the lead developer of ASP.Net, Importing content presented by Richard Soeteman, Design Contour forms with Tim Geyssens of the Umbraco HQ to name the few that I managed to get to see part of.

That evening we played the always popular Umbraco Bingo. Ole Erling provided the accompaniment and the Umbracos did the Bingo calling.    It was strange evening with Umbracos pausing the proceedings to say "Bring in the Horns!" as a Danish Horn band marched through the venue and out the door again.  Weird but in the spirit of the evening was awesome.  Prizes presented included a Umbraco door mat, an Umbraco biker vest delivered by a biker, and the grand prize was a  framed canvas of the core team.
Photo: Douglas Robar

Day 3 was the open space sessions.  This was a time for all conference attendees to get involved and give them an opportunity to contribute.  Sessions ran all day on all sorts of subjects including Training & Certification, the Umbraco Core Values, the Hackathon where they built a new datatype from scratch, Snapshot which is a upcoming project by TheFARM Digital allowing the export of a fully working databaseless ASP.Net site. (more info on www.farmcode.org) and much more.

Photo: Douglas Robar

Day 3 ended with the package and skin contests.  The winning package was the datatype built by Shannon Deminick during the Hackathon and the winning skin was a tribute to GeoCities built by Warren Buckley.

Codegarden is a key event on the Umbraco calendar.  I look forward to attending again next year and encourage those from Australasia that if you can make it you should.