Carole Rennie Logan

3 nights, 23 techies, lots of food and an amazing view... what else could you want from an (un)conference?! In October 2018, I packed my bag and headed over the border to the north of England. I was off to CodeCabin 2018, hosted in Grindleford in the peak district to join a group of fellow Umbraco developers for a weekend of learning and coding.

If we are already friends, you will now I like to make API driven (headless) systems! Particularly connecting different systems, for example CMS content beyond just the website. Therefore when Umbraco announced their Headless service, I was intrigued to what could be done with it.

A few months ago, I asked for some podcast recommendations. Much to my surprise, I received so many recommendations! I have managed to listen to many of these since then, so thought I would share some of my favourites for developers.

Ada Lovelace Day is a day of celebration of women in STEM, their contributions and encouraging young women to join us in STEM jobs.

Next up on the developer book club is: A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug by Sarah Lacy. Or to give it's full name "A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug: The Working Woman's Guide to Overthrowing the Patriarchy".

It’s that time of year again, when I try and describe the indescribable that is Umbraco’s developer conference, Codegarden. Every CG experience has been different for me: 2016 I was totally new and didn’t know anyone at all. 2017 I was giving a talk and was awarded MVP (still trying to believe it) and then now at CG18 I was lucky enough to be in Odense a few days early for the codegarden retreat. Here's a wee overview of another awesome CodeGarden.

About this time of year for the last few years I write a blog post about going to Umbraco Codegarden. But this year it’s a bit different… I arrived in Odense a few days earlier as I was invited to the pre conference retreat.

A 5am alarm is never fun, but as much as I was tired I was excited to be travelling to Frankfurt. I was on my way to Umbraco Festival Deutschland (UFD18) where I was attending the conference aswell as giving a talk. I travelled with my husband as we were extending the trip and using it is a chance to visit Germany for the first time!

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson is next up on my reading list. Recommended by another dev, it’s a collection of short one or two page chapters explaining a piece of advice. The main theme is changing the way you work with advice from the authors, the founders of basecamp.

Recently I have been getting more interested in the people side of work, how we work together to get the best results. Getting this right is way harder than the coding side, right?!