Carole Rennie Logan

On 24th October this wee developer stepped out of her converse and in to some heels and to attend the Scotland Women in Tech awards. A chance to wear a nice dress and meet other women in tech? I’m in!

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.