What Is An Umbratron?!

So, this was an idea that had been brewing in my head for a little while, and whilst waiting for the bus to the excellent #umbukfest 2016 I had time to turn this little dream into a reality. There is ultimately a purpose, but one for reasons that will become clear over time, a purpose I can't reveal. If I were to reveal it would as if I were giving away the final answer to an exam. No really!

I started using Umbraco in 2008 and it's been a truly joyous experience. No really! I had three criteria when selecting an alternative to our ludicrously expensive proprietary CMS (naming no names).

1. Had to support XML / XSLT ( this was 10 years ago, that stuff was really cool then)
2. Had to be open source but run on Microsoft stack.
3. Had to have a truly excellent, positive and helpful community.

Umbraco really did excel in all of these things, especially the 3rd criteria. I have always been impressed by the dedication to excellence, user experience and generally helping people that characterises the Umbraco community. So many other online communities are bitchy, judgmental, argumentative. The Umbraco community has always been the polar opposite of this. I'm often shamed by the exceptional technical know-how of many of the people who help me when I take to Twitter or Our looking for support.

I'm so glad I forgot to put excellent documentation in my selection criteria above.

Many in the UK will know Doug Robar who conduct Umbraco Fundamentals training in the UK and takes truly excellent photos of many many Umbraco offline events. He is also an incredibly wise man. He is also the accidental founder of one of the first (possibly the first) UK Umbraco monthly Meetups. It was arranged in honour of Doug though he didn't actually make it. The meetups have been truly excellent and really worthwhile.