The big announcement this June at Codegarden 2012 was that Umbraco v.5, after three years of development and a release last January, was being discontinued.
This didn't come as too great of a let down to Srdjan or Aleksandar, Vega's representatives at this year's conference, who hadn't invested too much time in obsessing about v.5, and rightly so. The founder and lead architect of Umbraco, Neils Hartvig, conceded that v.5 was a monstrous failure, and that designers were losing accounts because they refused to comply with clients' demands that they use v.5. So he trashed it.
He pointed out that transparency and truthfulness were the keystones of Umbraco's ethical views, and that while v.5 was technically impressive, it was completely out of sync with everything…itself, the expectations of the international community, and the essential values of Umbraco.
He also pointed out that another one of the essential values of Umbraco was to have fun, and proved that by hauling however many of the more than 380 attendants out after the first day of sessions for a bus tour of Copenhagen. From there, Srdjan, Aleksandar, and the horde, were loaded up with as much beer and Champagne as they could carry and taken onto boats for a journey through the city's canals. Around they all went, celebrating the essential value of having fun and carrying on in the name of abraver and better Umbraco v.4, where, they'd been told, a number of the more successful characteristics of v.5 would be salvaged to.
That party continued until 7:00 the next morning, with speakers taking the stage at 9:00. Srdjan and Aleksandar, the consummate professionals, didn't stay out long enough to toll the seven o'clock bell, but knew a handful that had.
Day two of sessions offered attendants plenty of time to socialize and network, with five breaks, and an evening of entertainment over Bingo. Rabbits with chainsaws and a jet-propelled wheelchair "or something" should sum up the events of the night.
Day three of sessions culminated in an Umbraco coding contest,sort-of-but-not-reallywon by a face recognition software that didn't work out in the end. So it goes.
Following the spirit of adventure, Srdjan and Alexsander stayed through the weekend. They made their way to a sand sculpture festival, and were amazed by the technical complexities of one display illustrating the evolution of man and society, in sand.
They finished the trip with a short voyage to the city of Malmo in Sweden. It was just to visit Sweden, they claimed, to see the old city, and because they'd heard there were Serbians living there. It was Sunday, though, and everything was closed, so back to Copenhagen they went.
Then home.
