- Name: Amalie Wowern
- Pronouns: She/her
- Company name: Knowit Experience
- Role: Team Lead & Head of Umbraco
- Country/region: Copenhagen, DK
- Working with Umbraco for: 14 years
A love for Umbraco
I love the journey Umbraco have been on. How the focus has been on how to create a better experience for the content editor and the developer. The learning curve for new developers is very easy and I like how surprised our clients are when we introduce them to Umbraco, having worked with different solutions, they just find everything with Umbraco so easy.
I also like how helpful and friendly the community is. When I was a junior developer, asking a lot of questions on the Umbraco Our forum I was always met with friendliness. That was very refreshing in comparison to my experience using other tech forums, where my questions were definitely not met with helpful responses.
My love for Umbraco and the community really began quite early in my career, back in 2014, when I worked for Twins Solutions. My previous boss, Jesper Hauge, was involved in community activities. He encouraged me to attend meetups and raved about Codegarden. So I went along to see for myself. I was met with a friendly tone and happy energy and I haven't looked back!
Amalie enjoying the Codegarden Thursday night dinner festivities. That year she and her company won an Umbraco Award
Hosting Meetups and more
Being part of the Umbraco Community is a lot of fun and a way in which I like to get involved is by hosting Umbraco Meetups in Copenhagen. I started hosting the Umbraco Meetup (København), because I was missing the community spirit in Copenhagen. When I started going to Umbraco meetups in the past I really enjoyed getting to learn about other people's way to build stuff, discussions and learning more about new features in Umbraco.
I think its brilliant that we have succeeded in having more people attend our meetups, as well as encouraging community members to speak at them, sharing their knowledge and work. It's inspiring. I really hope that in the future more people will reach out with new talks.
I am passionate about the ongoing success of our meetup. One of my goals is to have my team more involved, I'd like them to share their awesome work with our meetup attendees, because what they do is so cool. Plus, it not only encourages them to generously share their expertise with our community but also enriches our projects by incorporating newfound knowledge gained from these experiences.
Attendees at the Umbraco Meetup Copenhagen.
Lasting memories
I have so many great memories from various Umbraco events, but a core memory that sticks out for me was our first hackathon, I loved it! It was wonderful to see how many attended and wanted to contribute. I also managed to make first pull request, which was very exciting.
After the first hackathon I really wanted to contribute to the Codebase more, but I also learned that Umbraco was handling a lot of the bugs/features in Umbraco, so it was hard to find the right task for my skillset. However, I then joined the hackathon in London the day before Umbraco UK Festival in 2023 and learned that it was also possible to help out with all of the great community contributed packages on marketplace. This was great news and I went on to spend my day contributing to other packages. It felt really great knowing that I could help out with some of the brilliant packages out there, ones that I use day-to-day in my work. I really hope for the next hackathons people will look to help out with the packages issues by creating pull requests to help fellow community folk. I'm doing everything I can to encourage our developers on my team to add tasks and issues on our packages.
Tickets from the Copenhagen hackathon
Plans on the horizon
At the moment my calendar is looking busy. I'm planning our next Umbraco Meetup in Copenhagen, encouraging people to attend and finding speakers - if you'd like to talk at one of our events, in-person or virtually, let me know ;) Speaking of speakers, I am planning and practicing my first Codegarden talk, which is super exciting!
We have a project coming up where we intend to use the Content Delivery API for all data, not full Headless but almost. We are using our instant block preview that allows the editor get a preview, even though our frontend is in a Vue app. Plus, our office is in the process in making everything in to Nuget packages so we can hopefully share it on the marketplace soon. Watch out for great packages here https://marketplace.umbraco.com/search/knowit
I'm also really looking forward to trying out the flexible environments for Umbraco Cloud, hoping it's out soon :D
Amalie at Umbraco Partner summit in Odense
How to join in the community fun
When starting out with new thing it can be daunting knowing where to start. I found the following to be really helpful to me, so maybe it will be helpful for you too.
- Start by joining a meetup. I have really learned a lot by joining and seeing how others build their websites and what cool features they made for their solutions. The moments between talks are also super valuable, because its where I get to talk to the speakers about what they presented, get to know people better. Here I can ask questions, face-to-face for help with a problem or see if I can help others with their issues. It really great to be able to do that.
- Come to Codegarden, it's the best place to learn about Umbraco and learn that it is really the friendliest community. It's inspiring and I always come home with a new view on how we should build our solutions, as well as lots of new friends in my network.
- Remember to ask the Forum or Discord if you need help - people are nice and helpful. Instead of getting stuck on an issue or a way of making the right solution, then ask - there are a lot of great minds out there. I have used the forum a lot, especially in the early days of my career. And I know that some of my question posts are still helpful to others all this time later, as I have gotten a thank you from co-workers and fellow devs who have found my question and the subsequent solution, which is very cool.
Amalie on the beach with her kids
What I do for fun and other interesting facts
- Fun fact - I just started to take my drivers license at the age of 36.
- Talents - I'm a keen cook and an excellent travel planner, things that my family really appreciate.
- Current fave watch - Better Call Saul
- If I had a superpower it would be - My first thought was mindreading, but I don't think I really want to know what's in peoples mind, so probably flying
- Memorable meal - I have had a lot of memorable meals but I think one of the best is dinner on the beach with my kids and girlfriend last year, when the evenings just started to get hotter.
Stay in touch!
You can contact me via LinkedIn
Is there someone you'd like to nominate for a uProfile?
Do you know someone who deserves a spotlight on their Umbraco journey? To nominate a friend, peer, or colleague, reach out to Lucy Brailsford in the DevRel Team at community@umbraco.com and explain why!
