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What? No umbOktoberfest?

Umbraco-Festival 2017!

The German-speaking community's Umbraco festival will be back in 2017, on 28 April: more informative and more sociable than before and even with a new name.

Lately, many friends and partners have repeatedly asked us about this year's umbOktoberfest. Understandable, since our Umbraco festival's well-known namesakes have been finished for quite some time and gingerbread boxes that have been placed in the market shelves announce that the year is nearly over. And indeed, there will be no umbOktoberfest 2016. The reason for this is our decision to host the next festival in spring and the fact that moving into our new office kept us busy this year.

But now we can announce that the Umbraco festival for the German-speaking community will be back in 2017, on 28 April: more informative and more sociable than before and even with a new name. In our interview byte5's founder Christian Wendler explains our change of concept.

Why hasn't there been an umbOktoberfest this year?

Our umbOktoberfest began as a rather small Meetup for the German-speaking community that has grown a lot over the years, which has also shown in the great development of our festival. However, we now have the feeling of having arrived at a turning point that will make concept changes necessary, in order to keep going into the right direction. An important question that we asked ourselves is where we want to go with our project. And since we wanted to take our time to think through, analyse and plan the event, we decided not to go through with the festival in 2016.

Were there any problems with the previous concept that made certain changes necessary?

Not problems exactly. However, over the last years there were a few things that we never actually thought or talked about. When we had new ideas, we just went through with them – which was often fun, but nothing that you could call a developed concept. Seeing this, we felt it was necessary to ask ourselves about what our guests and participants want, what made sense in the past and what we can improve so it makes even more sense in the future. We're certain that only an event that exactly meets the participants' needs is ready for the future.

Do you have specific plans what you want to change? What did you learn from the past four umbOktoberfests?

What we are planning to do is to focus more on the interests of Umbraco developers, which means offering more tech-content, the best speakers, intensive workshops before the event and a supporting programme that connects all of these points. For this we have been using the feedback we received over the last years. In order to sharpen our festival profile, we are going to have separate events for non-developer guests. And since we wanted to make this relaunch visible at first sight, we are joining the official Umbraco festivals all over the world, by calling our event „Umbraco Festival Deutschland“. So, see you all there on 28 April.

Do you have a special wish that you would like to come along with the new start?

Since the day we decided to go through with our new concept we have already been profitting from much better energy and new ideas that came with the knowledge that something was about to change. Our number one wish is to be part of the reason that the Umbraco community here in Germany, Austria and Switzerland continues growing and that many more developers – with and without experience in Umbraco – will find their way to our festival. We believe that we have found an ideal mix of valuable content, open atmosphere and lots of fun – the basis for an unforgettable event.


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