📣 New post: Has the Umbraco Community lost it's Spark? https://owain.codes/blogs/2025/november/has-the-umbraco-community-lost-its-spark/

tbh, I must have missed the memo about Umbraco Tees Day 😅 But yeah, you're right, folk have been forced to make a choice and follow the herd to the flavour of the month social network and perhaps it's hard and exhausting to keep up to date when information and faces are scattered everywhere. I for one can't remember the last time I loaded blue sky, mastodon & X (for Umbraco content). I just don't have the time these days to hop between everything which is really sad because back in the day Twitter used to be the primary source of updates and content and was effortless. I don't even know what the solution is, though it seems LinkedIn is where a lot of focus is at the moment, but not everybody uses LinkedIn, so a lot of the core separation issues still remain. Is it just me that perceives things this way, or is that a general opinion?

I think the spread is the 'problem', but also the number of activities, events, information that is spread everywhere. I have never even heard about Tees Day 😄

Here is the issue I guess, Umbraco Tees day used to be a Twitter thing, but, trying to get the word out now is super hard, not just for Umbraco Tees day but anything. Events, meetups, etc. You can post it on all the socials and still only hit a small percentage of people. This post is also an example of that, I'm having conversations with people on Mastodon, LinkedIn and here all about the same things but we don't get to see it all because it's spread around. I don't know the answer but the blog was aimed at starting a conversation I guess. Which it seems to have done 🙂

To me, Discord is the most 'official' social platform. And I usually see the events here in the event-news channel.

For me Umbraco Tees day last week was just an example, you spread the word, even have it included in Umb.FYI and it still didn't really happen. People forget. People don't know where to share etc. Same with h5yr.com - the hashtag has sort of died because no-one knows about it or knows where they can use it.

I'm not around for that long, but the issue might also be that a lot of these things are or were very individual things and you just needed to know them. Now that some people have left or work for HQ now, it died slowly because it was nothing 'official'.

https://umb.fyi/2025-10-29 very bottom in "Social"

ah...that's it. I don't like socials, so I guess I just skip it for some reason 😆

haha, sometimes the newsletter gets lost in my emails and for whatever reason I didn't read it last week, even though I know its every Weds. Ironically, I was wearing my Codecabin 23 shirt on Friday, so I did dress appropriately, just didn't have any pics lol

To be fair, you did get response from a number of people, so at least your blogs are not going into the void 😄

Blogs are the future it seems - and then I need to try and keep on top of all the comments 😄

Yeah, it hasn't been the same since the Twitter era. I try to keep up with Discord, but there isn't really a lot of talk about Umbraco here. Questions are all on the forums, discussions about new ideas/improvements are all on Github

It was a bit more crowded, but yea, since it moved to forums its a bit silent here 🙁

It depends what people come here for. If it's just to ask a question and then leave, then it might feel like the community is more 'alive', but is it really in that case? If you just asking a few questions are you really participating in the community? Don't get me wrong, ask away, but in the context of this discussion, does it matter that people who just ask a few questions are on the forums now?

For me I am just a bit burnt out and trying to keep up in what feels like 5 different places to keep my finger on the pulse is just a bit draining for me at the moment. I don't know what the answer/solution is but curious to see what happens 🙂

I think so far, they did a good job with Discord. I get MOST notifications here: * New forum post in #1344266000241135677 * New discussion in #882963797021716531 * Almost all relevant events are placed in #1184134344772685944 * Blogs and news get placed in #882981290662580264 (although it would be nice if more people registered their blog with Umbraco :)) So currently for me Discord works best when it comes to 'keeping up' just by letting it run on the background on boot on my computer and phone.

I do enjoy getting the notifications for the #882981290662580264 feed 😊

But I think the fun or perhaps sillyness that Owain is talking about is struggling to scale as the community grows and if I did see the mention about Umbraco Tee's from Owain, I wouldn't even know where to post. LinkedIn, Insta, my own Blog, a photo on here, BlueSky, Mastodon. Where would you put it? We just feel all spread out and fragmented that I don't know where the place is to hangout anymore with my gang. As much as I hate Elon & the mess that Twitter became in the end, before he come along and messed it up. I felt I knew I had one single place to look and chat with everyone, post some sillyness, share a post or ask for a bit of help.

I feel you @Warren Buckley ! You've been around MUCH longer than me, so my perspective is a little different. To me, Discord always seemed and felt like THE 'official' place. But hey, maybe I'm missing out big time on other channels, I don't have the reference, so I'm not 'missing' anything at this point.

Yeh that's totally fair, Discord is probably the closest thing to what replaced Twitter when most people to decide to pack up and leave.

I never had Twitter/X, so I'm happy that I don't really need to be there lol

Yeh I don't wanna go back - it was a burning mess towards the end. Not looked for a while but can imagine its still just full of spam and noise I didn't want to hear about

I think you'd nailed it Warren - I miss the silly / community driven things like seeing everyone in Tshirts (swag), people giving h5yr to each other. Stuff like that. Because we are spread so thin now it might still be happening but its easier to miss.

I've heard that contract work is a bit slow at the moment, maybe more people are working for a boss at the moment that doesn't allow them the flexibility and time to be more active in the community?

so generally work has slowed up, the tech scene is still thriving and there are jobs and umbraco jobs.. its just a bit thinner and people are taking time and being more selective , and some people have left to go for other jobs, and non umbraco roles There is also a general thing that being seen to work on Open source during company time is a bit frowned upon.. but actually its good for long term business.. but that's a suit problem.. affecting development rather than community