I attended my first Umbraco Spark event in Bristol last week, and I've been buzzing with thoughts on search, AI, and all things Umbraco ever since. Now that the learning has had time to settle, I've been reflecting on the day and thinking about how to keep that inspiration and momentum going.
Bristol was the perfect setting for an energising day out. Colourful houses, cool style around every corner, and – to top it all off – the sun was out! We The Curious was a fantastic venue for the event, and the veranda overlooking Millennium Square was the ideal spot to soak up some rays and grab a breath of fresh air between sessions.
The day offered a great mix of lightning talks and longer sessions, covering a wide range of topics from load balancing to DevOps, alongside plenty of rich Umbraco content. The selection of talks felt fresh and diverse, and every speaker brought their A-game. I certainly got a lot of use out of my branded Spark 2026 notepad and pen – I do love a good free pen.
It was great to get a deeper dive into the code behind Umbraco's new search package in Kenn Jacobsen’s opening talk of the day. I've known it was on the way for a while, so it was really valuable to see concrete examples of how to plug in different search providers and just how straightforward it is to work with facets. Particularly useful was the look at customisations needed to preserve the full list of available facets.
I've worked through my fair share of Umbraco upgrades over the past year or so, so it was refreshing to hear Rachel Breeze's thoughts on the business strategy behind whether to stay on your current version, upgrade, or rewrite entirely. There's often a default assumption that upgrading is the obvious path – keeping the site supported, secure, and up to date with new features. But in practice, those conversations tend to get bogged down in budget constraints and the difficulty of making a clear cost-benefit case.
A standout point from Rachel's talk was that the cost of upgrading only increases the longer a decision is delayed. That delay might sometimes be strategically valid – but the key distinction is that it should be an active decision, not a passive deferral. Kicking the can down the road isn't a strategy; making an informed choice to wait, with eyes open to the consequences, is.
I had a chat with Niels Lyngsø at the pre-Spark meetup on Thursday evening, where he kindly shared a few spoilers ahead of his Friday afternoon talk. It was good to hear directly from him about what the product team at Umbraco HQ have been getting up to. I'm genuinely excited about the prospect of reusable content blocks coming to the Umbraco back office – and it sounds like work is progressing well.
As ever, the Umbraco team have a thoughtful and robust solution in the works, one that has the potential to transform how content editors work day to day. Niels' talk was easily one of the highlights of the day, and I'm looking forward to seeing this functionality take shape over the coming months. If you'd like to find out more, Niels has put together a video well worth watching – watch Niels’ full talk here.
Joe Glombek's lightning talk, Developers assemble! Community is your team's superpower, couldn't have landed in a more fitting room – one packed with people who are actively living that message. It was one of those talks that holds a mirror up to something you already feel but haven't quite put into words.
It really resonated with me. There's something about spending time with the Umbraco community that consistently leaves me energised and motivated, and this event was no different. Getting to speak directly with people at Umbraco HQ – many of whom were community contributors themselves before joining the team – only reinforces just how special that culture is.
What better way to close out a packed day of talks than with a showcase of the previous day's hackathon projects? The demonstrations were impressive across the board, with a strong AI theme running through many of them – from analytics reporting tools to enhanced error analysis – highlighting just how creatively the community is already putting it to work in Umbraco packages.
My personal highlight was a package for bookmarking content nodes in the content tree for easy reuse. It's one of those ideas that makes you wonder how you ever managed without it, and I dare say it deserves a spot in the core product. It was the perfect way to end the day and left me thoroughly inspired to join the hackathon at Codegarden this summer.
A huge thank you to the team at Gibe Digital for organising such a well-run and enjoyable event, and to the Umbraco team for continuing to build and share with such enthusiasm and transparency. Events like Spark are a reminder of what makes the Umbraco community so good – knowledgeable, generous, and always worth showing up for.
I’m already counting down to Codegarden in June, where I'm sure there will be even more to get excited about!
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