Gnarly Times at the 2025 US Umbraco Festival
Last week’s US Umbraco Festival brought the Umbraco community together in Chicago, and what a fantastic couple of days it was! Between inspiring talks, new product announcements, creative surprises, and a whole lot of friendly faces, this year’s event captured what makes the Umbraco community so special.
ProWorks was proud to attend with Jen Wolke, Janae Cram, and Jason Prothero, and to have both Jen and Janae take the stage as speakers!
Highlights & Announcements
The first day included the Umbraco Partner Summit, where partners got a sneak peek at what’s next:
- Umbraco MCP is now in beta and set to release when v17 is released
- A new Western U.S. Partner Manager role is on the way
- A new Enterprise product bundle is coming soon
- Umbraco Compose, a hosted solution, is planned for 2026
- Expanded U.S. support hours and team
Community & Creativity
As you can imagine, there was plenty of fun and craziness (it is an Umbraco event after all). There was a fortune-telling narwhal, mood rings, great swag, giveaways, fun AI speaker intros, and the evening arcade fun (complete with a few epic pinball attempts from Janae ...and Jen destroying Jason at the hoops game #h5yr), the good vibes were everywhere.
As always, the organizers and volunteers deserve huge thanks for creating such a welcoming, high-energy, and informative event that embodies the Umbraco community spirit!
Talks That Inspired Us
Our team came away with notes and ideas from the talks, and here are a few of our favorites:
- Let’s Be More Than Friends: How Designers Can Shape an Awesome Editing Experience by Angela Wolak
- Content Debt: The Quiet Killer of CMS Projects by Nora Lahl
- Automate All the Things: Building & Evolving Umbraco Sites with YOLO-Mode AI Agents by Shannon Thompson
- Beyond the Build: How Umbraco Powers a Unified Digital Ecosystem by Chris Osterhout
- Beyond the Cart: Custom Fulfillment and Reporting with Umbraco Commerce by Scott Clevenger and Aaron Sawyer
- Embracing AI as a Collaborative Design Partner: Ethical Integration in UX by Kassandra Gibbons
- Friendly by Design by Erica Quessenberry
- Kickstarting your digital optimization process by Joe Kepley
There were lots of great ideas and interesting ways to think about Umbraco configuration, AI, design, UX, and useful Umbraco packages.
Kassandra Gibbons' Embracing AI as a Collaborative Design Partner: Ethical Integration in UX was probably my favorite talk of the day. There were definitely actionable practices I think ProWorks can implement in relation to AI right now.
Janae Cram
ProWorks Senior Developer and Umbraco MVP
ProWorks on Stage
We couldn’t be prouder of our own team members who spoke at the festival! Really, an amazing job to both and a huge High Five You Rock! #h5yr
Jen Wolke: “Into the Umbazon!”
Jen took the audience on an adventure and explored some of the most popular Umbraco packages, as well as a few off the beaten path.
Want to learn more about her talk? She has a great way to explore the Umbazon on her website with videos talking about each package here: Into the Umbrazon!
Also, there is a recorded version from the Codegarden 2025 version of it here: https://youtu.be/Vfdu6dm18Ow?si=BEojF-LcRj7Q__z_
Janae Cram: “TinyMCE is Here to Stay - You Can Still Use it in Umbraco 16!”
Janae showed how to implement TinyMCE in Umbraco 16, how to upgrade from v15 without data loss, how to change core settings you may be used to since this is now a package, and how to customize the editor and implement complex plugin functionality!
Videos and more resources to come on this! (watch this space)
Our Takeaways
This year’s festival was great and showed us:
- The community is growing and thriving in the U.S.
- Umbraco is positioned for the future and is a great platform for all sized organizations (including Enterprises!)
- AI and automation are giving content editors, designers, and developers ways to be more productive and focus on the important things
- Great editor experiences are worth spending the time to get right and there are a ton or great packages to help
Huge thanks to the organizers, speakers, and everyone who made the 2025 Umbraco US Festival such a success. We left inspired, energized, and ready to bring new ideas into our work and community involvement.
See you all next year (and maybe at CodeCabin US 2026)!
Connect With Us!
Interested in learning more about the takeaways? Contact us below and we are happy to demo some of the new AI features and packages that have been released.
