It was a cold, wet January evening but that didn't dampen the spirits for the first UmBristol meet up which we were lucky enough to host in our swanky new office.
After the 'Happy New Years', the 'How was your Christmases?' and 'Oh wow, have you tried this pizza?' we had two fantastic talks by two excellent guests.
I had the pleasure of being the host for the evening and whilst I was a little nervous, as I'd never hosted a MeetUp before, everyone was incredibly encouraging and soon calmed any jitters.
Lotte Pitcher who is a member of the Developer Relations team at Umbraco HQ, gave a very insightful and detailed talk which took us through the new hybrid cache feature. Not only showcasing how this alongside other recent features can create innovation opportunities for businesses but also how the structure of keeping the release cadence inline with Microsoft allows Umbraco to establish the best strategy for the ever evolving technical world.
This talk really invigorated the room and the Q&A session came alive with thoughts, opinions and knowledge sharing full the air.
After a brief break to recharge (or fight over that last piece of pizza) we were then treated to a talk by Jason Elkin who is the Lead Developer at Bump Digital, as well as being an Umbraco Master.
Jason explored how nullable reference types can enhance the resilience and expressiveness of your code, helping to significantly reduce the likelihood of null reference exceptions - potentially eliminating them altogether!
Speaking from a QA perspective I have seen a few nullable reference messages over my time so it was very interesting to hear the perspective of how and why they occur. Jason then demonstrated how best to use them in an Umbraco Project and finished his talk discussing what improvements can be made to increase quality and performance.
It was a super evening and both speakers not only have a warm and welcoming presence when you meet them, they both have a great way of making their talks engaging, interesting and entertaining to follow.
After all this a few folks headed to the local Boca Bar for more drinks, those of who are doing dry-January headed home!
I look forward to more UmBristol MeetUps at Gibe, hopefully we will see you there!
