I launched a new website over the festive break called Is It Umbraco Tees day today which is a simple static page hosted on Github Pages. The page will show a countdown timer to when the next #UmbracoTees day will be (currently nothing planned).
The site may become a CMS driven website in the future but for now, it does the job as a simple html / javascript / css setup.
The reason behind the website is to try and bridge the gap of everyone being on different social platforms. The site will hopefully be a simple, single point of reference. I've plans to also add a photo gallery to it and possibly a file submission form so people can share their photos of them wearing an Umbraco related item of clothing and get featured on the site.
While creating the site, I added an About page and it got me thinking, when and how did the whole #UmbracoTees day hashtag start? So I jumped on X and tweeted to one person I knew would know, Pete Duncanson.
The conversation went like this (spelling mistakes have been updated from original tweets):
Owain: @peteduncanson were you the instigator for #umbracotees day? Looking to update the about page on http://isitumbracoteesday.today with the correct info. 🙂 When did it start?
Pete: Yes I was. If memory serves there had been a few grumbles that Twitter wasn’t as fun as it used to be and the Umbraco crowd had gone a bit quite so I had the idea to do something that most of us could engage in easier and bring us all together
Pete: Thus #umbracotees was the result. I fired out the idea with a few days notice and we got about 40+ people engaging wearing their various Umbraco swag. It seemed to work, brought some fun back and we go to see selfies of lots of folks and friends.
Pete: It could get a bit lonely at times working from home so I think it helped build the community spirit up a bit more. Was meant to be a one off but after that I would announce another when ever it felt we needed it
Pete: Like the super hero saying goes though, with great power comes great responsibility and personally I always thought it should be a rarely used call to arms. Birthdays wouldn’t be special if they happened every week or when HQ marketing had a new service to push 😝
So there you have it, the reason why and where #UmbracoTees day originated from.
If you think an #UmbracoTees day should be announced, drop me a message and we can chat. I'm on twitter and mastodon and also the Umbraco Discord channel (links are at the bottom of this site).