I was a speaker at Umbracokalaset 2026!

I've never really seen myself as speaker. I've always been to shy to be one. But here we are. I've just gotten home from Umbracokalaset. And I thought I would do a sort of "postmortem". I've never done anything like this before. So I'd thought I'd just bring you along on how I went from never held a talk before to standing on stage in front of around 80+.

Choosing a topic

So. Here I am thinking "Ok, what the hell should i talk about?!". I knew a couple of things:

I don't want to do like a guide. Where it's: I did X then Y then Z. Finished!
I wanted to tell a story from my trip to Japan.

With this in mind I started to think about what I should talk about. I still think choosing a topic is really hard. You should choose something that feels like second nature for you. But not for everyone else.

One night while blogging in Japanese, I used Umbraco in Japanese and realized that it's not really that well translated to Japanese. And this reminded me about the time in Japan where I was presented a menu that I couldn't understand because it was purely in Japanese. With this I started wonder. I wonder how many people don't use Umbraco because it's not that well translated to Japanese.

With that in mind. The title of my talk was formed. "How ordering food in Japanese made me realize why many opt out of Umbraco". Solid title I thought. So the talk would revolve around localization in Umbraco!

Since I didn't just want to create a whole talk before knowing if it would earn me a spot at Umbracokalaset. I'd wanted to ask one of the organizer (Markus Johansson) what he thought of my Idea! Before going any further I just wanted to show my appreciation for Markus! He has been a huge help for while creating my talk. He has given me so much support throughout my journey here. And he has given me so many tips and been the best hype-man! So thank you so much Markus! I wouldn't been able to do this without you!

After telling Markus about my idea he gave me the green light! And with that. I went off to work!

Structuring process

I had a couple of favorite talk from Codegarden ealier this year. And Umbraco had uploaded them to YouTube! So I transcribed those talks and uploaded them to a project in Claude code. And I asked Claude to find a pattern, this is what it wrote:

The speaker is inside the story, usually as the person who got it wrong or got hurt
2. The technical payload and the human story are the same object, not two things bolted together. (Example: Callum’s Polly section is the resolution of an escalating failure story, not a library tour.)
Each one hands you one reframe you can repeat at lunch

Claude told me that it noted that I disliked talks that are more of a "tour" talk and that are to technically dense. This is golden for me! Now I know how I should form my talk and what I should avoid!

Writing process

I choose to write out the entire script. Word for word. I saw this more like writing a story to tell rather. I still don't know if this was the right way to go about it. One hand, it gave me the entire talk and made it harder for me to forget what I was suppose to talk about. But on the other hand, improvising depending on the audience was basically 0. And the risk of me starting to sound robotic was high. But oh well. Experimentation is key! I think...

What was great about having the entire script. Was that I could send it to Claude so it could cross-check What I wrote against the talks that I liked from Codegarden. So I could make sure I stayed true to form.

Once the script was done. I could then upload it to Claude design. And BAM! A power point was formed! It wasn't stage ready from the start. So A lots of manual labor was needed in order to make it to my liking. But, before finishing it. I wanted to try out it on some of my coworkers. To see what they though. I didn't want to spend too much time finishing a power point that would need to be changed later. They gave me their seal of approval. I still had my doubts about. Once again, Markus came to my recuse! Thank you Markus for giving me feedback on my talk when it was still in development!

Umbracokalaset

Day of the talk!

I sat there listening very excitedly to Lotte and Sebastiaan delivering the key notes. I Laugh along the great jokes from Sebastiaan. (Yes Sebastiaan, they were great!). But then it dawned on me. Oh wait. I am supposed to speak right after the key notes! Oh no I thought... My hands were getting numb.. You can say I was beyond nervous! I was thinking. It's not to late to bolt out of here! But just then our great presenter Tobias came along miced me up and then it was showtime.

I stood on that stage more nervous than I'd ever been, but Tobias stood there giving me an introduction and that calmed me down a bunch. (Thank you so much Tobias!)

I did a bunch of practicing beforehand. And then it took roughly 28 minutes. But now it only took 18 minutes. I believe I was speaking faster than normal, and I probably missed a couple of things. One thing was really difficult. Was to read the audience! Maybe because was early in the morning but I thought it went horribly at first. But then people came up to me saying how much they liked it. Which made me quite relived and really happy!

And after all that I felt like it was beer o clock! According to sources we drank around 36 jugs of beer afterwards!

What I've learned

What I've learned after this journey... This is such a hard question to answer.

What I did right in my opinion:

Record demo instead of live demo
Told a personal story
Practiced a bunch before
Kept it lighthearted with a bunch of jokes (If you would like to call them that haha)
Asked for help and input!

What I do differently

I'd pick a different topic. The topic felt a bit to niche for the majority to appreciate.
NOT come up with a title first and then write he talk around it. This made it difficult if I wanted to pivot.
Try to keep the technical talk to a minimum. People won't remember your code examples 1h when you're done.
Add a QR code in the end for feedback. This way I could get a better understanding if people enjoyed the talk.

If you've ever held a talk before. I'd love to hear from you! How do you write your talks? What's your tips and ticks for new speakers? Or anything else?
Either if you write to me directly on linkedIn or comment on this post below!

Acknowledgement

I just like to take second to thank everyone that supported my during my journey!

Markus Johansson
Callum Whyte - Thank you so much Callum for all the tips and advice you gave me! It was golden!
Kim Bardach - Thank you Kalasgeneralen for all your encouragement!
Daniel Andersson - Thank you Daniel for taking pictures and recording for me! And thank you for all your encouragement and your kind words!
Tobias Dahlgren - Thank you so much Tobias for beeing such a great presenter and helping to calm me down before hand!
Mathilde Høst - Thank so you much Mathile for enduring my Swedish and for all of your your encouragement!
Anders Brohäll - Thank so you much for creating such a warm and welcoming atmosphere!

And thank you to Umbracokalaset and to Toxic and Obviuse for putting up such a great event. Thank for for having me!