I've already shared the short version on LinkedIn: the presentation, the thank-yous, and the photo of the trophy. Here's the rest. Two days in Kochi, where I represented ZAAKS at the Umbraco India Festival 2026, India's first event dedicated to the Umbraco community.
September 04, 2026
The short version was already on LinkedIn: the talk, the thank yous, the photo with the trophy. This is the rest of the story. Two days in Kochi, representing ZAAKS at the Umbraco India Festival 2026, India's first dedicated Umbraco community event.
A few weeks before Kochi, Melvin told me I would represent the company at the Umbraco India Festival. Good news. But I had also never flown before. Never left Nepal. So this was not a normal work trip. I discovered for the first time how flights and airports work, on my way to a talk for people I mostly only knew online.
I was nervous. Packed my bag twice, checked my documents more often than necessary, went through the talk over and over in my head. No point pretending I stayed calm about it.
I don't remember much about the takeoff itself, it went quickly and suddenly I was in the air. What stayed with me: looking out the window above the clouds and realising this was the first time I saw the world from that height. For most people who fly often a small detail, but for me it was one of those moments where you just sit and look, without really thinking about anything.
The talk I gave was called "From Audience to MVP: An Umbraco Story from Nepal", and that title is not a slogan. It literally happened that way. In 2024 there was an Umbraco meetup at Impact Hub in Kathmandu, led by Robert Foster together with the Umbraco training team, and organised on the ground by Pasang Tamang. I sat in that room as a visitor, not as a speaker. No stage, no talk, just in the audience taking everything in.
From that room to a speaking slot at an international festival, two years later, that is the whole story I told in Kochi. The core: becoming an MVP is not a big moment, it is an accumulation of small contributions that eventually get noticed. Answer one forum question this month. Write down what you learn, a blog post, a gist, whatever. That was roughly the advice I gave to people who are still looking for their place, like I was in 2024.
The hackathon before the festival was on a boat. I found a spot, opened my laptop and started working on ideas. At some point pizza arrived, as always at a hackathon.
I was busy with the project, looked up and saw the sunset outside, the backwaters, palm trees along the banks, the sky turning gold. We don't have views like that in Nepal. So I closed the laptop and just watched for a while, instead of continuing to code.
I finished the project after all, a package that people ended up using. At the end, everyone showed what they had built, and I presented mine. In hindsight, that turned out to be good practice for the actual talk a few days later.
Before the festival really started, I stood outside the venue for a moment to take it all in: Lulu IT Twin Towers in Kochi's Smart City, glass and marble columns rising high, fountains at the entrance. The tallest IT towers in South India, and you can tell. Coming from a smaller market like Nepal, standing there knowing I was about to walk into that building to speak was a moment in itself.
Before the sessions started, the room went quiet and a message appeared on the big screen: we stand in solidarity with Nepal flood victims. I hadn't expected to see something about home projected for a room full of people from across India and beyond. It wasn't a general moment of silence, it was specifically about what had happened in Nepal, and it meant something that a festival in another country took a moment to acknowledge it before the programme began.
Woke up, headed to the venue, everything was already set up. I spent most of the day watching other sessions: AI agents, load balancing on Umbraco Cloud, a mindfulness session that was a nice break from all the technical content. But I was thinking about my own talk all day, as it was scheduled at the end of the day.
When my turn came, I walked onto the stage and just did it. It went well. I was proud of myself for pulling it off. A few years ago, I was sitting at a small meetup in Kathmandu listening to someone else. This time I stood on stage myself, closing out the day, in front of a room full of people from across the Umbraco world.
Small detail, but worth mentioning: Keralan banana chips. Someone gave me a packet at the venue and I finished it quickly. Simple snack, but it's one of those things that defines a trip a bit, the food you hadn't planned for but keep thinking back to afterwards.
I also once had appam with stew: thin, fluffy rice pancakes served with a mild coconut curry, along with a glass of filter coffee. Classic Keralan breakfast, simple but good in a way you only understand once you've eaten it yourself.
On the way back from the beach to the hotel, the sun set over the water, and I saw the Chinese fishing nets in silhouette through the car window, which Kochi is known for. Later that evening, from where I was staying, the city's skyline lit up against a dark, cloudy sky. A quiet end to a day that started at the beach and ended with a view of a city I had never been to two days before.
At the end of the event, I received two trophies. One was a Speaker trophy from Umbraco India Festival 26, with a plaque thanking me for sharing my knowledge and inspiring the Umbraco community in India. The other was my Umbraco MVP trophy, which I received on stage. Heavier than I expected. I ended up flying home with both instead of one.
I got back from Kochi a few days ago, and I wanted to close this out properly rather than leaving it in the travel details.
Giving that talk, "From Audience to MVP", in front of a room full of people from across the Umbraco world, is something I'm proud of. Not in a loud way, more a quiet, I-actually-pulled-this-off kind of pride. A few years ago I sat in the audience. This time I stood on the stage myself, and I did well.
None of this happens without a few people, so here's the real thanks.
Melvin van Rookhuizen and Joyce Datema, thank you for making the decision to send me. Supporting someone from a small market like Nepal is what changes "watching from the sidelines" into "being part of it". I don't take that for granted.
Pasang Tamang, thank you for everything we're building together with the Umbraco community in Nepal. This trip is part of that, not separate from it.
Mathilde Høst, thank you for bringing my MVP trophy all the way to Kochi, so I could hold it myself.
Thanks to the Umbraco India Festival team and the UIUG organisers for a strong first event, and to everyone who came to speak to me afterwards. That's the real reason to get on stage, not the talk itself, but what happens after.
I came home proud of what I did there, and grateful for the people who put me in the position to be able to do it. I look forward to more of this. Codegarden is next.
