Welcome to the Higher Education Atlassian Community!

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We’d like to welcome you to the new Higher Education Atlassian Community! 

I’m Matt Spangenberg, a Lead Software Engineer with the University of Texas at Austin.  I am the administrator of UT Austin’s Atlassian Guard organization, the campus-wide Confluence site, the Jira site for central IT and I provide support to the host of departmental sites within our org.  I’ve been working in the Atlassian ecosystem for more than a decade.

We’re excited to help create a digital space for Atlassian product administrators and users within universities and colleges.  We all know that navigating the Atlassian ecosystem in a higher education setting presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities.  Our institutions often operate within distinct organizational structures, budgetary considerations, user needs and campus missions that set us apart from the corporate world. 

We aim to create a collaborative environment where we can:

• Share strategies for unique higher ed challenges: We often find ourselves innovating and adapting Atlassian features in ways that address the research workflows, student services, administrative processes and missions for our institutions.  This community will be a space to openly discuss these higher ed specific roadblocks and collectively brainstorm effective workarounds and creative solutions.
• Showcase innovative use cases: Let's highlight the incredible ways Atlassian products are already driving the mission of our schools.  We can learn from each other's successes in introducing new features to our diverse user bases, from faculty and staff to students and researchers, and share best practices for maximizing product adoption and impact within campus environments.
• Optimize resources and budget effectively: We understand that higher education budgets can be tight, particularly when it comes to third-party apps and consulting services.  This community will serve as a valuable platform to discuss and evaluate essential Marketplace apps, share insights on which investments deliver value, and explore cost-effective strategies for extending Atlassian product capabilities while working within our budgets.
• Facilitating direct communication with Atlassian: We envision this group as a direct conduit for higher education voices to reach Atlassian's product developers and customer specialists.  This will be an invaluable opportunity for us to hear about new features and important updates directly from the source, and for Atlassian to gain deeper insights into the specific needs and innovative uses of their products within the higher education sector.

Ultimately, our goal is to empower every Atlassian admin in higher education, ensuring we can leverage these powerful tools to their fullest potential, support our institutions' missions, and learn from a network of peers who truly understand our unique landscape.

You can find our Atlassian Community Events page here, please feel free to join for meetings and events!

Our first meeting will be held on Wednesday June 25th, 2025 from 3-4pm CDT. 

Please feel free to join our community and invite your peers along.