Ask (our Community leaders) Anything -- answers LIVE at Summit!

[LarryBrock]

With wearing multiple hats (AUG/Champ, work, home, etc), what are your strategies for maintaining balance between them all and keeping your sanity?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

I can't wait to hear the answers from the Panelist!  This is a burning question of mine too! :D

[Tinker Fadoua]

@LarryBrock 

Whenever I interviewed for a position, I am told you will have to wear multiple hats if hired. I guess it became part of my life. I have to admit in my personal life I have a great husband who is really helping, regarding AUG meetup there are 3 wonderful leaders we split tasks. The rest I try to juggle in the best way I can. There are times I fail, I take a break then resume when I feel like I can.

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

@LarryBrock 
It does take a lot of support from those around me.  My partner and Co-AUG Leader have really been a great help with the heavy lifting.  Literally.  I couldn't do half of what I do with out that support.

The keeping the sanity part....I'm pretty sure I lost that some years ago :D

[Danny Zuccaro]

@LarryBrock gave up on my sanity ages ago ;). 

I'm fortunate enough to have other amazing leaders in Toronto and we work well as a group. We lean on one another when needed and it helps to balance out our responsibilities well. 

[Mark Lang]

@LarryBrock 

I have to go with the answers above.  I make sure to surround myself with wonderful teammates that are passionate about Atlassian tools as well.  I guess if I were to add anything new it is about picking the people around well.  For  work, we interview everyone from the standpoint of team fit  AND diversity then consider the skills.  We often feel like we can teach the skills as long  as the  person brings a different perspective and wants to work as a team.   It sounds corny but it really has worked for us.  I tend to do the same in my personal life (but a bit more subconsciously).  If you can't laugh together it will become work and less likely to keep rolling.  

[Corey_Tabb]

My Question is I did a migration from one instance to another cloud-based

but when I search by users in the issues tab all my users appear twice but when I check them on the users they only come up once why would this be and what could I do resolve it?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

Hi @Corey_Tabb 

This is a really good question! 

You will get a better answer if you open this as a full question within the Community.  The questions here were posted to be asked as part of a live panel of Community Leaders about being Community Leaders and their experiences in that role.  

[Kathy Hart]

I have taken over a community that is inactive. I have sent out messages, requested input on how, where, and when to have meetings, and even just scheduled a meeting without any response from the existing community.

Do you have any advice for revitalizing interest in participation? Or on totally rebuilding the community from scratch? 

When I joined the community I had burning questions to ask, but no one responded. I don't want another new person to experience that frustration. 

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

@Kathy Hart 
I have to tell you, I adore your profile pic! <3 Puss-in-boots!

I can tell you a bit about what worked for us.  We went with Tuesday evenings and the second one of the month, because that didn't conflict with our schedules and hoped that it wouldn't conflict with others. There is something going on every night of the week here in Columbus, We, not so jokingly, say, that if you were fine eating Pizza, you could go to a meetup every night of the week and never cook.  So we were bound to conflict with something, and just decided to go with what worked best for us.  

I do think the hardest thing for us was to gain traction and get the word about us out.  I tried attending a lot of other meetups, to hand out business cards and talk about the group. I try to post frequently on LinkedIn about our local goings on.  Twitter doesn't seem to do a lot for us in gathering membership, but we do have an account there too. 

We were slow to grow, and I would not say that we are a large group even now, we have a good core of people and several that come around as the topic applies to them.  I have really been driven to provide content that is valuable to the people who show up.  Really taking to heart that it is quality over quantity.  I particularly try to drive for the members to connect with each other and to be resources for each other.  That's were the value is in the community, not just having me to come to with questions, but to bring them to the meetings and ask each other. 

I had to learn a bit, to have the mindset, that even if One single person showed up, and if I brought value to that person, I have done a good job.  If no one showed up, that was ok too.  I would spend that time, improving myself with the products and use the time to start planning the next event.  There were some very discouraging times, but I am glad that I am still working to bring value to even just one person that would show up to my events.  

Feel free to reach out to me directly through the Community channels.  If you would like to chat more. 

[Mark Lang]

@Kathy Hart 

I am sorry to hear about your experience.  I  have to say that has been my biggest fear about starting a regional group because i have heard that the one in my area has folded under twice in the past.  It is why I started with the company user group first.  That being said, what I have learned from the company user group was to be willing to try different things to see what works.  Much like what @Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_ mentioned.  I tried different deliveries (in person vs online), times, locations to see  what caught the most people.  I plan to try the same thing soon when I take a shot at restarting our regional group.  I also plan to first find 2-3 core people in my area to get started and grow from there.  That way if we show up then it is a benefit to us at a minimum.  

[Partha Mandayam]

HOw has being a community champion helped you in your career? How did you get selected for that?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

@Partha Mandayam 

Hi! If I were looking for a direct way that being a community champion has helped me in my career, I don't think that I would be able to find an example.  However, it has helped me in many indirect ways.  I get a chance to be exposed to a lot more environments, problems, answers, ways of working than I would have been exposed to just by my own work environment.  I have a group of people I can bring questions to, that is larger than just myself, so I have widely increased my opportunities to learn and be exposed to different ideas and ways of approaching a problem. It's made me a more educated, well rounded person, in ways that I can apply to my job and career.  Its not necessarily made me rich and famous though :)

I was selected as one of the initial Champions, to help the community when it launched 2 years ago, because I was involved with the User Group Community.

[Tinker Fadoua]

How has being a community champion helped you in your career? How did you get selected for that?

@Partha Mandayam 

By answering users questions I learn more. Sometimes when I get stuck I reach out to an Atlassian Support or @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-  who come to the rescue very quickly. Learning from the experts definitely empowers me and let me give better suggestions to my stakeholders.

I thank my great friend @carolyn french who introduced me to the "champions" world, explained to me the rules, then I went from there.

[Ollie Guan]

Questions:

1. As an AUG leader, how do you find more community participants in the city?

2. As a Community Champion, how do you allocate your own work and time investment in the community? I know that the latter requires a lot of time and effort. What does this kind of contribution bring to you?

Thanks for sharing!

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

@Ollie Guan 

1.  Great Question.  What I did was try to attend other Meetups that might have people who would use the Atlassian Products.  DevOps/SecOps meetups and BA meetups have been my usual focus, with the occasional AWS and Kubernetes meetups.
Posts to LinkedIn and reaching out to some of the larger recruitment firms have helped too.

2.  This is pretty tough, I often feel like I don't really have enough time to put into the Community as I would like to.  I'm an AUG Leader, an Online Group leader and a Community Champion.  So I've got a lot going on just with all of that, and I'm involved in a couple of other organizations too.  I've got a lot going on!  I try to balance it as best as possible, and do a lot of prioritization, based on event and due dates.  Sometimes stuff does fall through though.  I tend to focus most on the In Person and Online Groups and wright, the very occasional, article for the Community.  I don't answer many questions, because the time commitment can get away from me if the question was improperly asked or if the answer isn't quite what the asker needed. Too many follow-up can wreck my time, and I don't want to leave someone hanging if they still need the help.

[Tinker Fadoua]

@Ollie Guan

• As an AUG leader, how do you find more community participants in the city? Right now since I just became an AUG Leader, I try to spread the word in every way I can so that more people can attend. I recall being in a store when one of the shoppers came to me and said where did you get your JIRA top from? I said from Atlassian Swags we get for AUG meetups. The guy couldn't believe that there is an actual AUG. I provided him all the information. We talked for 30 min he seemed impressed.
• As a Community Champion, how do you allocate your own work and time investment in the community? I know that the latter requires a lot of time and effort. What does this kind of contribution bring to you?

Here is the analogy I will give you: when you love someone you always find time for them. Same goes with the community help 😊 however I do know that not everyone has time we all get caught up in our daily lives.

[Partha Mandayam]

Do we get these cool swags even in Pune, India meetups  or only in USA?

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Do you or have you ever done a more "excursion" type AUG Event - like paint balling or bowling?

Was it a success?

How did you still make it about Atlassian Users and build the event around Atlassian Culture & Tools so that it was still a genuine AUG event?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

Hi @Andy - PTC Redundant 

We hold one event a year, that is our Social event.  We plan this around our AUG-iversary. (when we started our AUG)  We have our event at an old school arcade.  We allow attendees a drink from the bar, encouraging the happy hour specials and order pizza and/or chicken for the attendees. I also bring cake or cupcakes to celebrate.

It should be a great time!

....and very few people show up.  We're kinda at a loss on that one too.  

We're looking for other ideas for our event next year.  We might wait for nicer weather, the event is usually in March, to have a cookout at a park, and bring some lawn games and figure out a scavenger hunt or something using Confluence or Jira Mobile apps.  :)

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

@Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_ : That is great to hear ! Sounds AUGsome! 😎🤟

Shame very few people show up but a scavenger hunt sound awesome!

Are partners or vendors interested in sponsoring!?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

@Andy - PTC Redundant 

We have had sponsorship from local offices and partners in past years.  We didn't seek it out this year, and just used our AUG budget.

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Good to know! Thanks @Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_ !

[Partha Mandayam]

Can you post the answers here? I'm not attending the summit.

[Tinker Fadoua]

@Partha Mandayam 

We are trying please keep checking. Let us know if we missed something that you want more details about it 🖐

[Help Desk Support]

i am excited to have learned about Deiser and the power of server based service desk vs cloud based!

[Meg Holbrook]

@Monique vdB - does this count as number 3 if I went TO the AMA - took pictures - and served as moral support to @Fadoua 

[Momina Naeem]

Hello Group Members I am new person in the group. I have book  one ticket for the developer tour in USA Austin. Can you tell me where is my visa and Aeroplan ticket. 

Thanks.