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Welcome Wednesday: Ask Me Anything with Jimmy

Jimmy Seddon

Hello Everyone!

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means!

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I have something different for you today. First, if you want to learn more about the Community Leader program, you should check out this post:
https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Feedback-Forum-articles/Two-interactive-sessions-How-to-become-an-Atlassian-Community/ba-p/1798158

@Tamanna Godara & @Deepanshu Natani will be hosting the APAC session and I have the honour of co-hosting the EMEA/AMER session with @Community Manager!

Normally, I'm asking you a question. Today, I'm flipping the tables, and you can ask me anything you want. It could be about the Community, being a Community Leader, the Atlassian products, other things you want to know about me, I'm an open book.

In addition to that, if you ask your question before the session Erica & I are hosting tomorrow (2pm EDT), you will be entered in a raffle for one of five $25 gift cards.

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I hope to see you out at tomorrow session and have a great rest of the week!

Ok, fire away!

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Comments

Fun Man Andy

Is it true that by Canadian law, all Canadians must keep a dooms-day-prepper-cellar full of Maple Syrup, Poutine and a VHS copy of all the Winter Olympic Gold wins?

Andy - PTC Redundant

And now the serious stuff...

You are well known across Atlassian Community and your entire work-life revolves around using the many different products... BUT if you didn't have Atlassian in your life, what would you have?
AND... based on all your game streaming, if you could go back in time and choose a different career, would you and what would it be?

Jimmy Seddon

HAHAHA! Thanks @Fun Man Andy! That is not true. It's not law, but strongly encouraged, we wouldn't want to offend anyone

Martin Bayer _MoroSystems_ s_r_o__

Hi @Jimmy Seddon , thank you for the opportunity to ask you (almost) anything. I'd like to know how many time do you invest in community in one week? .

For me personally it is really difficult to find a time when choosing between family, projects and community. So I absolutelly admire people like you

John Funk

Hey @Jimmy Seddon - Great post! What's your favorite piece of Atlassian SWAG?

Jimmy Seddon

Great set of questions @Andy - PTC Redundant!

I'll answer them in order:

If by some tragedy Atlassian didn't exist, I'd be willing to bet that I would have been using the Microsoft stack. I have always been in favor of using everything from one vendor as the integrations between products are very well done and I really struggle to use integrations that are slapped together.
My career to this point as been about seizing opportunities as they present themselves. I went to college to become a developer, and ended up in Customer support for a few years before transitioning to Quality Assurance. I took a chance on an opportunity at being a developer for a small startup and some how ended up becoming their Tools Administrator and I have never looked back from there. Would I change that to become a full time streamer? No, I do that as a hobby to support a wonderful charity, I don't think I would want to rely on that as my source of income.

Jimmy Seddon

Hey @Martin Bayer _MoroSystems_ s_r_o__ !

I have been really lucky that both my previous and current employer recognize the importance of me using the Community to both learn and become a better administrator, as well as share what I know and what we are doing with the Atlassian products with the rest of the Community.

Because of that I have the ability to spend some "work time" participating in the Community.

I'm logged in daily. I will usually be here first thing when I get up (I'm in the EDT time zone) where I will catch up with everything that has happened already from the EMEA morning. Then, I'm usually on for a little bit after 8pm my time after my wife and I get the little one to bed. I don't do that every night.

I completely understand what you mean as far as having to choose what you want to do. For me some nights, relaxing is digging into someone else's issue and trying to help them.

Jimmy Seddon

HAHA! Great question @John Funk! That one is easy, it's the Taco Plushie Erica sent me (on the right) as it goes very well with my own company mascot Cypher:

Fun Man Andy

Hah! No.. you wouldn't! 😉

Andy - PTC Redundant

NIiiiice!!!
I love that you have truly taken a path full of destiny! 🌈🌟

Jimmy Seddon

Before I forget, I'd like to welcome all of the new members to the Community! We'd love for you to join in the conversation!

@Chirannjevi Panala @Zhuo Wang @Toni Jiménez Lamas @Landon Tran @Karen Schaefer @Renata das Graças Silvestre @Niraj Upadhyay @MD @Mando Gu @ivan.lose @Алексей Исаков @william_taylor @Việt Sơn @RuteFV @Oscar Garcia @mouad laf @Mahuza Menza @luke.mountz @Kevin-Mullen @Keruchan @Domi @derekb @Artur Hamernik @Григорий @Vladimir Virlan @Stuart Wilde @Seamus Clancy @Ririka Hayashi @Rangarajan S @Rajesh Balakrishnan @Noah Leu -MESKRU GmbH- @Mark Slade @Mark Lees @Julien Laffont @Jen @ISP VRN @Ian Porter @Deepa @Babak Fakhamzadeh @Adrian Ferrante @Yehoshua Krakowski @yash.agarwal @Wisnu Widiarta @Vladan @Vina Sectiana @Vamshi Rao @tea.puljic @Sumeet Gupta @siddharthjoshi @Shawn Quinn

Jimmy Seddon

Welcome all of the new members to the Community! We'd love for you to join in the conversation!

@Sergei Valevka @Sayantan Ghosh @Sandar @richard lucas @Ralph Esslinger @Pooja.Aswanth @Piotr Ślęczkowski @Partha Maitra @oda mao @mohamed gamal @Mike Villanueva @Maxim Bayer @Katie L @Judah Ferst @Joydeep Hazra @joao_tavora @Jenny Flores @Jeffrey Cheng @Jarrod Smith @James Waithe @Jagz @Ignacio Estaun @Gourav Salanke @Felicitas Borkes @David Dean @[deleted] @Winnie Wong @Victor Tuzov @Versiris @varun_kashyap @Universitaetsklinikum Muenster @Tim Shaw @Tiffany @Support Lab @Steph Ellis @Sigitas Jasinskas @Sherwin Moscoso @Sela Lerer @Sebastien Millier @Sau Kan @sadeepdarshana @Ruedi @Roman Schepkin @Robert Ruyenzi @Rishi Saraf @Ramesh D @Rajesh P @Rafiq Benz @Rachel McDonald

Jack Brickey

One question….

If I were to become a leader how soon can I expect to unseat @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- on the leader board?

Jimmy Seddon

LOL! @Jack Brickey I think you have a better chance of winning the lottery.

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Shawn Quinn

Greetings. I'm a systems analyst at the university of ottawa. We have a confluence instance here and we're in a bit of a bind. The people who used to manage it are gone. I've inherited it. And my first task is to upgrade it and migrate to SSO or to our central domain LDAP. I've been looking into it, - kind of a rabbit hole because we run an older version of CentOS (6.10) with an older version of postgresql..... so - i'm thinking of building a new VM with ubuntu LTS or something and installing the new Confluence fresh on that , then using the data export / import tools in the GUI to just move over to that new server.

What landmines, roadblocks or other sleep-losers am I going to run into and how can I avoid them?

Jimmy Seddon

Hey @Shawn Quinn!

I see that you also posted this as a discussion over here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Welcome-Center-discussions/In-a-bit-of-a-quagmire-maybe-you-can-throw-me-a-rope/m-p/1812781

I'm going to provide an answer there so we don't start two threads of discussion on the same topic.

Shawn Quinn

many thanks. i ended up posting twice mostly because i wasn't clear whether you would see it on the other general forum. i was originally trying to post on this wednesday ask me anything forum. ... so whichever is cool with me.

John Funk

Nice! They could almost be twins!

Teodora V _Warsaw Dynamics_

I am truly grateful for having Jimmy as one of my closest friends despite the fact we've never met live (thank you 21st Century for that)! 🤗

@Jimmy Seddon, I know you wear many hats, and you excel in any area you are involved in - the Community, your job as an Admin, the streaming, and all this while being a father and a husband.

Reveal your mojo, and share with us how you manage to balance all these areas, and how you keep yourself motivated to continue doing it?

Dharma Ramos

Hi Jimmy!

Other than the Atlassian Community and Atlassian University, what other tools do you use to continue to learn about Atlassian products?

Thank you!

Jimmy Seddon

Great question @Dharma Ramos! Actually, the Atlassian Products and the documentation are another resource I use. I have a cloud instance (on the free plan) for every Atlassian Cloud product because one of the best ways I learn is to simply play with features and try them out myself. I'm also lucky to work for a company that pays for Jira Software, Service Management & Confluence Cloud Premium so I have a sandbox that I can use to play with the premium features.

Jimmy Seddon

Ok @Teodora V _Warsaw Dynamics_ wants to get real for a second. Honestly, some days it is EXTREMELY hard to do. Others I simply need to let something slip in order to manage all the rest. Too many times sleep is the thing I let slip.

As far as staying motivated, my best advice here is to surround yourself with amazing supportive people (like you!) who can help you feed on positive energy.

My wife is an amazing person who has my back with all the things I get involved in.

Everyone on the Atlassian Community and in the Atlassian Ecosystem are extremely supportive of each other.

I have found a wonderful group of people that have become very good friends that I do charity streaming with and I think you need that in order to be able to keep doing it every single day!

Kristján Geir Mathiesen

You are very talented @Jimmy Seddon !

Kristján Geir Mathiesen

Góðan dag, @Jimmy Seddon

When did you start using the Atlassian products?

Jimmy Seddon

A number of years ago, I actually worked for an Atlassian Competitor for some time. When I moved to a startup in 2012. They were using free tools for issue tracking and source control.

In 2014, they made the decision to move to paid tools. I was not a part of the selection process, but I took over the admin work having experience supporting and testing a similar platform.

I started as an admin for Jira and BitBucket (Stash at the time) and my only regret is that I didn't start getting involved in the community back then instead of waiting 5 years before I discovered this wonderful place.

Taranjeet Singh

I had the same question as @Teodora V _Warsaw Dynamics_ , and you have already answered that perfectly. I agree with you on all you said on how you manage to do all the different stuff, as mostly I also find myself let slip the sleep to make up for all different things I want to do in the day.

Taranjeet Singh

@Jimmy Seddon

First, I just want to wish you all the best in whatever you do for the Atlassian Community and your upcoming webinar session with Erica!

What support or advice would you be able to provide to a new Canadian immigrant in getting involved with Atlassian Community Events, and getting a new job in Atlassian domain to make their career in a new country, if they have some knowledge of Atlassian tools?

Jimmy Seddon

Thanks @Taranjeet Singh! The most important advice I would have for anyone is this:

If you are volunteering to do something, do those things because you enjoy it. If you aren't having fun and it just feels like a burden, you should stop and find something else to channel your energy into.

I was an ACE leader for the Waterloo, Ontario group for a while. Virtual events were going really well early in the pandemic and then in June of 2020 I had to events in a row where people had signed up but didn't show up.

After speaking with Erica, I decided to stop putting my energy into something that I didn't think was beneficial and I started focusing more on the Online Community.

Jimmy Seddon

Wow! Good question @Taranjeet Singh!

First, getting involved in Atlassian Community Events, I'd recommend checking out https://ace.atilassian.com and looking at the various Canadian chapters. There might be one for you to join.

As for getting a role in the Atlassian space, this is my personal experience, having a background in Application and/or System Administration can definitely help as a number of companies I have worked with/for usually want Atlassian Administration to be only one part of your role.

Also, having Atlassian Certification (while not required) certainly can't hurt as it really helps to establish yourself as a seasoned Atlassian Admin.

Taranjeet Singh

Thanks for your answer, @Jimmy Seddon !

I hope to meet you some day in real, since I really feel that our way of thinking matches a lot, that's what I have observed in whatever interaction I had with you on the Community!

Jimmy Seddon

Thanks @Taranjeet Singh! I really want to meet a TON of people I have had the pleasure of interacting with on the Online Community. Right now, my hope is an in person 2022 Team event!

Martin Bayer _MoroSystems_ s_r_o__

Congrats, Good for you @Jimmy Seddon, you really do a great job. You are right, reading, helping and collecting Kudos is a great relax

Thorhalla Gudmundsdottir Beck

What's the thing that always picks you up when you've got bad days?

Jimmy Seddon

Great question @Thorhalla Gudmundsdottir Beck!

If I have had a frustrating day at work. Virtually hanging out with my friends watching some sort of comedy.

If it's my 4 year old testing the limits of my patience, being alone for a few hours listening to music on Spotify and either working on a coding project or working on a writing project.

Thorhalla Gudmundsdottir Beck

Cool. I would probably also list comedy and music as my biggest contributors to continuing sanity as well. :þ Not to mention if the two are combined well. That's my Sanax, Zoloft and Prozac with a good dose of barbitals :þ

Suvradip Paul

Hi @Jimmy Seddon

Sorry, it was a busy week for me and I missed the session. Is there any way to get the recording of this one?

Jimmy Seddon

I believe @Community Manager will be making a recording available. Stay tuned!

Jimmy Seddon

Thank you to everyone who asked questions! I hope you all enjoyed participating as much as I did answering the questions. Now for the moment you have all been waiting for, the announcement of the winners: