The Purpose of the Atlassian User Groups (AUG) - Part 2

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This is the second part of this article. On the Part 1 I discussed  the role of the USER, the AUG Leader, the importance of the Atlassian Partners and our AUG Online Group. In this Part 2 I will go over other angles of the Atlassian User Groups sharing our own experiences during last year, our members Service project and the end of the year social event. As I mentioned before the main objective of this article is to sparks some ideas and initiatives for your local AUG. Be involved and make it strong!

About our last year events. A year to remember!

I had the fortune to work in a company that supports our efforts and that embraces our passion by providing a place to run our meetings. In addition, great co-leaders able to help and support our initiatives engaging local companies like DSS, Inc, NextEra and Modernizing Medicine providing alternative venues so we can rotate our presentations. Last year we did 20 events (we already did 3 this January, a good start), our events were on regular evening meetings, virtual presentations, lunch and learn sessions, breakfasts and weekend training workshop. Attendance varies based on the topic and they were from 2 or 3 to more than 40. Topics also varies from Atlassian specifics, book authors, marketplace add-ons, service project to best practices and more. We did it alone, just with the Atlassian sponsorship, and engaging partners that allowed us to have a great end of the year social event, right when we need it!, Special thanks to Atlassian, DSS, Inc, Service Rocket, Isos Technology, Automation for Jira and Praecipio Consulting, you rock! and our Palm Beach AUG members really appreciates the bowling evening we had, it was amazing!

Presentations and Presenters spotlight

The content presented in our meetings is based on our users needs and here are some details about presented topics and participants (including the first 3 for this year) and three more for the other AUG that I run, Temecula Valley, CA. For those that shared their knowledge, a big round of applause, thanks for helping us, it was great to have you there with us (in person and remotely), it takes a lot of courage and passion to share knowledge and each one of us, as recipient, really appreciate it. We know it takes time to prepare and present a topic and we hope you had a great time with us. Of course, 2019 is just starting and we would love to have you back.

Date	Topics
Jan 29, 2019	Cross Company Issue Tracking - issue synchronization | Automated Report & Release notes generation Presenters:   @francis | @Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California)
Jan 25, 2019	Introducing the Atlassian Agile Corner and Building the Palm Beaches into a Tech Hub Presenters: @Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California) | Joe Ruso
Jan 24, 2019	Unflipping the Table with Portfolio for Jira and Automation for Jira Presenters:   @Amanda _Praecipio_ | Andres Knecht
Dec 13, 2018	End of the Year Event... Let's get the ball rolling! Sponsored by: Atlassian | DSS, Inc. | Service Rocket | Praecipio Consulting | Isos Technology | Automation for Jira
Nov 07, 2018	Essentials of Agile User Story Mapping + Agile Marketing & FREE BOOK!! Presenters: Nick Muldoon |  @Bill Cushard
Oct 23, 2018	Scaling the Atlassian Stack and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: It Came from the Admin Side Presenters:  @Boris Berenberg - Atlas Authority | @Rachel Wright
Oct 15, 2018	Virtual - Outlook Calendars for Confluence Presenters: Andreas Schmidt
Oct 11, 2018	Bridging the gap between Confluence and SharePoint - SharePoint Online Connector for Confluence Presenter: Dirk Roehrborn
Oct 03, 2018	Agile Release Management | Atlassian Developer Tools - Better Together Presenters:  @[deleted] | @Thomas Laussermair
Sep 27, 2018	Virtual - Mastering massive changes in Jira Projects Presenter: David Garcia
Sep 11, 2018	Atlassian and Isos Technology are in Town - Join Us! AUG + Happy Hour Presenters: @Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California) | @Mike McGreevy | @Larry at Isos
Aug 29, 2018	Summit Presentation: One Queue to Rule Them All Monitoring with Jira Presenter:  @Lisa Reilly
Jun 22, 2018	Introduction into Bitbucket and how it fits into the SDLC Presenter:  @Thomas Behlau
May 30, 2018	Asset management in Jira with Insight and Insight Discovery Presenter:  @Zihni Saglam
May 09, 2018	AUG Lunch - Canned Response and TFS4JIRA Presenter:  @Pawel Mazur
May 08, 2018	Atlassian Team in Town! - Learn about DevOps and Applications for the Enterprise Presenters:  @aileen | @Mike McGreevy
May 07, 2018	AUG Lunch - Manage a tree of pages as one unit of content in Confluence – a Document! Presenter:  @Tobias Anstett _K15t_
May 03, 2018	Turbo Charge Jira for Success with Turbo Kit for Jira and what is on the Atlassian pipeline for 2018? Presenters:  @Jillian Flook | @Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California)
Apr 05, 2018	AUG Breakfast, Automated Release Notes + Confluence Workflows Presenters:  @Anand Inamdar_Amoeboids | @Simon Gatto
Apr 03, 2018	Team Tour, Outlook+Jira and Scriptrunner for Non coders Presenters: Andreas Schmidt | @Evan Golden
Feb 27, 2018	Gliffy Project ,Turning Visual Plans into JIRA and Why supporting Waterfall Planning is a great idea Presenter:  @Miles Faulkner | Steven Valencia | @Mary Nielsen
Jan 24, 2018	Show and Tell & Lean Coffee Presenters/Moderators: @Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California) | @Christopher Heritage
Jan 20, 2018	New to Confluence?... Ask me about Confluence or show us what you have (hands on workshop-training) Presenter: @Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California)
Feb 13, 2018	Temecula Valley – Jira Service Desk in Action - Warfighter Made Help Center
Jan 12, 2018	Temecula Valley – Confuence and Jira in action - Workshop and Training
Jan 5, 2018	Temecula Valley - Confluence Workshop and Training - Warfighter Made

Our AUG Service Project - Warfighter Made

Warfighter Made - Adapt to the Injury, Customize to the Soul

Disabled veterans organization Warfighter Made will run on Atlassian thanks to the AUG members of Palm Beach, FL and Temecula Valley Atlassian User Groups and partners like Isos Technology ( @Thad West), Adaptavist ( @Evan Golden),  Refined Wiki (Genevieve Blanch) and Praecipio Consulting ( @Christian Lane ). To learn more about this project please read our series of articles about this project and watch the video to learn more about this organization.

The goal is to share on this series of blog-posts how we are building the new collaboration platform for Warfighter Made. So AUG members will learn some new tricks ad they help this organization. See below the list of completed blog posts.

• Part 1: Unleashing the power of Collaboration to overcome the Sadness of 22
• Part 2: Onboarding the team to Inspire – Adapt – Overcome
• Part 3: Gathering requirements and using Mock Ups
• Part 4: Requirements and Diagrams
• Part 5: Radiation of information in Confluence and Jira
• Part 6: Empowering the user experience by customizing the Confluence theme
• Part 7: A new theme for Jira Service Desk Portal

Watch this Video to Learn more about this Organization.

The Palm Beach AUG end of the year Social Event

I have to acknowledge that I mentioned the event multiple times already but let me share with you some of our best moments and how it was done.

The Venue

One of the AUG co-leaders ( @Jennifer_Weser ) mentioned that Revolution Rock and Bowl place at West Palm Beach, FL downtown could be a good fit for our target event, so I visited the place and I found a wonderful location for an evening full of great activities but the best of all, a place where we can have a good time with our friends, finally a non-technical meeting where we can have some fun!. After contacting Atlassian partners that helped us to make this a reality we started inviting our members. We had a good turn out and the first hour was dedicated to pizzas and pool tables while we waited for our bowling lanes.

The Teams

We had 5 teams and the ball started rolling as well as our well-deserved dinner, of course  with exclusive swags sent by Atlassian and partners, including a coffee mug designed just for this event. The winner team got special swags and we ended a good evening with a smile in our face and getting ready for a great 2019.

The winners’ score!

The winner team: @Thomas Laussermair  @Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California) @Isaiah Rodriguez @Andrew Bilukha Collin

 Next steps.

 We are already surfing another great year, don’t miss the opportunity and join us as participant, presenter or sponsor. We have a place for you and if you are not in the area, look for the Atlassian User Group near you. For a completed list of cities visit this page.

 See you soon!