Atlassian Team 2021 Q+A with Shannon Winter

[#1]

Hello Community members! 

Shannon just gave a talk, Be the change: How to create inclusive communities at work, at Team 2021. 

Now's your chance to ask her any questions that came up during their presentation! 

If you don't have a question, feel free to post your #1 takeaway in the comments below. Shannon will be around to answer your questions until Tuesday, May 4th ... so get your question in ASAP!

[Hannah Maher]

Thanks for sharing your framework Shannon.

Do you have any learnings or tips for building communities across multiple time-zones?

[shannyshan]

Thanks so much for watching @Hannah Maher

Such a great question. We're definitely still learning and improving with this, but here are a few tips:

• If possible, it's great to have a global lead or leads and then local leads in each major timezone. Global leads can help drive overall strategy, then local groups can hold get togethers in their time zone and tailor events to specific regional/cultural needs. 
  
  • Rather than trying to pull all the local leads together in real time, Global leads can share info with local leads through various async tools and channels (Confluence pages/blogs, Trello boards, Slack channels, etc.) They can even record with a tool like Loom to share video messages async. 
• Try and keep all events virtual-first events (even if some folks go back to the office post-COVID). Find a time that overlaps for the most timezones, but always record sessions and share them out after. 
• Create a dedicated Confluence page or Trello board for your community where you share info about each member (name, role, picture, what the community means to them, fun facts, etc.) so even if folks aren't in an overlapping timezone, they can get to know more about each other. This is also a great resource to send employees who are interested in joining your community.  
• Create a Slack channel where community members can still chat and support each other (even if some of the convo is async due to timezones). 
  • For added structure alongside casual chit chat, you could do weekly or biweekly stand-ups in Slack to keep everyone aligned on what they're up to, what kind of events they're planning, what issues they're facing that the group can help with, etc. 

Hope this helps! Would love to hear how it all goes and am happy to help along the way :) 

[Hannah Maher]

Thanks @shannyshan for your comprehensive response. Illustrates the range and flexibility of the Atlassian suite too!