Confluence Holiday Workshop: A twist on your favorite holiday song/book/film

[#1]

Raise your hand if you usher in the holiday season with the same book, movie, or music every year! 🙋‍♀️ For me, the holiday season hasn’t begun until I’ve watched Elf at least once. Nothing beats revisiting a favorite film, song, or book to harness the holiday spirit, so we thought it would be fun to put a Confluence-themed twist on some holiday classics.

How would your favorite holiday book or film have unfolded differently if the characters were utilizing Confluence?

• Would the Grinch be more amenable to working with the citizens of Whoville if he could collaborate asynchronously from the comfort of his cave?
• Could Kevin McCallister leverage Confluence to outsmart the Wet Bandits?
• What about your favorite Hallmark holiday movie? Think: “How Confluence saved the small town cheese shop – and Christmas”
• (Side note: this comedian’s parodies of Hallmark writers pitching films are my favorite.)

However you celebrate, we want to hear from you: how would you put a Confluence spin on a holiday book, movie, or song?

If you need some inspo, here are a couple of concepts our team collaboratively brainstormed (in a Confluence page, obviously!):

• “A Confluence Carol” – a PM is moved to adopt Confluence for asynchronous collaboration after being visited by ghosts of meetings past, present, and future.

• “'Twas the night before launch…” – a cross-functional team responsible for an upcoming product launch sleep soundly after using Confluence to collaborate from brainstorming through final pre-launch status update.

Share your response in any format you’d like (so long as it’s posted in the comments for all of us to enjoy 🙂 ), and be sure to spread the holiday cheer on social with #ConfluenceHolidayWorkshop and tag us @Confluence if you post on LinkedIn or Twitter.

[Jack Brickey]

Love Elf and love this challenge. I will have to give this a bit of thought and come back to it tomorrow. ☃️

[Alexander Pappert]

I would take Christmas Vacation

You can plan that you don't buy a tree bigger than the room + that it has no squirrels in it

implement some safety issues

check invitations to family + disinvite people you don't like

get more power with confluence  ;)

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Elf! Santa and the elfs use Confluence to collaborate on next Christmas' gift ideas, design, testing, and production.

🤶🏻

[Brant Schroeder]

Ralphie would have know for sure he was going to get a Red Ryder BB-Gun and would not have had a plan to get out of wearing the rabbit suite.

Sadly he would have still (almost) shot his eye out. 

[Andy Gladstone]

<Apologies in advance for the length of this post...>

As Supreme  Court Justice Elana Kagan humorously responded during her confirmation hearings in 2010 - when asked by Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) about her whereabouts on Christmas Day 2009 - “Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant”.

As a Jew myself, part of my memories growing up were attending the movies with my family on Christmas Eve. The theaters were always open – and always empty – and it was a family custom throughout my youth. But that remained a memory from my elementary school days until it was awakened by this article…

As the years passed from my elementary school days, I went on a personal journey of self-discovery (details not for this post) and have lived a religious orthodox lifestyle for the past 25 years. This brought an abrupt stop to my movie going days, which we had basically outgrown as a family in the early 90’s when we were all teenage boys.

But there was one movie franchise that was part of our DNA – Star Wars.

We grew up on the movies, had them on VHS, and watched the original trilogy at least 300 times (I'm lowballing since I don't want to exaggerate) – many of those in one day, in order. The biggest problem we had growing up is that we recorded The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on the same VHS tape (in EP, not SP), but with RTOJ first! We’d always have to rewind the entire tape (popcorn and bathroom break) to get back to RTOJ after watching TESB (where the tape usually was already after a trilogy marathon).

But when that franchise relaunched with the sequels (please, please don’t ask ME to speak about the prequels) in 2015, my father and brothers decided it was time to to get the band back together and rekindle those days of our youth. And so, each year from 2015-2019 we attended a Christmas Eve showing of a Star Wars Sequel or Star Wars Anthology Movie (Rogue One is not part of the official canon). Kudos to the IMAX Westbury 12 – best place to enjoy a movie in an empty movie theater when the weather outside is frightful...

So, while Star Wars is certainly NOT a holiday themed movie, it is the one that reminds me of the Holiday season, so I’m stretching the bounds of creative license to include my submission here.

The Rebels could have really used Confluence...

The Influence of Confluence 

[Jack Brickey]

I love so many Christmas movies, from the classics like It’s a Wonderful Life to the goofy like Elf and Jingle All The Way. Actually I just watched Polar Express which is a wonderful movie IMO.

However, I would have to consider The Nightmare Before Christmas (which should be obvious given my avatar) to be my favorite. Confluence would be ideal for Jack and I’m confident that things would’ve turned out much better for the Pumpkin King had he used it in his efforts to take over Christmas.

He could have pulled in Sally at the very beginning to leverage her impressive planning skills. Sally would have immediately jumped in by creating the overarching space and pages. Of course she would leveraged the powerful project planning templates, Jira integration, macros, etc.

Space: Halloween Town - Christmas Will be Ours!
           Mission Statement & Opening words from the Pumpkin King

• Page - Key Players and Their Goals (owner: Sally)
• Page - Timeline and links to Jira Advanced Roadmap (owner: the Mayor)
• Page - The Kidnapping - How to get it Right! (Owners: Lock, Shock & Barrel)
• Page - The Science Behind Christmas (Owners: Dr. Finklestein)
• Page - Making Christmas (Owner: Witches & Behemoth)
• Page - Corralling Oogie, Before it’s too late! (Owner: Jack)
• Page - Delivering the 🎁- Let’s make the children’s dreams come true! (Owner: Jack)
• Page - Post Mortem - How did we do? What did we Learn? (Owner: Sally)

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Of course @Jack Brickey  :) I contemplated The Nightmare Before Christmas as well but thought I´d leave it up to you... And you did:

I love the idea of a Post-mortem page, very fitting for this movie!

[Meg Bailey]

So much amazing content here! 🤩 Props to you all for major creativity, loving seeing these. 

[Fadoua]

[Laura Holton _ACE Rotterdam_]

🎶  Merry Confluence Everyone - Shakin Stevens 🎶

Content is falling
All around me
Teammates playing
Having fun

It's the season
Templates and collaboration
Merry Confluence everyone

Time for knowledge and communication
Teamwork going all day long
Time for contributions
And exchanging feedback
Time for singing Confluence songs

We're gonna have a remote-friendly workspace
I'm gonna find that blog underneath the pages
We'll read by candlelight

Room is swaying, records playing
All the old songs, we love to hear
All I wish that everyday was Confluence
What a nice way to spend the year

We're gonna have a remote-friendly workspace
I'm gonna find that blog underneath the pages
We'll read by candlelight

Content is falling
All around me
Teammates playing
Having fun
It's the season
Templates and collaboration
Merry Confluence everyone
Merry Confluence everyone
Ooh Merry Confluence everyone

[Jack Brickey]

Nicely done @Laura Holton _ACE Rotterdam_ !

[Laura Holton _ACE Rotterdam_]

Thanks @Jack Brickey 😄  It's one of my favourite Christmas songs and the inspiration just hit me as soon as I saw the lyrics. Who knows maybe I'll be singing the new version this Christmas 😅

[James Madlin]

I love ELF as well, but my Season starts with Jingle All the Way!