Say hello and tell us: what's on your desk?
tl;dr: Click here to introduce yourself!
We want this community to be just as much about making connections as it is about learning. Introduce yourself by telling us who you are and what brought you here – a picture of your desk is optional but encouraged.
So snap a photo of your desk and say hello!
Some other ways to participate:
- Earn your Welcome badge.
- Ask questions (here are some tips on how).
- Answer questions and become a Community Champion.
- Join in on our Friday fun.
- Watch things you're interested in.
- Give us ideas on how to make the community better.
Also, be sure to read through the blurbs of other members to find users like you. (On your homepage feed, enter the tag first-post.)
And, as always, thanks for being a part of the Atlassian Community.
163 comments
I'm Philippe - I'm Head of Online Community, which means that for once, they truly have let the inmate run the asylum. Enjoy it while it lasts. :-) . It also means that I get to serve as overlord for @Monique vdB and @Erica Moss - if only in my own mind.
What I'm working on: most of every day is spent plotting or dreaming of ways to get more people to join this community. That takes a lot of meetings.
My desk, as anyone who works with me will tell you, is a disaster. Here it is: you can rejoice in the knowledge that you're spared from working next to me, because @Monique vdB has to do that.
- Photos of my parent's home in New Mexico.
- Pics of my critters.
- A mug and plush that were given to me by someone on my team at Reddit and Wikipedia - she was my staff anthropologist (another team member there gave me a broadsword. That one doesn't go on my desk.)
- A bottle of Clearly Canadian, because heaven.
- Business cards.
- A custom coffee mug given to me by Sue Gardner, the former Wikipedia E.D., which says "Today, he did fantastic work. He also said: 'I hope you all get your heads chopped off, honestly.'" It's a long story...
- A copy of Radical Candor, by Kim Scott.
- And a super sweet pair of headphones.
Hi, I'm Nic Brough (Rhyme it with "rough", before you ask)
I've been here a while. My first Jira install was a 2.7.3 needing an upgrade when 3 was released, and I had 3 weeks to learn it, then merge a Jira version 1 into the new one.
At that time, I got a LOT of help from the community, and when I realised that I had absorbed stuff from people like Neal Applebaum and Matt Doar, I started to contribute back. I've kept going, through four incarnations of the community software (Jive, OSQA-based thing, Confluence Questions and now Lithium).
I now work for Adaptavist in the UK, an Atlassian Solution Partner who are one of the oldest, and largest, and focussed almost entirely on Atlassian stuff.
I work mostly from home, and because of that, I have my own room to hide in when needing to concentrate or have conference calls. Also, it's the only place in the house where I'm allowed to be untidy. This thread has also made me notice that while office desks tend to be personalised, my desk here isn't. The personalised stuff is mostly on the walls (well, bookcases).
As I have space, I spread out a bit. I've got two desks next to each other, and swap between them depending on what I'm doing.
The second photo is probably familiar to some of you, if you've been on conference calls, it's a step back from the camera on the laptop.
Nice office, Nic. I'm late to the post (due to a UK vacation) but I've not only got a new desk, but also a new job. I've started at LinkedIn after six years at ServiceRocket. It was time for a change. My desk has a large picture of an iris so I can screen other people.
I'm Thomas and I'm a system administrator at HanseMerkur, an insurance company in Germany. I take care of servers, applications, users, implementing training courses. My main areas of responsibility are
- Jira & Confluence
- Powerbuilder (for the younger ones of you: this is a programming language, we still use a lot)
- Versioning and Build Automation
I also started years ago, reading in Atlassian's questions and answers platforms. I think, I started with this OSQA-thing, Nic mentioned in his post. Later, I didn't only read and ask but also answered questions and still do this, if my work leaves enough time for it.
I love board games. Meeting with friends and playing is one of my favorites. I own about a hundred board games and many more card games... But I also like reading, going to the theater, meeting friends for a beer and talk the whole night long...
Here is a picture of my working place (a part of). It's the more interesting part of my desk. Memorabilias of awesome moments, an ugly but funny owl (it's christmas decoration actually), coffe mug (of course, who can work without coffee?). At the moment I'm fixing a problem with an old Powerbuilder application I've written more than ten years ago. Trying to understand my old code... :-)
I'm Zack. I'm a systems administrator at Trifecta. We are a custom software company that focuses on custom Salesforce implementations. Right now, I'm working on plans to upgrade our JIRA and Confluence instances in the next week. I'm also prepping to take the ACP-400 exam in December.
My desk is an assortment of tools and knickknacks that I've picked up at various conferences and events over the years. Those two VMware robots are going to turn on me eventually, I just know it. Within the last 6 months my desk has seen a MASSIVE upgrade in the form of pictures of my new twin daughters (and my patriotic pup, of course!) So while I am certainly working on all that stuff I mentioned before, I'm mostly working on surviving the the first year of being a new twin dad.
I'm currently a developer consultant in State College, PA. I formerly did mobile application development consulting as Woodchuck Apps and now my brother and I do all sorts of consulting as Woodchuck Studio, from web development to small business IT solutions to board game design.
Right now my home office desk has been taken over by a farm animal stock tank that we've made into a terrarium for the newest member of our family, Ptolemy, a 15-year old Russian tortoise we adopted. I will get my desk back once I build the terrarium a floor stand.
@Monique vdB Russian tortoises usually live for 40 to 60 years, so my 6-year old daughter has promised to take him when I die (though she loves him so much, I bet he goes to college with her).
Right now, we have a card game called Farmers' Market Rally that is in pre-production to be printed early next year. It is kinda like Splendor meets Sushi Go. I have a Civilization-style board game that I'm designing that is set in 1700-1800 Ireland.
Here's a current photo of Ptolemy basking. He's a little grumpy in the afternoon because he just wants to be left alone to nap.
Oh, hey! My name's Erica, and I'm one of the community managers here at Atlassian, working alongside @Monique vdB and @pb — but not physically because I'm based in New York and they're in SF. Thankfully, trolling transcends geography, so there's still plenty of that.
I spend my days figuring out how to further empower the Community Champions we already have, and how to bring even more awesome humans into the group.
My interests include theater (ask me about my favorite show, Dear Evan Hansen, which I have seen seven times), music (the poster near my desk was inspired by one of my faves, Betty Who), social media (I've been known to close an app, only to reopen the same app seconds later) and exploring New York (I've got my eye on a new cocktail bar that just opened, The Aviary, which features a "coffee-tinged old-fashioned served inside a plastic bag filled with everything bagel-scented air.")
Feel free to say hi. 😄
When I got the email notifications for this discussion I thought this was going to be the stuffed taco:
I'm Daniel and a JIRA / Confluence / plenty-of-other-things administrator at JSTOR.
Given that I'm working from home today, here's my rather untidy basement desk. My laptop stand is a screwed together set of IKEA cabinet doors (clearance) that together with hardware cost ~$6. I'm pleased that it's surprisingly sturdy (almost better than my laptop arm at the office) and easily converts to "sitting" if needed (just put the laptop down at desk level and take away the keyboard tray, also an IKEA piece).
Given a few days, this will be tidy again as I repair some old PCs on my desk's side arm and get various handwritten notes into their proper places digitally. There's a few things like Community article ideas that need to not be on paper anymore ;)
Off to the right of my desk is a tower (originally designed for DVDs it looks like) where I stage AUG swag before events. My user group meets twice in one month, so I set all the swag up and split it between the two events based on the RSVP lists. Some things like stickers tend to stick around for several months, so it's nice to keep them organized between events. If you're an AUG Leader, you can see that tower in the AUG collection.
Other things I like doing:
- Cooking (lots of cookbooks on the bookshelf behind me)
- Playing with my 11-month-old daughter - once the basement is cleaned up, she can hang out with me while I type stuff!
- Playing jazz music with my friends from college - I play flugelhorn and trumpet, and we do a small casual combo that plays a "real" gig (i.e. outside of our houses) about once a year
- That's about all I have time for at this stage in life - did I mention I have an 11-month-old :)
And here is a picture :-)
Hej @all
this hairy thing you can see below is obviously not me. Who can tell what it is? My daughter wants me to let it watch me while working.
Just a very brief introduction: i am working at demicon for Mr. Batman. We are an Atlassian Solution Partner with locations in Stuttgart, Hamburg and Berlin. Job title would be something like Principal Consultant / Head of Sales and Marketing. While scaling the business and being absolutly agile at the same time this might change any time ;-)
Coming originally from the nothern part of germany (reference to my name) i am living in Berlin for almost 20 years now. I still move my old bones twice a week to play in a famous (notorious) football club in Kreuzberg called Pulmon Negro. Being manager (not coach) of that team we won the leisureish amateur tournament in Amsterdam at WV-HEDW (Wilhelmina Vooruit - Hortus Eendracht Doet Winnen) 4 times. @[deleted]: can you manage to set up a team from your HQ? I can arrange your participation. (See: I try to bribe you to get the swag). Btw: we are looking for a new striker. Any ideas?
What else to say... If you come to Berlin stop by at our office for a chat in Krausenstraße 9. Any questions? And any suggestions what sort of animal you see on the photo?
Hi, I'm Erwan, and I'm QA manager at Whaller, a company that is creating private social networks for everyone.
There is still a mess on my desk, and I have a clear view on my dashboard.
Books are on the left, but not visible on the picture !
So I have a pretty regular desk, fairly uninteresting EXCEPT for those who know my Job Title (JIRA Queen), I have one prized treasure, a coaster on my desk given to me by a co-worker.
I'm Josh, the lead Jira and Confluence admin from Bose in Framingham, Massachusetts. I've been working with Atlassian tools since we brought in Jira for one team of 15 and it's grown to over 3000 users and all of product development since then. I have Jira and Confluence Administrator certifications.
My desk isn't that interesting. Some old swag from summits past. But always have to have two monitors.
But for extra credit, here's my collection of badges from conferences:
I'm a channel manger at Atlassian - I work with solution partners across US Central and Canada. I'm a huge advocate of the community and especially the AUG's in areas where I work.
Here's my desk - I work remote for Atlassian so dedicated space that is personalized is key to me being productive. One new addition that is super helpful is the light up sign on the right (says "Welcome to my office") - when the light is on this indicates that I'm not available if family comes into my office - either on a call or doing deep work.
I'm all about natural lighting and have two windows in my office - when the weather is nice, they're always open.
I'm Ana and I'm a Support Engineer here at Atlassian. So far I've worked with Jira and Confluence Cloud, Bitbucket Cloud and more recently Sourcetree and Bitbucket Server. I work from our awesome Amsterdam office :)
Here's my desk. On it you can see the medal of my first ShipIt victory, my breakfast (I'm a nicer person after I've eaten it :) ), Kudos, toys and merchandise. Not in the picture: my stationery organizer with pens in different colors, post-its, etc and my planner notebook that I can't leave without (ok, I could, but I'd probably forget so much stuff!).
Hello, I’m Madeline Barr and I am an application administrator for Confluence and JIRA at McMaster University (Ontario, Canada). I’ve been working with Confluence since version 2.2.7 and we are about to upgrade to 6.2.4. I haven’t been working with JIRA as long. I can’t remember which version I started working with but we’re about to upgrade to version 7.5.1.
My desk area is rather large though I mainly use the hydraulic desk in the picture. The other half of my desk seems to be a magnet for treats, candy and bake goods that people want to share. I don’t mind though – free treats, who would mind?
My desk is somewhat messy but it works for me.
I have:
- A autumn picture of a nearby conservation area on the wall
- An elephant sculpture from Africa
- Marge Simpson
- Green sticky notes on my monitor from when my son visited my office years ago. He is always surprised , year after year that I still have it
- Some lose change (Yes, there is some Loonies and Toonies in there)
- A Pink Panther stuffy – best cartoon character ever
- A quote from the blog of Seth Godin about how “You’re doing it wrong” Just something I need to remember
Hi community! My name is Kimm and I'm a former Jira and Confluence (server) admin (currently looking for opportunities in Toronto, if you know of anyone) from Milwaukee, WI. I've also worked with BitBucket, Bamboo and Trello.
This is my desk at home. While I don't have any animals there currently, I do get visits from time to time from the cats. I also have a tin of hand lotion, a bicycle pint glass (water. boo), a hand exerciser ball and a small Gromit statue to remind me to laugh.
Hello people 👋🏼
My name is Piter Dimitrov. Web & UI Designer at theformula.digital. Currently living in Sofia, Bulgaria. Our team loves to do work for early stage businesses and brands.
This is my office 😊
Right now, I’m doing some web design work for a dental tourism agency.
Things I love to have around me:
• Plants 🌱
• Drinkable water 💧
• Wireframe sketches
• Coffee ☕️
• Books 📚
• Pens and paper 📝
• Crystals
Interests:
• Mountain ⛰ Traveling
• Cooking 🥘
• Beat making 🎶
• Spirituality and meditation
• Filmmaking 🎥
• Photography 📷
Wishing the best to all!
LOVE WHAT YOU DO
DO WHAT YOU LOVE
Hello Everyone,
I am Ashish Agrawal, a co-founder, Chief Operating Officer, and Certified Scrum Product Owner at SmartMobe Solutions while the community leader of AUG-Kathmandu Chapter.
I live in Kathmandu, Nepal: an incredibly diverse historic city with breathtaking Newari architecture, centuries-old Hindu and Buddhist religious sites along with beautiful hills in surroundings.
There is some stuff at my desk which help me to enjoy my work and to be productive throughout the day.
- My day starts with a coffee and ends with a coffee and the coffee mug having company logo on it is my coffee partner ;)
- A laptop along with a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse to make my work easier
- I am a music lover and love listening varieties of music during my work and headphone helps me enjoying it without disturbing others.
- A bunch of pencils, pens, markers etc. to do some drawing and written stuff.
- A bottle of water helps me to not get dehydrated
- A 3-in-1 printer for printing, scanning, and making the Xerox of the documents.
- My mobile in silent mode.
- Last but not the least a beautiful plant just behind my laptop to generate oxygen for me and my laptop :p
I enjoy my weekend with my family and by playing cricket and futsal with my colleagues and friends. Beside that helping several local communities to grow for making a better platform for IT Professionals and students in Nepal.
Hi everyone, I am Habib Ullah Bahar, Co-Founder of Field Buzz and based in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh.
Now I'm working from home like twice or three times a week and I got myself an office at home as well... hehe
This is what it looks like when I start...
This is what it looks like in the afternoon...
And this is the little buddy that I get to play with when I'm working from home... hehe...
He likes to play catch with his yellow ball, but you have to catch him first so you can take the ball from him and throw it again... Smart boy! hehe...
Important update: I just returned from a vacation to Italy, where I got this little glass fish for my desk. I felt you all should know.
@Monique vdB: It looks beautiful.
Yey for updates!
Since I last posted, my own desk has become over run over with Googly Eye Syndrome !
Howdy from Texas! At the moment, I am on holiday till end of year, running back and forth from family in Kansas and Texas, but I live in beautiful Greenville, SC and have a client in Atlanta that hired me to redesign their product which was just announced at the Atlassian Summit. You can see screenshots of it here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.forty8fiftylabs.plugins.atlassian.smarthandler_for_mail/server/overview
I have been a UX designer for (gasp) nearly two decades now, and have done design for many platform-based products in addition to web-based, from scratch products that I designed from inception. I love to design software - making everyday tasks a little less mundane is a nice challenge I guess. You can see my non-updated portfolio at freshid.com if you like. I have been mid-site-redesign forever but work keeps getting in the way.
Since I don't have desk pics, here is a photo of my constant companion next to my desk in Kansas City when I rescued her 6 years ago. She is still a spitfire, but now only has one eye. Sydney recently survived the worst kind of cancer this last year. We go on lots of adventures which is why I have to drive long distances that make me scream to bring her with me. For fun, I am also a triathlete of mediocre skill, and frequent lambaster of political hypocrisy on Twitter @kriscolvin.
I'd love to do another Jira product design so if you ever need UX help, let me know! :-)
Howdy from Texas! At the moment, I am on holiday till end of year, running back and forth from family in Kansas and Texas, but I live in beautiful Greenville, SC and have a client in Atlanta that hired me to redesign their product which was just announced at the Atlassian Summit. You can see screenshots of it here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.forty8fiftylabs.plugins.atlassian.smarthandler_for_mail/server/overview
I have been a UX designer for (gasp) nearly two decades now, and have done design for many platform-based products in addition to web-based, from scratch products that I designed from inception. I love to design software - making everyday tasks a little less mundane is a nice challenge I guess. You can see my non-updated portfolio at freshid.com if you like. I have been mid-site-redesign forever but work keeps getting in the way.
Since I don't have desk pics, here is a photo of my constant companion next to my desk in Kansas City when I rescued her 6 years ago. She is still a spitfire, but now only has one eye. Sydney recently survived the worst kind of cancer this last year. We go on lots of adventures which is why I have to drive long distances that make me scream to bring her with me. For fun, I am also a triathlete of mediocre skill, and frequent lambaster of political hypocrisy on Twitter @kriscolvin.
I'd love to do another Jira product design so if you ever need UX help, let me know! :-)
