Let's re-ignite the MKE ACE group!

[Andrew Zimmerman _Appfire_]

Hi, everyone!

My name's Andrew and I'm a new Atlassian Community Leader, online and for the Milwaukee ACE. I'm excited to meet and connect with local Atlassian users here.

I just moved up from Chicago, IL this past summer (2022) and I work remotely, so I haven't had a chance to interact with many Atlassian users outside of work. Over the years, I have really benefited from networking with other Atlassian users and experts at the Chicago ACE and other Atlassian events, and I'd love the opportunity to build up the community here in Milwaukee!

But, I need your help! I'd love your thoughts on the below questions.

1. Do you prefer virtual or in-person ACE events? (Don't know what an ACE event is? That's perfectly fine! You can read more about it here)
2. What do you hope to get out of attending an ACE event?
3. How long have you used Atlassian tools?
4. Do you have any advice, special skills, cool use cases, etc, that you would be interested in sharing with others?

It would bring me so much joy to see this group grow! If you know of any other Wisconsin Atlassian users, please let them know about this group, as well as the Atlassian Community in general if they don't already.

I'm really looking forward to getting to know y'all better!

[Amanda Barber]

Hi, Andrew!

I've never been to an ACE event, but would love to participate either virtually or in person. I left my teaching career in 2020, so there haven't been many opportunities for networking. I've been in educational technology project management roles since June of 2020 - both jobs I've been in have used Jira. My current job is definitely all in with Atlassian tools and I have a lot more involvement in the different tools we use, as well as the management of them. My engineering is rather small and I love how we use Jira (Kanban) to prioritize and organize work. My product team is trying out Atlas and Discovery Projects to keep ourselves aligned as well.

[Andrew Zimmerman _Appfire_]

Hey @Amanda Barber! Fantastic. It's wonderful to hear your interest in the ACE. My goal is to get an event in the books this quarter to build some momentum going into the new year.

And, that's awesome about the willingness of your product team in trying new things. I would love to know what y'all think of Atlas especially, and hear about any tips or tricks you've learned from using it. 

[Amanda Barber]

I think we're still figuring out how Atlas can work for our team. I am really wishing for better dashboard options outside of Jira to tie Discovery Projects and Atlas together somewhere.

[Andrew Zimmerman _Appfire_]

Totally makes sense. I've just started exploring it myself. Eager to dive in deeper.

[Vicki Ivancevic]

Hi Andrew and Amanda!

I am in the Madison area, and this is the closest ACE to me.  I also moved up from the Chicago area last year and work remotely, so I am also looking to expand my network in the area.  

I administer Jira Cloud and Confluence Cloud for my team.  These are the only Atlassian tools that we administer centrally.  Even then, my administration work is very light.

I am always on the lookout for ways to increase the usage of Jira and Confluence for async communication, especially since we are hiring more remote workers.  

Cheers,

Vicki

[Andrew Zimmerman _Appfire_]

Hi @Vicki Ivancevic! Right on. I'm thrilled you're interested. I'd love for our Madison neighbors to be involved in this group. That's also great to know for event planning. Perhaps meeting virtually would be the most accessible initially and we can build up to a few in-person events per year thereafter.

Awesome! Indeed, I've seen Confluence work especially well for communicating changes to distributed teams, such as using your wiki home page as an internal news and announcements stream. And when that stream references the specific, ticketed work in Jira, it's even clearer!

Thanks for replying to this discussion. You'll hear from me again as I work with my Atlassian Community Manager to put together an ACE for our chapter this quarter.

[Travis Duffy]

Hi!

I live in Downtown Milwaukee, went to some of the In-Person ACE events here a few years back.  It's always great to network with other people in the areas to share ideas and experiences!

I've been an Atlassian Administrator at my company for a few years now.  We are currently using Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, Bamboo, and Fisheye Data Center in addition to Trello.  We are currently starting to migrate Jira and Confluence to Cloud, and looking at potentially using Atlas, Compass, Statuspage, and Opsgenie in addition to expanding/industrializing Trello usage.  Over the years, we have built out some pretty neat processes in Atlassian tools and have gotten a surprising amount of adoption from business teams.  

I have a few coworkers that would likely be interested in joining too - I'll have to invite them to the next event.

-Travis

[Andrew Zimmerman _Appfire_]

Hi, @Travis Duffy, fantastic! Wow, that's great. Seems like your organization has really adopted the Atlassian tool shop across the enterprise. It'd be great to hear more about your experiences at an ACE, especially as you start your Cloud migration journey.

 I'll be sure to post back here, once the Milwaukee ACE is officially listed again and we have our next event locked in, be it a virtual or in-person one.

Thanks for sharing!

[Andrew Zimmerman _Appfire_]

Hi everyone! I just wanted to follow up here to share that the Milwaukee ACE chapter is officially back! Our first event post-reactivation will be virtual and take place on November 30th. I hope to see you there! Check it out!

[Vicki Ivancevic]

Hi Andrew!  I would love to join a virtual event but unfortunately this week won't work for me.  I look forward to the next event!

[Andrew Zimmerman _Appfire_]

@Vicki Ivancevic no worries at all! We'll have more!