🇪🇸 Team 24 EU is over: What was your Social Impact Experience?

[Matthias Gaiser _K15t_]

Team 24 in Barcelona has been a trip into the past for me. Six years ago, we have been at the same venue, same vibe, same location for the bash. And I appreciated again talking to many people I know or met for the first time. Thank you all for the great conversations.

However, this year I also went with a different scope to Team, looking out more how we can help nonprofits or have a social impact with the work we all do using the Atlassian products.

I got some new impressions - and would love to hear your stories as well.

[Matthias Gaiser _K15t_]

I've attended @Phill Fox's braindate about 'Do you give or take from your community? How can you make a difference to your community?'. I loved to hear how everyone shared how they're involved in one way or the other also in giving back to the community - whatever community means: Working in an animal shelter, in youth groups or the broader Atlassian Community.

One takeaway I had from the sessions that we should share more what we're doing with Nonprofits and how Atlassian products can be helpful for Nonprofits. I'd be up for trying out some virtual sessions, where e.g. @Phill Fox shares how he thinks everyone should use Jira Product Discovery for prioritization.
What do y'all think?

What were your impressions?
Mentioning the other braindate attendees: @Svitlana Samotis _Reliex_, @carolyn french, @Dreamsuite Mike, @Emma Schnee & Harshith (didn't find your handle).

[Emma Schnee]

It was great meeting some of this community at Team24 EU! At the Foundation booth we had a volunteer initiative to support local schools in the area. It was a great way to connect with attendees around social impact.

I also enjoyed the social impact brain dates and was particularly excited by the ideas in the community for how to get more nonprofits to attend Team25!

[Svitlana Samotis _Reliex_]

Hey everyone!

I really enjoyed the braindate as well, it was inspiring to hear how everyone is giving back to their communities in their own ways. 

One thing that stood out to me is that supporting nonprofits can take many different forms, and every small step counts. For instance, as I mentioned I volunteer at an animal shelter, and sometimes we gather money for medicine for rescued animals, and other times we simply take the dogs out for walks so they can socialize. It’s a reminder that even the smallest actions, like giving your time or skills, can make a big difference. We don’t need to start huge, we just need to start somewhere.

To sum up, I’m all for the idea of trying out virtual sessions.

You can count on me! 

Regards, 

Svitlana 

[carolyn french]

@Emma Schnee I really enjoyed the Foundation booth volunteer activity of assembling the package for the kids. Thanks for organizing it at Team!

[carolyn french]

I also attended the Braindate (just a fancy term for the group meet-ups that had a designated space in the corner of the expo floor at Team Barcelona). Thanks for organizing @Phill Fox ! and to the other attendees as well.

One thing that struck me (again) is that many people want to help out with causes and nonprofits that work on issues that they feel passionate about, but it's hard to find those opportunities. And it takes considerable effort on the part of non profits to take time out of their core mission to learn software and participate in events, so facilitation of that will go a long way. I think we can make virtual sessions happen, for sure @Matthias Gaiser _K15t_ 

[steve]

Great to hear this @Matthias Gaiser _K15t_ ! 

We're also really keen to hear your + the community's thoughts on what we can do next time too and we're always willing to give new things a try. I think there are a lot more people out there wanting to do some good and a lot of organisations who want to know how to engage and get help!

Some themes I'm seeing and keen to address in our work at the moment in no particular order:

Social Impact Champions: There are a lot more people influencing their teams into volunteering and taking social action and helping them be successful as a part of their work, and who can advocate really effectively for social impact orgs when the understand their needs!

It should be easier: One of the big things folks report, is a desire to reduce the complexity to doing good work and making it easier to engage your team by using standard practices. Continuing that theme, smaller teams are finding it harder to source opportunities on their own, but in bigger organisations individuals find it difficult to see what opportunities are coming up. 

[Phill Fox]

Most not-for-profit organisations that I come across have one common challenge. 

How do we do the most with our limited resources.

Add in to this the dimension that the people setting the priorities and identifying what next are also part of those limited resources and we have the perfect storm of a desire to do more battling with the limited time to make decisions. 

So in this battle what do I see as the Shining Knight riding into the fray? Yes none other than the product that goes by the name of Jira Product Discovery. 

For organisations trying to manage all the demands on the not-for-profit this works wonderfully with a low barrier to entry for non-technical users, the ability to quickly capture data and turn it into usable information. Whether this information is the prioritised list or a more comprehensive analysis of impact vs effort.  JPD charges in to their rescue. 

At Team24 Europe it was great to share this observation with @Matthias Gaiser _K15t_ @Svitlana Samotis _Reliex_ @Dreamsuite Mike  and @carolyn french and of course @Emma Schnee and @Harshith (sorry I could not work out who to tag either).

Hopefully we can all use our powers to help share this message with many other not-for-profit organisations to enable them to make the biggest impact with their limited resources. 

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

I had a great Braindate with @Fun Man Andy, @Rodney Nissen - ReleaseTEAM, and the Foundation team. We talked about our efforts to make an impact in different societal aspects.

From educating kids and sharing career advice and experience to helping with the building of a new medical center for kids with developmental issues, we proved the immense power of leading by example and caring for the future. 

Showcasing nonprofits and social causes in such a way is new to a conference of this size, and I hope we will start seeing the Foundation team more often.