👋 Introduce yourself!

[Dave Liao]

👋 Welcome to the Philly Atlassian Community Events chapter!

Please take a few minutes to introduce yourself to your fellow Philadelphians! And I know a lot of you are in the Greater Philadelphia area - the suburbs count too! 🙂

In your intro, share anything you're comfortable sharing, like:

• Your name
• Where you work
• How many years you've used Atlassian tools
• The Atlassian tools you're using (or have used)
• What draws you to Atlassian tools
• Any fun facts about yourself you'd like to share! 🏄‍♀️

[Dave Liao]

I'll start!

• I'm Dave, you may recognize me from the online Atlassian Community forums!
• I'm primarily employed as an admin at Braze, and my focus is Atlassian tools
• I've been using Jira and Confluence for more years than I care to admit - and at many, many organizations!
• I love using tools like Jira and Confluence to keep teams focused, and to reduce waste. Life is short, why waste time repeating yourself?
• ☕️ I love coffee

p.s. I noticed the original "introduce yourself" thread was from 2018, so starting new!

[Elliot Reiter]

• I'm Elliot.  I currently work for a company headquartered in Princeton, NJ with offices across the US.  I've been here 4 years as the Atlassian administrator.
• I've been using Atlassian products, mainly Jira and Confluence Cloud instances, since 2010.
• I like the ease to administer the products and be able to set non-technical project teams up with the Atlassian products to track their work with clients.  I also use the Jira API to get information out of Jira that is difficult or impossible to get out of the user interface.
• I like to draw intricate mazes by hand.

[Dave Liao]

I used to draw mazes by hand as a kid!

There was a computer game I used to play that generated somewhat random mazes, and that inspired me.

Welcome!

[Marco Morales]

Hi - I'm Marco and I work at Snyk, a partner/customer/vendor/friend of Atlassian.  (See y'all at Team 23 if you are making it)

I've been using Atlassian tools in some form or another for many years.  Primarily Jira.  

Particularly with Jira, it feels like the right tool for the right type of problems.

Fun facts?  I am busy with work and family.  When I get free time, I try to build things such as a deck, a new office, and other projects that are mostly carpentry.  Also quite a bit of garden work.  It is hard to beat fresh veggies.

[Dave Liao]

@Marco Morales - see you at Team '23 Marco! 🙌

🥬 What vegetables have you found to be easier to grow? I've got access to a garden, but no inspiration!

[Marco Morales]

Yes, Team'23 should be a good show. Stop by our booth.

I've grown quite a bit - basil, cilantro, sage, rosemary, carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers, hot peppers, tomatoes, kohlrabi, radishes, beets, peas, raspberries, blueberries, key limes, and meyer lemons.

[Chris Iacovelli]

Hi. my name is Chris. I have been on Confluence and Jira for the last 10+ years.

I have worked in many differing industries but currently am a people leader and manager within the automation, digitization, and robotics group for TD Bank. Our team works with differing lines of business across the US operations to help lean, automate, and remove manual intervention from back office processing and exception handling.

I am currently building out YATR (yet another repository) for intake management, initiative management, business requirements, and some initial project management tooling. We are using a combination of Confluence w/Confiforms and Jira letting each do what they do exceptionally well. Our access to other Atlassian products/offerings is locked down and limited to a few add-ons to both Confluence and Jira.

In the team I work in, we employ Confluence as a one stop location to find information regarding intakes, initiatives (Confluence and Confiforms for biz requirements, Jira for RAID log management) w/external links to allow content outside of Atlassian to be easily found without hunting through the cryptic folder structures of SharePoint, shared drives, emails, etc..

These tools are quite powerful in what they do and how they operate. I am drawn towards them to architect, build out, nd provide guidance on innovative solutions for my peers/co-workers to help them do their jobs easier (I like building cools stuff). I often find myself in the geek zone and am not ashamed to say that I re-use other people work to help me in all things Atlassian related.

I built models as a kid to keep my idle hands active or I would surely have been in mountains of trouble. I have recently started back in model building (currently working on a corvette stingray) and find that I am much more meticulous in removing the flashing, sanding and smoothing the rough edges, and dry fitting parts together for a near perfect fit. Talk about loosing yourself, I have spent hours on my current model and am no where near complete.

[Dave Liao]

Welcome to the group!

I'm planning the next few Philly ACE meetups, probably will do a combo of suburban and Center City events. Hope you can join!

[Chris Iacovelli]

If i get to rub shoulders with other Atlassian users and superstars, I am all in!

[Elliot Reiter]

Will this be only an in-person event, or will you plan to include people via remote access?

Thank you.

[Dave Liao]

@Elliot Reiter - depends on the nature of the events.

For our future events, we'll indicate whether they're in-person or remote. Remote events we may even be co-hosting with other ACE chapters!

Certain events naturally lend well to hybrid presentations, like product presentations. The previous ACE leader did a great job accommodating remote attendees, but that required technical setup and AV equipment that I don't personally own.

[Christie Gera {Appfire}]

I'm Christie and I am a Tech Comms manager at Appfire! I've used Confluence for over a decade, and Jira for about 3 years now. 

I live in Quakertown, so about 45 minutes from Philly. 

[Dave Liao]

Welcome @Christie Gera {Appfire} !

Did you ever call Confluence “Connie”? I met folks who have…

Love that you’re in Quakertown - I think I went to the Q Mart a few times when I was in high school 😂 

[Christie Gera {Appfire}]

I have never ONCE heard anyone call it Connie and I would NOT like it if they did! 😂 The one I hear sometimes is "ConFLUence" rather than "CONfluence". That one triggers me, too!

The QMart is epic! All sorts of people hang out there!