Ask (our Community leaders) Anything -- answers LIVE at Summit!

[Bridget]

Hello, Atlassian Community! We are THRILLED to announce that we'll be hosting our first ever live AMA at Summit 2019 in Las Vegas. Submit your questions below and our panelists will answer them at Summit. 

Location: Shoreline Expo

Date & Time: 09 Apr 2019, Community Night

Panel Session: 6:40pm-7:20pm Theater A

Our panel of experts will be ready to share their experiences leading Atlassian's online, offline, and in office Communities. Ask them anything about their Atlassian journeys, the impact that becoming a Community leader has had on their careers or anything else you're curious about! 

You can read more about our panel below, and be sure to add your questions for them in the comments below. Feel free to add general questions for the group or direct specific questions towards a particular panelist––you'll hear answers to your questions live at Summit in Las Vegas! 

@Stephen_Sifers__DFW_ 

Stephen began his Atlassian journey as a Dallas Atlassian User Group Leader in 2013. From there, he became a Community Champion, attended 4 Summits as a customer, and joined the Atlassian TEAM in 2018 as a Senior Community Support Engineer

He also is an avid baker and is an ultimate team player!

@Tinker Fadoua 

Fadoua is a Community Champion who works in the healthcare industry at Inova Health System as a Systems Administrator. She just joined the Northern Virginia AUG leadership team!

Fadoua is a constant source of inspiration and helps to all Community members. She's the only Atlassian Admin in her Institute and is thus an expert in supporting Marketplace Apps and triaging bugs. 

She loves photography, painting on glass and going to Taekwondo class.

@Kimberly Deal 

Kimberly Deal is a co-leader of the Columbus, Ohio Atlassian User Group and is also a Community Champion

She built her user group from the ground up, from zero to close to 250 members! 

Kimberly is a skilled cupcaker, and her dream job is orchestrating a pyrotechnic event. 

@Mark Lang 

Mark is a Software Engineer at Cisco (where he's been since 2006!) where he started a Company User Group program in 2016. His first meeting was a hit with over 200 attendees, and the rest is history. Mark is as a JIRA, Confluence, and Bitbucket Administrator, and manages 14 team members as a technical lead. Most importantly, Mark is a huge star wars fan who appreciates really high-quality stickers from his software vendors.

@Danny Zuccaro 

Danny is a Senior IT Manager at TD Securities, where he started a company user group. He is also the co-leader for the Toronto Atlassian User Group and a Community champion. 

In his first year as a User Group Leader, he hosted 12 events. Danny is also known for his awesome pizza making skills.

Danny is constantly mentoring others to help drive success with Atlassian tools and is also involved in the Toronto agile community.

[Jack Brickey]

Awesome! what a great panel! I can't wait to attend.

[Meg Holbrook]

Right @Jack Brickey ?? Just saw this and got all giddy :)

[Cassie Mayes]

I love reading these facts about everyone and can't wait to hear more from the panelists at Summit!

[Tinker Fadoua]

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

[Jodi LeBlanc]

What a fantastic panel roster - wishing you all the best at Summit! :)

[Tinker Fadoua]

We missed you @Jodi LeBlanc

[Jodi LeBlanc]

Aww I missed you all too! Congrats on a successful panel, community day and summit 👏🏼 

[Sachin Dhamale]

Nice. It will be a helpful

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

Awesome! I can't wait the starting all activities :)

[carolyn french]

Cool idea for a panel and great choice of panelists! Can it be recorded and/or live streamed?

[Celina Zamora]

Great question! I'll see what we can do :) 

[Vishnukumar Vasudevan]

Great. I am gonna miss this :(

[_Fabian A. Lopez]

Don't miss it! This is a great opportunity to learn from experts. Great Choice and congratulations to our hard workers Community members. They enjoy the happiness of giving! See you soon!

[Tinker Fadoua]

Always with the big smile on your face. Enjoyed meeting with you in-person @_Fabian A. Lopez 

[Thomas Schlegel]

That's great - I'll be there!

[Tinker Fadoua]

We enjoyed seeing you in the crowd @Thomas Schlegel !

[Jan-Peter Rusch]

Amazing! Can't wait...

[Tinker Fadoua]

👍👍👍👍

[John Funk]

Great Idea! Looking forward to it!

[Tinker Fadoua]

Hope you enjoyed it!

[Bryan Trummer - ReleaseTEAM]

Oh this is fantastic! What a great panel with some experts! Excited to be there and to learn.

[Tinker Fadoua]

@Bryan Trummer - ReleaseTEAMyou are an expert as well! I am sure your are part of this amazing community because you are an awesome helper.

[JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_]

How to you select the topics for your AUG meetings? Is it worth having a general main topic for an AUG meeting? What does your audience like more: Technical or non-technical topics? 

[Dileep_Bhat]

A related topic - how do you balance between Jira/Devops and Confluence focused talks? We find at the NYC AUG that we attract a different set of folks for ones that are Confluence centered.

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

@Jan-Peter Rusch  & @Dileep_Bhat 

I try to crowd source the topics at much as possible.  I also try to make sure that I have a few Tools Agnostic talks thrown in.  Usually around CI/CD, Testing&QA, and Agile Methodologies, with tie ins to the Atlassian Tools that can help with each of these areas.  I try to balance the Tools, through out the year, but it can be a challenge, as there are * A Lot* of tools, and different groups of people interested in each one.

I think you are always going to interest a different group of people with each product or talk focus.  Some things will have a broader appeal and some a more focused appeal, and that is Ok too.  Not every event has to be appealing to a large group, for it to be valuable.  Just make sure to scale your venue, food, and expectations to the crowd you are going to attract, and try to alternate the topics so that you are not looking at a narrow focus more often than a broad appeal topic. 

[Danny Zuccaro]

Hi @Jan-Peter Rusch

We usually poll our members for topics they would like to hear at upcoming sessions. Once we get a main, general topic we will try to build out that entire event around that topic so we can make it an overall theme. We try to keep a good balance between the tech and non-tech talks and will advertise the event accordingly so the audience is aware. 

[Tinker Fadoua]

@Jan-Peter Rusch 

1. Topics is a shared task. I like both either have the audience share common practices and lesson learned or have a presenter.
2. Our audience is both technical and non-technical.

(I am new co-leader, at the moment my experience is very limited)

[Mark Lang]

@Jan-Peter Rusch 

1. For the company user group, I currently pick all the topics.  I rotate between tools (Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket).  I do internal topics that merge software projects  and their use of the products, TAM presentations, App Vendors.  And then I look at the support tickets we get and pick topics that cover where a lot of questions/cases come in.
2. Our audience tends to like technical but not very deep technical.  Like how to set up permissions as a Project or Space Admin.  The focus is on the topic and we generally spend 30-45 mins on a topic and 15 mins on  Q&A.  

[Deleted user]

I'm not gonna be there :( 

My Question is to the Community Champions; is there an achievement badge level 10 you can earn? 

[Tinker Fadoua]

If you convince your company to attend we will make sure you get it 😉

[Deleted user]

Well played!

[Kat Warner]

Community night? Tell me more.

[Kat Warner]

Looking at last year's version it looks like this is for Community Champions and User Group Leaders. *sigh* This is a downside to the partners cannot be AUG leaders rule.

[Celina Zamora]

Actually it’s open to all! It’s an event sponsored by Atlassian Community.  It’s Tuesday night at showfloor area (where all the product hubs, partner booths, and other Atlassian team hubs will be. Please feel free to come by, grab a beverage and chat with us!!!

[Kat Warner]

Yay! Thanks.

[Davin Studer]

This is my question.

Are there any unique/niche ways that you use Atlassian products that might not be an obvious use for the product but still provides value to you/your organization?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

So I've done some crazy stuff with them, just so that I could get use to using them.  I'm an admin for the tools, but didn't really have a good way to use them, and building out a full Jira project, just to track my own work (in the days before Trello!), didn't really help, since I was going to have to track it across three different systems then.  

So I purchased a cloud license for Jira and for Confluence, here are the odd things I currently use the for.

Jira:
Plan a Garage Sale
Track the Full Remodeling of our bathroom
Track Presenter and Location offerings for our User group
Track Dog walking clients and millage for each engagement

Confluence:
Log my Lego kit inventories, purchased new and used. 
Summit and Vacation trip planning.  Keep Itinerary and Reservation information, as well as Sightseeing activities. 
Track Household expenses, both regular bills and Home Improvement spending.
Track Home Improvement needs and contractors contacted/used.
Library to keep all of my PDF type Documentation for several technical products that I use, such as Linux/Unix Documentation, Solarwinds & Grafana, and some Atlassian docs as well, using the Tags on Attachments features.

I also plan to start putting all of my Community Articles into my Confluence space, so I can start writing them more in advance for publication on a schedule.

[Tinker Fadoua]

@Davin Studer 

I use:

• Trello for my personal events as it doesn't require lot of customization
• I use my personal Confluence Cloud to document events from my Trello. For example I am planning on taking ACP-100 I have Trello cards for topics, in Confluence I have links and bullet points that will be easy for me to review before the test.
• My JIRA cloud is more for testing purposes when the question on the community portal is for a Cloud instance.

[Mark Lang]

@Davin Studer 

I agree with both @Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_ and @Fadoua about  using Trello.  I have used it for planning  the DevOps Unconference for the past few years. 

This year I am using Jira for the open sessions  which is a little awkward but has the rooms as columns (and therefore workflow states) and a custom field for the time slots  and  used for swimlane queries.  

I  have seen some  interesting confluence spaces and apps there to help with building out documentation templates for a product.  I also use Confluence store all my user group meetings with links to the recordings and the Q&A.  

[Jack Brickey]

Questions for the panel.

1. As an AUG leader how do you enagage your members outside of events?
2. what do you find to be most rewarding about being a champion or Aug leader and why? Conversely, what are your biggest challenges and what changes would you like to see?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

@Jack Brickey 

1.  This is really challenging, and before the start of the User Groups in the Community, nearly impossible.  I would do as much as I could with newsletters, but that is a single direction of communication.  We also tried a stint with the LinkedIn groups, but it wasn't a user friendly experience to maintain.  I was really glad to have the Community space for our Group, because it allowed for Bi-directional communications with our Membership.  I still do a newsletter, but I often use it to direct the members to current content being shared here in the Atlassian Community space.

2.  I really love the seeing the connections being made, both the in person, friendship/work buddy, type and the "Oh!  That's how that works!" type.  I find getting people the answers and the help they need with a problem or project super rewarding.  I also love being able to collaborate on solutions.  With many of the aspects of Atlassian products, there is more than one way to go about something.  Some times one way fits better than others and it is fun to discover which way that is with others.

2a. Challenges.  Getting more people to see the value in coming together in person.  There is a lot of social interactions happening online these days, and that's really great. I love that there are more ways than ever to be in contact with others, but I don't feel like the deep connections are as easy to make online.  There is a certain sense of spontaneous creativity that happens in person, that while not impossible to happen online, is a bit harder and must be deliberately sought out. 

2b. Changes.  That we all got a little more help promoting our events and encouraging people to come seek out those in person interactions. 

[Danny Zuccaro]

Hi @Jack Brickey

1. For the Toronto AUG we have a Community group we try to use to engage our members. We also have tried social media with a Twitter account, though that seems to get a limited audience. 

2a. The most rewarding part is easily the people I've had the opportunity to meet. Our local members, the other Community leaders and all the amazing Atlassian folks supporting us. Has been an incredible experience and I enjoy every minute of it.

2b. Biggest challenges have been trying to build our user base in Toronto. We have a solid, loyal group coming out to events but we haven't been able to really grow the group as quickly as we'd wanted. Hoping the Community group will help us with this goal. 

[Tinker Fadoua]

@Jack Brickey 

1. I try to engage the members outside events by posting in the NOVA Group here on the community site that's the best I can do for now.
2. The most rewarding moment is when a user gets back to me with so much happiness informing that what I suggested worked and that the issue he/she has been struggling with for some time is fixed. I feel relieved myself. My biggest challenge as I posted once is when I think it is a quick fix but then it turns into something hard that I have to google myself. Honestly I enjoy it. The change I hope to see is the "Accepted Answer" which I already started by myself. I no longer ask users to accept my answers. At the end the goal is to help "Quality" not how many accepted answers "Quantity". I do respect if other leaders like the number of accepted answers. 

[Mark Lang]

@Jack Brickey 

1. Again as a company AUG this has been a bit easier because we track users of our tools that login and I use that to build the list of people to contact about upcoming user groups.  I have been thinking about a regional group and agree with the above.   I have considered building a mailer and a slack channel  to  go with but I'm not sure what  issues I might run into  yet either.  

2a.  I find it rewarding  to  provide a forum for others to learn about Atlassian products (Jira & Confluence).  Because I get to see when people start to realize what is possible and then start to ask additional questions on how to go even further. 

2b. Getting others to want to present on what they are doing in a way that would be useful for others.  I would like to encourage other departments within the  company to want to present as well.

[Jan-Peter Rusch]

Do you recommend Apps/Addons in your AUG meetings? If yes, which ones? If no, how do you respond to members asking for advice on Apps?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

@Jan-Peter Rusch 

We do some App recommendations at our meetings, but only when there is a problem that one of our members is trying to solve, or when we do a pressentation on App & Best Practices.  For the Apps & Best Practices, we talk about the Market Place and some of the larger use Apps.  We will also have presentations on particular Apps, if they have been requested by our membership.  We don't blindly make recommendations on Apps or often have partners in to just tell us about their Apps. They must be part of a larger discussion on a particular topic or a User Presented use case. 

[Tinker Fadoua]

@JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_ 

We had some AUG meetups where the presenter shared some valuable information regarding best Apps for both Confluence and JIRA.

I am reluctant when it comes to sharing details about a plugin versus another. Sometimes if asked about a specific App, I try to answer the question in the best way I can especially if I used it otherwise I invite the user to read more about the App online since every vendor has detailed documentation.

[Mark Lang]

@Jan-Peter Rusch 

This is a double edged sword.  I wish we were a bit more consistent, however we tend to recommend Apps that we use across all of our instances or extremely frequently.  However, from there, we try not to recommend apps as much as allow Vendors to present benefits of using it.  Then we inform our users that we have an App review and approval process before we will include it on a Jira or Confluence instance.  We are upfront about being more open with Apps that are supported where the Vendor is active, Atlassian has reviewed along with others.  We actually prefer Apps with a cost because then we know what we are getting into up front as opposed to starting with a Free App that is awesome that starts costing a good bit of money as a surprise.  

[Thomas Schlegel]

Questions:

How do you reconcile your Community Champion effort with your main job? Do you have any agreement with your employer?  

As an AUG leader, how do you motivate your AUG members to be more active, e.g. give a talk on their own and not just consume talks? 

[Meg Holbrook]

Took the question right out of my mouth @Thomas Schlegel 

[Tinker Fadoua]

Hello @Thomas Schlegel _AUG_   & @Meg Holbrook 

There is no agreement between my employer and myself. I try to answer questions during my lunch time or after work. Also if there is downtime at work, I jump to the community site and try to help.

There are days when it is really hard I try to do it over the weekend to make up 😉

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

Hi @Thomas Schlegel  & @Meg Holbrook 

Much like @Tinker Fadoua I do not have an agreement with my employer.  All the work I do on here is on my own time, though both my previous employer and current employer will work with my schedule when I am working with the Columbus User Group, either leaving work early for our evening program or coming in late if I am facilitating a breakfast meeting. 

For @Thomas Schlegel 's second question, I think finding ways for our users to get to know each other and be more comfortable around the membership has really helped us in getting people to present talks.  In the more open formats, we encourage conversations among the members and when we hear someone talking about a subject they seem to feel comfortable with, will ask them if they would be interested in presenting on that subject.  We've been able to have several user presented sessions over the last year using that method.

[Danny Zuccaro]

Hi @Thomas Schlegel and @Meg Holbrook

As with @Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_ and @Tinker Fadoua - no formal agreement with my employer. I will try to fit in time throughout the day or when I may be researching a question of my own. Makes for fun lunch time surfing. 

[Mark Lang]

Hi  @Thomas Schlegel  and  @Meg Holbrook 

The company user group has been a bit different.  

It started as me doing this on spare time on top of everything else.  Since it has been recognized as a best practice after an internal audit, my management is more inclined to give me time to plan this and even consider getting involved in the Regional User Group.

[Bryan Trummer - ReleaseTEAM]

As an AUG Leader, what do you feel is the "sweet spot" in terms to AUG meeting time lengths? One that keeps AUG members engaged and participating during the meeting.

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

Our Breakfasts run an 1:30, with a very short program, to allow for as much group discussion time as possible.  I have to shoo them out the door sometimes :)

The Evening events run 2:00.  I try to keep at presentations 45 minutes to an Hour with time for questions.  We have some that have one presentation and some that have two.  If they are two, I ask for the presentations to run 30 minutes, with no more that 15 minutes of questions, so we can put a 10 minute break in between.  

Two presentations don't leave a lot of time for socialization, but can have a broader appeal, since we can cover two topics. I also use the two topic format as often as I can when we have a remote presentation. To cover for any potential connection/equipment failures.

[Danny Zuccaro]

Hi @Bryan Trummer - ReleaseTEAM

For our lunch sessions we try to keep them to 90 minutes. We usually keep to one shorter presentation and then group discussion for these sessions. For our evening sessions we again do 90 minutes of presentations and try to leave the last 30 to 60 minutes for networking between the members. We also host a year-end social that we don't put a time limit on ;)

[Bryan Trummer - ReleaseTEAM]

Thank you both for your responses! Very helpful!

[Mark Lang]

@Bryan Trummer - ReleaseTEAM 

For our company user groups, I have to stick to 60 mins as they are presented during the business day.   I have to work with timezones  around the globe.  We decided not to present multiple times and instead pick a time that works for the most  groups and record the sessions to provide for everyone that couldn't attend.  

The topics are around  45 mins in length with 15 mins  Q&A.  I save the chat and Q&A to store  with the recording.  

[Michael Kimathi _AC Nairobi_ Kenya_]

Great panelists I look forward to this. 

[Kamal Sondagar]

im so eXcited !!!

[Tinker Fadoua]

Did you change your mind now that we met in-person? 😂

[David Mayer]

Hello Panel Members,

Have any of you extended an Atlassian product beyond your current position/to another organization? Can you briefly explain your experience/how you sold it?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

I am not quite sure what you mean by extended the product.  I've had people from other departments approach me about using Jira or Confluence for their teams.  Confluence is fairly easy to open up to teams beyond a development team, and in my previous position was used widely across the environment, including as the corporate landing page. 
Jira is a little more challenging, in that what ever groups decide to use it, you still have to work to keep a consistency to the structure of it, to be able to maintain the custom fields and workflows in use. But, I often say, if the work has a process flow, you can use Jira to track it.  I've helped Legal, HR, and Event Planning teams use Jira for their processes. 

[Mark Lang]

@David Mayer 

We started with Jira and Confluence for our Engineering Business Units.  Over time, word  got out and we have grown to support HR, Training, Advance Services, IT, along with others.  We are bringing in Trello and looking at StatusPage and potentially OpsGenie.  Another group supports Bitbucket.  We also have started integrating the tools to other used tools that might be homegrown or purchased for Test Management or other Help Desk tools.

We didn't have to sell it because we made sure to start small but have a plan in place for all the little things like DR, backups, monitoring.  We make an effort to automate and upgrade twice a year.  So then word of mouth gets out and we just keep growing.  

[Samuel Gatica (ServiceRocket)]

Go @Fadoua !

[Tinker Fadoua]

Thank you @Samuel Gatica (ServiceRocket) ! I definitely learned a lot from you when I was doing my first upgrades in JIRA and Confluence.

[Deleted user]

To the AUG Leaders; how do you pick your event topics?

Do you have a theme running over a number of events?

[Kimberly Deal _Columbus ACE_]

I try to have event topics that have been proposed by my members, either as something they want to learn about or something they are willing to speak about.  Its pretty informal, in that I just ask people what they are interested in or listen for conversations that sound like they would like to know more about a topic, either I or other members don't know a lot about.  We have quite a few new users or folks exploring the products for the first time, so a lot of our presentations are Beginner to Intermediary Levels, at both a user and an Admin level.   We do one or two Advanced topics a year, but they draw a smaller core group.

[Mark Lang]

@[deleted] 

I start off with asking for topics from our users.   I might get 1 or 2 a year that way.  

But for the company user group, I currently pick all the topics.  I rotate between tools (Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket).  I do some internal topics that merge how the Atlassian products were used on a software design project, TAM presentations, App Vendors.  And then I look at the support tickets we get and pick topics that cover where a lot of questions/cases come in.  

I have gotten to where I have a decently long list to pick from.  I make sure to have a couple very simple presentations and a couple advanced and then the rest are in the middle.  But all the topics are from the standpoint of an end user getting benefit out of the tools.  

I usually reach out to Solution Partners to provide a couple topics each year as well so the presentations can be spread around a bit as well.