Any recommendations for starting an Atlassian Champions group?

[Amy Chamberlain]

Got inspired after Team '23 and am pitching the concept of an Atlassian Champion community at my org. I'd love to hear feedback, tips, tricks, hacks, successes, failures (especially!) that I can draw upon to institute.

For context, we're a small company (~300) in the grey area between startup and mid-market, and I'm hoping this could better align the company around how to best collaborate virtually via Atlassian tools (and enable the company to better align with Atlassian best practices overall).

Thanks in advance!

[Jimmy Seddon]

Hi @Amy Chamberlain,

Company User Groups is something supported by Atlassian.  You can sign up for it here: https://www.atlassian.com/community/company-user-groups.  There is also a collection for Company User groups here, however I don't think it has been very active in a while.

I hope that helps you get started!

[Andy Gladstone]

@Amy Chamberlain as an admin who brought Confluence and Jira into my company and had to rally the troops for adoption and usage, I may have some insight to share. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn (on my profile social tab) to start a discussion.

[Amy Chamberlain]

Awesome, thanks @Andy Gladstone !

[Dan Breyen]

Sounds great! 

[Curt Holley]

When I have done this I had a confluence page where I could hype what was I was planning on chatting about over the coming weeks. Also, encouraged people to leave comments suggesting topics they would like to hear/learn about. that said, I kept it fairly spontaneous and encouraged people to bring along their struggles or victories to share as well.

It took a while to build momentum, so patience is a virtue. But in the end it added value and was fun to host.

Good luck!!

[Amy Chamberlain]

This is really helpful @Curt Holley - how early on in the rollout of general Atlassian products was it? And can you elaborate on the value-add at all? (Going to tee up a pitch to senior leadership to this end so that information would be really helpful!)

[Curt Holley]

Hi @Amy Chamberlain 

Atlassian cloud (Jira and Confluence) had been rolled out 6 to 9 months prior to me starting, and starting to build a community of interest as part of my role (so I didn't have to pitch it, it was in my job description).

The value add was; 

• A building up of Atlassian knowledge amongst interested parties
• A safe place for folk to ask questions or share their learnings to facilitate growth in Atlassian knowledge
• All with the companies tooling strategy and constraints being able to be taken into context, as we were all part of that company.
• With the ability for these people to;
  • Spread the word that the sessions are of value...and thus, more people come
  • Spread their newly found knowledge with others, as well as being able to reinforce any reasoning for config decisions or conversely bring back challenges as to why current set-up should be reconsidered.
  • Was also a great place for any plug-in requests/desires to be aired and considered
  • Automation rules to be created, demoed or requested...which broadened the knowledge of writing and using automation.
  • Confluence macro usage etc etc.

[Amy Chamberlain]

Wow @Curt Holley this is GOLD. Exactly what I was looking for - thank you so much! I may reach out once I get my pitch deck in place if that's ok?

[Curt Holley]

Sure @Amy Chamberlain 
I've just added my Linkedin account to the social tab of my profile 🙂