Say hello and tell us: what's on your desk?
tl;dr: Click here to introduce yourself!
We want this community to be just as much about making connections as it is about learning. Introduce yourself by telling us who you are and what brought you here – a picture of your desk is optional but encouraged.
So snap a photo of your desk and say hello!
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Also, be sure to read through the blurbs of other members to find users like you. (On your homepage feed, enter the tag first-post.)
And, as always, thanks for being a part of the Atlassian Community.
531 answers
I'm Monique, and I'm one of the community managers here at Atlassian. I'm working with our team here to help improve the community -- recently I helped redo our answer reminder email template, so hopefully users will have better pointers on marking accepted solutions.
Random things I love: birding, traveling, musical theater, wine, reading, and board games. My family is from the Netherlands so I'm always happy to talk to my Dutch and Belgian friends.
This week I'm working on a guide for how Atlassians can participate more on community. And here's my desk in our San Francisco office. (Note this is out-of-date as my desk doesn't have a million empty La Croix cans on it.)
I'm currently a developer consultant in State College, PA. I formerly did mobile application development consulting as Woodchuck Apps and now my brother and I do all sorts of consulting as Woodchuck Studio, from web development to small business IT solutions to board game design.
Right now my home office desk has been taken over by a farm animal stock tank that we've made into a terrarium for the newest member of our family, Ptolemy, a 15-year old Russian tortoise we adopted. I will get my desk back once I build the terrarium a floor stand.
WELCOME to all you awesome peeps who have recently said hello and showed us your desk ! !
I did my own hello post some time ago but decided to do an update due to a new item that's technically not on my desk... but at it!
It's my new Status Page and it's fricking AWESOME! (Glows in the dark!!!!)
So a nice big welcoming wave to you all from Rotterdam today!
Hi, I'm Nic Brough (Rhyme it with "rough", before you ask)
I've been here a while. My first Jira install was a 2.7.3 needing an upgrade when 3 was released, and I had 3 weeks to learn it, then merge a Jira version 1 into the new one.
At that time, I got a LOT of help from the community, and when I realised that I had absorbed stuff from people like Neal Applebaum and Matt Doar, I started to contribute back. I've kept going, through four incarnations of the community software (Jive, OSQA-based thing, Confluence Questions and now Lithium).
I now work for Adaptavist in the UK, an Atlassian Solution Partner who are one of the oldest, and largest, and focussed almost entirely on Atlassian stuff.
I work mostly from home, and because of that, I have my own room to hide in when needing to concentrate or have conference calls. Also, it's the only place in the house where I'm allowed to be untidy. This thread has also made me notice that while office desks tend to be personalised, my desk here isn't. The personalised stuff is mostly on the walls (well, bookcases).
As I have space, I spread out a bit. I've got two desks next to each other, and swap between them depending on what I'm doing.
The second photo is probably familiar to some of you, if you've been on conference calls, it's a step back from the camera on the laptop.
Hello, all! I'm Patrick, a Confluence administrator and knowledge manager in Boston, MA. What's generally on my desk is my cat, Arthur.
Howdy from Texas! At the moment, I am on holiday till end of year, running back and forth from family in Kansas and Texas, but I live in beautiful Greenville, SC and have a client in Atlanta that hired me to redesign their product which was just announced at the Atlassian Summit. You can see screenshots of it here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.forty8fiftylabs.plugins.atlassian.smarthandler_for_mail/server/overview
I have been a UX designer for (gasp) nearly two decades now, and have done design for many platform-based products in addition to web-based, from scratch products that I designed from inception. I love to design software - making everyday tasks a little less mundane is a nice challenge I guess. You can see my non-updated portfolio at freshid.com if you like. I have been mid-site-redesign forever but work keeps getting in the way.
Since I don't have desk pics, here is a photo of my constant companion next to my desk in Kansas City when I rescued her 6 years ago. She is still a spitfire, but now only has one eye. Sydney recently survived the worst kind of cancer this last year. We go on lots of adventures which is why I have to drive long distances that make me scream to bring her with me. For fun, I am also a triathlete of mediocre skill, and frequent lambaster of political hypocrisy on Twitter @kriscolvin.
I'd love to do another Jira product design so if you ever need UX help, let me know! :-)
Howdy from Texas! At the moment, I am on holiday till end of year, running back and forth from family in Kansas and Texas, but I live in beautiful Greenville, SC and have a client in Atlanta that hired me to redesign their product which was just announced at the Atlassian Summit. You can see screenshots of it here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.forty8fiftylabs.plugins.atlassian.smarthandler_for_mail/server/overview
I have been a UX designer for (gasp) nearly two decades now, and have done design for many platform-based products in addition to web-based, from scratch products that I designed from inception. I love to design software - making everyday tasks a little less mundane is a nice challenge I guess. You can see my non-updated portfolio at freshid.com if you like. I have been mid-site-redesign forever but work keeps getting in the way.
Since I don't have desk pics, here is a photo of my constant companion next to my desk in Kansas City when I rescued her 6 years ago. She is still a spitfire, but now only has one eye. Sydney recently survived the worst kind of cancer this last year. We go on lots of adventures which is why I have to drive long distances that make me scream to bring her with me. For fun, I am also a triathlete of mediocre skill, and frequent lambaster of political hypocrisy on Twitter @kriscolvin.
I'd love to do another Jira product design so if you ever need UX help, let me know! :-)
Important update: I just returned from a vacation to Italy, where I got this little glass fish for my desk. I felt you all should know.
@Monique vdB Russian tortoises usually live for 40 to 60 years, so my 6-year old daughter has promised to take him when I die (though she loves him so much, I bet he goes to college with her).
Right now, we have a card game called Farmers' Market Rally that is in pre-production to be printed early next year. It is kinda like Splendor meets Sushi Go. I have a Civilization-style board game that I'm designing that is set in 1700-1800 Ireland.
Here's a current photo of Ptolemy basking. He's a little grumpy in the afternoon because he just wants to be left alone to nap.
When I got the email notifications for this discussion I thought this was going to be the stuffed taco:
Hello everyone, I have been a long time on the Trello scene and an Atlassian Community lurker but not a contributor but I have decided that is to change.
For 15+ years I have been a project manager for a whole range of tech companies and ended up specialising in business transformation and business system implementation.
I have been using Trello since 2014 and loved its ability to capture peoples attention with its visual approach compared to the very formal solutions I was working with. I also realised that Trello's design allowed it to do everything instead of having a specific function, which is just amazing.
In 2021, I set up Daydreamers solutions, a company offering great value project management, business transformation and business system consulting. However, it fast turned into a mission to develop and deliver to people Trello based solutions that offer the amazing features and functions of best-of breed software with the beautiful simplicity of Trello and affordability. I believe that every business no matter how big or small should be able to have software that works for them and I am continuing on that mission.
The business is a mix of consulting and also creating custom systems in Trello to fit any part of business in any industry. Commerce, engineering, digital marketing, real estate, brokering and many many more.
I am doing all this using core Trello functionality, mainly automation and a number of amazing power-ups.
I now come to the forum to help bring some of the knowledge I have gained to others as well as to show people what I offer.
I also have a unique life, travelling and working, with a focus on nature and conservation. I have had some of the most amazing offices over the past year or so and here is 1 example
Now I'm working from home like twice or three times a week and I got myself an office at home as well... hehe
This is what it looks like when I start...
This is what it looks like in the afternoon...
And this is the little buddy that I get to play with when I'm working from home... hehe...
He likes to play catch with his yellow ball, but you have to catch him first so you can take the ball from him and throw it again... Smart boy! hehe...
Hello Everyone,
I am Ashish Agrawal, a co-founder, Chief Operating Officer, and Certified Scrum Product Owner at SmartMobe Solutions while the community leader of AUG-Kathmandu Chapter.
I live in Kathmandu, Nepal: an incredibly diverse historic city with breathtaking Newari architecture, centuries-old Hindu and Buddhist religious sites along with beautiful hills in surroundings.
There is some stuff at my desk which help me to enjoy my work and to be productive throughout the day.
- My day starts with a coffee and ends with a coffee and the coffee mug having company logo on it is my coffee partner ;)
- A laptop along with a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse to make my work easier
- I am a music lover and love listening varieties of music during my work and headphone helps me enjoying it without disturbing others.
- A bunch of pencils, pens, markers etc. to do some drawing and written stuff.
- A bottle of water helps me to not get dehydrated
- A 3-in-1 printer for printing, scanning, and making the Xerox of the documents.
- My mobile in silent mode.
- Last but not the least a beautiful plant just behind my laptop to generate oxygen for me and my laptop :p
I enjoy my weekend with my family and by playing cricket and futsal with my colleagues and friends. Beside that helping several local communities to grow for making a better platform for IT Professionals and students in Nepal.
And here is a picture :-)
Oh, hey! My name's Erica, and I'm one of the community managers here at Atlassian, working alongside @Monique vdB and @pb — but not physically because I'm based in New York and they're in SF. Thankfully, trolling transcends geography, so there's still plenty of that.
I spend my days figuring out how to further empower the Community Champions we already have, and how to bring even more awesome humans into the group.
My interests include theater (ask me about my favorite show, Dear Evan Hansen, which I have seen seven times), music (the poster near my desk was inspired by one of my faves, Betty Who), social media (I've been known to close an app, only to reopen the same app seconds later) and exploring New York (I've got my eye on a new cocktail bar that just opened, The Aviary, which features a "coffee-tinged old-fashioned served inside a plastic bag filled with everything bagel-scented air.")
Feel free to say hi. 😄
I'm Zack. I'm a systems administrator at Trifecta. We are a custom software company that focuses on custom Salesforce implementations. Right now, I'm working on plans to upgrade our JIRA and Confluence instances in the next week. I'm also prepping to take the ACP-400 exam in December.
My desk is an assortment of tools and knickknacks that I've picked up at various conferences and events over the years. Those two VMware robots are going to turn on me eventually, I just know it. Within the last 6 months my desk has seen a MASSIVE upgrade in the form of pictures of my new twin daughters (and my patriotic pup, of course!) So while I am certainly working on all that stuff I mentioned before, I'm mostly working on surviving the the first year of being a new twin dad.
I'm Philippe - I'm Head of Online Community, which means that for once, they truly have let the inmate run the asylum. Enjoy it while it lasts. :-) . It also means that I get to serve as overlord for @Monique vdB and @Erica Moss - if only in my own mind.
What I'm working on: most of every day is spent plotting or dreaming of ways to get more people to join this community. That takes a lot of meetings.
My desk, as anyone who works with me will tell you, is a disaster. Here it is: you can rejoice in the knowledge that you're spared from working next to me, because @Monique vdB has to do that.
- Photos of my parent's home in New Mexico.
- Pics of my critters.
- A mug and plush that were given to me by someone on my team at Reddit and Wikipedia - she was my staff anthropologist (another team member there gave me a broadsword. That one doesn't go on my desk.)
- A bottle of Clearly Canadian, because heaven.
- Business cards.
- A custom coffee mug given to me by Sue Gardner, the former Wikipedia E.D., which says "Today, he did fantastic work. He also said: 'I hope you all get your heads chopped off, honestly.'" It's a long story...
- A copy of Radical Candor, by Kim Scott.
- And a super sweet pair of headphones.
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