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In This Episode
I share my last thoughts about the Atlassian Summit 2015.
Resources Mentioned
- Atlassian Summit 2015 Replay
- Atlassian User Groups
- Podcast Music – The Boss Intro (remix) – MDAJ (Me)
Social
Blog Version Of Podcast
Not a transcript, but a standalone blog post of the podcast if you are unable to listen. Enjoy!
Overview
I share my last thoughts about the Atlassian Summit 2015.
How I Attacked Atlassian Summit
This was my 4th year at the Atlassian Summit and my 3rd year at the summit as a user group co-leader in Kansas City.
Unlike my first year at the Atlassian Summit, I’ve developed a pre-summit routine to help me be successful. For those that have attended summit for the first time or have yet to go, bookmark this posting as a foundation for your planning next year.
Goals
Why am I going to summit and what am I looking to learn?
You need to ask yourself these questions, and then spend some time writing down your goals for the summit. Is there a vendor, or plugin that I have my eye on and would like to know more about? Is there a problem in my business that potentially speaking with a developer or another experienced user will help me resolve? The list is endless.
Identifying these items will help you stay focused and will actually push you to be more social by joining conversations you would normally not participate in. I log these questions in my summit planning notebook and revisit them often as the summit gets closer to ensure these are questions I still care about.
Make Contact
If you don’t have a contact for the products you use, you’ll make many at the Atlassian Summit. If you are just starting out, reach out to the vendors of the software and or plugins you use and ask if they will be at the summit. If so, ask if you can book some time to chat with someone. This is a great opportunity to not only get a close up demo of the product but you may be able to see new features before anyone else. What I love most about doing this is that I have the ear of a project/product lead AND a developer. You have someone with expert knowledge to ask all your questions. They may even give you a few ideas on how to resolve an issue or tackle a problem that you are having.
Summit Theme: Smarter, Better, Faster, Stronger Teams
Every year, Atlassian provides a theme around their conference. Some are tailored towards product/feature enhancements that focuses on a particular solution. Others, such as this one, are focused on the team. Nothing cements their dedication to empowering teams than their requested ticker of TEAM when filing for IPO.
The sessions at the summit were focused around using their tools to help the team. This is shown through chatops, which focuses on continuous and instant communication throughout the development cycle with HipChat. One such example was via the Atlassian for IT Teams keynote on how it walked through seeing an issue, adding a notification banner, opening a JIRA issue, creating a chat from that issue, and pulling in those involved to help provide a quick solution. You can see a lot more examples in how failed builds notify a HipChat room and how you can interact with the JIRA issue there. Endless uses with deep integration between their tools to create end to end transparency and ease of access. When you have tools that talk in such a manner, your productivity can go through the roof!
What I Took Away From The Atlassian Summit
Awesome stuff for our upcoming AUG’s!
My first day of the summit is spent with my fellow Atlassian User Group leaders. We discuss, with Atlassian, on how we can make the experience better for our members. There are some very nice things that are being done so that we can run our AUGS more efficiently and stay communicated with our members. I won’t go any further, but if you are not familiar with what an Atlassian User Group is, I definitely recommend that you check one out. If one isn’t in your city, grab a friend and start one. It is a great way to meet others in your area that are using Atlassian products and share ideas with them. Definitely email me if you would like to know more!
Small changes I can do to improve how my team works
Atlassian spoke to their Project Central JIRA project, which is nothing more than a housing of the various projects throughout their company. Two things that I started to implement is in relation to their questions that explains what the project is, why you’re doing it and how you will judge success. Having these questions answered can help you keep focused on what you’re trying to do in your project meetings. The second thing that I have started is just a simple custom email notification to bulk up the projects I am on, I use something similar to Project Central, and send me weekly updates. Seems like such a simple idea, but one that I had not implemented.
Another was simply refreshing of something I already knew. Culture first. Sometimes we want to go to the tools to solve our problems, but we may end up making things much more complicated than what they need to be. Change your culture before messing with your tools. This was reaffirmed in the “1M JIRA Issues Club” session presented by Autodesk.
Stronger friendships
As always, it was great to see my fellow user group leaders, and to see new and old faces alike. This year I had the chance to speak with AUG leaders that I had not spoken with before. I also had the chance to speak with old co-workers that I hadn’t seen in a long while. Best of all, I actually met a few of YOU! Yes, YOU! The very same you that are reading this blog or listening to the podcast. Meeting and speaking with people at the Atlassian Summit is certainly one of the best aspects about it!
Overall
Another great summit with lots to learn. I recommend watching the summit replay videos. I hope to see you all next year!
Save The Date: October 4-6th 2016 San Jose, CA.
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