AUG Newsletter - January 2010

Introducing the AUG Newsletter

It's been over a year since we launched the Genuine Atlassian User Group program. We now have 42 active user groups in 20 countries around the world! The program is more successful then we ever imagined!

In a continued effort to engage our loyal community and support user group leaders and members, Atlassian is beginning this quarterly newsletter. Four times a year, we'll highlight a particular user group, a leader or some best practices around running a user group. We'll also send some fun pictures and general updates from the global program.

If you have a story you'd like to share about an AUG in an upcoming Newsletter please contact me at jessie at atlassian dot com.

Spotlight on Shazam Abass, Toronto User Group Leader

What company do you work for and how is Atlassian involved?
Scotiabank. I work inside the technology applications group, we're the IT and support arm for the bank. We use all of the products! We own enterprise licenses of almost all of the tools, and in many cases multiple licenses.

Why did you want to start an AUG?
In short, it was risk management for us. We needed to learn from other companies with similar use cases. We wanted to gain insight into the local user base. We felt that by creating a community of users we could help to standardize the tools, and have better chance of prioritizing requests at Atlassian. We've had two meetings so far, with great turnout. The first meeting had 40 and the second closer to 50

What are most members interested in hearing about?
Our attendees are mostly Confluence and JIRA users with a small number of FishEye and Bamboo users. I think these users fall into two camps. The first camp is people who want to learn new cool and interesting things that you can do with the tools and apply these tricks to business use cases. The second camp have particular problems and challenges with the tools that they are hoping to get addressed. They want to learn ways around the limitations they're facing. There is a another small group that are interested in business adoption and are interested in discussing implementation on a higher program/management level.

What is the most difficult part of planning an AUG?
Finding the time and prioritizing it with everything else that's going on at work and home. Finding a venue wasn't difficult because Scotiabank has a great space we can use. We've also been lucky that people have been really great about volunteering to speak. It helps to stress at the meetings that a presentation doesn't need to be fancy, even just opening up a conversation is ok.

What do you think makes a user group successful?
Well in Toronto in particular, we're a pretty undeserved market. There are no other Atlassian events or groups in Toronto but we have a large user base.

Once we get people in the meeting I think it's the atmosphere that's most important. We work really hard to keep the environment casual and relaxed. I encourage people to engage with the speaker. At one event, we had a partner present and the group felt comfortable enough to let the presenter know that the presentation was too "salesly" for a user group meeting. That's the kind of environment we want to foster.

We also schedule the meeting in the afternoon instead of after work. Our user base tends to have a lot of after-work commitments with family so it's easier for them to leave a little early from work, rather then staying through the dinner hour.

Do you feel like your goals as an organizer are being met?
I do I feel like my goal of minimizing risk and engaging an Atlassian community in Toronto is working. However, I would like to see Atlassian show Toronto a little more love! I think if people are on the fence about starting a user group I would say, just do it! It's very valuable and a lot of fun.