So, Atlassian’s annual conference in the US, “Summit”, is now less than 30 days away. And at the time of writing I don’t know if I’ll be going to Summit yet. I would very much like to, but there are some final logistical hurdles to overcome first. But, I wanted to take a look ahead to it and figure out what breakout sessions I’d recommend to you, and which I’ll be going to if I can.
Now my advice is if you can, DEFINITELY go to Summit. It is an amazing learning experience each time I have gone. But much like me, it may not be possible for everyone to go every year. As I’ve stated previously, Atlassian has been very good about posting breakout sessions and keynotes to their YouTube page. I very much intend this to be running in the background while I work if I can’t go – and I’ll definitely be focusing in on the sessions I point out here today. But if I can go, I have some special plans for you readers from this blog.
So lets get into this
How Atlassian Enterprise Services are Unleashing our potential
Speaker: Christopher Heritage, Agile Leader, NextEra Energy
Time: 02 April, 2020 @ 3:00 PM
Room: Oceanside F
So this one seems like it will be a good story on how Atlassian’s Enterprise Services – that is to say their Premier Support and Technical Account Mangers (TAM’s) helped NextEra Energy scale and grow their Atlassian deployment. I’ve also had a really good experience with the Enterprise Services people (Hi guys!), and know more than a few of them personally, so I’ll be going here for more stories I can pass on to clients who are on the fence about signing up. If you are thinking “Are Atlassian Enterprise Services for me?”, maybe check out this session to hear first hand what they can do for you.
How to clean up your Atlassian suite (without losing your damn mind)
Speaker: Alex Christensen, Lead Atlassian Suite Engineer, AppDynamics
Time: 01 April, 2020 @ 3:05 PM
Room: Oceanside D
So, you get onto a new job, just to realize the JIRA Instance is a complete mess. This is a topic I am actually planning on touching here soon. I’ve had several experiences with messy JIRA Instances, and seen many more.
So, what do you do? Alex will guide us on how they went about cleaning several “messy” instances, and best practices they do to keep it clean.
How we learned to stop worrying and love weekday upgrades
Speaker: Ed Bukoski, Software Engineer, Netflix
Time: 02 April, 2020 @ 11:00 AM
Room: Oceanside C
Okay, going to admit, the title of this one gave me a mild panic attack.
Downtime is a necessary evil, and in the days when JIRA Server was the only deployment option, it was required for an uptime. But as a point of pride, I’d prefer my systems be up when people need them – which meant I’ve done A LOT of weekend upgrades.
However, with the Data Center Deployment option, you don’t have to bring the system down to upgrade it. This does open up the ability to do an upgrade during the weekday – without the system being down for your users. This is exactly what Ed intends to talk about, and the consequences there-in. Should be an interesting talk.
How to Un-F*** Jira
Speaker: Jon Kern, Agile Consultant, Adaptavist
Time: 31 March, 2020, 1:55 PM
Room: Oceanside C
Jon here speaks to something I’ve seen to often. Agile is meant about making things simple. So why do so many organizations make their JIRA usage so complicated? This is the curse with any highly configurable tool: People will see everything they can do, and feel they need to use it all. Jon will present several best practices for administering JIRA while honoring agile principles.
Personal branding for people who hate personal branding
Speaker: Megha Narayan, Head of Brand, Atlassian
Time: 02 April, 2020, 4:25 PM
Room: Mandalay Bay J
So, something I had to come to terms with during my job hunt is that I have a brand, and I haven’t been managing it to that point. This blog has made that even clearer. Megha will be speaking to just that – how defining your brand can be a very good thing for you and your teams. She also share tips from brands like Apple and Nike that you can apply to your personal brand. Sounds like a must-listen to me
Dev Teams & Dragons: From DM to PM
Speaker: Anthony Nomorosa, UX Designer, Atlassian
Time: 01 April, 2020, 11:00 AM
Room: Oceanside F
So, what does Dungeons & Dragons, the classic yet resurgent table top RPG have to do with leading a team?
A lot actually! Anthony will share how he takes lessons learned from the game and use it to foster communication, motivation, and empathy within cross-functional teams. As I’ve recently gotten back into playing myself after some 20 years, this one is a can’t miss for me.
Will you be at summit?
As I said, I will be there if I can make it. Will you be there? I hope so!
So, for the next blog post, I’m going to be doing something different. I was recently contacted by a friend of mine that works as an Atlassian TAM. Atlassians are reading my Atlassian blog – that blew my mind. But he also had several requests of topics that we can cover – and honestly, they are all too good, I can’t decide! So instead, I’ll let you decide.
I’ll let this run to Noon EDT on Sunday, 8 March, 2020 – at which point I’ll have to start writing whatever you chose to talk about!
In speaking of the blog, we hit a new high monthly viewership in February with 550 page views! I thought it would be a while before we beat last January, as it was a rare month with five posts published, but we did it in a month with only four! Lets see what March will bring.
If the numbers are to be believed, LinkedIn hasn’t been sharing the articles the past two weeks as widely as they previously had – or our numbers would have been even larger! If you want to help me change that, start a conversation within the comments of the LinkedIn Post! That is one of the key parameters their algorithm looks at when deciding to show it to new people. Thank you!
Don’t forget to subscribe to get our new blog posts directly to your email! The Email Subscription form will be at the bottom of this post. Also don’t forget to check out our Atlassian Discord Chat!It’s always interesting to see who has popped up there and what’s being discussed. https://discord.gg/mXuRsVu
But until next time, this is Rodney, asking “Have you updated your JIRA issues today?”
The Jira Guy 