26th October saw the first user group meeting for Atlassian in London. Whilst there have been some amazing partner events in the past, its great to start building a closer connection to the community.

Over 60 people registered for our first meeting and it was a great turnout, from beginners to long standing customers with a variety of expertise.

Launch night - ideas mean tshirts

As it also happened to by the at the same time at the Atlassian launch there were extra goodies to give out. To help break the ice, anyone suggesting ideas for the community got a tshirt with the cool new Atlassian logo.

Whether it was the tshirts or just the enthusiasm of the crowd I dont know, but with in about 20 minutes we had enough ideas to last a years worth of monthly meetings…

I showed off a neat video that explains the basics of Atlassian OnDemand, showing how you can get our tools as a managed service. As there was a mixed level of experience, I also talked through how Atlassian take ideas through to reality.

Sharing experiences

As well as setting up the London AUG, Alan also presented his experience with the recently release Rapid board of Greenhopper. Alan has worked with teams that often have a big backlog and lots of epics (functionality that needs to be broken down). Using labels on JIRA tickets, a bit of simple JIRA Query Language (JQL) and the rapid board view he showed us how to manage our work effectively.

Whats next?

We hope to run the London Atlassian user group once a month to give every opportunity to share and ask questions face to face. We will also make use of the meetup mailing lists and discussion forums so people can talk outside the meetups.

If you want to keep in touch with this community, please sign up, its free !

Thank you.
@jr0cket

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