Physical Event After 6 Months of Covid19 Guidelines
Pandemic, quarantine, isolation, lockdowns, business closure, salary cuts, zero gigs, online work, online virtual events, curfew, layoffs, cabin fever, depression, reopening, guidelines, and flattening the curve. All this in a span of 6 months. In my life, this is the first pandemic that affected me directly and what I do as a community leader, it was the first time for everyone and we learned along the way. I love people and when I participate to empower them I also feel empowered indirectly.
Atlassian Community Events Nairobi started 2020 on a high note. Every end of each year in November we take stock of what we have achieved as a community and what to focus on the following year. In 2019 we had done outreach workshops in various counties in Kenya but we had not yet reached other counties where we consider we have an active community who are exploring Atlassian products, thus 2020 was the year when we had planned to add 2-3 more counties for the outreach program. In Nairobi where we had succeeded in hosting a few bi-monthly events, ShipIT events, team best practices, and product demos. In 2020 we had plans to host 2 ShipIT events where we would see more members explore Forge and Connect. We had plans to consistently host a bi-monthly event where one would be best practices and the other would be a product demo/certification process to get Atlassian Certified professionals, we were looking forward to having more members from Atlassian Community Nairobi attend the Atlassian Summit in Las Vegas.
Any community highly depends on members to accomplish its mandate and when a pandemic and the aftermath effects happened we had to protect our members. This was done through hosting our events online and rescheduling the ones which had to be physical. We observed that most members who were going through layoffs and cash crunch either because they lost their job were in between jobs or got a salary cut or just purely cautious because they did not know when the "stay at home" guidelines would last they could not attend the virtual event or if they did they could only engage for a short time which did not provide the required value. So after hosting virtual events for 5 months and as the guidelines started getting relaxed to allow gathering the idea of resuming started lingering in my mind.
This was assured by the feedback I got from members and the support of the iHub community in hosting us. It was important as we resume there was a need to be cautious by maintaining social distance thus we could only allow a limited number of attendees. Checking temperatures, sanitizing, and be brother's keeper. We also encouraged those with pre-existing conditions to stay at home for now if they did not feel safe to attend.
We all looked forward to our first physical event which was scheduled for September 19th Build your Career on Atlassian. We decided to keep this event about the Covid19 experience for all members who attended on time. So it was simple to
- Introduce yourself
- How did they deal with sudden changes?
- Did they lose their job?
- How did they adjust/survive?
- What can they share with other members?
Most members were impacted negatively; either they lost their job or they were required to work from home with a pay cut. Some of them decided to take advantage of this by utilizing the Atlassian tools for collaboration and sharpen their skills. They also used the extra time to learn other skills such as baking, farming, and academic writing. The overall message was no one was prepared for the sudden change but we could all agree that the experience taught all of the good lessons which we will find useful going forward.
Some of the opportunities on Atlassian which were shared:
- Developing on the Atlassian platform which utilizes Forge, Connect, and Atlassian Marketplace
- Atlassian Careers
- Community Posted Careers/Jobs
- Atlassian University
We concluded by networking the Atlassian Nairobi Community way over Pizzas and Drinks.
We look forward to seeing all our members thrive and come out stronger.
If you are in Nairobi and you would like to join our upcoming events or you are in Kenya and you would like to join us at one of our upcoming outreach workshops please register HERE
Atlassian Community Nairobi is an award-winning community. (SET THE STANDARD 2018 - Atlassian Summit 2018, MOST ACTIVE in EMEA 2017-Atlassian Summit Europe 2017) and (Global MASTERS OF CONVERSION WINNER 2017-Atlassian Summit US 2017). The Atlassian Community Nairobi encourages better use of Atlassian tools, share best practices, case studies, and individual perspectives. This Community has an abundance of Atlassian Experts and customers in the area - let's take advantage of each other's expertise. If you've got a topic to present or questions you need to be answered, we're here to help. RSVP to our next meeting or join the group to be notified of upcoming events and Atlassian Community news.
