Welcome Wednesday: How did your community journey begin?

[#1]

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

We all started our community journeys at different times for different reasons, and I thought it might be fun to have everyone share how they got started.  For those of you who are brand new to the community I'd love to hear what make you decide to come here today.

For myself, I created a community account long before I actually started using it.  It wasn't until after the 2019 Summit, that I really started to engage.  At that time I had about 5-6 years of being a Jira, BitBucket & Bamboo server admin under my belt, and I was work in a position where I didn't have any career growth opportunities.  I used the community as a means to share the knowledge I had and help others resolve their problems as swiftly as possible.

How about you?  What got you started in the community?

Have a great rest of the week everyone!

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

At first, it was all about finding questions about my company's products and answering them or giving them to the technical team. As I gained more knowledge about the Atlassian stack and some marketplace apps, I started answering more questions and sharing my own struggles or experiences with the products.

Then, one day, I was invited to join the Atlassian Authors group. It was an excellent opportunity to practice my writing and share usage stories for my favorite tools (primarily Confluence 💙)

[Collins, Jorge (J.C.)]

I'm just joining and want to learn, to be honest i don't find this platform very friendly but overwhelming with a lot of links does this happens to you? where should i start?

my target is to learn how to Analyze data

[Kristian Klima]

I've been a Confluence user since 2014 but, not being a too much into forums and such, I wasn't keen to join.

However, as a tech writer, I was a keen participant in the Write the Docs's Slack workspace for tech writers, carrying the Confluence flag and preaching how you can built a really powerful CMS around Confluence and apps.

Let me tell you, I was severely wounded many times and wanted to leave.

But sometime towards the end of 2023 @Shannon Meehan _K15t_ suggested that I join the Atlassian Community where I'd meet friendlier people, have meaningful discussions, and share my multi-app solutions without the 'convert-first' frustrations.

So I did.

And it's been great. Sharing my solutions and experience is one thing but being able to solve other people's questions and learn from the experience pretty much every day is priceless.

There's a question. Hmmm, this is an interesting problem - if I find a solution, I'd benefit too. And so, thanks to this 'learning by answering' experience I expanded my apps arsenal, I streamlined my workflows, improved efficiency of my product documentation team, I made friends, helped Marketplace vendors with apps development, became a leader, won an Atlassian Team award...

I'm still on that Write the Docs Slack... but I tend to end my answer with 'you'll get a much better support in Atlassian Community' :) 

[Susan Waldrip]

I've been a Jira Admin for almost a year and started right off the bat with the Atlassian Community after googling for help with something and the Community popped up first in the results. I joined a few groups and the rest is history! ☺️ I still remember how nervous I was to post a question in the Community and how excited I was when someone answered! How cool! I also remember how nervous/excited I was when I answered my first question from another Community member. I've found I learn at least as much from answering questions as I do from getting answers to my questions. It's really fun and rewarding!

[Jimmy Seddon]

@Collins, Jorge (J.C.) when you saw your target is to learn how to analyze data, can you be more specific about exactly what you are trying to analyze or what you are trying to accomplish?

[John Funk]

It was a cold, dark morning. The rain has just begun to fall ....

Oh, maybe that was a different journey. We had a consultant suggest Jira be used on a project he was working on in our company. No one in the company had any Jira experience. I began to use the tool more and more and we needed someone to help administer it. So I turned to the Atlassian Community to get answers for MANY things as I was a total nube. And that's how it began. 

[Shreeja J]

It’s great to see everyone sharing their stories about how they got started in the community.

For me, my journey began when I was working on a project that required a lot of help with Jira and Confluence. I initially came here looking for answers, but I soon realized how helpful and collaborative the community was.

Attending Atlassian events also played a big role in my involvement. I found them not only informative but also a great way to connect with other users who were dealing with similar challenges. These events gave me practical insights and new ideas that I could apply to my own work, which made me want to stay more active in the community.

Over time, I found myself sticking around not only to learn but also to help others where I could. It’s been great to be part of such a supportive space, and I always look forward to learning more from everyone here.

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week!

[Barbara Szczesniak]

When I started a job at a new company in March 2023, they wanted me to write their documentation in Confluence. The dev team used Jira and they had hired someone who started 2 weeks before me to create a help desk in JSM, so they signed up for a free Confluence plan for me to document their product. They thought it would be easier for collaboration.

I had used Confluence in my previous job, but mainly as a reader and commenter, but here I would be the Confluence expert by virtue of the fact that no one else used it.  

I had over 30 years of experience in technical writing, but I needed to figure out how to do it in Confluence. I started with Get started with Confluence on the Confluence Resource Center page and made my way from there. Then, as I tried to find Confluence features to do what I wanted, I did a search and came across a related question someone had asked in the community, and this whole mega-resource was opened for me—I found a set of people I could bounce questions and ideas off of (since no one at my company could help me out). 

I found that other people had encountered the same issues as me and how they resolved them. I found answers to things I didn't even know enough to ask yet. One day, someone asked a question about something I had already struggled with (I think inserting paragraphs within a numbered list 🤯), and I responded with the convoluted way I had found to resolve something that was not an issue in any other application I had ever used to write documentation.

The rest is history. I learn things every day in this community and, hopefully, help other people out. Sometimes what I see in someone's question is completely different from how someone else interprets it, and I find that interesting too—our responses are all colored by our experience. 

My favorites are these more social posts, though, where I feel like I have extra friends I'll never meet in person.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Similarly to everyone else, my Community journey began when I got stuck when implementing new processes within my organization. To be honest, I didn't find the platform to be quite intuitive to find the content or answers I was looking for but after some time, when you learn which groups are used for what, it's relatively easy to find those answers you're looking for. Not to mention that I can see rapid Community growth over the years (just look at how many new questions are raised daily 😯).

These days, I find myself more often using Community than official product documentation (even for new, unknown things to me) and I love seeing interesting discussions and new use cases posted by so many different people 🤓 

[Andy Gladstone]

I had two starts (actually three) in the Atlassian Community.

#1 was early days when the platform was Questions for Confluence and my company was on Confluence Server. I created an account and started searching for answers to common issues that would come up. I don't think I ever actively participated, I was just a passive observer.

#2 was in early 2020 after we had launched Confluence and Jira Cloud in my new organization. I was holding user enablement sessions internally and needed to get some expert advice on some questions that were stumping me. Then the pandemic hit and everything screeched to a full stop.

#3 was September 2021 when I dove in to the deep end of the community and started to not only ask questions, but answer some. That was the slow rolling pebble that started the avalanche that my participation has taken on today. I don' know what I would have done the past three years without this community being part of my life, and I'm glad I don't need to think about it. 

[Eric Sibomana]

Usually, I’m more of a lone wolf, enjoying the process of developing my skills quietly without much fanfare. But this time, I decided to try something different! I have to say, the way this experience has been gamified is really inspiring. I think I might just get swept up in the fun!

[Gerard Nye]

Long story short. I identified we needed a helpdesk. So, I turned to JIRA with no experience. One month later after denting the wall with my head I think I've finally got something off the ground. Now just trying to work out how to make it all confidential etc. so no other admins can look at the HR confidential stuff. 

[Viknesh V]

I have joined to learn about new tools and extension. So, my primary goal is to learn something new and to be in the same zone without any distraction. 

[Angela Newton]

This is my third start (my third company) in approximately 10 years.  It is like starting a new school having lost all my usual crowd.