Atlassian App Week. What to expect in 2020 2021 2022?
Are you selling apps on Atlassian Marketplace? If so, then Atlassian App Week workshop is for you, but dispatch developers there rather than CEOs and marketing staff. Unlike Atlassian Summits, with each of them being a must, you don’t need to travel to each and every App Week (Santa Cruz, Amsterdam, Berlin), rather choose the one nearest to you. Delegate back-end coders to an App Week, as the event focuses on Jira-[your app] API. Below is a first-hand account from BigPicture coders. Is it worth to travel to an Atlassian App Week in 2020, 2021, or 2022?
For whom?
We consistently send intermediate and advanced back-end, Java team leaders to Atlassian App Weeks. Out of the three ‘Weeks’ that occurred over the last 12 months (Amsterdam, Santa Cruz, Berlin), we participated in the two European editions. Atlassian gives away passes sparingly. If you get three passes (per vendor), consider yourself lucky.
What will you do?
- Code! During the ‘2019 Berlin edition (June 3-7), they would have made you re-program, re-code, and re-develop the most fragile interactions between your app (BigPicture in our case) and Jira Cloud
- Talk to Atlassian’s technical staff. In Berlin, they disclosed some debuting features, such as the new API, that boosts the performance of third-party apps and at the same time puts less stress on Jira/Confluence. Could BigPicture’s performance tips become redundant in the near future?
- Chat with other Marketplace vendors
Non-coders at Atlassian App Week?
If you’re a software house, you certainly have a CEO or two, or some QA, support departments, or marketing staff. Could it potentially make sense for them to travel and take part in an Atlassian App Week? Since the event is focused on coding, you could be tempted to say ‘No, it only makes sense for true programmers’. Ironically, we would answer ‘Yes’:
- BigPicture’s CEO and a part-time developer took part in the Amsterdam App Week
- check if a would-be participant is in the related field, such as software architecture, or debugging, or maybe a person who practices Domain Driven Development
- other than that, research keyphrases, such as ‘berlin climate’, and if the App Week is in June, as was the case with Berlin, treat the event as a 5-day vacation
One of our programmers said: Five days of peace and quiet for development was a good enough reason to be there.
Catering was excellent, both at the venue and in the city—try Bratwurst around Brandenburger Tor ;) Checkpoint Charlie is another must, and if you have time hop on the S-Bahn train and get out to the shores of historical Großer Wannsee.
Bottom line
If in doubt, rather go to Atlassian App Week, than not, be it a European, or American edition. The conference is a rare opportunity to talk to Atlassian’s technical staff and get to know the new features they have on their roadmap, before the crowd. Given the pace of change at Atlassian, we’d recommend travelling to the Week at least once a year.
