Being the diverse lot that we are now at Atlassian with offices all around the world I think it's time to divide and conquer. Most of our news and events are focused in North America, but if you happen to be reading and are in our home country then these posts are just for you. This series will focus on local news and events relevant to the Atlassian Sydney office. If you see a post tagged or titled 'Oz News' it will probably only be of interest or relevance if you are in Australia.
Do you like our cricket version of Charlie (our logo)? He was done up internally for our staff, but I think he deserves an innings on the news blog in honour of the new 'Oz News' series.

Digital Economies Future Directions Paper Launch

Earlier this week we trotted down to the Powerhouse Museum to see the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, release the Australia's Digital Economy: Future Directions paper. Atlassian was included as a case study in the paper as a company that has "engaged successfully with the digital economy and reaped its rewards". It was exciting to be up there and seeing our Director of Engineering, Soren Harner, presenting success stories alongside Google and IBM reps. The entire paper is available online and the video from the evening will be posted to the DBCDE's YouTube channel. The government is definitely trying to amp up it's use of the internet to communicate, this week also saw the launch of KRudd's blog. Update: Including Soren's presentation here:

Room to Read - Sydney Chapter Volunteer meet up

Do you remember our Atlassian Stimulus Package? Well Room to Read also has a local volunteer chapter in Sydney. Next week they will be holding their monthly volunteer meeting in Lavendar Bay. They will be showing John Wood's presentation that he gave at the Atlassian Summit earlier this year. If you would like to get involved with this worthwhile organisation then please come along.

Date: Thursday 23 July 2009
Time: 6.15pm for a 7.00pm start. Finish by 8.15pm, then social time.
Venue: Sports Lounge, Kirribilli Club. You will need to bring some ID for purpose of signing in to the Club as a guest.
Address: 11 Harbourview Crescent, Lavender Bay, map
Transport: There is undercover parking at a flat rate of $10 or metered street parking after 6.00pm. Walking distance from Milsons Point Station.
RSVP: to Mihiri Udabage as soon as possible.

OzCollab

At the last Wiki Wednesday meet up Matthew Moore told us about OzCollab - the Australian Collaboration Software Report. He's currently collecting survey information about the use of collaboration tools in Australia. What they've learned so far is:

It's crowded in here. Microsoft's Sharepoint & Atlassian's Confluence are the two most popular products but it's a space with no clear leaders - with both commercial vendors (e.g. SAP, Documentum, Salesforce) and open source (Drupal, MediaWiki) in use.

If you are currently using collaborative software, or are planning to buy it sometime soon then they would love to hear about your experiences. At the end of the study you will receive a free summary overview of the survey results.