Stepstone Technologies, one of our strong Partners in the Northwest, has released a new version of their website - and it's
built on Confluence! The new site is simplified, making it easy for users to quickly find what they are looking for and
the site includes a number of clients/projects that they are working with.
Stepstone has done some really slick Confluence work for their clients. One example is the web site they built for
Toxipedia.org. According to the web site, Toxipedia.org is:
the free toxicology encyclopedia and resource center that anyone can edit and a quality control system to ensure accuracy
of the information.
A great fit for a wiki!
Stepstone has also done custom plugin work for their clients and has assisted other Partners in creating/designing projects.
I'd highly encourage you to visit their new website and with talk Darryl and Kathy about any questions you might have
regarding your customised Confluence needs. Not only does Stepstone do great work, but they are also fantastic people.
Great job team!
Concinnity Solutions, one of our newest Partners, will be attending the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors symposium in San Francisco during
the week of October 1. The American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors is...
...a nonprofit professional society of crime laboratory directors and forensic science managers dedicated to providing
excellence in forensic science through leadership and innovation. The purpose of the organization is to foster professional
interests, assist the development of laboratory management principles and techniques; acquire, preserve and disseminate
forensic based information; maintain and improve communications among crime laboratory directors; and to promote,
encourage and maintain the highest standards of practice in the field.
I will be attending the event to help support Concinnity's efforts in using Confluence as a collaboration tool focused on the Forensic Science Community.
I have personal experience within the law enforcement community and Concinnity has a rich and deep history in forensic sciences so I'm really excited
about attending this symposium. If you are in the SF area next week and have some interest in forensic science, I'd encourage you to attend. We'd
enjoy meeting you inside or outside of the event.
The symposium will be held at the Marriott San Francisco - to find out more information, you can visit the ASCLD web site.
CustomWare, one of our outstanding Partners, introduced a new release of their web site over the past week. If you haven't
had a chance to take a look at their new site, which is run on Confluence, you should do so. It's a great way to see how
you can re-skin Confluence to match your corporate marketing and branding and how to take advantage of the many
Confluence features.
Rob and his team have always done superb, timely work for Atlassian, our customers, and has supported fellow Partners.
You can contact Rob and the CustomWare team for additional support or just to comment on their new site.
CustomWare also recently expanded their footprint by opening up an office in Malaysia. The opening was covered by the
Star Online and there is a YouTube video covering the opening as well. Check for the Atlassian Partner logo about 1:24
into the video. 
Outstanding work Rob! Congratulations to you and your team for an exciting achievement!
I mentioned this in the September Partner Newsletter and I wanted to highlight it here: I'm hosting a Partner
Chat tomorrow (Thursday) at 7:30am pst. If you have a question about the Partner program, or maybe you'd like
to hear some news on our product and company roadmap, or perhaps you'd like more information on our first
Atlassian User Group. If so, tune in tomorrow.
The Chat will run for approximately 30 minutes and do remember that you can use SkypeOut to place free phone
calls through the end of the year. So Skype on in!
For more information and to sign up for the chat, visit our Partner Wiki space...
We held our first Atlassian User Group yesterday, and it was a tremendous success. We had nearly 50 people
turn out at one point and we spoke with nearly everyone who made the trek out to Falls Church, VA. Thanks
to everyone who joined us!
Ernie Svehla of Intelliobjects started off the evening with a great introduction of Intelliobjects,
Atlassian, and Pyxis who demoed their GreenPepper product. Christian, from Pyxis, provided a live
demo of GreenPepper, showing the slick integration of JIRA and Confluence within their solution.
Next up was Jonathan Nolen, presenting Plugins and the Developer's Network. Jonathan's talk was greeted really
well with attendees asking many, in-depth questions. One of Jonathan's goals was to get users excited about
developing plugins and make them aware of the resources available to developers including forums, the
plugin library, and the developer network.
Finally, Scott Farquhar talked about the product roadmap. As Ernie pointed out, it was really great of Scott
to fly out to DC and attend the event - we could tell the attendees were excited to meet and chat with Scott.
Scott's time up on the podium was the longest (a bit over an hour!), which was dictated by the attendee
questions. I thought the biggest reaction was when Scott rolled out the JIRA 3.7 Roles and JIRA 4.0 slides.
In talking with the team, it seemed the event was a great success. We do have some ideas and thoughts to
make the next event even more valuable. In the mean time, keep an eye on our AUG space for updates and
follow-ups to yesterday's event.
I'm not sure if you saw the news from our blogs yesterday, but we announced the acquisition of Authentisoft
on Thursday. Finding a good single sign-on solution has been a goal for many organisations looking to simplify
user management. Bringing in Authentisoft, a company that creates IDX, a single sign-on Java EE solution, will help
address these organisation's SSO needs.
Over the next few months, we'll be working on the application to make it more Atlassian-like, however today IDX is
fully-functional and works natively with JIRA and Confluence.
We're even happier to announce that Justen Stepka, one of Authentisoft's founders and senior developer extraordinaire,
is moving to Sydney to continue developing IDX full-time. We invite you to read the full press release and check out
Authentisoft yourselves. Stay tuned for additional announcements over the next few months.
Did you notice the new link on the left? Under Partner Resources, I included a new link to our Partner Control Center. This
isn't a new tool, but rather one that I wanted to highlight to ensure you knew where to find immediate answers to your
license, download, and ordering questions.
I've captured an image of the My Account page, which you can find at:
Once you've entered your user name and password, you'll be greeted with a page similar to the screen capture image in
the Partner Control Center. I've listed an explanation of each section but if you have more detailed questions, I'd be happy
to walk you through them.
I hope this helps in answering some of the administrative questions that might pop up durnig an engagement, as well
as providing links to help support your needs.
I use NetVibes as my home page - a great tool that uses very little resources but is an exceptional aggregator,
perfect for those who like to keep up with their interests no matter their location.
One of the feeds I subscribe to is VARBusiness through the ChannelWeb source. I skim the headlines to keep
a regular eye on any market shifts or Atlassian-related news. The one that caught my eye was titled:
What Customers Want From VARs
The article attempts to get the reader excited about the forthcoming VARBusiness Market Insight Report,
which could be a valuable tool. However, I thought the following statement was a good one:
What she values most in those (VAR) partners: expertise,
price and quality of service
As I thought about how these three attributes fit with our Partner program, I thought we were focusing
on similar objectives. Our Partner's expertise is growing very quickly, which is very exciting and
something we need to be able to package up as a big value add. The pricing on our products is quite
aggressive and it's a true competitive and defendible position in our served markets. Finally, the
quality of service is right up there but definitely improving from an Atlassian point of view,
which should help our Partners provide top-notch service.
You can read the entire article here:
http://www.channelweb.com/sections/allnews/article.jhtml?articleId=192205097&cid=ChannelWebNews