Normally, one would write a daily summary in chronological order, but I think it would be good to start a new trend. We’ll start where we ended: the party. The Atlassian Summit Bash this year was held in two adjacent restaurants, Epic Roasthouse and Waterbar, which are located along the San Francisco Embarcadero. It was an unusually warm and beautiful day in San Francisco, and what’s more unusual is that it remained short-sleeved weather even by 8pm in the evening, which on most nights is the time to start bundling up.
Now rewind a few hours and back at the Design Concourse where Summit was held. The Hipchat folks were introducing Atlassian customers to all the goodness of real-time collaboration. Attendees also got to use a private Hipchat instance set up just for the conference. When we sent them their login to Hipchat, we also included a login to a Summit version of Confluence Mobile, part of an as-yet-un-released version of Confluence.
Adjacent to the Hipchat booth was the AtlasBar (our homage to the Apple Genius Bar), where customers could get their troubleshooting questions answered by Atlassian’s ace support staff and by a couple of our Experts who helped staff the booth.
Lunch was courtesy of Off the Grid, San Francisco’s local chain of gourmet food trucks. When we weren’t eating Off the Grid, we were able to get a bite at the snack stations throughout the Concourse.
After the keynote and before the tracks began, there was the Launchpad Event — ten sponsors gave 5-minute presentations, and via audience vote one company was crowned the winner. This year, Gliffy won runner-up, but the grand prize went to the certifiably fun presentation from Zen Foundation by Stepstone. Hats off to Darryl Duke for not only a tremendously entertaining presentation in a straightjacket, but an impressive demo of Zen.
Before the launchpad there was the keynote by Atlassian CEO and co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, who gave an overview of the company’s trajectory and talked about some of the announcements this week, including the new Atlassian Marketplace.
The sponsor pavilion was packed. Between the beautiful weather outside and the 1000+ attendees at Summit, temperatures in the Concourse also rose. While we struggled to cool down the huge venue, it seemed that people were taking the heat in good stride. It certainly didn’t seem to deter anyone.
Next stop: Day 3!