Stepping down as Atlassian User Group Leader

This week I officially announced that I step down as the Atlassian User Group leader for Stockholm. This is a position I have held for 2 years now and it has been fun, but also a bit stressful. With my recent dip in energy levels I felt that this was taking a bit to much of my energy. That is why I stepped down so I can focus on regaining energy and placing it where it makes most sense.

I took the position because I wanted to see if it would be possible to build a community around Atlassian. I had never attended the events, but I liked the idea. There was a decent group already with 250 or so members and I also got a partner in crime from the start. As we started planning the events we noticed a trend. No matter what the topic we had 20-30 people signing up, but only half actually showed up.

We also noticed that we almost always had the same people showing up and if we got someone new, they rarely showed up again. This was a bit troublesome, even if the core group that always showed up was amazing of course. Advertisement was hard as the mailing list only reached existing members. I tried to extend the capabilities by setting up a Slack channel and a Trello for event planning, but both failed. I even created a club on my own website, but that one failed as well.

Chasing topics for events is hard and when @Jesper Högström needed a break to deal with life it became even harder. It took a lot of time organizing events and the reward for me personally was pretty low to be honest. I even got criticized for the events not being grand end epic as in the "old days", which was kind of demoralizing to be honest. I do work 60 hour weeks and time I can commit to these kind of activities is limited. I did my best, but eventually I felt that the time I put in was not enough and it just added stress to my already stressed life.

So I decided to step down.

I will continue working with Atlassian products of course. I am not tired of their products. I will probably continue doing some events around Atlassian products, both internally and externally. The difference is that it will be on my terms and it will be when my time and energy permits. I have some plans for this of course so be sure to check the site for more Atlassian stuff coming in 2020.

So for now I say goodbye to Stockholm AUG and continue to enjoy my vacation.