Team ’22: What Happens in Vegas (Doesn’t) Stay in Vegas

Once upon a time in the West, the weird and wonderful ragtag bunch of Atlassian outlaws that make up Old Street Solutions launched themselves on an unsuspecting public.

Carnage ensued. (Did you really think otherwise?)

It all took place at Team ‘22, Atlassian’s international conference and expo, in person for the first time since before the only Corona we cared about was the one served in a bottle with lime. Las Vegas was the scene of the crime, er, dime. The city of lights and parties, where the people see in shades of dollar bill.

We came, we saw, we dressed up as dinosaurs (well, one of us did).

But of course, as the saying goes:

What happens in Vegas, stays in… Fuck that! Let’s tell you all about it right now.

Painful arrivals and auntie to the rescue

While Big Chris Cooke, our CEO, and Teodora Vasileva, our Marketing Manager, were busy not arriving in Vegas thanks to cancelled and delayed flights, our Head of Partnerships, Jamale Harris, had a different concern. He had to jam 94lb’s worth of Charty Party game boxes into suitcases and was worried what the airport scanners might think of it all.

He asked his aunt, who works for Transport Security Administration, and she said, “Yep, they’ll think you’re smuggling drugs. Best ship it to Vegas overnight.” Thanks, Jamale’s aunt. You helped get our Team ’22 swag to Vegas while saving your nephew a trip to Rikers Island.

Poaching at a partner event is bad form (but thanks for the compliment)

At one of several partner socials (which took place at the Venetian Hotel’s Ice Bar; I went wearing flip-flops – whoops), a person who shall remain nameless from a company that shall remain nameless did a bit of a naughty.

He told Jamale that his company is the best in the business, asked if he’s thought about making a change, and encouraged him to meet with their partner manager. All the while trying to avoid catching at the attention of Big Chris (and conceal his quivering knees).

Jamale, of course, told Chris all about it straight away. Chris walked over to the attempted poacher and punched him. Okay, he didn’t really. He just gave him a friendly talking to.

Demos, demos, demos, and whoops, there goes the cloud

Our booth was our home for two long but awesome days. We had our sales and marketing people manning it, and our Product Manager, Morgan Folsom, and Head of Customer Education, Becky Schwartz, offering demo upon demo to interested partners and customers.

And although the ratio of partners to customers was high, Teodora was thrilled to see so many people approaching our booth. Although maybe it was something to do with our frickin’ fabulous new branding, if we do say so ourselves. Look how pretty…

That said, Andy Barker, our Atlassian Experience Architect, says our booth location was damn good compared to others…

We also did presentations of Old Street’s apps at the Seibert Media conference. Gabriel Wielkopolski presented our new app, Agile Planning Boards for Jira. This acts as a free-form visual overlay for your Jira environment, so you can take Jira actions in a different (ahem, better) interface. And Jamale showcased External Share for Jira & Confluence, our supremely popular pair of apps for sharing Jira issues and Confluence pages outside your instance.

And Jamale got to debut this baby, too, illustrating the benefits of External Share with some sick rap beats.

All in all, things went well. Er, apart from when Atlassian Cloud crashed after multiple keynote speeches that went on about the greatness of it. 😳

Keep calm and play with your yo-yo

There were many successful parties over the course of Team ’22, such as this one:

Although, the Old Street team came close to selling their bodies (at premium prices) after the party at the Venetian Hotel’s Tao restaurant and nightclub. At the end of the night, after everything had already been paid for upfront, Jamale went and asked for a copy of the receipt.

When it was handed to him, it showed an extra charge of $13,000. 😵

Big Chris says he’ll never forget the look on Jamale’s face when he read the receipt, then slowly and calmly walked away while playing with a yo-yo. Chris thinks maybe he was working on his street-art performance to earn back some cash. Jamale says it was his way of concentrating on not peeing his pants right there in the restaurant. It all got sorted – a blunder on the restaurant’s part – but there was a period of definite panic before that, our co-founders’ phones dinging with alerts about their dwindling bank accounts.

How being knackered started a meme

Andy Barker, aka Fun Man Andy/Urban Gorilla Boy/Rainbow Warrior, turned himself into a meme after he passed out from exhaustion in the corner of the Community Leaders center.

It’s no surprise. Between recovering from an illness, jet lag, speaking to clients all day at the expo, and entertaining clients in the evenings, Andy managed about 5 hours’ sleep over 7 days and is lucky to be alive.

BASH was BOSSED

We rounded out our time at Team ’22 at the BASH Celebration, the big bang finale party hosted by Atlassian. There was a band, DJs, BMX bikers, ballerinas, a photo booth, and most importantly, Gabriel Wielkopolski. He had dressed up as a T-Rex for day two of the expo (because, well, why not?) and got up on stage for a dance with the band. It was a riot.

At the end of the night, Jamale took to the stage as well, then Jenny from Veristor pushed Andy up there to join him. In the final moments, they encouraged everyone up on stage for a proper takeover. (Unfortunately, 65 million years had caught up with our resident tyrannosaur by this point, and he’d gone to his primeval bed.)

Ultimately, what really made Team ’22 for all of us was the chance to get together as a team and have a ton of fun. Memories, friends, and quite the impression on the Atlassian Community were made.

Old Street Solutions has arrived (in supremely gaudy fashion). Here’s to Team ’23.