Atlassian and Tech: A Marketing Intern's Perspective

Here we have Shannon's account of her experience with us!  

Today's my last day at TechTime Initiative Group as a Digital Marketing Intern. I've been removing the post-its that have been stuck to my computer, decluttering my work desk of the stationery and marketing swag I've accumulated, and sorting through my emails to achieve Inbox Zero. As a rather sentimental person, it's been a sad but bittersweet day packing up and reflecting on the past three months I've had here.

At university, I've been studying Marketing and Information Systems. But admittedly, I had rather limited knowledge on what the tech world is like, let alone the world of Atlassian. However, I was keen on learning more about the industry and understanding how I could put my degree to use, which is a question that most, if not, all students question at some point throughout their degree.

Prior to starting my internship, I attempted to do my due diligence by reading up as much as I could about Atlassian - from browsing their social media accounts to watching YouTube videos to trawling through the millions of results that appeared when I Googled "Atlassian for dummies". Yet, I was overwhelmed with jargon and terms that left me even more confused, and I turned up to my first day wondering what an epic or Jira was. 

Fast forward three months and I've learnt enough to be able to craft up all sorts of content; like blog posts, marketplace product descriptions, emails, social media posts and metric reports. As all marketers know, it's hard to create content about a product without knowing it inside-out. And through all of my product-based learnings, I've realised a few extra things that I thought I'd share:

• You need to be hungry to learn, especially in Tech

One of my first tasks was to write a series of emails promoting one of our apps to existing customers and leads. Did I have a CTA in mind? Yes. Was I able to back it up with a fleshed-out and technically-justified USP? Nope.

I ended up spending a good chunk of my first weeks doing research so that I knew the product well, but also the trends in the market that we were competing in. It was a very steep learning curve, but I reached a level that I could be satisfied with through the help of Google, the Atlassian Community, and bombarding my supervisor with questions.

With the tech world constantly evolving, there are always new innovations popping up while others become obsolete. It's helpful to stay in-the-loop with trends and reach out to a variety of sources when you want to learn. In tech marketing, it's vital that you substantiate your content with correctly-used terminology, and impressive when you can whip out a cool industry-relevant fact to impress potential customers at a conference. 

• All forms of dedication are valuable in building your personal brand

While I was at TechTime, someone in the company passed one of the Atlassian exams and was awarded a t-shirt and digital certificate as proof of their new-found status. Another person earned an Atlassian Community badge recognising that they were an active and important member of the community, which sits on the front-page of their profile looking all shiny and bright. 

Even if you're not the most highly-skilled person in your field, the commitment that you put into upskilling and being active in a community does wonders for your personal brand. Plus, the badges you can wear on your profiles is an added bonus. Being in an environment where everyone is passionate about Atlassian and tech is inspiring as the shared interest bounces around all the walls of the office. In fact, my (small) interest in HTML, CSS and Javascript has been reignited by this. Talk about upskilling!

• People can really be passionate about anything

Having never heard of Atlassian before working at TechTime, I never knew how huge it is and how extensive its tribe is. 

When describing Atlassian to my friends I often said it was a bit like the Microsoft Office of the software development world. To someone who doesn't have much of a technical background, it was eye-opening to hear about the almost cult-like following Atlassian garners. I've been shown how active the community is; with meetups, conferences, Slack channels, community boards - there are countless opportunities for Atlassian fans to connect. 

I never thought that I would have such strong opinions and appreciation for a suite of collaboration tools. But here I am - the proud owner of an Atlassian notebook, Atlassian coaster, Atlassian peppermints, Atlassian shoelaces and an Atlassian backpack (that I brought with me on my travels halfway across the world). 

This internship has taught me more than just marketing. It's taught me about a whole world that I likely would not have been exposed to otherwise. Thank you TechTime for making my experience an absolute blast. I have gained so much knowledge, skills and experience and am confident tech will always play a part in my career. 

Of course, I can't forget to shout out the awesome people I've had the pleasure of working with this summer. We're a diverse bunch consisting of part-time coffee drinkers, cacti lovers, cat herders and gamers - all united by our passion for tech and determination to score highly in the Stuff daily quiz.

Till we meet again!

Changing my last issue status: Resolve

Experience as a DevOps Infrastructure Intern

Sandy was assisting our Infrastructure Engineer - Denny Mate. 

" I’ve had a great time being an intern at TechTime; I’ve learned a heap and have gained some valuable experience in between the Slack banter and bizarre Russian proverbs. I’d done Agile workshops before, but here I got to participate in a scrum framework every day, and witness the process continuously evolve to improve our software development at TechTime. It was also of great value to me to see how problems here are tackled with a far more collaborative approach than what I’ve experienced at previous jobs, and at university. And it’s been very satisfying working on a variety of projects; I’ve built several tools to aid our customers, worked on the automated deployment of our cloud infrastructure, and many others. I’ve gotten a lot out of this internship and I’m much more confident about my career in tech going forward."
- Sandy