Hands-On Training and AI Integration with Robert Hean at Atlassian Team ’24

This is Textron tv. Hi everybody. Mitch Ashley here at Atlassian, team 24.

We're, we're talking with a combination of people from Atlassian, from the community, uh, people who are advocates, um, they're that help the community and, and work with them. We're great, great pleasure talking with a gentleman who's working kinda on the education training using the products, which is always great to talk to someone in that area because, you know, that's where the rubber meets the road. So let's talk with Robert Heen.

Welcome, Rob. It's good to be chatting with you, Mitch. Thank you.

I really appreciate the opportunity to, to connect about this and share a bit about, you know, what I see happening and what I do. Absolutely. Well, tell folks what you do.

So I, um, you know, I'm an Atlassian instructor is what I've been calling myself. I have some online learning courses on topics ranging from like HR data analytics, but also how to think through setting up a knowledge base. Mm.

So not just getting the tool Confluence, but also the processes in getting buy-in and champions around that. And I've also been working with the Atlassian creators to do online live training for Confluence. So whether it's how the basics, I'm a average user or a space admin, or how the templates work, and then creating content online to help folks understand how the system works.

And not just Confluence, but also Jira or other Atlassian tools. Uh, but really to help them, to your point, understand where the, the rubber meets the road. Where does my job interface with this tool and how do I use these things?

Mm-Hmm. And you have a background, like within doing this, you are very active in Udemy and been doing online stuff for quite a while, I'm guessing. Yeah.

My first job I was an implementation manager and then quickly be to join the learning and development team. And so I got to learn from that group, how do you think, through a learning process and structure. Mm-Hmm.

And then, you know, building the Udemy courses, I learned with the Udemy team, how do I structure an online only course? Mm-Hmm. And so what's the, the framework I can use to slot in all this information so someone can understand how to use Confluence better, or Jira or HR data.

Yep. And the, the way you're delivering content now in training is, is through like a YouTube online interactive experience, or how does it work? Great question.

I've got kind of three different ways right now. One is the Udemy platform. Okay.

Which is, you would go to Udemy, you'd watch the video, and there's some interactivity. You'll get messages from me that are automated, but also there's assignments. So you might fill it, you know, write a product update that I could do feedback on.

That's one pillar. Another is the online learning. So, uh, a YouTube live session.

And this would be, I can see you chatting and we're interacting that way, but I'm still talking, explaining it. And the third way is just a recorded what we think of as a YouTube video. You want to get my top 10 tips for Confluence.

It's just all recorded and edited down. Well, you're talking about immediate feedback with all those bubbles coming up with, you know, hearts and smiles or frowns or, you know, I had a experience like that, not online, but in person where someone's like drawing doodling. I'm like, oh, this is not going so good.

I better, I better help change my approach here. But, well, it's interesting online, 'cause I've, I, I added a slide to them all saying, this isn't just one way. 'cause most people come to this just thinking, oh, we're gonna hear Rob talk about it.

Sit fact, listen. Yeah. I say, no, no, no, I'll, I'll talk about a concept and then give me a one, two, a five, just in the chat.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5. You know it, one, you don't. And that helps guide me.

That gives me a bid of feedback to adjust and tailor the training. You get it in real time. That's great.

Yeah. Instead of at the end of the class, I, he lost me at module one. And could we go back then?

Exactly. Yeah. That real time feedback is critical.

So let's, let's talk about obviously Confluence, JIRA, the whole product line, suite of products, it's continually changing, right? I mean, a lot of changing happening. Yes.

I mean, I think about when I was using Golin in Jira and, you know, 15 years ago, it was a very different experience today than compared to that. But in this online SaaS world too, also we're kind of used to things changing while we're using it. How do you train or how do you educate people, equip people to not only use, okay, here's how you use the the tool.

Here's what you can do. Um, but you wanna be familiar enough that they can pick up with, oh, hey, there's a new button. What do I do with that?

Right. I really like that call out. Uh, recently Confluence changed how the sidebar works.

So before when you were editing a page, it was just editing the page. But now the sidebar still sticks around. And I joke with folks like, because it's SaaS, the last scene or whoever deploys the change.

And unless you're paying very close attention, which most people don't Mm-Hmm. You're surprised. Like, oh, what is this?

So part of training is it's point in time, to be honest, if you sit through one of my videos from even four months ago, it's already, there's been drift I call it. It's already almost out of date. Yeah.

So one interesting aspect for myself is that gives me evergreen content in a sense where I should evaluate how much change has occurred. And in my judgment or in my talking to folks, has enough change happened to necessitate re-recording or having a new thing. So that's part of it, to make sure my library is up to date.

Another aspect is when I'm training, encouraging folks to be comfortable exploring a system. Mm-Hmm. Um, I've worked with many people who are nervous or afraid or don't want to, oh, push that button.

What will happen? I don't want to do something bad. Right.

If I don't know what it does exactly. And I, I tell folks, if it clearly says delete, you know, maybe don't push that button. Delete all.

Especially yeah, the purge all, uh, drop tables if you know what that be free format. Um, but barring those things, I encourage folks, go explore. And, you know, confluence is great, J is great.

You can get your own demo instance and even in their delete stuff. But in your company's instance, go and play around, make a page, see what happens, see how it changes. And that helps kind of inoculate people from that drift.

If they can become comfortable with, okay, I kind of know where the create the buttons are. Oh, there's a new one. Let me push it and just see.

And then kind of empowering them to train themselves as they go. And then bring their questions back, talk to other people, but not to be afraid of these changes that will just kind of pop up out of nowhere. Maybe show 'em age.

But, uh, you used, I used to help, help folks say, go to your personal workspace. Play around there. That's your sandbox.

You could always, you know, here's my profile and my this and play with it there. Then nobody else is gonna see 'em unless you want 'em to. I have, uh, many environments I work in, have a, the personal space in Confluence.

And I tell folks, if you have one, you can do anything you want to know it's yours. And if you really, really make a mistake, you know, talk to it or someone, but you can't hurt the system. Mm-Hmm.

And if you do, you found a bug and that's great to go report a chair, but you know, be comfortable just experimenting in playing. You talked about learning or helping people understand the idea of discovery, right? Not just this does a does this and B does that, but you see something, how do go find it, go play with it, go try it out.

Um, how do you then kind of also take it to the next level of here's the mechanics of doing a task, or how you create a page and you're what you can do it, et cetera. Um, but then how do you apply it into a work setting? How do you help people make that connection?

'cause sometimes that's not obvious. Some it is, it is great when it is, but it isn't always the case. Yeah.

It's, I use Atlassian University a lot as this example because Atlassian University's content, which is now, you know, widely available and free, which is amazing. Yeah. Well, you today in NASA at the show just today, which I'm definitely gonna go in there and just see what they have.

Um, but that, that content kind of by necessity has to be fairly middle of the road and very broad. Yeah. And so a a lot of my trainings and I work with the Atlassian creators team is like, how is it different from that?

'cause the Alaska University stuff is very good. And what, you know, what I'm able to bring either with talking to folks or personal experience is like, how can it be used? And again, creating a page is a very standard process.

You click the button, you add your content. And that's very mechanical in rote. But if I can tell a story about, oh, I'm on the human resources or the people team and I have a brand new policy I need to create, then people can start to dig in and get it more.

Or if I have the luxury of enough feedback, someone in the audience, give me an example. You're stuck on, you know, I've taught you how to make a page. Mm-Hmm.

What have you tried to, oh, we're stuck because we don't know how a template works or what this feature does, or how to show someone else to do it. Then it becomes more real. It's no longer the, the sterile, the middle of the road training.

It's a real thing that, oh, I do this. I can resonate with it. It's kinda like the old word problems, right?

Joe's traveling down the highway at 50 miles an hour. You know, okay, now how do you solve this problem? I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to use that one minute.

You'll two trains, leave the stations. You know, it's, it's that, uh, classic memorabilia. It still pops up every once in a while.

Um, there's another part to this too, is also, and this may be more the advanced kind of things, just thinking about how do you change how you work, right? Yeah. Now that you've got these capabilities, you could automate what you did or currently are doing.

There's also, uh, well maybe I don't have to do that part. I can do it this way. Now.

That sort of creativity part of how you use productivity tools, um, how do you instill that? Like the discovery much harder thing? I'm sure it, it, I wouldn't say harder, just different.

Just different. It's trying to figure out what is the underlying concept behind it. Like Simon Sinek has start with why, like, why am I doing this thing manually?

Well, 'cause I don't know a better way. Hey Mitch, do you know a better way? Hey Atlassian community.

Do you know a better way? Um, now the immediate story that just came to mind is I worked at a company that we used Lucidchart for diagramming. It's great.

A wonderful tool. And then we were told, you can't use that anymore. Well like, oh, nuts, what do I do now?

I can't do my job. Yeah. I, my systems maps are all gone.

My process maps full, hang on. Confluence has whiteboards, which I had not been using because I had a separate thing. So I was kind of forced to use this new thing and explore it and understand it.

So one way, like for me, I've had this happen is I've been forced into it. And I know many other folks in different companies around the world end up, you have to now use blank. And that's one way to instill it.

Another though, like I just mentioned, is just questioning why there's a, an apocryphal story of a woman cooking a, a Christmas ham and they always cut the small end off and put it in a different pan. And her daughter goes, mom, why are you doing that? Well, great.

Grandma did it. Great grandma, why did you do it? Well back, our oven was too small.

We could only fit half of it. And so challenging why we're doing something the way we're doing it, whether it's every six months, every year, every day, is how I find a lot of these differences. 'cause like with automations, I honestly don't use them very much, but that's because I haven't sat down and said, wait, what can I automate?

Why am I doing these manual things when I know there's all this great stuff that can automate it? Yeah. You know, it's interesting.

We live in a world of constraints, but they're always change, right? The oven size gets bigger. Oh, I can do that more than one way.

I mean, there's a new tool available. Um, I, I'm wondering if, I haven't had a chance to play with Rebo or Rebo myself, but it sounds like some of those AI capabilities might help us say, by the way, uh, Rob has, has figured out a way to do what you're doing and you can go right here and pick up his automation and try it out for yourself. Maybe kind of surfacing those sort of the bigger institution, other, other people.

Right. The, uh, the graph of teams. Mm-Hmm.

Teamwork, other people doing similar kind of work. Let's share, let's collaborate without me having to go search it out or somebody dictating you do it a new way. That's, that's interesting because in the past, you know, I've had the luxury of just wandering around or slacking people, Hey, how do you handle this?

But with something like robo coming in and it sees all That's right. Robo I had, yeah. I think it's ROVO.

Yes, you are ROV. Um, I only remember that 'cause it was in 20, you know, 27 foot letters. Um, but now that there's this tool that at least just scope to everything we do, you know, will it be able to serve up or, you know, kind of, I joke about clippy, you know, I'm trying to do something manually.

VO pops up, Hey, did you know that Mitch is, has this automation that does it, it, so I'll be very curious as that tool develops and as people start to use it more. Mm-Hmm. Because again, right now it's like, well, I do it manually 'cause I need to, and robo exists in the corner.

Mm-Hmm. As folks engage with it and really kind of pressure test and see what it can do, how those other use cases will fall out that we can't even consider today. Whether it's teeing up an automation, maybe I could see a world where it just starts doing the automation Mm-Hmm.

And then maybe if I notice it goes, oh, here's what I've done. Which by the way, I did this for you last night and there's how it worked and Yeah. Tell me if you want to keep doing it.

Right. Yeah. I, I could see a, a Jira service agent logging in and it vo just saying here, you know, I've teed up 15 messages for the top priority tickets for you, please review so I can send them Mm-Hmm.

And that eliminates a lot of the, how do I write this for spots? What do I have to look up? Hey.

Right. And it's, you know, to the points we heard in the keynote, it's not that Rob, as the agent, you aren't needed. It's Rob as the agent, we're going to, you know, lift you up a bit and it's gonna tee up work and free you to do the things that are hard and challenging that the computer can do.

'cause that's why computers are here. You can, I I I'm sure something you get to deal with is sort of the fear factor around ai, right? 'cause it's everything from all of our jobs are going away to, you aren't gonna do what you're doing today, you'll be doing some other job.

And some of us are comfortable with that idea. And some of us that's like, you know, you just upset my whole world. Right.

I was, I just had figured it out. How do you deal with that sort of apprehension with ai or you, are you encountering that at all when people, as you introduce, you know, Atlassian and others introduce ai? A great question.

Uh, the story that always comes to mind with any technic, like it's any technical shift. I worked in a, uh, a shipyard and we had guys there who had been doing steel work for 40 years and they order steel. They know how to cut it.

And I had to go to one of these people and say, I'm sorry, Johnny, you can't use a paper form to requisition steel. You have to use a computer. And I have never seen terror in another human's soul, except that that just shows my lack of skill or knowledge, or I just don't wanna be embarrassed or whatever.

Okay. And I feel like this shift to ai, people are feeling that to degrees. So part of this, I feel will just be becoming comfortable with the tool.

And, you know, I've worked in environments where they just kind of shove an update out and they walk away and there has been no introduction to it. So I could see in environments where AI's been turned on and you're an agent, those agents being, you know, apprehensive, what's to do. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think a lot of this will be around how do we tee it up? What do we do around, we have robo, how do we prepare our teams?

What is the change management? That would be my word for it. Mm-Hmm.

How do we introduce it to them? How do we get a small group of folks who are interested in it? Because some percentage of people Yes.

Ai, how can we get them using it and then pointed them and say, look, the agency used it, you know, had, we're able to answer 15 more tickets and got a better score, we're gonna start expanding it. Yeah. So it's, it's addressing it in a way that people aren't, you know, scared or intimidated by it.

But if we just shove it in their face and say, no, this is what's happening. That I feel like is where we're gonna see a lot. And of course you have to use it.

It seems like another possible reaction is, you know, in the IT world, it's like, um, my system's not, you're not working correctly. Well, what did you change? I didn't change anything.

Mm-Hmm. Yeah. So you kind of, when you don't know if something's what's changed, then you start to question the whole system.

Right? It happens some unexpected behavior. And it seems like that human machine connection is even more important when it's doing things for you.

So, you know, you know, when it's gonna do something for me, I will always know, or I'll, I'll always get a chance to pre-approve it and review it. Or sort of setting up that, that agreement, that trust to build, to build that trust with people. I saw that today when they were demonstrating one of Rovos capabilities to summarize content and it would show its receipts, so to speak.

Mm-Hmm. I found these quotes about this thing on these pages, so it didn't just give you an answer. The project blueberry, whatever their sample was, it said, I found Project blueberry, these bullet points and here's where I found it.

And so to your point, it's not just the AI told me so I should trust it. No, no. The AI is helping me and showing me where to go find it if I want to verify.

Mm-Hmm. So I, I think you're right, Mitch. That ability for a human to trust it and to verify it will be very important to adoption.

Do you, do you see how we learn, you know, the, the work that you do? How do you see that evolving in, in the world of AI and all the technology that, you know, every day is different? That's gonna be very interesting.

Um, you know, the Udemy platform has a few AI things, mostly in the short term related to around how do you answer like, question and answers. Um, but in terms of like me, like considering content, that could be incredibly helpful. 'cause I could say, you know, say I have a robo robo, what challenges are people having?

Or what have you noticed people asking about? And then it could spit out a list or summarize or show me and kind of guide me. 'cause right now I kind of have to guess what does my YouTube channel want to learn?

Or what should I do live training? And I think these are good things. Mm-Hmm.

But if I can get that like, passively collecting, what is it that would be interesting from the learner's perspective? I think discovery will be a big one. And we're starting to see this in YouTube a bit, where if you type something in it's AI can find the point in the video where that thing is spoken about.

Yep. Yep. And for me as a learner, that would be huge.

'cause I don't wanna listen to a 15 minute video of Rob talking, if the answer is four minutes in and only 10 seconds. That could be the intro. I need the answer to how do I do this?

Right. Another area I could see being very helpful, we saw this a little bit with robo, uh, in Confluence. Like what has changed?

So if I make a Confluence training on May 1st this year, in six months, I might ask a system, give me a list of all of the changes that impacted Confluence since May 1st and show me where they are. And then it doesn't have to make the training for me, but I can go in and evaluate which ones of these are valuable for someone to learn. Mm-Hmm.

And help again, discover and uncover the things that if I had 50 people working for me, maybe I'd get lucky we'd find them all. But instead the, the system just knows the change happened. So keep upbeat, tell me that, and then flip that around for users as well.

Right. It seems also too, um, an opportunity to think about Loom and that being part of Atlassian now is someday, you know, one thing that pops up is, by the way, there's a great video with Rob showing you at 36 seconds in added, do this if you're interested. So kind of build it into the tools we're working in as well as getting special.

Yeah, sorry, that the, the, the expression you just saw was, you know, I, I've used Loom quite a bit at, at different places and it's great for recording bugs and things. And the thought I just had was, if I record a bug, what if loo is smart enough to go, Hey, these gear tickets are already addressing it. Or Hey, Rob's video solves for this, or, you know, anything like that.

It's got that data, it's got that context you're talking about, you know, SS sb whatever the vulnerability and the security that needs to be fixable here. Bob has a video that match that. And there you go.

I think that could be very interesting to see. Especially, you know, especially between groups. So like within one company having that would be awesome.

But if there's some way to share that, again, a critical vulnerability, a system-wide thing that impacts everyone. Move your next business model. Yeah.

So Right. Atlassian subscribe corporately to Rob's, you know, knowledge. You channel first, knowledge channel.

So great. Who knows? That could be a future that Yeah.

Happens with us. Well it's been great talking with you and, uh, really appreciate, actually, there's a lot of people that really appreciate the work that you do. And, uh, thank God I didn't have to figure that out on my own.

But now I can, I've got some new skills as well in the product. I've actually met some folks here who have been on those live trainings and it's amazing, you know, Hey, I've been to two or three of them and I'm like, who wants to listen to me multiple times? Have you already heard me enough?

Haven't you? You really wanna talk to me? Yeah, they do.

They're so personal connection. No, that's been amazing. So it's, and they can say, wow, you're really tall, but I didn't know that you were tall from your, my camera at home looks down a bit.

So if people close. Oh, okay. Wait a minute.

Yeah. All Rob, great chatting with you. Hey, someone who's making everybody's life better and using, uh, the technology as part of our work and part of our lives.

So thanks to Rob and, and others who do the same. So we'll be back with more great conversations. Thanks for being here.

Stay tuned.