Jira Day 2022 — the wrap-up of the most cosmic tech conference in Central Europe

Jira Day 2022, the 10th edition of the largest European Atlassian event, was special in many ways. First of all, after 3 years, we could finally meet again in person. It reminded us that online presentations can’t replace talking and having fun together, even during times of remote work. The conference gathered around 350 participants from over 20 countries on 74 lectures. Just like every other year, in addition to exchanging knowledge and inspiring one another, we had one more special mission. The income from the Jira Day 2022 extended welcome kits along with the support from Deviniti’s board will help the Polish foundation named “Save the Bees”. Thanks to Jira Day 2022 participants, in the upcoming season, the foundation will be able to build up to 30 new hives!

How we designed Jira Day 2022 to rise to the challenge of the 10th edition

Jira Day 2022 Design Your Day edition took place at the Norblin Factory in Warsaw on 7-8 September. We were proud to host guests from all over the world: Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, Ukraine, and the USA. Apart from attending the speeches from the business, technological and demo tracks, this year’s participants could consult our 20 sponsors. 

General information

There were 4 kinds of sponsors: Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus with dedicated stands, and Neptune without booths but still available to answer all questions regarding their companies. We know for sure that our guests seized the opportunity to participate in these discussions. Whilst walking through the sponsors’ section, it was possible to overhear multiple tech talks and product-related questions. However, the vibe that prevailed during the whole event was easy-going and casual. IT people proved again that they’re not stand-offish but quite the opposite. The Jira Day 2022 participants created an ambiance that made the whole event seem like it was just a friends’ meeting in a cool place. Thanks to our Satellite Partner, JustJoinIT, and their report from the event (article in Polish), we can proudly say that our guests share this positive impression. 

The magic of Norblin Factory 

It’s not possible to talk about Jira Day 2022 without saying more about the venue. Because of its history, Norblin Factory wasn’t the easiest place to organize an event, nevertheless, we now admit it was worth it. The building itself is a 2-hectare modern space filled with antique objects. The area, which has been a neglected pearl of post-industrial architecture for years, is now a new part of the city with offices, shops, restaurants, cafes, an eco-bazaar, a boutique cinema, and an open-air museum. We’ve heard many positive comments about the place. The participants appreciated its unique and informal atmosphere. It was nothing like the big, overwhelming halls where conferences are usually organized. We wanted people to have fun instead of making them feel like they were at work. Our team is delighted to have succeeded in that matter. 

jira day 2022 norblin factory

The entire space of possibilities

The IT world evolves quickly. Each year, whilst organizing Jira Day, we have aimed to address the latest challenges and opportunities. Despite the versatility of Atlassian products, we acknowledge that customers use other tools as well in 2022. Even Atlassian admits that there’s no one DevOps toolchain that works for all teams. To maximally optimize work, it’s smart to integrate Jira with extra solutions. This is why, instead of making it all about Atlassian, during Jira Day 2022, we highlighted Jira-related use cases of GitLab, monday.com, Freshworks, or Mendix. We’ve been leveraging the power of various software partnerships for a good couple of years now. This year, we’ve decided to raise their topic also during Jira Day. It only confirmed how opening to new options can positively influence everyday tasks in a wide range of industries. 

The gamification app – giving feedback made fun!

We know how important feedback is to grow better. Luckily, paper questionnaires went away for good, so we had to get our participants’ ideas by other means. This is where we came up with a new plan. We provided the Jira Day 2022 guests with a mobile app powered by Grywit. The app was a perfect guide through the event. It contained the agenda and all the necessary information. Also, there was gamification! Users got points for answering questions in a special quiz about IT, Warsaw, and Norblin Factory and for sharing their opinion regarding the speeches. Additionally, the Challenges tab helped everyone take care of their physical well-being. It included tasks such as a short walk or squats which were equally scored.

In the end, thirty participants with the biggest number of points won valuable prizes. The winner of the whole contest was Gonchik Tsymzhitov. The top four got consulting sessions on business- or tech-related topics and vouchers for Deviniti apps. People that took from fifth to thirtieth place received vouchers as well. Once again, congratulations to the gamification champions!

What were the main topics of the Jira Day 2022 lectures? 

This year’s Jira Day agenda was filled with practical information. After the welcome speech from Deviniti’s CEO, Piotr Dorosz, and Deviniti’s Head of Atlassian Services, Katarzyna Dorosz-Żurkowska, the participants proceed to get to the conference rooms. We were impressed by the level of all presentations and also by the audience’s active interest. The auditoriums were full nearly all the time. Our speakers got multiple questions after their lectures, and the following debates were endless.

The Jira Day 2022 business stream

The business stream focused on answering why we need changes in 2022 regarding processes and tools. The series of lectures started strong with a keynote Unlocking the full benefits of Agile using DevOps by Dr Arne Weiner (BCG Platinion). From the very beginning, Arne brought our attention to the importance of digital transformation nowadays, calling it no less than an industrial revolution. He also raised the subject of Cloud tech and its indispensability in modern Agile. 90% of managers say that agility is critical to the execution of a strategy. The presentation showed us how the development of new technology requires proactive business management to avoid suppression. It certainly left the audience with numerous valuable conclusions and gave context for the next speeches. The following topics also concerned Agile, effective management, ITSM, and integrations.

Jira Day 2022 presentation by Dr Arne Weiner
Source: presentation by Dr Arne Weiner, Jira Day 2022

Platform adoption and the future of CX

Digital transformation and how it is becoming more and more challenging was also brought up by Michał Kułakowski (GitLab). In his presentation about the evolution of DevOps, he highlighted that 92% of companies say their current business model will not remain viable if they digitize at the current pace. As DevOps matures, developers have more tools to work with per project. This is why we all recommend integrating Jira with other tools. What’s more, modern microservice architectures significantly increase the number of projects. Michał believes that the consolidation of DevOps onto platforms is the solution, which is confirmed by Gartner data. It predicts that by 2024, 60% of organizations will have switched from multiple point solutions to value stream delivery platforms in order to streamline application delivery, up from 20% in 2021.

platform adoption, presentation by Michał Kułakowski, Jira Day 2022
Source: presentation by Michał Kułakowski, Jira Day 2022

Another important topic was well-developed by Johanna Mörsky (Freshworks) who talked about the future of CX. Johanna made us think about how consumers have embraced the convenience of engaging online while still craving the empathy of personal interactions. For businesses, this reinforces the need for inventing a strategy that speaks to the digital-first consumer. During her lecture, the speaker pointed out that whilst leveraging modern tech platforms, we should aim to cut repetitive tasks, slash workloads, and ensure collaboration. In 2022, AI can and should support us in our operations mostly by automating the right kind of queries and simplifying the work of agents. 

Accessibility empowers innovation

While summarizing the business track, we should underline the second day’s keynote from Aga Walczak-Karbowska and Maria Sobińska (Atlassian). The speakers talked about how Atlassian wants to open the job market to a new group of employees with the power of accessibility. Listening about how accessibility builds innovation was inspiring and truly insightful. In 2022, it’s crucial to build solutions that work for everyone, especially for people with disabilities. In order to grow, companies should make sure their products are useful for the whole market. Great examples of content accessibility are voice readers, adaptive keyboards, and voice recognition. In the case of Atlassian, the company has prepared the roadmap for making its solutions more inclusive.

atlassian accessibilty roadmap, presentation by Agnieszka Walczak-Karbowska and Maria Sobińska, Jira Day 2022
Source: presentation by Agnieszka Walczak-Karbowska & Maria SobiÅ„ska, Jira Day 2022

During this year’s Jira Day edition, we got to be a part of the first panel discussion in the event’s history. It was about how digital transformation can boost business agility and team performance. The talk revolved around the initiatives that businesses can take up to become future-proof. When facing many challenges of the modern world, it’s hard to build or increase competitiveness in the market without an open work culture and suitable technology to support it. Our speakers: Piotr Dorosz (Deviniti), Dr Arne Weiner (BCG Platinion), Agnieszka Walczak-Karbowska (Atlassian), Ronald Oreel (Mendix), moderated by Radosław Cichocki (Deviniti), discussed their practices regarding both the “hard” and “soft” sides of this issue. 

jira day 2022 panel discussion

Last but not least, on the second day, Marcin Łuczyn (Deviniti) introduced the Supernova Awards. He explained that we established an algorithm that indicates new Atlassian Marketplace apps created in 2021 in 8 categories. If you’d like to know more about the topic, feel free to download the full ranking. 

Discover Supernova Awards by Deviniti

See the ranking of the best Atlassian Marketplace apps to be up to date with the app development market and customer demand!

The Jira Day 2022 technical track

The technical stream was about what modern companies are doing right now to implement the necessary changes. The topics that were often brought up concentrated on the Cloud, administration, team performance, and tools. However, if we were to choose the most often mentioned questions, they certainly would focus on Atlassian migrations and the Forge platform. 

Cloud vs Data Center

During their presentation, Beata Karkoszka (Link4) and Katarzyna Olchawa (mBank) compared Cloud and DC hostings. First, they went through the main differences, including infrastructure, test environments, upgrades, responsibility, and backup recovery. The speakers also looked closely at the functionalities, limits, performance, security and compliance, costs, and use cases of all hostings. The migration topic was developed by Bogusław Osuch (Deviniti) as well. Bogusław focused on the pros and cons of migration to the Cloud which is considered the future of IT businesses. Bogusław answered all the bothering questions such as when to consider staying in Data Center, the main reasons to migrate to Cloud, and the other way around. He also talked about how Deviniti approaches the topic and shared some tips and tricks for maximally efficient migration. 

cloud vs data center differences, presentation by Bogusław Osuch, Jira Day 2022
Source: presentation by BogusÅ‚aw Osuch, Jira Day 2022

Atlassian frameworks

Victor Debone (Atlassian) introduced us to the new Atlassian framework dedicated to Atlassian apps development – Forge. Victor told us all about how the platform works and how to build the frontend in it. The audience was especially interested in the UI modifications module which enables Forge apps to control how selected Jira fields behave on the global Create Issue dialog. Gökçe Gürsel(Deviniti) continued the Jira Cloud development platforms topic in her speech. She compared Forge, Connect, and external apps (such as Script Runner) and focused on which one to choose for integration. Together, we went through all the deciding factors. The points included questions like maintenance requirements, flexibility (e.g. the way of structuring data, custom UI), and finally, the estimated need for storage. 

forge platform, presentation by Victor Debone, Jira Day 2022
Source: presentation by Victor Debone, Jira Day 2022

The Jira Day 2022 demo stream

Finally, on the big cinema screen, we could see product and solution demos. The visual presentations explained how we should approach the changes brought about by 2022. During the demo sessions, our own Jarosław Solecki (Deviniti) announced the release of Dynamic Forms for Jira Cloud. We were proud to talk about that as the app is one of our best-selling products. From now on, it’s available for all three hostings. Later on, Klaudia Schön and Aleksandra Bosacka (Deviniti) introduced us to ways to improve the look and feel of the Customer Portal with Theme Extension for JSM. Theme Extension, another top Deviniti product, has also just been announced as available on Cloud, so feel free welcome to check it out! 

One of the most interesting lectures of the demo stream concerned Mendix, a low-code platform that has partnered with Deviniti this year. According to Gartner, in 2024, low-code/no-code technology will support up to 65% of activities related to application developmentMateusz Olczak (Deviniti) and Benjamin Sanger-Davies (Mendix), during their presentation, showed us why Mendix appears to be a great choice to support the exchange of data between Jira and SAP. They backed up their thesis with two comprehensive use cases: timesheet merging and field agent support. 

mendix sap technology, presentation by Mateusz Olczak and Benjamin Sanger-Davies, Jira Day 2022
Source: presentation by Mateusz Olczak and Benjamin Sanger-Davies, Jira Day 2022

The presentation that also stood out was Phill Fox‘s (Adaptavist) Jira Instance Tips and Tricks. Phill guided us through the new Microscope app which enables admins to perform audits in Jira. The tool allows to quickly spot post functions left in the workflow after uninstalling apps and run a cleaning script. Further in the speech, we’ve learned how to integrate Microscope with ScriptRunner and execute more advanced activities. 

And finally: a few words about the Afterparty – this was how IT does networking! 

At the end of the first day, we all gathered in Norblin Factory once again but this time without our notebooks and laptops. Everybody came all dressed up to talk, laugh, eat, dance, and party. From the very beginning, the dance floor was full. This was our chance to meet each other on neutral ground, and it turned out fantastic. It was like we had known each other for years and then we finally got to catch up. Of course, we won’t share any more details as what happened at the party, stays at the party. We can only say that when the place was closing at 1:00 A.M., there was still quite a crowd! 

At this point, we would like to thank again all our sponsors: Atlassianmonday.comGitLabMendixOld Street SolutionsTempoMeta-InfeazyBIAdaptavistAppfirere:solutionDecadisYasoonK15tAlphaServeAtlas MergeCommunardoFreshworksKantega SSO, and Amoeboids Technology

Jira Day 2022 wouldn’t be so amazing without you, guys! We are looking forward to working with you again soon. And now, feel free to enjoy Jira Day 2022 once again by taking a look at the video below: 

Katarzyna Kornaga

Katarzyna is a Content Specialist, responsible for writing on the Deviniti blog. As an SEO enthusiast, most of all she values helpful, unique content where users can find answers to their questions. When not writing, you can find her at the theatre, at home with a good non-fiction book, or passing on city streets on her bike.

More from this author