the Art of Work
Brett Jackson

a little bit
about me

Knowledge
workers

Knowledge
workers

A Knowledge Worker...
works primarily with information or ...
develops and uses knowledge in the
workplace.
Peter Drucker, Landmarks of Tomorrow, 1959

But actually they have
been around much
longer than that.

Old

New

New software makers are the
vanguard for KW 2.0

why?

Open and rapid
innovations

Silicon Valley

explosive growth

Agile or Scrum
development

all of the above
intersecting with
and driven by
Gen Y capabilities
and sensibilities

18 to 26
year olds

it’s creating what
some call...

The Burst Economy
powered by:
•innovation
•flat information networks
•discontinuous productivity
Anne Truitt Zelenka
Web Worker Daily

Enterprise software company
Started in 2001 with 10k
Organically grown - no VC
Australia’s Fastest Growing
(2002-2007)

10,000 9,487
8,000 7,468
6,000
4,340
4,000
2,219
2,000
1,039
319
18
0
Jun 02 June 03 June 04 Jun 05 Jun 06 Jun 07 Dec 07
Customers

40
32
USD 24
Mil
16
8
0
Jun 02 Jun 03 Jun 04 Jun 05 Jun 06 Jun 07 Jun 08
Sales

Who Are They?
10,000+ customers in 100 countries
across Fortune 1000, public enterprise and technology sectors
Technology & Finance & Banking Science & Telecom & Corporate &
Biotech Engineering Networking Government
Cisco Citigroup NASA Vodafone US Supreme
Court
JP Morgan Boeing Nokia
Oracle
GE
Deutsche Bank CERN AT&T
Novell
BP
BNP Paribas Raytheon Bell Canada
Siemens
Sony
CIBC Northrop Verizon
Fujitsu
Grumman 3M
Merrill Lynch KPN
Borland
European Space BMW
HSBC Newbury
Pfizer
Agency Networks BMG
World Bank
Imclone Stanford Linear Booz Allen
Roche Accelerator Hamilton
Accenture
Australia: Telstra, Macquarie Bank, The Reserve Bank, Cochlear, Caterpillar…

2006 Aussie EoY

Typical Enterprise
Software
High price, high touch sale
Aggressive discounting
High cost / lead
Expensive sales people
~40% prof services
revenue

Atlassian Model
‘Self service’ software
Straight line business!
$1-5k / server
No professional services
Reasonable price, no discount
Legendary service Extreme openness

Model Evolution
No $ for sales team?
Product must:
sell itself, be low price
sell 1000’s of copies
sell globally

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E?+1:+-57+B56-*?/=5.:7-*+/*6+-657:-1B:+?
!\"#$%&
)*+,-./0*1,23-,/-4566789:;
<596=->9:8-8+1?:-1,=-4161,.+;
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<+-:8+-.81,D+-2/5-7++C;

how do
Atlassian
work?

1. Transparency &
Collaboration

Stand Up Meetings

EAC

Blogs

JAC
SAC
CAC
WAC

2. Inputs

Metrics

social
web

surveys

3. Customers and
Eco-systems

Legendary Support
\"Thank you, this was the best outcome of
any ticket for any company I have ever
been involved with,
May you have happiness and the causes
of happiness.\"
NEIL KELLEY

open
source

Codegeist

4. Mojo

Events

opening up the ofice

T-shirts
1000s of shirts
shipped ... by hand!
Fulfilment now
outsourced - scale
Make them
wearable!

The Foundation

The Foundation

5. Experiments

We eat our
own dog food

Fedex Day
& 20% time

This year
26 major releases
6 new products
2 new ofices opened
Doubled sta

less than 5% total
sta turnover
in 6 years

So Brett,
why should I care
about all this?

And as more
Gen Y’s move into
management....

okay! I care,
so what should
I be doing?

Experiment!

small failures
help you
learn,

small failures
help you
learn,
so fail
earlier &
more often

Plug into the mob

Break down
some walls

Build Eco-systems

get social

Try to
be more
Transparent

Try to
be more
Transparent
But don’t
fake it

Credits
I am Knowledge Worker 2.0
http://www.slideshare.net/trib/i-am-knowledge-
worker-20
Stephen Collins
Acidlabs Canberra

Thanks!!
friendfeed
http://friendfeed.com/rooms/aow
bj@babalouie.net