Brett Jackson is presenting the first keynote of Open Publish.

Key focus: how people work today, and how they might work in the future.

On knowledge workers … people who work primarily with ideas and information, not their hands (Peter Drucker). An earlier example would be artisans.

There is a current change in knowledge work … from a very defined and definite role of the knowledge worker, through to much more work about concepts and ideas (collaboration, multi-tasking, connectors, emotionally intelligent, mobile, shares information).

New software makers are the vanguard for “knowledge work 2.0” … key reasons:
– open and rapid innovations in the space, across many different types of industries
– the pace and intensity of movement in Silicon Valley (aggressive and fast paced … they have to get beyond and do new things very quickly)
– explosive growth of companies … getting new people, taking people where they are coming from, and where they are going
– Web 2.0 … the ability to use the Web to connect to lots of different people
– agile or scrum development … it pushes people to things in different ways … devolved responsibility
– different types of people who act online … creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, inactives (from Forrester Research)

All of this is creating the Burst Economy, powered by innovation, flat information networks, and discontinuous productivity (from Anne Truitt Zelenka)

Let’s talk about Atlassian …
Started in 2001 with $10K on a credit card. Just gone past 10,000 customers and $37 million in sales. Up to 180 people, with half of those joining in the last year. Customers from many different segments, eg, Fortune 1000, right into small business. See Atlassian.

Atlassian approach: self-service business, low pricing, no sales force. Needed to make the software sell itself, with about 4% of sales into Australia, and half of the rest in the US, and the other half in the UK.

How does Atlassian work on a day-to-day basis:
– stand up meetings in the morning, as standard practice. Talking points: (a) what you got done yesterday, (b) what you are doing today, and (c) what roadblocks you are facing. Keeps people very engaged … very clear contextualization of what everyone is doing.
– using blogs to find answers to questions and issues in real-time, without having meetings. Encouraged cross-organizational interaction.
– everyone is encouraged to have blogs. Lots of people find out about the business this way.
– seek to be very transparent about what they are doing. People don’t feel crammed in.
– very metric driven company. Will try new metrics at the drop of a hat … if they work, they are kept, if not, they are booted out.
– use IceRocket (blog search) and Summize (Twitter search) … daily updates of what’s going on. To pick up what’s going on. Very plugged in, and seek to get back to people if they are having problems. And seek to get back very quickly.
– ongoing surveys, and going back to people who are dissatisfied.
– support is legendary … because Atlassian don’t have a sales staff, need to go above and beyond on the support front.
– user groups … do about 28 of these this year, all around the world. Will fly engineers from Sydney to each of the meetings.
– have a good partner network, doing lots of different things. Eg, plug-ins, on-selling, professional services
– support for open source projects, including using core building blocks from the open source community. People from Atlassian are heavily involved in various open source groups.
– annual competition for developing cool plug-ins, with serious money for the winners.
– the company spends a lot of time and money to create the sense that they are appreciated and valued in their work.
– open the offices to other groups … to learn what they are doing, and so they can learn what Atlassian is doing
– have done a lot with t-shirts. Have done 30 different designs in the past two months.
– there is a Foundation run by Atlassian for helping various charities. People can have 5 days a year to do work for any charity they are interested in.
– “Fedex Day” … regularly during the year, people have 24 hours to come up with something that can be used in software. Have a winner.
– “20% time” … engineers allowed to spend time on their own interests and work. Eg, like 3M and Google.

So far in 2008:
– 26 major releases
– 6 new products
– 2 new offices opened
– doubled the staff base
– … in other words … they have both the wacky ideas married with execution.

Less than 5% total staff turnover in 6 years. People love it and stay around.

So What?
You need to take these transformations to heart, or you will become irrelevant. Sees that companies will push this way.

The Gen Y’s are driving this way … and once they get into management positions, it will be critical.

What can I do tomorrow?
– Experiment software, try things, see what happens, fail quickly
– Plug into different sorts of groups
– Build into other groups
– Try getting different more social
– Become transparent, but don’t fake it.