Who Are You? Meet Jobin, the Newest Go2Grouper!

We’re looking to bring a bit more of Go2Group to you, and that means introducing some of our Go2Groupers.

The first in this series is a chat with Jobin Kuruvilla, Go2Group’s newest Java / Atlassian expert. Jobin has jumped right in, so this chat was conducted via Google Docs.

Jobin and I will be in the same room at AtlasCamp, so we’ll do a nice recording of our chat and post it as a follow up.

Until then, enjoy!

Wil: Firstly, welcome to Go2Group!
Jobin: Thank you very much! In fact, it has been a very warm welcome I think we have a great team here and everyone has been very supportive and helpful adopting me into a comfort zone.

W: Tell us a little about your role here with Go2Group.
J: I am here working as an Atlassian consultant. Primarily as a JIRA consultant with experience in most other Atlassian products. I engage with customers directly and help them in adopting the Atlassian product suite starting from installation to continued usage. I also work on plugins and other customizations both for internal projects and for customers.

A major product that I work with internally is the JaM Plugin. Ever heard of that? If not, don’t forget to have a look!

W: I hear you are doing something book-related. What’s that all about?
J: Well, it was supposed to be a secret, until it is published! But I don’t mind making it public now because there is no better place to do it I used to write some JIRA tutorials in my personal website (www.j-tricks.com) and some people really thought it helped them a lot.

Then, one fine day, someone from PackT approached me to ask if I can take it to the next level – a BOOK! I couldn’t have rejected that offer. All credit goes to the PackT team and the book is now due in November.

What’s more, you can pre-order your copies right away at the PackT Hub site.

W: What’s the one piece of technology you can’t live without?
J: JAVA. Believe me, I didn’t study JAVA in my college. It was just my passion for the language that I studied it myself and I even had to write SCJP (Sun Certification) to convince my manager! I have come across a lot of technologies over the years but Core JAVA is something that I love a lot. And fortunately, JIRA and other Atlassian products are JAVA based. Woohoo!!

If there is something else I like, it is the world of integration. I like learning about new APIs, cracking the integration with COTS products, etc. This comes to my aid when I integrate Atlassian products with other COTS products. An example? Look no further than JaM!

W: How long have you been working with Atlassian products?
J: Maybe 4-5 years now. I used to use JIRA and Confluence even before that but I really started playing with them when I was working with British Telecom. We had to create a requirements gathering system and the flexibility of JIRA convinced us to convert to JIRA from an issue tracking system to a requirements management system.

We ended up customizing JIRA a lot, with loads of plugins and even modifying the user interface. The experience was really good, and we ended up using almost all the other Atlassian products.

It was just the beginning of my love affair with Atlassian products!