About Me
The full story — or at least, most of it.
I'm Bryan Guffey, a 43-year-old developer, performer, and general equity advocate based in California. I live with my partner and our nine dogs — yes, nine — and I've built a career around an unlikely combination of passions.
Suit and Tie
By trade, I lead a team of Atlassian administrators in the public sector, driving culture, workflow, and development processes across some of the largest enterprises. I'm best known in the Atlassian community as "The Atlassian Doctor." I specialize in helping people learn how to use technology to make work better, whether it's Jira, Confluence, Office 365, git, GitHub, Bitbucket, Forge, or AI. I've been in tech for 16 years now - just a couple years shorter than I've managed Atlassian tools (story for another time).
Three times a week, I host The Atlassian Clinic — a live stream where anyone can drop in with their Atlassian questions, queries, and quandaries. No slides, no predetermined agenda. Just real people helping real people solve real problems and create new tools. Monday is Marketplace Mondays, where we talk about the Atlassian Marketplace and review apps. Wednesday is the Main Clinic, where it's a free-for-all on any Atlassian-or-adjacent question you can think of, and Friday is Forge Fridays, where I help people learn to code, diving into Forge challenges together.
My philosophy is simple: help people spend less time working and more time enjoying their lives. Better tools, better processes, better culture — they all add up to more time for the things that actually matter.
Make Your Own Kinda Music
Before (and alongside) tech, there was theatre. I'm an Equity Actor with a musical theatre degree from Kent State University. The stage taught me about presence, timing, and the power of bringing people together — skills that translate surprisingly well to teaching, building community, and leading others.
These days, my performing life centers on a cappella. I'm deeply involved in a cappella education, coaching award-winning groups and serving on the board of Broadway Goes A Cappella. There's something magical about voices creating harmony without instruments — it requires trust, listening, and a willingness to support each other. Sound familiar?
Without all of us, it's none of us.
As a fat, disabled, queer, neurodivergent Black person, I face systemic and interpersonal challenges and oppression every day. I try to find a place each day where I can make the world better for everyone. I co-host several podcasts Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back, a podcast where we push back against diet culture and reclaim space for fat voices. This work is personal, and it's political, and it matters.
More broadly, I'm passionate about collaboration and helping organizations of all types create cultures where participant thriving is the default - where people enjoy what they do and they;'re not exhausted by the experience. I believe we do this by understand how people really work, what work is in different contexts, and what it really means to people. If we don't meet the needs people expect to get from each work context, we can't expect people to do good things sustainably and for the long-terma, dn we can't expect our organizations to thrive.
Current Projects
Right now, I'm particularly excited about Kindling, a regenerative feed filter for Bluesky that removes spite and schadenfreude while preserving legitimate critique. It's part of my broader work in the AT Protocol space, which includes building the first Astro implementation for the standard.site specification and developing tone indicator labelers.
I also host Work Chat, a podcast about — you guessed it — work. And I'm always tinkering with something new, whether it's emergency alert platforms, automated documentation systems, or whatever catches my curiosity next.
Let's Connect
If any of this resonates — or if you just want to talk Forge, a cappella, or fat liberation — I'd love to hear from you. You can find me on Bluesky, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Or just drop me a line.
Doing things alone can be hard. But doing them together? That's where all the good shit happens. :-p