A Tennessee Girl in Oz: At the wine gala

One of the things I'm involved with at work is our Foundation Council, which helps organize volunteering opportunities and donations to our main charity called Room to Read. The Room to Read organization focuses a lot on educating women and girls in developing countries and Atlassian donates money to it each year. Atlassian also helps it with normal fundraising activities, like buying tables at the wine gala fundraiser this year. I was lucky enough to be invited to one such event, along with a few co-workers.

I didn't really know what to expect out of the evening, but one thing I knew for sure is that I would have to dig out one of my nice dresses that I'd brought over with us. I almost never dress up here, and luckily the one I had in mind still fit, although it was a wee bit tighter than when I wore it five years ago. =\

Tight-fitting dresses aside, it was a really fun and lovely evening. We started out in the "Dom Perignon VIP" area, where we were a good 25 years younger than the rest of the crowd. This earned us a few dubious glances but we held our own!

Then it was on to the dinner and auction part of the night. Unfortunately not a single thing on the auction list was in my budget, so I didn't contribute much to that part of the evening. It was fun to see how the charitable 1% live though!

Our founders are big personal supporters of the charity, and one of them made some remarks during the dinner. It made us all at the table really proud to be Atlassians. =)