EtherPad

Many of my friends ask me, "How do you all figure out which features to build first at Etherpad?"

It is easy to imagine an idea lab where mad computer scientists sit around in rooms with white boards filled with multi-color graffiti art of an algorithmic nature and that inspiration comes after hours of solo contemplation and concentration.

The reality is that we tend to build collaboratively and iteratively. We prioritize features by following a few simple rules.

1. As Keith Ferrazzi once said, "Listen to your customers with big ears." We spend a lot of time talking with Etherpad users all over the globe, most often using Etherpad or a combination of Etherpad and WebEx/Skype/or an IPhone.
2. We ask a lot of questions about how users are using Etherpad to solve their problems, to exchange ideas across their companies, agencies, schools or other organizations, to respond to customers faster, to generate new ideas, to run meetings more efficiently, to get everyone to contribute during conference calls, and to give and receive feedback faster and better.
3. The whole Etherpad team then reads notes from the discussions we have and the written feedback we get from our users at feedback@etherpad.com. We find it far easier to discern patterns when there is a written record. We all add our thoughts or ideas to an Etherpad Features page. We choose to Listen With Big Ears to the needs of our customers and then keep asking questions until we really understand the essence of the challenges they are currently facing. Then we build features to solve those challenges.
4. We use Etherpad every day. When you use your own product all the time, you discover the little features which would make for big improvements.
5. We talk with product visionaries. We have an extensive network of colleagues who have built world-class software products—guys like Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail), Dustin Moskovitz (Founder of Facebook), David Jeske (engineering manager of eleven products at Google), Paul Graham (founder of ViaWeb and YCombinator), Barney Pell (Founder of Powerset), and Mitch Kapor (Founder of Lotus and Mozilla Foundation) who we meet with on a regular basis and who provide us with really useful advice and concrete feature suggestions.
6. Talk to mom and dad. We want to build powerful collaboration products which are deadly simple to use. Software should not require huge manuals and we do not like seeing mom spending tons of time scrolling through help menus. So we use the Parent Test. If our parents cannot use a new feature, then we go back to the drawing board until they can.
7. We talk with IT managers. IT managers have used just about every piece of software under the sun and they have a tremendous amount of knowledge about what is needed within their organizations. These discussions have led to new insights for both the Private Network Edition and the public version of Etherpad.

If you wish to become actively involved, please feel free to drop us a line at <feedback@e***rp*d.com> or invite us to your pad via an Etherpad URL. We would love to listen!

—Daniel