Meet our users

James - Teacher, England.

James likes to collaborate with others, uses really basic features. Benefits because he can show other people the service & gets paid for showing off new technology. He also uses Etherpad to organize meet ups and often takes minutes of meetings on Etherpad, stored on a third party service, PrimaryPad. He likes that it's simple, barrier free and easily accessible. James likes the ability to print and embed his pads in his CMS. James resells third party Etherpad services and often reports bugs, usability issues etc. to PrimaryPad which in turn get filed as issues and resolved in Etherpad core. James wouldn't mind if adverts were on the service personally but it would make it impossible for him to promote it inside of a school in the case an innapropriate advert was displayed. James might want theming. tooltips, printable end user guide, user guides...

Note for developers: We need level assignment ie level 1 is tutorial, level 2 is pro, level 3 jedi, 4 [plugin managers], 5 [sysadmins], lesson plans, help videos. Potential gamification of learning to use etherpad (schooling) <-- different user but James might appreciate this.

Anders - Programmer, Freecode, Norway.

Anders likes to collaborate with others on code, he is a power user of Etherpad. Anders has written some plugins and really likes to customize his own Etherpad deployment that he hosts on his own hosting. Anders likes Etherpad because he can control and customize it. He feels like he is part of a comunity and has contributed some source code back to the project. Anders has donated to the Etherpad Foundation in both time and monies, he would not consider clicking on an advert, in fact he runs Adblocker to mitigate the risk of being tracked online.

Wolfgang - Father, Germany.

Wolfgang has 6 kids, they are the bane of his existance but he still loves them. Wolfgang uses Etherpad to organize shopping lists and day to day activities such as organizing meals. Wolfgang has no choice but to use some of the more advanced features, mostly the QR code to transfer his pad straight onto his mobile phone. Wolfgang doesn't care where his data is hosted until something goes wrong and he loses it all. He doesn't want to pay for the service but might consider donating. Wolfgang is likely to click on an advert. Wolfgang has the odd meeting for his part time job as a translator.

Tazir - Protestor, Syria.

Tazir's life is incredibly hostile. His only real access to technology is via his smartphone which he uses to get regular blog/twitter updates about the violance in his area. He uses ushahidi and other crowd sourcing technology to join protests in an attempt to topple the current governing regeim. Tazir doesn't know about Etherpad, he hasn't heard of Etherpad and he is not really aware of what really-real time collaboration services can do for him. Tazir's cousin, Iqram is an Etherpad power user. He is currently using a self hosted Etherpad instance to provide lawyers a space to redraft the Syrian consitution. Iqram is very similar to Anders. Tazir is not. Tazir could find etherpad useful to provide real time status updates in the form of images, text updates and general reporting of activities..

Note for developers: Timestamp needs discussing..

Credit to this idea to Lydia Pintscher who suggested this idea.