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Creating Passionate Users
is a great blog just full of insights. The latest gem is about upgrading users.

Right, that’s you. (If you don’t use Planner, read on; maybe I can
convince you to try it out.)

Planner probably isn’t interesting in itself. _You_ make Planner way
cool. You aren’t just an anonymous person who uses Planner. You are a
bundle of unique ways of doing things and maybe I can come up with
things that fit you better. I want to know how you think. What makes
you tick. How you keep yourself from going crazy even though you have
to keep track of so many things.

(If this is starting to freak you out, don’t worry; you can pretend
I’m just like any other maintainer out there. ;) Ignore that large
BBDB in the corner.)

I don’t think of myself as hacking just Emacs Lisp. I’m hacking your
process. Your way of doing things. _Real_ planner development happens
inside _your_ head when you come up with a nifty idea or something
you’d like improved. Real planner development happens when you take a
look at the way you do things and wonder if you can do them better. My
job is to keep track of all these little things people want to do and
see if someone else has already done it, I can help you do it, or I
can hack it in myself. The Japanese have a word for continuous
improvement—kaizen. Process optimization.

We make a lot of progress in small steps. Take that +tue feature. It’s
not a big thing, but it brings Planner _juuust_ a little closer to the
way a lot of people think. Who knows what kind of hacks it just made
easier? John Sullivan has plans for that feature, mainly for his
template hacks.

The end result is that Planner is this strange, almost bewildering
personal information manager that just keeps growing and growing.
Sure, the quickstart introduces the essential parts of the system, but
there’s much more to it. I’m here to guide you through it. I’d love to
ask questions to help you figure out how you plan. I’d love to suggest
ways of doing things. =) Whether you’re a Franklin/Covey or GTD geek
or you’re using a funky home-brew kind of planning method that changes
all the time (I’m like that!), I’d like to think we can get Planner or
some other Emacs-based PIM to dance to your tune.

(Of course, there’s the danger of spending too much time hacking your
process and too little time actually doing things, but I think we can
keep ourselves from going overboard.)

So there. Sure, the mailing list is usually where software updates are
announced, but think of it as meant for user upgrading.

Keep the suggestions coming. Share your thoughts!

Creating Passionate Users: Upgrade your users, not just your product

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