Thanks to several people for jumping into the “Buzzword Mavens” discussion on the Buzzword forum! There were some great ideas, which will be summarized below. But more important was the reminder that having a place like the public Buzzword forum is a great way to carry on the two-way conversations that we need to help move Buzzword forward.

One clear idea out of the forum discussion was the utility of our publishing our planned features and a timeline for when they will arrive. In the spirit of having a two-way conversation with users, the respondents went further: we should allow the user community to vote for their most desired features. The aggregate response should inform our planning.

Response: Excellent idea. We’ll look into putting something like this together as soon as possible.

We get a lot of suggestions, either by email or on the forum, but the idea emerged in the discussion that we could integrate the suggestion process directly into the Buzzword user interface. That way, users wouldn’t have to jump out of Buzzword to go somewhere else to respond – which might be arduous enough that many people won’t bother.

It was also suggested that we could provide feedback to users when they have made suggestions indicating the status of their idea.

Response: we’re looking forward to integrating some of Adobe’s real-time communication capabilities into Buzzword, as seen in Brio and Cocomo (referenced in last week’s post). Once we integrate this messaging into Buzzword (no time frame available), it should be natural to extend that capability to allow for submission of suggestions and feedback.

There was some discussion on the appropriate place to host user interactions. We currently have a forum, of course, but a few people thought a wiki might be a better way to go.

Response: We’re very interested in working this out. We’re trying out things like a Yahoo Group and a Ning Community to see whether these publicly available approaches would be an improvement on the forum.

Finally, we heard that some form of “super” community member, or a set of designated Buzzword experts would be useful. These community leaders would spend time in the forum (or the designated site) and answer questions and provide feedback. This could ideally be similar to Yahoo Answers.

Response: This is a great idea, and one we’re looking into actively.

Thanks to everyone for your responses. And, the conversation isn’t close – please feel free to continue adding suggestions and feedback on our forum.