CLOSED: AMA with Michael Pryor, Head of Trello, on November 6

[Devon Henderson]

Oooh, I'm excited for this! AMAs were always super fun in the Trello Slack community, so I'm glad they're continuing!

One MASSIVE improvement I have seen from the Trello/Atlassian purchase is in the non-profit area. After Atlassian bought Trello, the non-profit discount went from, IIRC, 30% to 70% off. 70% off!!! That's HUGE! 

Either as a result of this, or just in parallel with other changes, I have seen Trello become an almost household name in my industry (public libraries). It seems like I can't attend a single conference without a conversation popping up about how other libraries are using Trello. And I think that's pretty amazing. So I guess my question is:

Was helping non-profits an intentional focus for Trello as a product? Are you seeing an increase in non-profit use with the product?

We are doing mandatory technology training for our library staff, and requiring Trello training for every employee. It's been very educational for us in many ways (oh boy, has it ever), but I've honestly been shocked at how well our staff are taking to it. I thought for sure we'd run into issues with some of our staff who maybe aren't the strongest on computers—but nope! My opinion is that Trello's visual nature and inherent playfulness help it succeed where other products fail. Trello's training is certainly going better than G Suite's, ha! My question for you:

What are the features of Trello that you really think help it stand out against the plethora of other productivity software in the marketplace? What does Trello, as a product, focus on so it can separate itself from its competition? What is its strongest feature (broad or specific), in your opinion?

And one last question without a preamble:

What is Trello's current hurdle to overcome? What overall problem are you trying to solve with Trello right now? How is it going?

[Michael Pryor]

I think most people don’t know about the non profit discount which is not intentional.  So relatedly, maybe our biggest hurdle (for non profits at least) is to let them know. Can you help?

I think the fact that Trello is just cards on a board which is the same thing as you might do in real life makes it so accessible to people and honestly I think that attention to the physical and visible nature of what we are doing is why we win in the market we are going after.

[Katrin Anger]

I have been using Butler for Trello long before it was acquired by Trello. Whilst I do see and appreciate the steps that were taken to integrate it better into Trello, from the user's perspective I see a massive decline in capabilities of this tool. - Can you share with us your vision how you see Butler to develop in the months to come?

Feature-wise, can we expect the new tool to be as good as the old tool? And if so, what's the time horizon you see for this? - Thank you!

[Michael Pryor]

As far as I know, we haven’t changed any of the features in Butler - in fact under the hood it’s still the same Power-Up it’s always been.  Maybe some things moved around and aren’t in the same place anymore?

[Katrin Anger]

Actually, there are lots actions and command sequences that Butler for Trello (1.0) had under its hood, but which the current tool (3.0) doesn't provide.

But yeah, if you are not even aware of that, there won't be any positive developments in this matter, probably. - Unfortunately.

[Gilles Prevotal]

Who should be aware then ? Oscar himself ? Cannot imagine this old treasure had been wiped out by the maelstrom of Atlassian money making !!!

[BiancaE]

What is your favorite power-up? (and why?)

[Michael Pryor]

Package Tracker - Our developer Matt Cowan that built it just did it to scratch his own itch - it wasn’t something we set out to build on a roadmap and honestly it’s my favorite Power-Up because it’s so surprisingly valuable to the people that use it.  I would never have thought beforehand to build something like this and it just goes to show that creating a platform for people to build on can allow you to discover really interesting things about your product.

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

That's a great Pups story! Love it.

[Mr Brett West]

Brilliant to see integration with the users - What better way to advance what is simply brilliant already
We use Trello to run business and scheduling daily diary to replace paper job cards. Even those initially resistant, have commented of how well it works. 

What could assist our system? 

Technicians each have their own list of jobcards on a Day page. We currently have 5 day pages & 13 lists in each.

Please offer an axis on Left side of board that allows time, then allow cards to be stretched or shortened to fit in that time bracket. Ideally keeping cards there as other earlier cards are completed and removed from each technicians list. Time could be 7am to 5pm and it would quickly be visible where gaps exist or jobs will extend over time

Another feature would be time tracking from the phones, as techs use theirs to manage their day. To be able to clock on and off a job card and or tasks in the card directly from the phones would be superb

B

[Michael Pryor]

Great feature requests.  Thanks for explaining!

[orlie]

Hey Michael,

Two simple but really life-changing (to me) questions from me!

1. What's your favorite Taco?
2. Do you even use Jira?
   1. Where/when do you use it?
   2. And if you do...Do you ever try to move everyone off Jira boards over to Trello? 

Cheers!

[Michael Pryor]

Paw over face Taco.  It’s in the Taco sticker pack.

Yes, we use it for OKR tracking and also a lot of our teams use it for software development.  To be honest, I think at scale Jira is a much better tool for software development and we see teams migrate from Trello to Jira at predictable inflection points (this coming year we will make that even easier).  I think people should use the right tool for the right job and while the line between Jira/Trello isn’t super clear (there’s a lot of gray area for software teams) I do think that Trello is extremely accessible to a very wide audience.  It might not be as simple as Jira is for software teams and Trello is for business teams, (most Atlassians use both for example), I do want people to use whatever works for them. Building features exclusively for software developers in Trello is not high on our priority list though.

[orlie]

Thank you for your answers!

[steven4320555]

Two related questions about digital and physical Trello board:

Q1. Is it feasible (any plan?) to have automatically printed physical Trello Board/card? Like a digital twin for Trello.

I just tried to digitise a post-it note into Trello, and it was like magic (Ref: twitter link #Step2Trello). But it is one way-> from physical to digital.  Being able to automatically digitise physical cards into trello board- is amazing, I would love to try more.

My experience/struggle of using digital tools is: compared with physical board, it can be too flexible and endless.

Q2: Any plan to constrain the users,eg. in terms how many list/cards can be created in a board? 

Many thanks

Steven

[Michael Pryor]

We did a shipit and our head of engineering built a really cool Trello Board print interface so boards would print out - but he hasn't shipped it yet even though I keep bothering him to do so.  Maybe this will be the tipping point :)

No current plans to constrain the number of lists/cards that can be created in a board. (There is a technical limit to stop bots/programs from creating cards/lists - I think it might be 4000 cards).

[steven4320555]

Did you use Trello to organise the AMA?

If yes, how did you do it?

Anything can be shared?

[Michael Pryor]

Erica? Care to answer? I think we just used a document to get some answers written down beforehand - but maybe there were logistics with the setup (I do know cards were created in other boards like Marketing to make sure we marketed it etc).

[Erica Moss]

@steven4320555 Hey, Steven! I ended up using a Confluence page to track different tactics and stakeholders, and like Michael said, we used cards on various boards to ensure we were promoting it properly.

[steven4320555]

Thanks for the answer. I am curious to try Confluence.

[juan_diaz]

Hello, 
First of all, I am really motivated for what Trello is doing and it's evolution. 
All the Trello team and community are doing a great job. 

I have 2 small questions. 

1) As community leaders, can we have in some future the option to become also business developers of Trello? 

2) ¿Would you be interested to be a VIP speaker at an expo/convention for e-commerce and innovation in WTC Mexico City March 2020? 

3) What was the biggest challenge you encounter when creating Trello?

[Michael Pryor]

You might be looking for this: https://www.atlassian.com/partners/join

I’m honored to be invited, but have promised my family I’d keep my travel to a minimum (after a whirlwind of travel in previous years).

Biggest challenge I just answered in one of the other questions. 

Thanks Juan!

[European Educational Services]

Eagerly waiting for it