A couple of days ago we had our second “Open Office Friday” where we invited our users to join us in our office for drinks, pizza and foosball. More importantly, however, we had the chance to talk face-to-face with our power users about how they use Mendeley and what features they would like to see added or improved.

As this Open Office Friday provided us with valuable feedback that will guide our future development decisions, and because it was a whole lot of fun, we said “Hey, why don’t we do this Open Office thing more often?”

And therefore we’re thrilled to announce that from now on we are going to have Open Office Friday more often! The next one is going to be at the end of June / beginning of July, more info following soon.

Here’s what some of our guests were saying:

The Mendeley-ers have a rare vibe that mixes the sharp thinking of a leading tech start-up with “young researcher out to change the world” enthusiasm. There was no shortage of BEvERages, pizza and friendly faces keen to talk about the trials and tribulations of research. It was also great as place to bounce around ideas with lots of cross-discipline discussion that is hard to find elsewhere.

I would heartily recommend the experience to anyone who needs to kick open their PhD bubble a bit or who wants to meet the folks who making world-leading steps into cracking Vannevar Bush’s half-century-old challenge [of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge].

— Nathan Eng, Engineering Design PhD student, University of Cambridge

I enjoyed the open evening.  It was good to learn a bit more about the company and its progress, to talk with people who are developing the next wave of Mendeley features, and to meet other users of the software.

— Frank Norman, Head of Library Services, MRC National Institute for Medical Research

It was great to meet the Mendeley team at the last Open Office Friday. If I am going to use a piece of software every day, it seems obvious to want to discuss my requirements with the people behind it; yet this relationship with users is very rare for a software company. Meeting the developers gave me great confidence in the Mendeley software, and I look forward to the exciting developments they have planned for the future.

— Peter Zeidman, Neuroscience MSc Student, University College London

I found their team to be young, vibrant, receptive and very friendly. They freely discussed all kinds of future updates and listened to all the participants’ concerns and feature requests. It is rare to find a company that keeps such an open relationship with its users. I was really pleased where Mendeley is going. Before this I had a few reservations but now I can whole-heartedly recommend Mendeley over any other bibliography/PDF paper storage/reference manager tool. Way to go Team Mendeley!

— Tauseef Khan, PhD Student, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine