Waving Works!
When it first launched, I was a beta user of Google's Wave.
Funny thing, I never really used it! I'm not sure why, but I suspect I just didn't "get" it.
Part of the problem, if indeed "problem" it is, is that a Wave is so many things - IM, email, document, discussion. It's hard to know what your point of entry is.
With later iterations, that has been cleared up somewhat. For one thing, there are now use cases, which helps us understand how people have successfully used a Wave; for another, there are pre-formatted Waves: discussions, meetings, brainstorming, voting. This helps us get a handle on how we might actually put one of these into action.
So let's use a very mundane example: sometime in October my family and I (in different combinations) get into two important discussions: where are we meeting for the various holidays, and what gifts we will jointly get for all our other family members. What this has meant is a ton of emails, a few phone calls, and a lot of confusion.
Here is a nice application for a wave, or a series of connected waves. You can create a single wave, and then address elements (blips, or wavelets... that is to say, individual messages or sub-threads) to selected groups from your entire universe of Wave participants.
So think of your whole family as participants in the Wave. They're all privy to where are we going to meet? Who's bringing what food? Where is everybody staying? And so on. Then, you have subgroups: Buying for mom, buying for Aunt Susie, buying for cousin Matt, and so on. Needless to say, cousin Matt is excluded from the sub-thread discussion of his gift, but everyone else is automatically included and able to chime in.
Now, you address all your ideas and comments to everyone in the thread, you can share images, links, and other pertinent data immediately and with all the Wave participants. You can even schedule a time to be on "live" as a group, so you can have a "right here right now" discussion. And if someone can't make it, they can catch up with the discussion later (Waves are stored and searchable).
You can even send out a voting proposition: "Get Aunt Susie the blue hand-knit sweater." Participants can vote yes, no, maybe.
And there are far more sophisticated uses for Waves, such as getting a far-flung work team together to brainstorm, or even share the writing of a document. There are task lists which can be shared with your team - and remember, you can link a series of Waves together so that a project's shared discussions can all share a common reference point.
All in all, it's time to give Google's Wave another look.
Funny thing, I never really used it! I'm not sure why, but I suspect I just didn't "get" it.
Part of the problem, if indeed "problem" it is, is that a Wave is so many things - IM, email, document, discussion. It's hard to know what your point of entry is.
With later iterations, that has been cleared up somewhat. For one thing, there are now use cases, which helps us understand how people have successfully used a Wave; for another, there are pre-formatted Waves: discussions, meetings, brainstorming, voting. This helps us get a handle on how we might actually put one of these into action.
So let's use a very mundane example: sometime in October my family and I (in different combinations) get into two important discussions: where are we meeting for the various holidays, and what gifts we will jointly get for all our other family members. What this has meant is a ton of emails, a few phone calls, and a lot of confusion.
Here is a nice application for a wave, or a series of connected waves. You can create a single wave, and then address elements (blips, or wavelets... that is to say, individual messages or sub-threads) to selected groups from your entire universe of Wave participants.
So think of your whole family as participants in the Wave. They're all privy to where are we going to meet? Who's bringing what food? Where is everybody staying? And so on. Then, you have subgroups: Buying for mom, buying for Aunt Susie, buying for cousin Matt, and so on. Needless to say, cousin Matt is excluded from the sub-thread discussion of his gift, but everyone else is automatically included and able to chime in.
Now, you address all your ideas and comments to everyone in the thread, you can share images, links, and other pertinent data immediately and with all the Wave participants. You can even schedule a time to be on "live" as a group, so you can have a "right here right now" discussion. And if someone can't make it, they can catch up with the discussion later (Waves are stored and searchable).
You can even send out a voting proposition: "Get Aunt Susie the blue hand-knit sweater." Participants can vote yes, no, maybe.
And there are far more sophisticated uses for Waves, such as getting a far-flung work team together to brainstorm, or even share the writing of a document. There are task lists which can be shared with your team - and remember, you can link a series of Waves together so that a project's shared discussions can all share a common reference point.
All in all, it's time to give Google's Wave another look.
Comments