In general, as most people know, Google builds some pretty good apps, and they’re mostly built with collaboration and ease-of-use in mind. As someone whose job involves figuring out how to distribute and manage targeted information and communication efficiently, I really appreciate their work. Sadly, most of the time I can’t use it with my target population, but what they do raises the bar for the applications I do work with and sometimes the features they introduce at Google make it to the apps I use.
One of their latest efforts is Google Wave. This thing seems to be a virtual collaboration mecca. There’s a real blurring of the line between synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous communication. It’s email, discussion boards, chat, Twitter, and Instant Messaging all mushed together in one easy package. If you’re looking to move away from email (and IMO, you should), this is the place to go. It’s very hard to follow an email conversation, for example – especially if you’re not in on the discussion from the start. It’s just impossible in IMs and chats. The playback feature in Wave takes care of that problem nicely. The ability to mix private and public conversations without cheating either of them is perfect. Everything stays in context and yet only the intended people see what you want them to see. Those are just the tip of the iceberg in what this can do.
Take a look at the abridged version of the demo Google gave. The original demo is 80 minutes long… I don’t have that kind of time at the moment, so this 10 minute version is perfect.
That goes by pretty fast, doesn’t it. I imagine the 80 minute version would be slightly easier to follow, but at 1/8th of the time commitment I’m satisfied with what I get here.
So what do you think? For a distributed group of people working on a project, this seems like the perfect answer to me. Let’s say you have a flowchart you’re creating for a new process. You could have one person create it an circulate it in email for comments and then make changes and circulate it again. Or you could use Google Docs and all make changes directly in the document in real-time. Or you could use Google Wave and edit and discuss the changes in context, publicly or privately, and have a history to refer back to, and be able to pull new people in at any time without worrying about how they’ll get up to speed.
How about for a distance training curriculum, where everyone needs to review and discuss a topic every month? Or as a support channel that becomes its own knowledge management system, or feeds into a separate one?
It’s full of possibility.
That said, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all. If you need a bit more control over your environment – prescribing a learning path for someone rather than letting them find their own path, for example – this may not do what you need. It also looks like it could overwhelm some users with its rich features – this would take more training to use than email, for some people. But if you work (or play) in a collaborative environment with even moderately computer literate people, you could probably make great use of this Wave.
