Google shows Sydney Wave User Group how it's done #gwsug
Saturday, March 6
For those unfamiliar with Google Wave, it is essentially "an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more," to quote Google. It is currently in a "preview" release and being trialled by inviation only.
For all the misinformation and confusion running around the inter-waves at the moment about what Wave will become or not be, it was refreshing to see inside the collective mind of the development team and the respect they held for the comments coming back from the floor about user issues and problems "beginners" were having getting involved with Wave. This included lack of tutorial videos and on-page instructions. It was clear, however, this is all coming soon and that Wave is being improved on a fast paced week-to-week development cycle.
We had both Lars Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon (Senior Wave Product Manager) in the room taking questions and explaining the thinking behind each element of Wave, showing genuine interest in the feedback they were receiving from a highly motivated and digitally aware audience.
Thanks to Pamela Fox and Dan Peterson from the Google Wave Team, Frances Jones (@FrancieJones), Tony Hollingsworth (@hollingsworth), Mark Anson (@nowWw - who has developed a snazzy email notification app for Wave which we are using), BDM's Iggy Pintado (@IggyPintado) and Tony Consentino (@thewordpressguy) for their presentations, and to Brett Morgan (@DomesticMouse) for organising the event and his wise words over our late dinner at BBQ King!
Inspired by Pamela's presentation on how the Wave Team use their own product, Sean Carmody (@SeanCarmody) and I decided to use Wave to manage a project we are working on - and I can report that Wave shows its business benefits immediately. You can add users to your Wave, edit entries like in a wiki, adding "blips" (additional comments or sub-comments), all of which can be edited, deleted or played-back to find earlier versions, as well as link-to or upload relevant files and then create a final file for storage, emailing, or whatever. I won't go into all the gadgets and other innovations because it will just make it seem complicated. It is certainly a sophisticated product that needs to be used, and maybe even demonstrated, to feel comfortable with it at this stage in its development. However, email must have seemed daunting to those used to just picking up the phone or sending faxes.
For more comments about the evening and a video of Pamela Fox talking about her experience on the night have a read of Roger Lawrence's blog on Channel 42 (@chnl42)
Here's a picture of our Heidi Allen (@dreamingspires), myself (@cbishops) and Frances Jones by Tony Consentino concentrating with laptops open. I'd say he sketched it himself, but I believe he used an iPhone app called ToonPAINT.
And here's Iggy Pintado addressing the room about the business applications and necessary approaches to maximise the benefits of Wave. (Sorry about the quality of the image, that's me using an iPhone from the back of the room.)
Reader Comments (1)
Hi Chris,
This is well written, it was easy to read your succinct thoughts.
It was an excellent night, designed to discuss Business using Wave and I will be interested to observe its evolution.
Great photo.
Frances