January 20, 2010 69 Comments

Living In Google Wave

Google Wave I’m sending more and more collaboration tasks and conversations to Google Wave. I use it in place of the phone for a very simple reason: I’m not on the ground and in people’s time zones often enough to make the phone convenient. But further, it allows us both to see the conversation and refer to it as we move along. It allows newcomers to get caught up simply without us wasting time rehashing. It allows me to work while you sleep.

I’m not using many of the frilly plugins. I’m just using it for conversations.

One trick we do a lot: put the “good” or “clean” stuff at the top of the wave, and then use the bottom part for the conversation. Then, we can run up to the top, edit the “good” part, and keep that as the master copy.

Things I wish it had: groups for contacts, so that I could ping the HBW group in one shot; Export to DOC/PDF so I could send the “good” Wave to people not in the wave; sidebar chat, so that we could see our chatter in the upper right but dump it below, while looking at the “good” part of the wave.

But I’m not pushing it. In fact, I’m keeping these notes more for people thinking on innovating on Wave, so that they can see how users are doing things with it, and so they can adapt and advance their product ideas accordingly.

What I’m NOT doing is just waving to wave, or chit-chatting. I appreciate that people are interesting in just kicking the tires, but I’m not really available for that. I’m using it for projects and plans right now, but much less interested in general chat.

That said, I have an idea for a paid “Wave-only” event some time in the near future. Stay tuned. : )

For me, Wave has become my go to place to think, to share, to coalesce, to make projects happen. In fact, when I look at my online ecosystem, here’s what I do where:

  • Facebook: connect with friends and family.
  • LinkedIn: share professional networks.
  • Twitter: communicate in real time, and find the new good stuff.
  • Google Wave: work on the future.
  • Blog: think and muse and share and publish.

It’s tucked in there nicely.

What about you? Are you there yet? Are you finding much value yet? What are you collaborating on? What matters next?

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  • geschenkefrmnner

    Hi,
    The first thing I would hope to use Wave for would be writing journal articles collaboratively. Virtually all scientific journal articles have multiple authors, although most of the writing falls on a single author. This would help make it more of a group effort.
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  • http://scottgould.me Scott Gould

    I'm just more curious to know what you're talking about in Google Wave, lol

  • http://scottgould.me Scott Gould

    How are you getting on with doing it like this?

  • http://blog.netvolution.ca/ Phil Ashman

    I tried to use it within my class organizing it much the same way you suggest. However it appears from everything I read that you can't insert a Level 1 Wavelet between two level 1 wavelets (or would you call them blips?) ie. If you have Wavelet 1, consisting of a blip and some Blip replies, followed by Wavelet 2, Wavelet 3 and Wavelet 4, you can't seem to grab W4 and move it between W1 & W2; or even just create another Wavelet, W5 and insert it between W1 and W2. Makes the reorganizing much more challenging, and in my opinion really takes away from the product. I should be able to cut, paste and copy any blip to any spot in my wave. This kind of cripples it for me at the moment. However I love the potential! Once this feature becomes available I'm all in!

    Twitter/FB pages : Public Stream (In fact my tweets go from FB Pages to Twitter)
    Blog/Posterous: Musings
    Linkedin/FB profle #1: Professional contacts/Students
    FB Profile #2: Personal Contacts
    Greader/Twitter/FB: Info Gathering

    Thanks for the post!

  • joanneberg

    Love your description of “working on the future” with this great new tool. Thanks for being the thought leader as usual. Clarity around all these tools and their usage should be more than priceless for many.

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  • http://twitter.com/ann_m_stone Ann Stone

    Chris, your schematic of the use of each of the elements of social media is spot on. In fact, it prompted me to write on my own blog about it, as I've got similar yet a bit different experiences. In my case, I'm teaching a class in marketing – and Wave allows me to comment in the process of the students creating their marketing plans, helping us both manage expectations better. http://cisjustaletter.com/2010/01/21/are-you-go…

  • http://christophercatania.com Chris Catania

    I'll be trying Google Wave out to collaborate with other music bloggers and also see what sort headway I can make in developing our community at Live Fix. I'll keep you updated as to what sort of things I discover too! ;)

  • kimatsprig

    I am falling seriously in love with Google Wave. I am using Ning for one project and Gooogle Wave for another and I don't know Wave does it for me. It is a great tool for collaborating over distances & time zones and allows me to brainstorm freely.
    Just one question for all you Google Wave fans, sometimes when collaborating, particularly on a design concept, I want to include a picture… much like a fashion designer would when concepting a new collection. Is there a gadget for this & if so, where can I find & install??
    Thanks all!

  • http://twitter.com/Israel_Garcia Israel García

    I'm starting to work with meaning and with large and substantial results

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  • http://www.powerbuy.com.au/ Joel

    I agree that Wave fits nicely into the mix of social networking tools, and I use it for work collaboration. Agree though it would be nice to be able to group my contacts – but can't be far off!

  • http://www.blurbpoint.com/ link building services

    To my eyes, It looks like Outlook express 5.1 copy.

    Google has copied microsoft, just added some messaging features on a web interface and calling it as a wave…. Good Job Google….

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  • http://twitter.com/shaine Shaine Mata

    You are able to use Google Wave in groups; but you have to have your domain on Google Apps so you can create an email group.

    Then, add that email group as a contact in Wave.

    Then, you can search “group:madeupgroup@chrisbrogan.com” in Wave to see what group Waves exist.

    Obviously, being the first person on it, you won't find anything. Email groups work for email addresses outside your domain too.

    If you don't want to move some of your domain over to Google Apps, you can accomplish the same by creating a Google Group for each team. You don't have to email each other through it, just borrow the group permissions for Wave. You would add “mymadeupgroup@googlegroups.com” as a contact.

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  • http://www.yuregininsesi.com sesli sohbet

    I was just tweeting about Wave yesterday. I've had it for a couple of months now, but I rarely, if ever, use it. It seems like it's a better collaborative tool than a chatting platform. I guess this gives me the push I need to start collaborating more! Thanks for sharing your opinion about Wave.

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