Perspectives & Strategy

With Google Wave being open to everyone I thought it may be interesting to take another look at the product that everyone thought would be a life changer. There was an incredible amount of buzz generated about the product a year ago, it was also one of the most sought after software releases of all time and when the beta became available for the early adopters, like myself, there was a large amount of activity.

Since then activity on the site seems to have waned significantly. More correctly that is the activity of those within my network, it may of course be different with the people in your network. Wave’s biggest problem has always been: “What would I use it for?” and I have heard this question so many times. First and foremost Wave is a product that will be used to communicate and collaborate. It has the capability of extending the collaboration in a team, project, or corporate community. It should be used with existing connections, it is not really for networking and building new connections.

I have explained the power of building documents by collaboration to my business partners, but there is still a preference to “Send me a copy and I will take a look while at the cottage this weekend”; with Wave there is no copy – it is all on-line. That is of-course one stumbling block – the whole world is not yet connected. People do walk away from a reliable DSL line from time to time and the collaborative document is not available in cottage country, or even on a plane.

Wave has several types of templates that can be opened:

* Discussion: Introduce a topic; make several alternative proposals; obtain feedback

* Task Tracking: to define a set of collaborative tasks and review progress.

* Meeting and Agenda

* Brainstorming: to allow ideas on a discussion topic to flow.

* Document: Everything you need to create a collaborative document

Of course it is still possible to open a plain, blank Wave. But in adding these templates Google has put thought into how we might use the product. From a project perspective it may be possible to introduce a discussion or a brainstorm wave and at a later stage pull the key ideas into a document wave.

From everyone that I have talked to about Wave it is the idea of synchronicity that is the largest challenge. Each person needs to understand the advantages of working synchronously, this can for some be a challenge, because they follow the activity of others rather than focusing on their own contribution. In the documents that I have created I have been the only participant of the wave when I have gone through my initial thinking, no matter how rough or polished the item – the reason: to get the initial thought documented before opening it up to comment from others. The great thing here is that the document can have gaps, sections where your thinking is incomplete – I have found it important to state something like “{{FURTHER THOUGHT REQUIRED}}” at those points where you desire additional input otherwise others may take your incomplete statement as a complete view and never change what you have written.

One of the biggest challenges can be about deleting elements of a document. There can be two views of the correct form of words to be used, but you do not want a war between two participants over one small section of the document.

A method by which it is possible to link the contents of  traditional emails into a Wave is one area that still needs to be addressed by Google. It is clear today that there are big challenges to adopting Wave in certain sectors of the community, where email is an important tool. Perhaps an application that works on the Blackberry will be a giant step forwards. It is already possible to use Wave on the iPhone through the browser and even possible to remove the Safari wrapper for Wave to appear as a fully functioning program. There is an application for Android phones, although from recent chatter this is problematic. Get over smart-phone usage problems and this may enhance Google Wave usage.

I am yet to meet any person or corporation that is using Wave at the heart of their communications strategy, so the feeling is more dead halt than wave of the future at this time. We should continue to look back at this product.