KM and Google Wave
Google Wave is an online software application product of Google, described as a personal communication and collaboration tool. It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, spelling/grammar checking, automated translation among 40 languages, and numerous other extensions. It is still in preview mode, thus not yet officially released.
When Google Wave was introduced it created a wave of enthusiasm all around the world, including from knowledge managers. At the moment, some people still underline its unique opportunities for collaboration, others were dissapointed by the buggy experience of the new platform, they could not see the practical use, or felt all alone because their colleagues weren't on it.
During this chat we will look at experiences people had with Google Wave, explore opportunities and threats, and share tips and tricks.
- Are you using Google Wave?
- What can Google Wave mean for KM?
- What are/could be succesfactors making Google Wave collaboration succesful?
- What Google Wave robots/extensions are particularly useful in a KM context? And how can they be used?
Using Wave
I have been using Wave for awhile and see great possiblities for supporting dynamic communities. Too often social networks focus on building membership and not collaborative work together. As such, they are difficult to reorganize to change with an evolving mission or when goals are met and the group reorganizes for the next phase. All this is possible in Wave, but with a learning curve that will take some time to fully understand the potential. Even with the limited permission structure there is the problem of managing who can do what, especially right to edit the work of others. To a large extent, there needs to be a governance layer that defines how the wave is to operate and what rights members have in the collaboration. This issue becomes important when a discussion "mess" needs to be cleaned up to create an on-going record.
The URL structure is also not very clear since there is a need to seemlessly move from wave and other web sites. Without this easy linkage, too much is forced into the wave structure that would better be positioned outside wave after the content is developed.
Inbox management is also a pain since everything you subscribe to is dumped there. For the most part, I really don't use the inbox, but use folders organized around different projects.
Extentions offer great opportunities, but are very confusing and disorganized. Most are play-things for games or illustrating some feature. I have yet to find a good source for extentions and what I have found lack good instructions for how to use them. All with time I expect.
hope to participate
I work in a secure environment and do not have access to twitter from work, but maybe I'll have access to the kmers.org site to listen in to the 'gwave' discussion.
I have particpated in the federal and now DoD testing of wave, on a very limited basis, but I find the potential of the capability and what it can possibly do to extend beyond communication/sharing boundaries to be quite exciting.
Hope to have access tomorrow!
Google Wave registration
Fiammetta, sorry no more left, but you can sign up here:
https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/
could someone invite me in google wave
Hi all!
I have just tried to enter googlewave and make myself an idea of what implications this tool may have for KM.
To my dismail I understand that you must be invited to actually enter the web application.
So, please, let me in if you can.
I am looking forward to explore it!
thank you
Wave invites
fiammetta, I have invites. Tweet me your gmail account and I will invite you.