Using Google Wave II

I have now much more experience with Google Wave. Especially in real-live collaboration with others.

To name a few collaboration examples

• Preparing a meeting with an external party
• Doing an evaluation of an internal project
• Preparing the 5th birthday of my son

Preparing a meeting with an external party

The Challenge
We all work at different locations. We have a personal life. We need to come to an agreement what our mutual point of view is, what we're going to ask to change and how to ensure this to happen.

Old way
Phone calls, endless emails and a few late meetings

New way
Create a Wave, invite all the team members, structure a number of topics. Linking e-mail notification to everybody's accounts ensures an 'update-push'.

The result
Much quicker, much better allignment of all the team members who participated in the Wave. Plenty of time & place seperated interaction. The two that didn't participate in the Wave were not as well alligned, nor were they prepared as well.

Doing an evaluation of an internal project

The Challenge
We all work at different locations. We have a personal life. We need to come to an agreement what our mutual point of view is. All aspects need to be covered ...and there is a 'slight' time issue as well: within 1.5 weeks it must be reported to management.

Old way
Phone calls, endless emails, a few late meetings and a lot of frenzy work of one or two people

New way
Create a Wave, invite all the team members, structure a number of topics

The result
Much quicker, much better allignment of all the team members who participated in the Wave. Plenty of time/place seperated interaction. The two that didn't participate in the Wave caused a lot of work with respect to sychronization. At least I missed the 'update-push' because the e-mail notification wasn't put into place.

Preparing the 5th birthday of my son

The Challenge
Although my wife and I spend times in the evenings together, it is not always opportune to work together in the preparation of the 5th birthday of our son. He is the oldest and this is the first time a number of his friends come over ...we don't have hands-on experience yet :-)

Oh, did I mention he woke up one night and said: I want a monkey-birthday. So that's the theme, up to us to make something out of it.

Old way
Phone calls, endless emails, a few late meetings and a lot of frenzy work of one or two people

New way
Create a Wave, invite my wife, add a bit of structure

The result
Creativity flowed freely. We were always up-to-date what each one of us was thinking and pretty quickly a detailed things-we-could-do, decorations, give-aways.

I'm quickly getting used to Google's Wave and I'm looking up the boundaries again and again. For instance somebody create a nice SWOT-tool. Imagine doing quickly a SWOT with a number of people ...well this imagination probably will turn quickly into a reality given the tasks I'm getting.

Best of all, everybody who did give Google Wave a go for a real challenge, loved it. The only thing is, some of our customers don't have Chrome or Firefox installed. IE needs a plugin to work and installing is usually not allowed.