WHAT IT IS

Google Wave is a free, real-time, online collaboration platform, now in beta distribution (by invitation only), to be released to the general public sometime this year. It combines elements of e-mail, chat, text messaging,Wiki documents, blogs, tweets and photo-sharing sites to create an online “hosted conversation” or a “wave.” It was developed by the makers of Google Maps, and like Google Maps, it’s open source, allowing integration with Twitter, Facebook, Web sites, and eventually, many other online tools. Beyond a Web application, it’s a collaboration platform that may change many rules in social media.

HOW TO GET IT

There are four ways to get a Google Wave invitation. Currently, those who signed up early for a Google Wave account, who have an account on the Developer Preview of Wave, are paying users of Google Apps or are invited by current Wave users, may receive accounts. However, searching for the phrase “How do I get a Google Wave invite?” yields Web sites offering Wave invitations.

HOW TO USE IT FOR MEETINGS

There are many possibilities. Here are just a few:

Collaborative note taking at events.Wave has great potential for collaborative note-taking at events. It will allow multiple people to share the note-taking load, record time lines and make decisions collaboratively. In large, multiplesession conferences, the Wave discussions can be threaded by topic, session or presentation, with the ability for multiple inputs and editing simultaneously and asynchronously. These “wavelets” can be set up in advance, so the tracks/ sessions can be ready for input at the event. The results will be a more complete record than nearly anyone could create individually.

Rich session summaries, session photos, video clips, audio clips, audience polling results, instructor Q&A and PowerPoint slides can be added during and after the event. Both physical and virtual attendees can participate and all can pose questions and add content as well.

Event agenda building. Google Wave will be a natural fit for collaborative agenda building. Presentation suggestions could be divided by tracks. Event stakeholders could draft content, manage documents, solicit feedback, build the conference agenda and more — all together in one Wave, rather than dealing with inefficient strings of e-mails and document attachments. Ideas for other event elements such as menus and entertainment could also be accomplished.

Wave also has a “playback” feature that lets users review the history of the postings, allowing late-comers to catch up on these conversations in the order they were created.

Meeting invitations.Wave could be used to send out meeting invitations with an agenda, proposed menus and a map of where it will be held. RSVPs can be handled by a built-in “yes/no/maybe” survey widget. Invitees can use the wave to respond to meal requirements, make agenda suggestions and more — all in one central location.

A replacement for Twitter for event back-channel communication. Twitter hashtags have been used at events to get feedback during sessions. However, these tend to be disconnected strings of tweets with little continuity and no great way of saving them for future use. Instead,Wave allows fororganized, threaded comments that can be archived to access later. While there may be some challenges regarding the number of simultaneous users posing usability and/or bandwidth problems, this is an intriguing possible use.

Roundtable discussions. Roundtable discussions could change substantially using Google Wave. Instead of using flip-charts to capture roundtable discussion ideas, each table topic could be posted as a wavelet organized under a common wave. The ideas in each wavelet could then be easily shared with the larger group and saved to be accessed and worked on later. Attendees could participate in these conversations virtually as well.

Group facilitation and brainstorming. The way that meetings are facilitated and brainstorming sessions are managed will likely change using Wave. It can assist in group collaboration and make the capture of group-generated ideas much easier.

Photo sharing.Wave has desktop-like drag-and-drop capabilities. It’s very easy to share event photos and other documents. Just drag your photo from your computer file onto the Wave window in your browser.Wave users can comment on the photos, geo-tag and add their own photos as well. This appears to be much easier than with traditional photo-sharing sites such as Flickr.

Conference feedback. Event participants can be asked to share thoughts, feedback and suggestions for improvement using Wave as a collaborative wiki. Attendees collaborating after the event and sharing their feedback could likely brainstorm many more ideas for improvement compared to the one-way “rate the session from 1 to 10” surveys commonly in use.

LIMITATIONS

As with nearly any new product, especially with the breadth of possibilities that Google Wave has to offer, there will be limitations. Some of these include:

Wave is still in beta release and there are still bugs to work out. There have been issues with lag time reported. There are many features to improve usability yet to be added. As it’s still on limited release, not everyone can access it now. There may be scalability issues, especially in meeting facilities with marginal

WiFi connectivity. There may not be enough bandwidth to handle the load if many users access Wave from the same location simultaneously, especially if graphic-intensive elements such as photo or video sharing are used. It seems that when more than eight or 10 people input to Wave simultaneously on a single thread, it may become difficult to follow all of the conversations. It could be somewhat akin to eight or 10 people talking at the same time. It may be difficult to follow the chatter.

Google Wave is currently a computer-based platform. To be used in its present state at meetings will require notebook/netbook computers, power strips, tables and good quality Internet access in meeting rooms. Not everyone lugs around a laptop to an event and not every meeting facility has easy wireless Internet access.With the open-source application programming interfaces (APIs), it’s likely that mobile applications will emerge to make Wave easier to use at meetings via mobile phones, but for now, this isn’t the case.

Google Wave promises to be more than a new Web tool. It’s a new, collaborative platform with tremendous possibilities — many of them are yet likely to be realized. It will help us organize events, build agendas, facilitate meetings, share session content and get session feedback in dramatically new, more interactive ways. It may be a while before everyone catches this wave, but the possibilities for event improvement seem to be substantial.

To learn more, check out these YouTube videos: www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pgxLaDdQw (an introductory eight-minute overview of Wave’s many possibilities and capabilities) and www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um6-Oa54s8g (a video about how the ECOMM conference used Wave for collaborative note-taking).

Corbin Ball, CMP, CSP, is a technology analyst focusing on the meeting and trade show industries.With 20 years of experience running international citywide technology meetings, he now helps clients worldwide use technology to save time and improve productivity. He can be contacted at his Web site, www.corbinball.com.