Community Cam: Google Wave

As part of the #nscm (North Side Coffee Mornings) delegation, I joined the Google Wave Sydney Usergroup meeting on Wednesday night, 3 March.

What do I think about Google Wave? A couple of things:

• Really cool technology – kinda like Notes, Sharepoint, Exchange, Skype, Huddle, Project Server, OneNote all mushed together, presented in a browser (yuk) on steroids.
• Makes a LOT more sense after some basic training – I guess the problem with new paradigms is that people, even intuitive learners like me, come from an old paradigm so don’t “get” it.
• A Solution looking for a Problem – let’s face it nothing in the interface hasn’t been seen before, and it’s not doing anything evolved, just replacing paper based processes, and like I said, we’ve been doing that since the 70’s
• May take off with the right interoperability – I say “may” because the jury is out. Most people in the “old” 1.0 world have, and are happy with email. It’s simple (hence SMTP), it interoperates with everything, and is still the killer app (just look at the 1st feature smartphones offer) after almost 40 years. People in the “new” 2.0 world are overwhelmed with Email, IM, Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs, Podcast (TV, Movies, Radio, Mobile Phone) – the last thing they need, or want, is another system which doesn’t (yet) interoperate with anyone else’s system.

But plug it into those systems, so I don’t need to be a Wave user to interoperate, and you have some incredible power.

Still, cool technology or not, I’m yet to be convinced that people are ready to mix their asynchronous (email, SMS, Twitter) and synchronous (IM, Voice) modes of operation. It is very messy, very unstructured. I somehow can’t see a project manager, or building engineer, giving up version controlled specific applications (e.g. AutoCAD, Project) for the unstructured Wave.

I may be wrong. I often am. What’s your experience of Wave? Blown away, or “meh”?

Here’s Pamela Fox, on the Extension Developer Team for Wave, on how she found the evening:

My thoughts on Google? Very impressed.

It was great to have Lars Rasmussen pop in to the Usergroup meeting, which was run by the engineering team. In an industry where we’re seeing virtually zero evangelist/pre-sales visits to technology usergroups, let alone Product Managers, to have the head of engineering visit a group of enthusiasts speaks volumes.

Not only did Lars come into the meeting, but he made an effort to introduce himself to the attendees, no matter their background or “influence” or status. Then he calmly, openly, and happily discussed what sucks with Wave, what’s about to be delivered, what their engineering challenges are and how they affect the features people are asking for.

There was no “swag” or any of the things that “draw” people to Usergroups. Just purpose, mastery, and autonomy…

It was an “open kimono”, no hard sell, no agenda, pleasant, discussion. It was also very influential. I came away buzzed about possibilities, and excited about what Google is doing. Wow!

Fancy that, a company that at face value cares about people, whether or not they’re influential in their ecosystem. A team that cares about their product, enough to spend time after hours with enthusiasts.

Have to rethink this whole platform, brand, values, technology thing. Huh…

Tagged as: Community, Community Cam, Google, GWSUG, Lars Rasmussen, NSCM, Wave