[LRUG] Googley Wavey Invitey

[James Adam]

On 26 Nov 2009, at 11:01, Jocke Selin wrote:

> I think Muz has got most of it, but to me, Wave's best feature is the ability to let a document transform into what it wants to me.

Absolutely.

> For example, you could schedule a meeting in Wave, then use the same wave to make notes during the meeting - several ones can make notes - once the meeting is over, the notes can be arranged, maybe to headers and partial paragraphs. Then these paragraphs can be edited to longer sections finally transforming the wave into what we traditionally see as a Word document. Could be whitepaper, plan of some sort, memo, etc, etc.

This is exactly what we do at Free Range. The wave is used to pick a meeting location and date, and build the agenda, and then the agenda transforms into a set of minutes collaboratively.

The client can be a bit clunky, and the limited amount of undo (i.e. none) is a problem, but I think it's worth it. I also don't mind people seeing me correct my typos and change my phrasing, but I recognise that other folks prefer to privately craft their prose closer towards perfection before dispatching it into the void. Life is too short for perfection, IMHO.

I think when people come to Wave, they see the live content and easy replying, and it most easily fits in with their mental model of 'chat'. What they miss is the 'refactor' step, where you can discuss a point within a document, but then (as Chris Mear's example highlighted) rework the discussion into the body of the document, deleting the conversation when you're done. For most people, editing in this way is completely novel and unintuitive.

I am hoping that, once development settles down and everyone can sign up, we'll get a client which can provide slightly richer interaction with waves (like some form of undo). In the meantime, this notifier for OS X (http://github.com/hiroshi/unofficial-Google-Wave-Notifier/downloads) is invaluable for being notified of when you have new wave content. And it's build with Ruby :)

- James