I have some very busy days, organizing blogs and multimedia events at my newspaper. I even missed Metanomics and We Are The Network this week, not to mention the Elluminate session of the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Course, but I’ll catch up. However, I managed to keep an eye on several of the Google Waves in which I participate.
As I mentioned previously, I discovered several Augmented Reality Waves, a Second Life Residents Wave and a Second Life/OpenSimulator Folks Wave.
I’ve the impression that the AR folks are most serious in trying to find ways to mobilize this technology for AR projects or for serious collaboration. Of course I do realize there must me lots of other groups out there doing great stuff with their waves.
I also read a live essay “An Ocean of Data” by several authors which was very interesting. In the essay it was mentioned that participants in a wave feel close to each other. This reminded me of the feeling of sharing a same space in a virtual environment.
Things I experienced and witnessed in Google Wave:
- Collaboration for concrete projects.
- Brainstorming.
- Chat and meeting each other.
- Collaborative writing of essays & papers.
- Sharing tools and documents such as maps, polls, pictures etc
- Meeting new people and yet feeling connected.
- Live typing: it is fun but sometimes embarrassing to realize people can watch how you type, how you make mistakes, correct them etc.
Learning to use Google Wave has its technical aspects, but most importantly it’s about finding out how to put this tool to good use, finding out how to behave correctly etc. In that sense it’s like discovering Twitter or Plurk: it’s not only about the technicalities, but about how to organize things and how to behave in order to realize the potential of those tools.
Anyway, I’ve several invites for Google Wave. If you’re not yet in but are interested to explore, just let me know and contact me on legrandroland(ad)google(dot)com. Also, I’d like to know what use cases you see for Google Wave…
First come first served!
Roland Legrand