4 Things You’ll Use Wave For

A lot of the discussion going on in Google Wave is along the lines of ‘This is great! What are we going to do with it?’. I don’t think anyone can reliably list everything Wave will be used for, but I can set out a few very likely possibilities, based on what I’m already using it for. I’m lucky in that many of the people I work on projects with tend to be early adopters in terms of new technology, and that for some of the projects, we’ve had 100% of the people involved on from about the second ripple of Wave invitations.

Brainstorming

Wave is absolutely made for brainstorming new projects. You can set in with a group of people, throw out ideas, discuss them in real time, capture everything that’s going by, include illustrations, links, voting modules, maps, or whatever else you might reckon you need, and it just works. It’s far more productive than even a real-life, face-to-face meeting - so much gets lost in the interruptions, distractions and bottlenecks of speech. Indeed, I’ve brainstormed one small project by sitting in the same room as two of the other people involved, all of us typing like mad.

Event Management

Managing an ongoing event - a convention, a conference, or the like - can be difficult. You can’t find someone because they’re running a panel, and you need to go fetch the kegs for later, and the only other person who actually understands the problem is knee-deep in the PA system and can’t talk to you. Wave is ideal. Not only can you put the problem up in text where the panel moderator and the sound engineer can find it when they have some time, but you can keep an eye on it on your PDA or iPhone while the keg guys load up the van. You can get a fast response, and you can also leave information for later.

Thought Capture

One of the principles of the Gettings Things Done method (yes, I am a disciple - a rather lowly one, but I try) is the capture of any stray thoughts that are knocking around. You need someplace you can get things out of your head, and know that you can come back to them later. It’s a far, far better thing to be able to throw these into a medium where not only can you retrieve them later when you have time to think about them, but other people can, if need be, comment on them, augment them, research them, or even spawn brainstorming waves to get the whole idea explored.

Review and Critique

Very often, in the process of any project, you’ll need to review something - a new tool, a piece of software, a document, something in from the graphic designer, or any of a thousand more things. Wave will allow multiple people to review an item at once - you capture all the feedback in one place, collate problems or suggestions for improvement, and have a permanent record of it immediately, rather than trying to remember what someone’s suggestion was later on. 

These are just four of the uses already under way. There will be many more.