IntranetBlogs

Earlier today I received my Google Wave invite along with many thousands (millions?) of others. For those who don’t know, a Wave is synonymous with a real-time email/Twitter conversation amongst an ad-hoc group.

Even at this early stage, what seems clear to me, is that Wave will influence how email works in future, setting aside the numerous risk & implementation issues with Google’s version. Once you get into the swing of things, it’s a more effective than the context-less approach of Email1.0.

In getting my feet wet, I first shared some invites with people I know in the KM community. I have 5 left and will happily share them provided you’ve an an obvious interest in legal KM type. Just leave a comment to this post and I’ll get in touch.

Creating a Wave is as simple as creating an email. You only need to hit “New Wave” and you’ll get a conversion for one. You can get a better idea of functionality by watching watch this video.

Having activated my Wave account, I noticed via Twitter that several people I knew were already on Wave (Doug Cornelius and Mary Abraham) and added them to a Wave I had created. It’s slightly ironic that in order to add & find others I had to contact them via Twitter.

I have to say that currently the interface needs work, but also, I need a better understanding of how it might be used. Doug, Mary and I have already started getting our feet wet with chats on privacy and possible uses. If you’ve got Wave account and want to participate in our initial foray into KM Waviness, then add neil.richards@googlewave.com as a contact and I’ll add you in.

Some questions I have yet to answer:

• How do I share a link to a Wave?
• Is a Wave public? How would I make it so?
• How do I control the privacy of a Wave?

There’s a lot more to be said about Wave, but you really need to read / see it for yourself. Watch a couple of the vids to get a better idea as to what it’s all about.