Monday, March 22, 2010

Google Wave at Google Campus

March 18, 2010

I attended the Hack and Hackers meetup on GoogleWave and the future of journalism at Google Campus.  This is the second time I've attended a meetup with this group.  Both times I have come away pleased with my experience and inspired by the piercing questions being asked, the interests and focus of many of the journalist types, and the commitment to the future and quality of journalism shared.  I don't label myself as either a hack or a hacker, but I consume and appreciate the art and talent required for both.

One of the things that I enjoy is the fact that this group does not "drink the kool aid" being poured by the tech companies presenting.  It felt like Google rolled out the red carpet to host this group; flew in members of the GoogleWave team from Australia (probably not just for this event - so thank you Burt Herman for coordinating this!), kept lots of support staff around to assist, clean up and direct us out, provided what looked like catered food (I don't partake) as well as beer and wine.  However, the participants could not be bought and were not impressed by GoogleWave.  A show of hands revealed that many had tried it before the event, but the questions asked of the presenters portrayed that not many had gone very deep with it.

Great questions included - what's all the different jargon being used?
Wave terminology
Wave is between owners and participants
blip = a unit of wave; an individual segment or posting within the wave
root blip = the original line/first line of the wave becomes the title to the wave
in line reply = new blip inside a blip
sibling blip = blips next to each other

extensions = robots or gadgets, visual collaboration toools
gadgets = ex. framed web page inside a wave
robots = supersmart nonhuman automations to augment and streamline abilities, work inside a wave and  provides integration to 3rd party sites, manage tasks, tags and searches
anonymous read - view only


a shortcut to move through the wave is to use the space bar

Proof that Googlewave is being utilized:
> 1 million people received invites and as many active users
There are 2-300 active developers and 50 user ready extensions

Here is the prezi presentation used


Wave to me!  cfsolomon@googlewave.com
Here's the thing - you'd have to gmail me first to inform me to go to wave to interact in real time with you

Need an invite to GoogleWave?
----> Comment below if you would like an invite - I got 2 at the event, and somewhere I have 10 more

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