Surfing the Wave with RedEye
What's a Wave, anyway?
As defined by Google, a Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A Wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and more.
When I was in high school, I wasn't much of a risk-taker. I became a lot more daring in college and now as my 37th birthday approaches this week, I can't imagine not taking risks--even at work.
That's why when attention started to shift from Twitter to Google Wave, the idea of embracing a new and unproven technology not only made sense, it was exciting.
Recently, RedEye started devoting 30 minutes each day to a live public wave session.
If you check the Twitter feed for
@redeyechicago at 10:30 a.m., you'll find the link to that day's Wave, which will focus on either the cover story or other buzzworthy topics from that day's print edition.
During the final 10 minutes, we ask those participating for suggestions on how we can make the Wave more useful. And believe me, we take those suggestions very seriously. We're learning too.
While Twitter and Facebook are great for connecting with readers and sharing information, Waves are a lot more live--you can actually see people typing. Most importantly, Google Wave affords us yet another way to interact with readers.
But the part I love the most is how we can use the Wave to build an even bigger online community. While we may spend just 30 minutes a day leading the discussion in the Wave, folks come and go all day, constantly adding to the conversation.
The Wave may be new, but people are noticing. Mashable wrote about us last week. Other publications are inquiring.
So what's next for RedEye and Google Wave? It's a work in progress, but I have some ideas. Currently, Sports Editor Brian Moore livetweets during Bears games. I picture Brian hosting a Bears game Wave where people can come and go as they please, offering their insights, photos of tailgating parties--the sky is pretty much the limit.
And that's just the beginning of what's possible using Wave. Some ideas will be instant hits and some will fail, but that's OK--we'll keep trying until we get it right. Goes back to that risk-taking I mentioned earlier.
In the meantime, if you have suggestions or questions regarding RedEye and Google Wave, let me know. Tweet me, poke me, wave at me--just tell me. It will be worth the risk.
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1 Comment
sneha said:
The problem with the folks like Google & Yahoo is that they have created many tools which have been loosely coupled. The challenge with such a solution is that the the information gets locked into multiple silos. With Google Wave they are trying to integrate all the conversations (discussions) but what would be truly desirable is a platform built form ground up using social networking at the base and business apps on top of it. I have tried Injoos Teamware (www.injoos.com) and found it captures both informal and formal knowledge like documents in one single workspace on the cloud.
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