Google presents a new tool and a new hype is born. This time it is about online collaboration and promises nothing less than the end of email. Although the tool has clearly some great innovations, I cannot share the great enthusiasm and again the belief that a tool can change things for better. We are moving from one hype and tool to the next, but still, we do too little to drive the necessary core changes within organizations make it even possible to use tools such as Google Wave.
I have been reading so much euphoria about the new tool, which leads me to write this piece and mention a few enthusiasts, whom blogs I have continuously read and which I always enjoy.
“The Wave is not just another application, it’s a whole new way of using online information… The Wave takes collaboration to a whole new level,” says Maish R Nichani. while Martin Koser writes, “Google Wave is poised to reshape (rewires I say) the nature of communication (yes, more face-to-face real-timelineness communication), improving the web experience.”
Real-time collaboration – what a nightmare!
Most excited was Lars Rasmussen, the developer of Google Wave, about the real-time collaboration. You can see changes made on a page within seconds. I have heard for the first time that the online collaboration’s biggest challenge was real-time changes, but on the contrary, that is the smallest problem. Bringing people to collaborate online is a huge challenge because of trust and the habit of a meeting culture, just to name a few. More importantly, I would argue that the growing speed of the Internet through life streams and tools such as Twitter and Friendfeed is made for a minority. Isn’t collaboration a process over hours, days and weeks?
We are witnessing more and more divides on the web
Who can and wants to master all this information every minute. How can you possible still work productively, on top of the ringing telephone and colleagues interrupting you. So, real-time collaboration can be great in a session, but if that is the future of collaboration, then it means that one has to collaborate 24/7. We have to ask us if instant communication really makes us more productive. Typing quickly a message in a smart phone in a go is perhaps not the greatest contribution. I argue that online collaboration, exchange and creativity needs time and breaks. I also doubt that this is a will change with the younger generation.
People, unlike tools, bring change
I wrote many posts about how different tools, such as blogs and RSS, can make a difference for information sharing and lead to more productivity and creativity. No doubt, Google Wave, combines here in an innovative way previous tools.
But all my experiences in online collaboration showed me that when a certain need has to exist. If that is the case even trivial mailing lists or a forum from the post web2.0 times can work dynamically. A fancy tool alone will not convince colleagues to share more information online. The tool can help and support interaction, but does not deliver interaction per se. Google Wave combines in an intelligent way many different streams knowledge worker have to deal with every day. But email is still seen as a core way to communicate and it will take many more years before this will change at large. Will new tools make it easier for that change to happen? I doubt it.
Lee Bryant makes a good point in this regard: “There is an echo chamber of voices confirming each other in the newest tool. “When they switch tools, the previous tools are “dead” and the new tool is “the future”. Meanwhile, millions of people continue using Outlook as a primary interface to their work, just as they did a decade ago.”
Luckily at least Google Wave is open source, which allows to be runned on an own server. Online collaboration takes a culture shift towards openness and trust to work online. In most organizations that takes a long road – even firms, who are the frontrunners such as IBM, face the same internal struggles, a colleague has recently told me.
A tool for one part of the world
Lars Rasmussen pointed out rightly that email is already forty years old and it is time for something new. But I am not sure that is the way forward because of one other reason: bandwidth!
Jonathan Goshier outlines this point nicely: “Of course, I have to point out that all this real-time communication stuff only matters to the fraction of people on the planet with good bandwidth. Here in Uganda, I’m so glad when an email actually makes it out of the queue that I don’t even bother to think about ‘rewinding’ conversations and dragging and dropping video! In all seriousness, it’s this reduction in basic utility for all users that worries me. Most Google’ products are by-in-large accessible no matter what kind of computer you’re on (except maybe Google Earth). With Wave they seem to be going down a path that might be a little more exclusive in nature. Not a deal-breaker but a concern none-the-less.”
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Glad you also see the hype behind Google Wave. It may also be a tool for a certain group of people only, so maybe we are just expecting too much of it, e.g. to even change or influence corporate working behaviour.
I think the silver lining to Google Wave and other lifestream products is that it’s all in one place. It’s many services on one platform/program/site to combine them all. So maybe this is the essence that will be used on other similar projects in future – some sort of Personal Information Manger (Outlook, Notes,etc) that will contain every stream of information in a company and will be accessible from both computers an mobile devices.
Good points JKE. But I still wonder, how many people can and want to deal with this lifestream of information. So RSS is out and now it is accelerated through lifestreams?
Nice pice. I however disagree with your point “Lars Rasmussen pointed out rightly that email is already forty years old and it is time for something new.” Really? Bicycles are over 100 years old but try to convince the average Dutchman that it’s about time it was replaced with something else because of its age. However, I think you are absolutely spot on with your remark that “We have to ask us if instant communication really makes us more productive”. The great thing about these tools is that they remove technical barriers to communication and allow one to concentrate more on the actual content of the communication which surely is the issue, not the manner of doing it. One could argue that instant communication actually leads to a decrease in efficiency in many cases, more inchoate ramblings, a tendency to lassitude and lack of focus, eating up valuable personal bandwidth. A theme for another posting?
1) the band width will be created where the volume to make money out of it occurs – look how many mobile phones there are now in 3rd world countrys.
2) first there was the printing press, then the phone, then the fax, then the mobile phone, then email, now wave. People will use it don’t you worry about that
3) The wave integrates both live and legacy systems. lets say you have a wave that is for a budget meeting some of you are live in say the US and the Europeans come online later to put their 10 Euros worth into the context. As long as their are deadlines for the replies etc doesn’t mean you are going to be waving live in the middle of the night, its just that all the collaboration is held in one place and equally accessible so all can contribute.
4) Email gets lost, somebody forgets to copy somebody in on a reply and they are out of the loop.
5) If a wave needs my input it can send me an SMS to ask for input, I can log in while on the bus to work and add my piece, or from anywhere else i have phone or net access.
I beleive the wave will add both flexability and integration to all sorts of business communication. So many ways to use it, I have already a list of about 20 waves I will start as soon as it is live. As an sme with global stakeholders, we are ready to implement it as soon as it goes live!
Dear Christian,
its always good to have some thoughtful thoughts and some critique
We from OneAim.org think a lot about such a new infrastructure for the commited world civil society what Google now did – since 4 years. So we are pleased about Wave, the Open Source server, the protocol, the technology. We will see
As example we have planned the same infrastructure as a base for echo: http://echo-logic.org – the planetary agora.
Now, through Wave we can put echo on the base of Wave. We will develope a global and local and at the same time decentral agora, a planetary digital democracy system.
Try to think beyond the actual wave. Try to think about the new web standards, we talk also together on the SocialCamp in Berlin.
Its a grand opportunity.
And about the scepticism that we all have “to collaborate 24/7″: no one have to collaborate 24/7 Chris and no one can collaborate 24/7
We have also to sleep, to make sport, be with the family and friends.
I think with the real time web more people must learn to let things flow. I think that will be the point. The world is so complexly and we think, that we could control something. But the truth is, that we cant. So its also not a problem to be not 24/7 available.
Maybe i make a Wave for my job and I’m not online with this account in my freetime. Why not?
Or like in Skype i say that I’m busy, offline etc, if I dont want, that other people see my status.
This is why I’m in this point not so sceptical. I work, communicate and collaborate in the time i want. And if i want with others to do this in real time on a Wave, i will do. But that means not that all people have to collaborate in the future in real-time
Its only a tool and better infrastructure, to do as example good eco-social things in the real world.
And for the society innovation around the Google Wave Federation Protocol in Germany we start:
http://WaveCamp.org
The first “German Wave Camp 2009″.
And additionally we start the international initiative “The Wave Society” to bring interested people together which are interested to use Wave Technology for education, democracy, healthcare, social economy, etc.
The theme network for democracy related things will be WaveDemocracy.org, for education WaveEducation.org als example.
Lets start thinking together to use this technology as the decentral base for more. And if we find problems on the way, we will also find solutions…
All the best,
Ingmar
email: ir(at)oneaim(dot)org
David and Ingmar thanks for highlighting the potentials for Google Waves from two different perspectives. When I watched the presentation for Google Wave, I was quite fascinated about the interface and easiness to use this application. I am sure that alone might attract new users to collaborate online.
But I cannot share your enthusiasm and I am quite surprised that you believe a “Wave” will make such a difference. Such a wave can be easily done on a Wiki page, where people share content independent from time and space. Have a look at socialtext.com, which offers even more than a normal Wiki.
I also cannot follow the open protocol enthusiasm, although it is obvious that we move in this direction. What happened for instance with Open Social, which was announced form Google long time ago. Where are all these anticipated easy connections between social networks?
What I saw during the presentation was a undoubtful a great interface with a lot of integration of media and a nice combination of existing tools. I still wonder what is so different about it?
Lastly I disagree that it has such far reaching political or social implications. You can connect with simple mailing lists from the global to the local. Dgroups.org does that for almost a 100k members for years and plain email drive also conversations.
christian,
only my quick 2 cents without in depth understanding your concerns …
…. wave is different from all the other tools google is providing, since is the first native app built with GWT – Google Web Toolkit … so it is more or less just a showcase what can be done with GWT (gdoc, gcal etc are all just stiched together from products google bought) … so it is very tech centered by definition … since GWT is FOSS it is a big step for this movement having such a great showcase provided by a big player like google; really helps me to convince people / companies using it …
… user experience: i was talking to one of the senior google UX designers, but not in detail about it, but he confirmed that there was a massive User Centered Design approach involved, the target group was just very narrow and tech savvy … nothing bad about that … me myself as a senior java developer would love to have such a real time collab feature built in the tools we have now … coding is very creative and therefore very spontan and what would be more fun than jointly painting a picture in real time together with your friends scattered all over the world? … so things evolve with the possibilities and taking the risk of failing or then actually failing is part of this game …
regarding africa, it is needless to says that citizens there are suffering from a lack of bandwidth … but actually such AJAXed apps as wave reduce the needed throughput but of cause still on a much too high level … so dont waste too much time on thinking about wave in africa … just for now go for SMS based UIs … at least i do that massively now …
so at the very end: please read carefully WHO says WHAT and then it maybe comes out, that you are also part of the people who pushed this hype
))
over and out …
Hope we meet soon again …
Cheers Martin
Hi Chris,
I understand and share your concerns.
Regarding the hype: we’re talking about a very enthusiastic and innovative community, sometimes fueled by the “imperative of innovation”. So anything new is a candidate for a hype. But you’re right.
Sometimes there’s a big unbalance between the energy devoted to innovation, new tools, new hypes or waves… and the persistence of well known problems. You mention some, for example: the divides on the web.
If this was a perfect market, this would all be great, and only the best tools would survive… LOL
Me, I’m still waiting to the Google video presentation to load till it gets interesting, to see how the wave looks and have an opinion…
I liked this:
“We are moving from one hype and tool to the next, but still, we do too little to drive the necessary core changes within organizations make it even possible to use tools such as Google Wave.”
I know so many orgs whose biggest tech leap was to use a mailing list for internal communication… And they still use it, cause it’s great.
Cheers!
Pablo
Hi Chris,
interesting and good article.
“We are moving from one hype and tool to the next, but still, we do too little to drive the necessary core changes within organizations make it even possible to use tools such as Google Wave.”
Pointing at the contexualisation of those nice new tools – awareness, capability, usability, and purpose.
Greets,
Stefan
(Ex-WM