Catching the Google Wave « Orange and Juicy

Catching the Google Wave

March 23, 2010

Technology

Sudhir Subbaiah

Last year Google launched Google Wave – more commonly referred to as the “Email Killer.” Wave provided a new way for groups of people to communicate and basically works much like email and chat. However, instead of sending a message along with its entire thread of previous messages, or requiring all responses to be stored in each user’s mailbox for content, Google Waves contain complete threads of multimedia messages and are perpetually stored on a central server. A Wave can easily be shared by adding new collaborators at any point during that Wave’s existence. The Google Wave platform is based on open protocols and web standards which makes it easy to use – anyone with a browser can jump right in.

It’s always exciting when an innovative company like Google launches a new technology. Of course at Gate6 we’re all about new technology so we got access to Wave very quickly. The first person in our office to get a Wave invite was soon the most popular person in the office as everyone gathered around to check it out.

Google Wave happened to release at a time when Gate6 was looking for new tools to enhance processes and increase productivity. It wasn’t long before we realized what a powerful collaboration platform it was and someone here quickly suggested we try it for project management. It was easy to see that Google Wave, with its ability to post user-date-time stamped notes – could replace IM and email and maybe even our customized project management platform.

Of course, we needed to try it out before we committed to a permanent change so we selected 3 brand new projects to put it to the test. We had all project team members sign up for Wave using their Gate6 email address to keep the process standardized. For the next few weeks, team members used Wave to communicate and collaborate on these 3 projects. After a solid month of using Google Wave, we knew we’d found a fantastic and streamlined new collaboration platform.

Today, just a few months after the technology preview release of Google Wave, we’re using it as our primary platform for all internal project-based communications. Our global team of over 60 members manages project workflow more efficiently than ever before – you’d never guess we’re spread across several time zones!

Here are a few things we really like about Google Wave:

It’s free! (who doesn’t love free?)
It keeps all project-related information organized in a single thread
It replaces project notes, internal emails and IM
It indexes all information so it can be easily searched
It’s browser-based so it works on any platform
It’s easy to add new team members to an existing project
It ensures new team members always get the entire project history

The one and only drawback we’ve seen so far is that all the collaboration information is stored on Google’s server. But with the increase of usage in web-based tools for project management and cloud-based tools for collaboration, this shouldn’t be a deal-breaker.

We’ve caught the Google Wave and we love it – maybe it’s time you try it!