Google Wave for Architects

Google Wave is the company's latest offering in their collection of products. If you haven't already heard of it, the pitch is "What would email look like if it were invented today?"  Email was invented over 40 years ago to emulate snail mail.  Google Wave aims to be a series of collaborative 'living' documents that multiple users can update simultaneously.  Here are some introductory links and my thoughts for how design and construction teams might use this tool.  If you have your own ideas for how you'll implement Wave, share it in the comments. 

Links for Getting Started

YouTube: What is Google Wave?

The Complete Guide to Google Wave

LifeHacker: How to Manage a Group Project in Google Wave

How Architects Might Use Wave

• Meeting minutes: Instead of one person publishing minutes, all parties could contribute their notes to ensure no detail is dropped.  This could happen live with attendees on laptops or smartphones adding their responsibilities to the document.  One party might still be chiefly responsible for moderating the minutes, but an increased participation in record keeping could help ensure all parties are clear on the next actions to take.


• Collaborative notes: Aside from architecture, there is discussion on how students can use Wave to crowdsource their notes on a class.  If a student dazed during a certain portion of a lecture, they might find it in the class Wave.  The professional equivalent of this might be notes on:
  
  
  
  • office-specific drawing and software procedures
  
  
  • shared notes from a presentation
  
  
  • notes from professional conferences
  
  


• Problem Solving: Some design issues require long email trails to find resolution.  Such circumstances might be aided by a Wave that allows each party to contribute their ideas to the collaborative document.


• Job record: If a construction project recorded major decisions and intentions in Waves, the result would be entirely searchable  and 'rewind-able'.  This could benefit a complex project in the later phases of design or construction.


• Research: If architects increase their participation in Wave, 'public waves' could enable  architects to find new expert voices to help solve technical problems.


• International Projects: The real-time translating feature of Wave aims to break language barriers.


• Fun Stuff: Organizing lunch, drinks and parties without long trails of emails.

Comments

[Aaron]

These kinds of instantly synchronized, collaborative tools are great. And I'm sure they will ultimately become the way projects are managed and business is done. Unfortunately, we're still working with people who don't understand why posting a single current version of files is better than emailing them back and forth. Looking forward to seeing what the wave is all about.

[k]

This is excellent! I was looking for the perfect online collaboration tool recently, and this looks like it could fit the bill.

I'm glad I stumbled onto your blog today. Good stuff.