Found: “What problems does Google Wave Solve?”

Image by nauj27 via Flickr

I‘ve not really had much to say about Google Wave yet aside from my initial roundup of Wave articles.  So far it looks like early adopters are disappointed and collaboration enthusiasts are still optimistic.  Early adopter tech blogger Louis Gray shared a really interesting post on the topic by Daniel Tenner that you really ought to read.  I’ve included a few choice quotes to whet your interest:

What problems does Google Wave solve? A matter of perspective

Being Robert Scoble probably doesn’t require you to spend days working on a specification document for some finicky aspect of project X, or at least not very often, and he’s probably not the one collating everyone’s suggested changes and resubmitting the document for further review.

In your average corporate environment, though, this happens all the time. People work on documents, presentations, etc. They have lengthy discussions over email. Pieces of work bounce back and forth across one or multiple organisations for weeks before they’re finalised. People are brought on to the conversation late in the day. Attachments get lost. Inboxes fill up and emails bounce. It’s a major pain.

So what are the problems with email in a corporate environment, and what does Wave do to address them?   - Daniel Tenner, CTO at Woobius

Tenner goes on to describe some of the classic problems with email-based document collaboration: Adding new people to an existing conversation, adding and losing attachments, splintering conversations, minor edits, and transitions back and forth to email. It’s all good, and it really outlines the problems between jumping from Word to Outlook to Messenger (or whichever clients you use)  and back again in the course of a work day.  Each is a great tool in and of itself but there’s just not enough tying them all together right now.

If you have a Wave account and you’re looking to chat, hit me up at dpritchett@googlewave.com.

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