A Wave of change

There are a few articles out there discussing the Google Wave concept and it’s uses in the construction industry, but no one who’s actually used it and written about the experience. We figured we’d be the first! Now many of you in the industry may already be familiar with Google as they are the creators of a tool called SketchUp. If you were impressed by that, you will surely be interested in what I have to say.

The Internets were abuzz with talk of Google Wave these past 10 days. I happened to receive a “nomination” as Google hopes to get the Preview of the product into the hands of 100,000 folks to help test out and use the product (they are still a ways from getting to that number so if you’re waiting for yours it’s probably on its way). Having now played around the with the tool I wanted to share a little bit about what I’m seeing and how it could bring change to the construction industry. As a disclaimer, this is no means a full review. Wave is still very early in the product development cycle, so I’ve decided to focus on two areas:

Email clarity
Collaborative experiences

Email clarity
The number of emails, messages, and documents passed back and forth throughout a construction project would make anyone’s head spin. Wave looks to have a way of clarifying all the clutter. Initially you type your note and once complete, you start to add folks to the conversation, or wave.

So let’s say a land developer is having a conversation with his financier. He or she would start a “wave”. All the messages are passed back and forth until the developer realizes this information needs to be provided to the marketing team. Instead of deciding which emails and documents they need to forward (and potentially missing some of the information the marketing team may need), he or she just adds the marketing team members to the wave. Now the marketing team can see the entire wave. Here’s where the fun begins.

Our marketing folks that were invited to the wave can now do a number of things. They can replay the entire wave from the beginning and watch how the conversation occurred, they can also start to be involved in the conversation at any level. Let’s assume after the third back and forth between developer and financier, marketing team member 1 wanted to interject with a question. They could. In fact they can start conversations at the end or in the middle of any message. They can even highlight a sentence or phrase and respond to that section alone. While this may sound confusing, the reality is that anyone added to the conversation can now see the flow of the wave. No more wondering if there was an email or document they didn’t get, because they information wasn’t sent to them; they were added to the flow of information, or again the wave.

What does this mean? It means that Google Wave, or a concept like this, is now bridging the gap between modes of communication that are active (Instant Messaging) and those that are passive (Email). Today’s Wall Street Journal article (long) in fact discusses “The End of the Email Era”. The point is that we need to deal with communication as it is relevant to our time and Wave attempts to update how we communicate.

Collaborative experience
If there’s any trait that is inherent to a spectacular design-build team, it’s effective collaboration. Wave emphasizes that and makes it easier. It’s email meets blogging meets instant messaging meets document collaboration meets social networking meets the real-time web. Whether the users speak the same language or not (yes - Rosy helps with language transcription) wave will take care of translating for you as well.

Imagine the superintendent of a construction site being able to sit at his desk and see the communication of a change in design occur in real time, participate, and relay that message to his crew immediately; or a sub-contractor being able to chime in when they see a potential flaw in design based on a discussion between mechanical engineer and facilities director.

If you’ve used any online tools to conduct business or manage teams and you’ve found success with them, you will easily see the power of this new tool. Today’s tool-set is complicated. We have so many different tools to do the same thing and Wave brings them all together.

Final Thoughts
What I’m not saying here is that Google Wave is what you should use today, or that it will succeed and it’s the greatest product ever. But, if you are not aware of all the Web 2.0 (or social media) tools out there that could make your professional life easier, you may want to take a look at them, because sooner or later they will become part of the way communication just happens.

For those who have an invite, feel free to add me as a contact. My info is: vikduggal [at] googlewave [dot] com

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!