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Get the NewsletterCan Google Wave Change the Future of Content Management?
Right now, most document management solutions work under the idea of many people making separate edits, locking the document to prevent edits stepping on one another. But what if you could all edit a document at the same time like you can in Google Docs and similar tools? That, in some ways, is the promise of Google Wave (news, site).
Document Collaboration, Real Time
Google Wave integrates services such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google IM and more into a single tool. Creating a Wave enables you to collaborate with your peers on documents in real time, watching them type and edit and allowing you to step in and make your own changes.
Rather than being limited to plain text, you have basic document formatting options such as headings (H1, H2, etc), alignment, font styles, highlighting and more. You can even click the Playback button to watch the entire discussion (called a wave) evolve step by step.
Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen?
Collaborating in a wave is a little daunting, especially if one person tends to think fast and write faster. One would also question the ability to automatically overwrite someone else's work. Some social etiquette is useful here or people can go overboard not letting one person finish their changes before stomping on what the first person was doing.
And what if you don't agree with the changes? Can you reject them? Back them out? If someone doesn't own the document and have ultimate say, things could get ugly. Fast.
In a nod to the fact that collaboration isn't always the best way to produce content, Google itself sends read-only waves from the system when you first get your Wave account. For the moment, users can't create read-only waves, but Google states that it looks forward to offering this feature in the future.
A Wave in Progress
The service is still heavily in development. Just working simultaneously with one other person is a bit slow, and can cause the browser to complain about potential runaway scripts when someone is editing.
Occasionally getting a message at the top of your browser window saying that everything is "shiny" (for you Browncoats out there) "but you'll need to Refresh" was a bit unnerving, but at least nothing was lost in the process.
For this technology to scale and be truly useful in the content management space it needs to be more efficient and more robust. Imagine many people editing a wiki page simultaneously with no appreciable lag and no browser death and you'll get the picture of where the future might take us.
Not that this picture is all sunshine and flowers. It sounds like chaos too. Especially when someone comes behind you editing as you type.
Best for Small, Collaborative Teams
Ultimately a technology like Google Wave is probably best for specialized situations where smaller-time collaboration is key, just as smaller groups in the physical world often can get more done, faster, simultaneously than larger ones.
Considering the lack of workflow and versioning capabilities, document collaboration inside a wave is definitely not for larger enterprises who have clearly defined rules for the creation and publishing of content on intranet and internet websites.
Of course, maybe that's not the point of Google Wave. It's much more about the collaboration than the content management. A similar feature in a CMS might be available for those who want to use it in the document creation or editing phase, but otherwise not be a large factor in the overall management of that content.
Which makes sense. CMS's offer editors but these editors are a small subset of even a simple CMS's overall functionality.
What do You Think?
Have you tried Google Wave? Is it worth all of the gushing and fuss? This article was written and edited in Google Wave simultaneously by Dee-Ann LeBlanc and Barb Mosher.
Writing and editing together allowed each participant to watch each other's thought process, step in when the other got stuck, polish one section as the other wrote new text, and get an article down without needing to discuss what we were doing ahead of time.
In fact, the very act of creating the document became the conversation. Maybe that's the real power of a technology like Google Wave.
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I can understand your concern about chaos in a Google wave. I think that eventually there must be some kind of hierarchy in terms of permissions, like wave author, editor, commentator, reader only, with corresponding rights. Maybe Google is waiting for extensions to add that kind of capability.
Since Google Wave is possibly the first truly collaborative, real-time content system, we will have to see how it all works out. This kind of technology kind of boggles the mind with possibilities, though doesn't it?
As it stands at present - no. It is a collaborative tool, which as the authors point out is not the same as a CMS.
It interests me that whenever a new collaborative space is announced CMS watchers clamour to see how it can be used as a CMS. What this really reveals is the dissatisfaction of many with the current offerings available in the market place.
If only Google would turn its attention to producing a dedicated CMS - that would be something worth watching.
I know that they are planning to introduce some form of permissions control, and there are a couple of schemes for moderation, although they tend to be honour-based.
I can see somebody developing a robot to do that sort of functionality, but it could get very complex from a design and coding point of view.
Interesting post De-Ann and Barb, something I have also blogged about this morning. I am interested in what happened when you were done collaborating - how did you publish the article?
If this is what Google intended it for, it doesn't seem to yet have that publishing capability and the API seems to be all about sharing Waves with other wave users…? Or did I miss something?
John,
I must admit I was a little unsure of Google Wave when I first when in. I couldn't really think of what to do with it. When Dee suggested collaborating on an article, I was leary (because I am not use to this level of collaboration), but it turned out to be very interesting.
Once you start doing something, you can start to get a feel for what it's good for. We focused on WCM because having this type of ability directly built into a WCM could be very useful.
I could also seeing using it for having a expert panel discussion on a particular topic - like social networking say. Watch as the experts discuss the adv/dis of something, having someone lead the discussion. I think that would be kind of interesting.
Hi Ian,
To publish the article, I actually had to cut and paste it into our editing program. I think I could have exported as a PDF, but cut and paste was fast. I also had to reformat it, because the html was different. Other than that, how it published was exactly what Dee and I wrote.
barb
Thanks Barb - just as I suspected with cut and paste and as you can see in my own post, I completely agree with you on its potential role in collaboratively creating content, as you guys have done here.
I am just not sure if that's what Google had intended, you can publish from Google docs - so why not wave?
Great article, and I think wave will infuse a big change into the CMS world, no doubt about that!
In my research in the CMS world, I have found that any CMS fail to deliver simple means to collaboration which makes the living days for the editors a nitemare.
The introduction of Google Wave in reality (not as now in pre mode) will uncover fun research areas. CMS vendors do need to change their portfolios or be extinct. The case of using the technology large scale will probably be the best test bench to new forms of collaboration and here I think Wave will be one key component. Improved corporate networking in a essence.
http://flandqvist.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/festering-lumps-of-postponed-embarrasment-will-wave-enlighten-the-cms-world/
Love to follow this debate from all CMS professionals and researchers alike.
If the users get creative, there are some useful things in Google Wave, now that all of the “How-To's” and “Abouts” have been created.
For instance, I like to fly, and I have found a few Waves geared towards aviation.
If you like football or baseball, there are plenty of waves for the MLB Playoffs, College games, and the NFL. In fact, I am working on a series of waves which (eventually) will include a separate wave for every game in the 2009 season for the NFL. Do a search for “NFL 2009 Season Schedule”. A few of us came up with a creative way to build this, by using linked waves.
So if the users are creative enough, Wave can be useful. Is it on the breaking edge as far as content for information, news and collaboration…ehhh…not quite. But the more people start experimenting and building waves, the more people with continue using it and add more meaningful content.