10 Tips to Better Google Wave Conversations

Posted by: Josh Walsh in Company.

Jonathan Penn and I have had a number of enlightening conversations about Google Wave which have had a significant impact on the way we converse. After reading an entry on his blog, Hardware Limits of the Human Mind and conversing with him some more, I’ve invited him to share some tips we have come up with.

1. Stay on the record. Conversing in a Wave and reading a wave are distinctly different experiences. Unlike email, it can be difficult to pick up an archived Wave and understand the attitudes and intentions that were communicated during the live conversation. Spoken conversations have a push-and-pull conversational style that is difficult to maintain in a written conversation. This is not a grown-up instant messenger or Campfire room, it’s a completely new conversational paradigm.
2. Wave blips should be focused. Since the conversation happens in real time, it is easy to abandon your comment mid-thought. Don’t. In spoken conversation, we would stop speaking and let the other person react. In Wave, we need to be careful that we take the time to finish our thoughts through to completion.
3. Don’t be afraid to explore and elaborate on the topic in your current blip. It’s ok to be extra verbose when exploring an idea. But, be careful to stay on topic. Going too deeply into thought is better than going off topic.
4. Know when to start a new Wave. The Wave is about the content in the discussion, not about the people involved in the discussion. When you have a new topic, start a new wave. They should be considered cheap and disposable. Shorter topic waves are easier to digest than long waves which span multiple topics.
5. Watch the “fluff.” When having spoken conversations, conversational “fluff” just goes in one ear and out the other. These statements don’t drift away in Wave.
6. Only invite the minimum necessary parties. It’s easier to get a good conversation going with 2 or 3 people and then bring in others as necessary. Otherwise the topic is not solidified enough and the Wave loses focus.
7. Not all Waves are permanent. Sometimes the process of conversing is enough. There isn’t always a document to save and come back to later. Wave is a powerful brainstorming tool, where the content created isn’t as important as the process you took to create it.
8. Reply where appropriate. Where your reply lives can be as important as what your reply says.
9. Prune and Summarize. Take a few moments to summarize the conversation into a more concise blip, and remove the conversation it took to get there. Once the content has been established, rework it to be as clear and concise as possible.
10. Be Flexible. Wave is a brand new protocol with myriad possibilities. Google’s Wave client is the first iteration to try and use it. There will be other conventions and courtesies emerging so don’t get too comfortable in your ways, yet!

Do you have additional tips or tricks you have learned since Wave launched? Comment them.