This weekend I was very excited to wake up to a surprise in my inbox - my advance copy of Google Wave. I have to be honest, Google Wave doesn't make much of a first impression. It is an uninspiring template that you have to learn to love. Here is my suggestion on how to do that.
Think of Google Wave for what it is – a playground.
I have wonderful memories of the schoolyard playground where we played basketball, kickball, dodgeball, and many other activities that we either learned or invented together – because we had to. If we were going to have fun on that little piece of asphalt at our elementary school, we had to create our own experience. There is an interesting dynamic to playgrounds, just as there is to Google Wave. It is a user controlled experience that demands cooperative collaboration.
Playgrounds have some limitations. There are both hard boundaries and some softer boundaries too. However, you don't know which are which unless you are willing to push those soft edges to see where you can go. In this respect, playgrounds reveal a great deal about who you are. They help us to learn who are the leaders, the joiners and collaborators, the risk-takers, and the observers who prefer to hang out on the the sidelines and watch the action. Wherever you fit, we all are participants who nevertheless help shape the overall experience.
Google has carefully released advance copies of Wave in a series of drips to create a trickle that is building into a strong current of hype and excitement, at least among those of us who follow the technology trends. We all know the real deal never lives up to the hype, and that is what I discovered, and what others have expressed on Twitter since the most recent release.
Once you see what Wave looks like "fresh out of the box," you will understand the disappointment. I'm convinced that reaction is unfounded once you realize how Wave can work. This is your playground, and its up to you to do something special with it. You have to make your own fun, and that means you have to get involved and do the work, which of course goes against the current of what some erroneously assume to be the rule of the road with social media.
Here's the thing. Imagine you have the opportunity to either sit in a classroom and listen to a lecture, or go out into the playground to make some fun. When I was in school we didn't care if it was raining or snowing, the playground was always the better option. How about you? Would you rather collaborate, make friends, and learn more about your capabilities with your colleagues, or would you rather sit there and have to take it as it comes – like a lecture?
As a professional speaker, my job is to deliver a message that benefits an audience, and this is usually accomplished with a presentation that is conveyed from a platform. Of course, I encourage participation and interaction, but there is no guarantee i will always get it. When I do it is truly a wonderful thing. It makes for a more enjoyable and beneficial learning experience for me and the audience, and I'm sure that then goes double for the meeting planner.
There has been a great deal of discussion lately on blogs about creating a more interactive model of learning for adults. Why? Evidently, we have retained fragments of the memories of those playground experiences. We can either sit back and listen to speakers like Jeff, or we can learn in a more collaborative environment with speakers like Jeff. The only way we are going to evolve our conference learning model is to once again push those softer edges, and Google Wave offers some possibilities.
Last week Mashable.com shared some creative applications of Google Wave. There is one in particular that got my attention in regards to this topic of collaborative presentations. This use takes the Twitter hashtag experience of collaborating during a conference and and puts a tidal wave behind it. The idea is simple: Conference attendees can collaborate in real-time on the same playground using Google Wave to assemble a body of work that captures the unfiltered, present moment insights and inspirations of conceivably hundreds of participants.
There is a fully documented account of this on the FreshNetworks blog. Here's an excerpt:
“Here’s what happened: an audience member would create a Google Wave and others in the audience would edit the wave during the presentation. The result would be a crowd-sourced write-up of the presentation: a transcript of key points and a record of audience comments.”
I'm suggesting this could go even further to also include the conference presenter in the collaboration. Imagine a presentation that gets better as it evolves into something completely original, something that has never been created before, and that is only created now because of this unique collaboration, by this audience?
This week I am attending the Fall Conference of the National Speakers Association where a few of us discussed this topic at length. There is risk involved with any kind of exposure, and there is certainly a great deal of risk in opening your presentation up to any and all comments. I'm just considering that greater risk usually involves greater rewards.
Maybe the question is how authentic are you prepared to be? I envision a time when we won't even have to ask that question because social media will amplify and reveal our true nature to the extent that complete authenticity will be unavoidable. How about you?
Who wants to play?
Yes, I would love to read your comments and will be sure to respond in kind. While you are at it, feel free to click on the green ShareThis button below to share with your friends.
Photo Credit: Lulu Vision
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