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October 2009 - Posts

Here Lies the Wave

So, I've spent a week or two experimenting with Google Wave. I've had some correspondence with some journalists I know, a Vistage colleague in the US, other people who run digital agencies. And it's been a frustrating experience.

I think partly the way they've done the beta release is to blame. It seems that very few large communities of people that already correspond have been given a pool of invitations. So conversation has been very fragmented. The beauty of Wave, which is a kind of rolling discussion incorporating instant messaging, social media, productive wiki and email, can't show itself clearly when there are six of you but not all on the same wavelength at the same time.

One of the features I found quite interesting is that you can incorporate a Wave into a web page. In my case I hosted a Wave in my blog for a week, and people who were logged in to Wave could view the embedded Wave and people in the conversation could interact with it. My coding's not up to much, so it didn't look particularly elegant, but it's a far cry from the basic comment field.

So I think that one day Wave could be awesome. While some of my online colleagues didn't see the attraction, I think it might become quite a revolutionary step. For example, imagine constructing a collaboratively-generated screenplay or feature article, where several people can be involved in different time zones, editing previous contributions and suggesting new, constantly honing and refining, fact-checking, editing and clarifying as you go along, until the final polished artifact is ready. On the other hand, I can see all sorts of mischief; and the experience of wiki, where attribution and defacement become important, may have to be revisited.

It's not in itself particularly original – it is after all an agglomeration and blurring of the borders between a whole host of technologies that have been around for between 15 and 30 years – but it may take discussion itself to a whole new level.

Posted Oct 20 2009, 01:30 PM by Felix Velarde with 1 comment(s)
 

Well, what a week

Well, what a week.

I started out the weekend getting my solo gliding certificate, and flying my first four flights with no-one else in the plane. Here's a picture of the KA13 I was flying (it's the red one at the bottom).

I then spent most of the rest of the weekend finalising our move into new offices while we wait for the brand new and very cool offices to be fitted out. How come? Well, we've just completed a deal to become part of Hasgrove-owned Amaze plc, the UK's biggest non-London digital agency. They've got 180 people in Manchester, Chester, Brussels - and pretty soon it'll be 50 in London too. We've made Head of Client Services Emma Nicol and Planning Director Pete Anderson shareholders in recognition of the work they’ve done over the past couple of years while we’ve built up to this point, and it’s well-deserved.

We'll continue to operate under the Underwired brand, and of course we own the eCRM.co.uk website and trade mark, so the pointy-head stuff we do, along with the lovely design work Jason Holland’s team produces, will continue but with a bit more, well, momentum behind it.

So, a momentous time. And we're extremely happy. You could say I'm flying.

Posted Oct 20 2009, 01:01 PM by Felix Velarde with no comments
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