Riding the Google Wave

It's been almost a week and I survived my "Riding the Google Wave" session at NYSCATE's "Riding the Digital Wave" session out at Erie1 BOCES West Seneca location.

It was a great day starting off with the keynote by Dr. Roger Firestein who started off by telling us he got his major in Creativity and Innovation here at UB!  What?  I've never even heard of that.  He kept us thinking and in particular had us form groups and "without judgement" brainstorm ideas about what we'd want our bathtub to be!  It was amazing when there were no limits what we came up with.  From NASCAR strips that you could just rip off and BAM, the tub and area around it would be clean.  To having the water do a skin scan and sending that information directly to your doctor to make sure everything is OK (thanks @rickweinberg for both of those).  I keyed in on the idea of "without judgement" since I was going to be showing Google Wave, which is still in Beta, and quite honestly, Wave's been beat up quite a bit since it's release.

In my session, well, I survived!
I must've been pretty nervous because I can't distinctly remember where people were sitting, just that it was packed.  Quite a few people said they had Google Wave invites, but we only had a few editing with us.  I fortunately could call on @tclarkeee, @jgriffith2, @theresagray and @rickweinberg as well as some others to add content and ideas.

To give the others an real time collaboration option, I set up an Etherpad to use with suffix RtGW (Riding the Google Wave).  I then realized that this one is different because it has lower case letters here!  Ooops.
The good things that I believe I did was to organize my waves into one folder (RtGW).  That gave them a blue box when they were in my inbox denoted by RtGW.  I also brought in the Public Robot (public@a.gwave.com)  otherwise no one would be able to see it OR I'd have to invite every single person.
The other robot I used was EasyPublic (easypublic@appspot.com) not sure if it did anything different, but I read that it wouldn't go away.  I guess sometimes the Public Robot does?
THEN, I tagged each of the waves #RtGW and to be safe also RtGW.  This is done at the bottom of the wave where it says Tags" and a + sign in a grey ellipse.
To be even more save, I went up to the top and numbered them 1,2,3,4.  Then, when people went to the search they could type:

with:public #RtGW (or RtGW without the #)

and get my four waves.  
For some reason the Fourth wave didn't show up and that was too bad, because I had questions about the opening keynote.  
Instead I started back over to wave #1 and deleted my content to put questions up for the keynote.  
You can see it here (If you have a Google Wave account).
I tried to show the Google Wave that JamieLynn Griffith did with her 2nd Graders and their Community project, but I was trying to rush through all of it and by that point, I'm not sure how many people were still with me.
I'm glad I took the risk, but couldn't done it a lot better.




First, in the description, sent everyone to https://www.google.com/ to sign up for an account before they got there.  I did try to send an e-mail a week before, but some didn't get it in time and didn't have time to send it in and get it back.  This would've been the biggest improvement, because I think there was so much confusion at the beginning that it was hard for people to see how they may use this.
I also should've gone slower at the beginning for those that had Google Wave accounts.  This is how you start a wave, this is your blip.  Shown ways to edit and save a little slower.  Maybe had them send waves to a small group next to them to practice...then thrown them into mine to have all of us start adding to.
Then, I could've organized gadgets better.  I had my third wave all full of gadgets to play with. I barely talked about them.
Not sure if I'd do that again.  At least not until it's out of Beta and I get to use it more.


Next, maybe something more like Google SketchUp!

First trial with Google Wave

OK, now that the black banner is gone, I can actually use Google Wave (if I can find someone with an account!). I had one wave with @jenwagner and it was tough for me to keep up. There were only 2 of us! Maybe I'm getting old. I did go to bed at 8:30 last night.
It will take quite a bit for me to get used to. Plus, I think we both noticed a lag on our computers when we tried to go to email and on Twitter.
I did think about kids, though, and for them it would be engaging as things change instantly.
It will take some getting used to for me, but I like it and am excited to have a chance to get in and kick the tires a little.

Anyways, I added blog-wave@appspot.com as a Contact in Google Wave and want to see if I can post this to my blog. Well, the first thing I learned is that Bloggy isn't working, so I couldn't post this to my blog from Google Wave. We had to go to Cut and Paste!

I also added Tweety (I remember thinking they were going to call it Twave), but can't seem to refresh and get live updates. I did post a tweet from it to Twitter however. To add Tweety, add tweety-wave@appspot.com to your Contacts.

Of course, I found all of this on the Google Wave Forum and in particular, at this thread.

We'll see where this leads, as I build up contacts (hopefully, some of my invites will go through) it will be interesting. It seems pretty confusing right now and I know I'm only scratching the surface, but in a year, could it be second nature?

We'll see.

Google Wave e-mail Invite? Or was it?

I was incredibly excited to see an e-mail invite from wave-noreply yesterday.
I was out in a district, and I didn't open it up until the end of the day because I had tons of work that had to get done.
I didn't think I'd get one, and also thought it was a little odd that it was sent on Oct. 1st at 12:07am and not on Sept. 30th, but I thought, "maybe someone from Twitter invited me in".
Who cares, I got an invite!

My e-mail looked official:

I clicked on the link, but it wanted me to add the Google Chrome browser plug-in.
I did go and check and this seemed to be legit, so I did download it (Might've been my mistake right there!)
Then, when it was done and I got in, all I saw was this:
A tad bit frustrating, if you can't read the top black banner it says:
"Everything's shiny, Cap'n. Not to fret!" Unfortunately, you'll need to refresh.
Wanna tell Dr. Wave what happened?
With a submit box to go to "Dr. Wave".
Now, I felt like I got scammed and began thinking why did I use IE!

Then, I thought, why not try Firefox? NOPE. Same thing.
I went to refresh the page....for a second, it looks good.....then same black banner.
Try it on another computer - same thing.
Download Google Chrome! YES, that has to work! NOPE.
Try it on a Mac with Safari - No.
At home, on another computer - No.

I came back to work today, maybe? Maybe? NO.

If I go to My Account in Google, I see Wave listed under My Products.

I've posted to the Google Wave Forum and wasted a night trying to figure this out.

Did I do something wrong? Maybe it was the Google Chrome plugin?
Let's just say it's been a frustrating day.
Then again, I'm frustrated over a Beta product that's free.

Maybe it's trying to tell me that I have too many other things going on? I would like to try it out this weekend, though. Can anyone help?