Google, Strategy

Google Wave for Ministry?

Posted by John Saddington on Dec 8, 2009

Everyone and their brother is trying to figure out how Google Wave is changing the game (besides trying to get invited to the darn thing). Of course, many people are taking a look at perhaps how it can help us in ministry specifically.

Brian Barela, as shown in the screencast above, shows a quick example of how he’s used it and some of the pros/cons of his experience so far.

Thanks Brian for testing the waters!

How have you guys seen Google Wave useful?

John Saddington

John is the Chief Editor @ The 8BIT Network and Senior Blog Junkie here at ChurchCrunch.He enjoys Triple-Tall Americanos, developing Wordpress Themes, and a few other Random Things.

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24 Responses to “Google Wave for Ministry?”

  1. Sweet. I've been using it to coordinate a creative volunteer team involved in various service programming elements. Really handy across the board, especially considring many of the people on the creative team are widespread and near impossible to get in the room at the same time, but are also all very active online.

    Some specific uses that I've found have been brainstorming and sharing graphic and video concepts for upcoming series, creation of creative service elements, strategic music selection and task delegation.

    It's worked really well for our creative SPD team so far and I can't wait to implement it more widely across our ministry.

    • hey justin that's another key way i've been using it; it's really great at having slowly developing conversations with people from different locations.

  2. i've got a few partners,clients,and friends and still processing …it's not if, but when i'll start using it.

  3. we've used it for planning as well. unlike email, it's all in one place and you don't have a long list of emails, plus if you have an idea after the talk, you can still add it.

    the problem is that if you don't remember to keep google wave open, you don't see or participate in the discussion.

    being able to add files and pics is also helpful, makes sharing financial reports, etc in one place pretty nice.

    we'll see if it's really useful after the preview is over and the "hype" subsides.

  4. The Wave is great. We've been using it for the initial planning stages and brainstorming. One of us throws an idea out there, and people can quickly comment or respond to each part. When I sign back in, I can easily see new feedback, and there's no guessing what part of ur original message they're responding to. Way faster than email!

    i agree with sblumer's comment, it'd be nice if they sent an email or tweet to u when there's new content in a Wave.

  5. We are using to coordinating live broadcasts on our multi-site and web campuses campuses.

    Would like an email reminder of new additions to the wavelettes.

    • There's a FF addon that works very well for gwave notifications.

      It's not email, but it's something.

  6. I predict a POP/IMAP gadget. Then google wave will be the app you open for email, and not gmail/yahoo/etc. All waves and email will be centralized there.

    I also predict rich clients for Wave. Think MS Outlook or Apple Mail for Wave. A central messaging hub for threaded conversations, IMs, Tweets, and emails.

    Convergence. It's only a matter of time.

    peace | dewde

    • I love all the things you're saying.

  7. A group of us have been using Google Wave to do collaborative planning for Emergent Village communications (revamping the @emergentvillage Twitter, EV blog/website, etc.). Other technologies exist for this kind of collaborative discussion, but Google Wave (because of it's real-time "chat"-like function) takes it to another level and makes it feel more "immediate" and exciting. So far that's been the only real use I've seen for Google Wave, but it's working well for this kind of "team" approach.

  8. I have used it for sharing ideas, having small group discussion, working on graphics, and sharing information about an idea.

  9. I have been using Google Wave with some friends to discuss our roadtrip to the Denver A29 Bootcamp in May. It's been great for that. Although, I think Wave has a long way to go before it's really useful.

    One thing that bothers me is that I am not notified in my gmail that there is a new wave message. It would be nice if there was some way to turn that feature on. There are virtually no "settings" for Wave.

  10. Our group is working towards going Wave. it's frustrating that as far as I can tell, you can't set notifications to email, so I always forget about wave and don't respond quickly. I guess I should just remember.

    • If you use Chrome as your browser there is a Wave Notifier extension you can use, which has come in handy for me. granted this only works if you are camped out in front of your computer…

  11. I feel lost. I think I'll just stick with IE5.5 :)

  12. So far I haven't figured out what to do with it. I see it's potential but that's where it stops.

  13. Good cross promotion :)

  14. Ok so I can’t see the video because of some Nazi inspired proxy settings here at the office (yes it is lunchtime here).

    But I do have 25 google wave invites to give away, and if, like the article suggests, there are many people wanting just tweet me at @RonTuffin and I can pop an invite in your direction.

  15. We're certainly checking it out for MemberHub.com. It seems possible that we could replace a hub with just a Wave. But of course with our beautiful UI on top!

  16. I have a whole bunch of Wave invites to give away if anybody wants one. I am having a hard time giving these things away, it almost seems like the Wave bubble has burst among the people I know.

    If you are interested in an invite send me a message at jeff [--at--] thebristows.com

  17. We have been using googlewave as a Q&A platform. Check out the link if your interested: http://www.chrisfenner.com/2009/12/google-wave/

    • whoa, thanks for this!

    • That's pretty awesome!

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