As I start to read the articles about the departure of Google Wave as a standalone offering I reflect on my collaboration experiences while riding the wave. When it was first rolled out and Lars Rasmussen talked about the new communication and collaboration tool, I was quite excited and embraced the invitation to use this ground breaking communication / collaboration platform. It’s hard to believe it was only a year ago, and at the time it seemed to have been hyped to deflate the Bing launch. Regardless, I jumped right in.

As someone who finds himself using many “collaboration” tools ranging from custom apps to SharePoint to Zoho, Google’s offering looked promising. My skepticism came in the usefulness of the real-time features / novelty of “watching someone type.” In the beginning this seemingly excessive feature clouded my judgment on how, or maybe why, we would adopt Wave as a useful collaboration tool.

As we used it at Kishmish and with a select few clients, the feedback was mixed, with the main barrier being adoption. But being a student of change, I felt it was my mission to understand why. It ended up being one small statement that made Wave work: EVERY WAVE HAS A PURPOSE. Collaboration doesn’t just happen, it is predicated on the ideas and passions of humans, and their ability to articulate a purpose or mission. We made it a rule that if you were going to create a Wave, you would give it a mission, and the collaborative team then was responsible for adhering to the mission or purpose of the Wave. As we followed this rule, we had both healthy early adopters and the kickers and screamers who needed some prodding. The Waves that were produced were concise, to the point, had easy to follow generations, and promoted a healthy collaborative environment.

While the prognostication of Waves replacing email was not quite accurate, it did persuade some non-believers to give up their email collaboration ways. A Wave proved much easier to follow than a marked up email thread, and when a true purpose was found, the Waves we created produced some amazing results.

So, as the standalone platform of Wave disappears by the end of the year, I am curious on how it will be represented in other Google Lab Projects. I know myself, my colleagues and some of my clients will truly be sad when it comes time to say bye-bye to our Waves.