Comments on: Using Google Wave in the LDS Church

By: Erika

Erika — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:31:51 +0000

I liked the post about using wave for family history. With the new familysearch.org, you can do a lot more collaborating, because you can see what everyone else has done. I love the idea of posting photos, documents, & personal experiences using google wave. It will really need some tweaking before everyone can get used to it. Even being quite computer savvy, it took me a few minutes to figure out what in the world was going on as I used it. Like any new technology, it seems complicated at first, but the usefulness will be discovered as it is used often.

I love being able to reply specifically where you want, as opposed to this format, or facebook, where you have to address who you’re commenting back to. In google wave, you can just reply to the exact spot you’re referring to. It would also be great for commenting back & forth, no more copying & pasting their comments before you reply to them.

Thanks for the ideas!

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:25:03 +0000

You lucky dog, I haven’t got my invite yet, so if you’ve got a spare there’s a brother that would love a hook up!

By: Sasha LDS Friend

Sasha LDS Friend — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:18:05 +0000

One more idea is to bring absent members of Quorum or committee up to meeting.
For example, if any of them is sick or on vacation trip, or travels on business…

From any point of the world (of course, if there is the Internet connection) I can join a wave to discuss, plan or report together with my brethren. Or being in another time zone I can get all information about missing meeting as soon as I have Internet.

By: Russel.Geist

Russel.Geist — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:33:08 +0000

Great ideas for an emerging technology, Bryce.

Having served in various Elders Quorums in different capacities, the typical “weak link” has always been lack of working committees to support the threefold mission in the Quorum. The reason most cited has been difficulty getting the brethren together as committees without taking time from Quorum instruction on Sunday. I can certainly see Wave improving the collaboration within Priesthood committees.

By: Bryce Haymond

Bryce Haymond — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:51:59 +0000

Great thoughts everyone. As far as family history goes, I think it might be useful. The New FamilySearch which is being rolled out slowly across the Church is going to have some amazing collaborative features for working on family lines and grouping information together on specific ancestors, etc., so everyone in a family can add their information and everyone else can see it and use it, and work on their genealogy together. It’ll be interesting to see if Wave factors into that equation.

By: Erin

Erin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:42:20 +0000

I have Wave but I don’t like that it posts my google wave address (which correlates to my gmail address) and my full name on websites so I’m going to comment the old fashioned way.

VT/HT: I could see using Wave for scheduling visiting teaching and home teaching appointments. I typically have one email conversation going with my VT companion, one with one of the sisters I visit teach and another with the other sister I visit teach. It would be easier to add everyone to a wave. Although I suppose I could do the same thing with CC-ing on emails. Wave just seems faster.

Family history: I’m the only member in my family, but the rest of the family is just thrilled that I’ll do their genealogy for them. I communicate with them mostly via email and it would be nice to create a genealogy wave where I could keep all of the messages in one spot. And where family members could see what information other family members had.

I wonder how long Google Wave will take to catch on. Until then, I’ll be checking both my email and Google Wave.

By: Kevin Harris

Kevin Harris — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:16:23 +0000

I could see this being very useful in doing genealogical research. For example, you could start a “wave” for a specific ancestor and add photos, records, stories, etc. and be able to find out from other people what they have already done or where they have already searched for information. Instead of every person starting at square one and hitting the same block and giving up over and over. Not only would this allow for team work, but could re-energize people who had otherwise given up. Now they can see progress from everyone and lend their talents to moving the work of the Lord forward.

By: David Larsen

David Larsen — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:21:22 +0000

Bryce,
I checked out Wave after I saw your post and I’m really excited about it. I would love to try it out! Definitely the “wave” of the future. Thanks for keeping us all up-to-date on the coolest new things!

By: Bryce Haymond

Bryce Haymond — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:18:46 +0000

Well, they’ve already made a Twitter bot for Google Wave, to be able to read and tweet from within Google Wave, and I’ve embedded a wave into this WordPress post above, so I think it’s only a matter of time.

By: Kim Siever

Kim Siever — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:55:51 +0000

I hope websites like Twitter and Faceboook and sites run by CMSes like Joomla, Drupal and WordPress will be able to integrate Google Wave. That will fundamentally change the way we communicate.