I first saw the very long video on youtube just before the first public google wave invites were sent out. I was very excited to get ahold of this product and use it to its full extent.
Short Video
Just recently I have begun managing my soccer team with some friends. The countless emails that were sent with a million reply alls really took its toll. Trying to get information from everyone and put it together in an orderly fashion, where everyone knew what was going on was very annoying.
I waited a reasonable month to receive my wave invite from a friend who is not necessarily tech savvy which made me sad and happy. I looked all over the net to get my invite earlier. I guess it’s all about who you know. When i first received it and opened it up to my first wave for sending invites to others, I will have to say I was slightly disappointed. I already had an issue with the window size. Even after resizing it, I felt i did not have enough real estate on my screen to enjoy it. There is just so much going on, that it is not well suited for 13 inch screen or less. I was looking into my near future with complicated gadgets and could see myself running out of space to work smoothly. I guess its time to invest in a larger screen.
The next thing I tried was to search for public waves which is highly recommended since it is very likely you will have a limited number of people to actually use the service at this time. I tried a few out to learn the ropes and see the possibilities of the service.
Finally came the opportunity to get my entire soccer team on the service. So far we have a good quarter of the members signed up. Luckily for my I get the feeling that these guys either A. trust me in managing the team or B. will do whatever i say as long as they don’t have to deal with paperwork. With only a few members signed up I went ahead and tried some new widgets…errr…gadgets(sorry google) out. The coolest so far and the most useful is called the iFrame gadget. It allows the ability to embed an entire webpage into the wave. You may think why would this be sooo useful? Well I’m glad you asked. A neat little trick is that with google Docs you can embed, in this case, an Excel file to be collaborated on. Just adjust your share settings on a google Doc and poof. Now, instead of gathering each members info and putting it into a spreadsheet myself, they can get in on the wave and edit the team roster themselves with all the essential info. This is a killer feature for me and has worked very well.
The next thing I tried was a vote system to find out when everyone would be available to practice. There are many voting systems available to try to suit your specific needs. And if your need doesn’t exist, there is a huge community to help you out.
Well, I am still in basic testing phase so ill get back to what else i find out. But for now, give google a check mark for: good tool for organizing a sports team!
i released a new tool for managing a girlfriend. you should be getting your invite in your inbox soon.