There has been a lot of press about the much-touted Google Wave platform. It will be a major culture-shift in how we communicate electronically. I foresee it replacing traditional email. At a minimum, it is an email, wiki, and real-time collaboration tool all rolled into one. There is also a Playback feature, where you can see how the document was built over time. Often it's hard to follow what happened based on seeing only the most updated version, and it helps to see the evolution. Currently user-access is invite-only, but I have some invites to give out!
I am officially announcing a new "wave" or discussion thread that I am starting, which is open to the public (or at least those with Google Wave accounts). It is called "A career in emergency medicine: Advice from emergency medicine faculty".This Wave will be a living document where faculty can answer students' questions and post their thoughts about commonly-asked questions about EM. It is so real-time that you can actually see the user typing letter-by-letter, if you catch them at the right moment. As I build the site, you'll see links, graphics, documents, videos, polls, and other cool gadgets.
Here's a screenshot of the initial layout. I may need to break out into several sub-"waves" if the main page gets too long and unwieldy. Each section is editable by the public. Questions/comments can be posted under each chapter within indented boxes. (An example can be seen just under the video.) Click on the image below to see more detail.
If you would like a Google Wave account, please email me at michelle.lin@emergency.ucsf.edu, and I'll give you one of my remaining 19 invitations.
If you have an account already, you can search for and join the Wave by typing "with:public career in emergency medicine" in the home page's New Wave box.
Come and join the fun. I'd love your help. With some help and hard work, I think this virtual EM advising site may really take off.
My prior post on Google Wave and a link to the introductory video from Google.
