For the Google Wave meetup we in Copenhagen today, we did all the planning regarding the meeting in a wave. It did not work out. It was only three participants how showed up to the meetup, and it was all the presenters or organizers. I hope that it is just the weather, but think there could also be some part of the wave usage that could be different.

We did some mistakes that I will probably do again, but at least try to avoid.

• First we did a survey about when to have the meeting, and we had to change the time because it did not fit with the schedule of university where the event should be held.
• I also asked people to contribute and participate in create an agenda. Most people are not interested in giving presentations, but instead what to learn. Which is why the meeting is taking place.
• We did not send out reminder mails. It would probably be a good idea to send out reminder mails to all the involved participants in the wave a day or two before. Many people may have mute the wave so they don’t see it as a reminder that an upcoming event is taking place.
• Did not have a clear RSVP where people could indicate that they were going to attend.

So next time we are going to plan a meetup. We will create an agenda and a place a head of time and then add people to sign up to the event. I if they want then people can contribute to the agenda if they want more topics.

I will also send an email to all persons how have indicated that they would like to come or are coming. That will for me sometimes make it easier to attend.

Planning meetings might be something that will be much easier to do in 12sprints, since you have a much more controlled environment for creating decisions.

I talked with Jacques Holst about planning, and he said the web never had been a one communication strategy. I think we have to remember that there are many other forms of communication to look for.

Image by Jonas K

For the month of February I was selected to the developer spotlight on theshinywave.com. It is a great honor that David Cook has selected med to perform his feature about. I was quite thrilled when, I got a mail with the piggy back on my blog. The thrill did not get any less when I found the blog.

I really appreciate that David finds my applications useful and they latest gadgets are the best.

If you want to try out our newest flash gadgets, all you need to do is to sign up to our newsletter on the right.

If you are in Copenhagen this week it might be worth going by the IT-university. We are having our 2.nd Google Wave meetup there.

This time we will focus on development of gadgets. There will be demonstrations on how gadgets and robots can be created.

Jacob Andersen will show how to create a python robot that can convert a wave to a pdf file. The code can already be found at github http://github.com/jacobandresen/pdf-thingy 

Daniel Graversen (me) will talk how to make gadgets using Flex. I just need to create a presentation.

I hope that we can get somebody to tell how wave is useful in their industry.

The event will take place Wednesday the 3 of February. The room number will be availed on Wednesday on the Wave.

For more information look see this Wave.

When you are working on designing your business or a product launch, it requires the use of some of the strategic tools. It can be the SWOT, PEST or PESTEL or the BCG growth matrix. Normally work on those tools is done in a room and on a whiteboard. The whiteboard is a really great way to work and it can make people work together and create a lot of interesting content. It though has some challenges for teams that are not sitting together or are difficult to get in the same room.

With Google Wave can collaborate on creating the same result. But then you will have to use different blips for managing each cell and this can lead to some unstructed content. With the help of a gadget there can be more structure on the content. See the following video to see what the gadget is able to do.

I’m looking forward to see when the Appstore for Google Wave will be released, so it is possible to sell the gadgets and spend more time on development of the applications. At the moment the gadget is only avaible for subscribers of our newsletter. Signup to the newsletter today and get access to the gadget.

Are there any other models that you will propose we implement?

Before anything else, let’s have a short introduction about Flex. Flex is actually a software development kit released by Adobe that will let you develop and deploy a cross-platform rich internet applications (RIA) having Adobe Flash as its platform for web and Adobe Air for desktop version. Since according to Adobe Flash Player Statistics, flash reaches 99% of all the internet-enabled PCs all over the world; and that will give us the start. Now, let’s proceed to the core. I got two sides to completely turn your thoughts to consider Flex.

First, for the developer’s side, programming structure would be a concern and with Adobe Flex, coding are not that complicated since it is readable in an English like manner but of course you need to have a programmer’s logical thinking to get it going. It’s easy to integrate designs and even apply effects (as we all familiar with flash) to help improve your applications. Adobe Flex builder 3 and Adobe Flash Builder Beta are commonly used IDEs for developing Flex. Exporting and importing projects with the IDEs makes it easier to share or work on projects with the group and one thing that really bites me as a developer is the debugging feature. Debugging is your best bud to get your codes work well. When it comes to support for Flex, there are tons of tutorials available that you can research on the web and you can even start with the video tutorials from Adobe’s “Flex in a week”. So, as a developer, if you want to develop an impressive, well-presented, interactive, and functioning application, Flex is a top option. Even though there’s still some few bugs especially in flex 4 considering it’s still in beta, solutions are highly attainable.

Second, for the users’ side, presentation and functionality of the application are always been their issue. The users are the major factor to know if the application is well-developed. If the design or layout of the application is way too dull even if the functionality works well, the tendency is that the users will get bored and sometimes get confused to use the application. With Adobe Flex, great designs, interactivity and functionality can easily be binded together to create a stunning application. Users will then be interested, become familiar and the environmental cues are that understandable. Applications well-developed in Flex are always been that impressive towards the users. You can hear them say, “WOW!, NICE!, GREAT!, FANTASTIC!, WORKS WELL!”, and all other good stuff rather than “WOAH! WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” and that is really heartbreaking.

Well, if you want to experience what has been written here, you might as well try our scrum gadgets in Flex and if you have a chance please post a comment for it will help a lot. Thanks for reading and have a nice day to all!