Wednesday, 15 June 2011

Uncovering the meaning of Google Wave for publishers

Guardian developers Lisa van Gelder and Martyn Inglis studied Google Wave in a recent DevLab research project. Martyn explains how the DevLab program works and their discoveries about what Google Wave could mean for news.

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Elsewhere on this blog are posts describing the Hack Day events that we hold here at the Guardian to encourage team members to try things outside of their normal working practice. In this post I will outline the second main program we have called DevLabs and, more specifically, some thoughts on Google Wave that came out of it.

(For more about Wave see Lisa van Gelder's overview on the Guardian's Technology blog)

Whereas on a Hack Day there are twenty four hours to attack the problem and the goal is a working demo, even if it is hanging together with duct tape, a DevLab is a more considered beast. The concept is similar, to examine something outside of the normal working scope, but the time-scales and outcomes are different.

The DevLab process is basically a simple one. A proposal is made to the departmental management team, in this case what is a Google Wave and how, if at all, is it relevant for us as a company. Once approved the developers are taken completely out of the standard development process for five days.

This period is to be spent on investigation. There is no requirement for a working product that can be released or even demoed. Rather the outcome is understanding, and for this understanding to be spread throughout the team.

A presentation is provided by the participants, during which there may be a demonstration and examples, but as stated above these need not be something which is useful for the company, but simply just to illustrate points.

Following this demonstration the other team members are invited to peer review the work. The best peer review, judged by the participants and by the departmental managers, receives half of the monetary grant awarded for the DevLab.

Why have a DevLab program? Really this is a cost effective way of having a research program and who better than those working on the site to investigate new technologies that may affect it. We understand the platform in a way that an external party would not.

These programs are not an investigation purely into the Wave for investigations sake, for example, but the participants should have in the back of their minds the Guardian throughout the investigation. And the result is the whole team moves forward. We may not use the outcomes immediately, but if we need that knowledge we have a starting point.

The first DevLab looked at Android development. As the Android now becomes more popular that knowledge becomes more and more relevant – it's not that we apply it every day, but when (if) the time comes we are prepared!

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