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In Friday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings peers at another Google 20% project, which helps meetings attendees vote on questions. Not to mention a mysterious checklist...
Heather Havenstein reports:
Google Inc. has publicly released an internal tool that applies Digg-like rankings to meetings, allowing attendees to vote on what questions will be asked.
The new Google Moderator tool was developed by Google platform engineer Taliver Heath as part of the company's "20% time" program, where Google lets its developers use 20% of their work time to explore new technologies. The free tool was released Wednesday on the company's Google App Engine.
Heath said he developed the tool for use at internal meetings, including the company's "tech talks" that address computer science topics. He developed the tool because the tech talk meetings had grown too large to adequately accommodate question-and-answer sessions.
Michael Arrington explains:
[It's] a simple tool that helps groups determine which questions should be asked at all hands meetings, conferences, Q&A sessions, etc. The idea is that there are always lots of good questions to ask in a limited period of time, but its hard to know which questions the attendees are most interested in hearing discussed. Moderator lets users add questions and vote on the questions of others, so the cream rises to the top.
Here is Taliver Heath (for it is he):
At Google, we host a large number of "tech talks". These talks cover a wide rage of Computer Science topics ... but as the number of attendees has grown over time, the question-and-answer part of the talks hasn't been able to scale. There was never enough time for all the questions, and it wasn't clear that the best questions were the ones actually getting asked. And ... it became harder for distributed audiences to participate.
...
I designed a tool in my 20% time that would allow anyone attending a tech talk to submit a question, and then give other participants a way to vote on whether or not that question should be asked. This way, ... the presenter or the moderator of an event could run the discussion more efficiently and in a transparent manner. The tool, which we internally called "Dory" after our favorite question-asking fish in Finding Nemo, quickly grew to other parts of Google including our weekly all-hands company meeting, as well as for our series of talks led by political candidates or distinguished authors.
...
We're pleased to release this tool, now called Google Moderator, on Google App Engine. Google Moderator is available now and is free to use. To get started go to moderator.appspot.com and sign in to your Google Account.
Ionut Alex Chitu had a go:
I created a list of suggestions for Google's services and anyone can add new suggestions or vote on the existing ideas. The most popular ideas are displayed at the top, but Google Moderator also lists random suggestions to make them more visible.
This isn't really one of Google's "change the world" projects, but could serve as a nice tool for those making presentations at conferences, meetings, and other events. Ultimately no matter what questions get voted on though, the presenter will likely choose which ones they want to answer..
Stan Schroeder moderates his enthusiasm:[You're fired -Ed.]
Sometimes it seems to me that the most useful of Googles projects come from their engineres 20-80 rule, which means that they are encouraged (coerced? forced? whipped?) to spend 20% of their time on side projects.
Let Andy Beal come hither:
OK, so this is kind of cool. I could see where this might come in handylike once a year, or something. What concerns me is this.
Marissa Mayer suggests theres a long, long way to go in perfecting Googles search engine. Right? So, why are Google engineers focusing their free time on projects that dont serve that goal? Are they bored with search? Is this a sentiment that is pervasive among Googles top talent?
Im a big fan of Google and, admittedly, use many of its products that would not exist if not for 20% time. That said, Id much rather Google focus that 20% on making search a better experience for everyone, instead of becoming the jack of all trades, and the master of none.
Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 22 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.
