At the risk of looking like I’ve lost what little sanity I may have left and I will only write about Google and Google products, something happened yesterday that I wanted to share. In a nutshell, I hosted a Hangout. What’s a Hangout? Well, you basically put yourself out there as open for anyone to drop by via video to chat.
You might ask why you would want to do that, but that isn’t the full story on my experience. The day before the event I announced the time when I would be “hanging out” and the topic that I was proposing to discuss. I wanted to share some work we have been doing in OCLC Research to try to unambiguously mark URLs in MARC 856 fields that lead to the full item. The idea was to give an informal summary of the work and ask for feedback and questions.
I drew four participants, three of whom I know and all who are eminently qualified to both understand the issues and provide useful feedback. The whole thing had next to no preparation, lasted less than an hour, and not only provided me with some things to think about and follow up on, but hopefully also provided them a window into some ongoing work at OCLC Research.
In the end, I think it is the low overhead, really almost casual feel of Hangout that has the potential to make it Google+’s “killer app”. Kevin Clarke, who attended my hangout, has also been using it quite a bit as “virtual office hours”. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to forsee telecommuting uses of this ability. Why not “hangout” to a circle of work colleagues who can then virtually drop by as they wish, as they would if you were in your cubicle in the office, to chat about a problem or something they’re working on?
That’s why I think these uses and more just may be the application that makes people leave Facebook. Possibly. Your thoughts?
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Absolutely. This is what you have to pay for with skype and then some.
Yes, that definitely has some serious potential. I bet it could be handy for college professors and students, also – in lieu of actual office hours. One or both of them might not have to trek to campus to do it.