It took a while, but Google finally "blessed" me with a Google Wave account. When I first heard about Google Wave via this video  (or this shorter introduction), I knew it would have a lot of applications. When I began talking about the Swarm and envisioning what it would be, it was obvious that Google Wave would have some useful applications for integration with bySwarm. While the integration is not quite ready yet, that does not mean we have to wait to start using Wave. If you do not have a Google Wave account, send me a message. I have a limited number of invites, but if you also have invites feel free to leave a comment here so people can contact you.

Creating and finding bySwarm Waves

In order to be able to find a bySwarm Wave, one of the existing participants has to have added Public as a participant in the wave. To add Public to a wave, click the + sign next to the list of participants at the top of the wave and enter "public@a.gwave.com". That will make the wave open to anyone that wants to participate. To help people find a bySwarm wave, I also recommend adding bySwarm as a tag at the bottom of the wave.

In order to find a public wave, you need to include "with:public" in the Wave search box. You can combine this with keywords or other operations like tags. To search for all the public waves that have anything to do with RPGs, you would enter "with:public rpg" as your search. You could do the same with bySwarm as your keyword. You can also search for tags explicitly by using the tag command like this: "with:public tag:byswarm".

bySwarm Wave Ideas

So what could you use Wave to do for bySwarm?

1. Collaboratively create a concept
   Maybe you have a seed of an idea, but you're struggling with fleshing it out into something you want to submit. By creating a new wave and mentioning it in the forum, you could immediately have people join the wave to help work on the concept.
2. Build details for your concept idea
   Sometimes the creative juices keep going and going, but bySwarm is not to the stage yet where we can start adding more details to the settings we have been creating. You could make a wave for your setting concept and start writing wavelets on the NPCs, history, geography and more. By opening it up to others from the Swarm, you can get other people involved as well to help you out.
3. Run a game in a setting concept
   There are lots of sites and public waves out there that explain how you can use Google Wave to run a game. If you want to run a game in your setting concept, Google Wave gives you an opportunity to do that online without having to get all the players together in one place.

Hopefully this gives you some new ideas to get involved with the Swarm, and I look forward to waving with you.