I had Groove running on my notebook and I brought it up a few times to do things. I collaborate with some clients and people with Groove, keeping documents and discussions in sync. I also use it as a better Briefcase. And invariably, the comments were like “Wow, that’s cool! I could manage my distributed project that way. I could keep track of bugs across a geographically disperse team that way. And man, you’re disconnected and can sync later?” Then all of them would say “Who’s Groove?” Its interesting to note that people need this kind of stuff and they have no idea its even out there or who Groove is (none of the developers in the room had ever heard of them). […] How do we get people to collaborate? [Sam Gentile’s Radio Weblog]

It was Sam’s post (partially quoted) that made me start looking into Groove.  From reading other earlier posts about it, I just didn’t get it.  Well, this morning I spent a half hour or so on Groove’s web site, and I still didn’t get it.  If I hadn’t heard so much hype on the blogs about it, I would have quit right there.

So then I download and install Groove, and start playing with it.  After 15 or 20 minutes of this, I’m starting to get it, so I think.  I call a few people from a client’s office and get them to install it, and we start exploring what we can do.  By now, I’m getting excited about what I can do with this, and I’m starting to think I get it.  We figure out a couple of quick wins, and share a “pilot” groove space out to the team.

Now after a few hours of reflection, I think I only get the very surface of this.  This is such a great idea, and seems to be a great implementation.  But I think the potential of this product and idea is limitless.  There is so much you could build this way, so many ways you could collaborate with your team…I need some time to get my head around it.  For some reason I’m reminded of a post a while back from Ingo Rammer, where he’s talking about idempotent web services.  The possibilities here are, methinks, endless.  Anyone have any cool ideas?