This guest post is from Dave Levy (@levydr) from Edelman’s Digital Public Affairs team in Washington, D.C.

Disclosure: Wave was created by Google, a competitor of Edelman's client Microsoft

The first day of the FDA Hearing on Social Media is now over, and we have one more full day of testimony to go. With the many conversations about the safest ways to communicate health, it comes as no surprise that we have spent a good amount of time trying to figure out the best way to read, follow, and analyze two full days of testimony. On the first day, our team came to meet as a group in the new collaboration platform from Google, Wave. And we want you – and the world at large that is on Google Wave – to join us in our now public wave, available here, for Day 2.

We hope to organize the overwhelming conversation in a way that is open and collaborative; Wave has allowed us to do that. Each speaker's time has been slotted into a segment, and it's the perfect way to both track and organize the day. In the past it’s been tested a little for other conferences, but we are hoping to ride the wave beyond simple conversations.

To us, this is the perfect opportunity to leverage application for a direct purpose: challenging us to use an open environment to talk about the application of health and social media. Wave allows us to share ideas about the fast moving hearing on the spot, with a large group of contributors. Even more importantly, we have the room to develop each idea with space for documents, visuals and commentary. (For more about why this is more than just dynamic, but also major shift in communication, check out my post on Authenticities, Edelman Digital’s blog.)

As we go into the hearing this week, nothing seems more appropriate than talking about the role of openness in social media and in health. Google Wave is a flat, transparent platform for collaboration – and as social media pushes us toward more communication about personal health, how do the many parties involved in health have to adapt to understand that conversation? As Nancy Turett challenged us earlier this week: “We need to create more great examples – of digital conversation that educates with flair but no spin, informs in real time, and empowers people to take more responsibility for their personal health reform.”

Join us in Google Wave, and help us create the next great example.