Google Technical Lead and Architect David Wang speaks at eComm 2009 about building an open network around wave technology. 

Google Wave is a product and wave is a technology, much like Gmail is a product and email is a technology. Google Wave was built using an open federation protocol to promote the use of waves and to ensure that users have a choice of wave providers.  Anyone can run their own wave server; the idea is to encourage organizations to build wave-like systems that will interoperate and discourage those that don't.

Wang describes what a wave is, gives a theoretical description of sharing waves and details of the Draft Federation Protocol Specification, which simply shows how to operate a wave server. It's just like running your own SMTP server and in this audio lecture, Wang demonstrates how.