Crowdsourcing – video displayed by Jeff.
Few key ideas
- Now with the internet we can create a crowd virtually with shared interest.
- Shared passions for hobbies, crafts, arts, etc.
- Ie: quality of stockphotos by amateurs is abundant, drives supply up and prices downforces companies to approach us as potential partners, not just buyers
- Technology is so good that people are becoming better.
Spent time covering the Vans Warp tour for some time and during this became infatuated with the process (he was a member of the Suburban Morons). What he loved about the time is that the teens there were so open to any creativity. Their relationship with the product. Older generations see that you film a movie because you want to be a film maker, write a book because you want to be a writer. These kids though do all these things just because they want to, the technology disappears and they just use the tool. They shoot video, write blogs, draw just for the creative drive of it, not for any one particular reason.
Opensource in 2006 was less familiar then now, existed very sparsely. User-generated brought back little if you tried to search for it.
User generated content is like Old Faithful, every so many minutes water is being spewed out. As an image it seems to come out in one location, but there are actually geysers spewing out vapor in fields quite a distance away from the original. User – generated – open source ….crowd-sourcing.
The labour source for crowdsourcing can be done over the “coffee break”. That things or tasks can be done in small components and in a quick amount of time. The time it takes to have a coffee break. (ie: Threadless – voting for the best t-shirt design). (note: from the Two Jakes).
What does the crowd do for Threadless – gives them cheap labour (picture a teen on a chair, laptop on knees). They do it because they have a chance to do it. (look for the Communist Party).
They are creating all sorts of cheap marketing by getting buyers to take pictures of them wearing the shirt. They then get a discount. Threadless has never spent a dime on marketing. The buyers do it all. But this is not the best thing that the crowd is doing for them. The crowd votes on the shirts and if they’d buy it or not. That way the are never over or under stocked.
Threadless is not exceptional, but a perfect example.
iStockphoto is the same idea. You can benefit from it by contributing to it. “Why do they put stuff on the web, so that others can enjoy and benefit from it.” Buyers quickly learned that they could publish their photos there and buy photos there for very very cheap. Other stock groups had astronomical prices. 96% claim that contributors to iStockphoto have another job and photography is not their first line of work.Ask not what your community can do for you, ask what you can do for your community. – Jeff Howe.
They both were providing, giving to communities. They built up around the community and then the community eventually gave back tenfold.
Themes of crowdsources the less discipline that a scientist had in relation to a problem, the more like they were to solve it. Scientists (generally) 70% of the time already know the solution to the problem (it just needs to be brought out).
Another example: Current – tv show – content created by the same people that watch the show.
The more you can do for your community – give to them, the greater the participation back from the community.
4 Developments that make crowdsourcing possible and inevitable.
– Amateur Renaissance – ie: bird watch, stock photos, threadless – we are all producing work at a higher quality and greater volume
– The open source revolution – we all are creating better products than the big corporations\
– Democratization of production – cost has decreased so more can access the tools to produce
– The rise of online communities – geography no longer matters. Communities are truly global.
Q & A:
How does this affect the lives of professional artist? Opening doors or limiting this? – keep your day job. Over the last several years it has made it easier for exceptional artist to market their wares effectively.
As elearners we use graphic design a lot. How do we keyword search some of these tools? “Spec Work”, Crowdsourcing design
eLearning seems to be a place where people can learn more from each other than not.
Technology used to facilitate crowd sourcing in a group such as a venue as this gathering? salesforce.com, citizens briefing book
Will depend a bit on the wisdom of the crowd. Collective wisdom of the crowd as well.
Using this for things related to expetise, where people think they know something where infact it’s not true. It gets put out there, but then it’s very difficult to bring it back to the truth. – Danger of this? Yes there is bit of this problem. This is the tranistion and everything is up for grabs now.