The Crowdsourcing Blog

Cross-posted from the Wooshii Blog

Wikipedia is one of crowdsourcing’s best and successful examples: it’s been way bigger than any other encyclopedia out there, and all done (mostly) by volunteers wanting to contribute it.

The thing is, many people usually wonder and ask: why so many people contribute for free?

Well they launched a video yesterday that shows some of their contributer people, and why they do it:

Another video they launched two days ago is in the same line as the previous one, this time with the usernames:

Wikipedia is a non-profit organization, but these videos illustrates that all companies can benefit from video: these kind of testemonials from collaborators or even clients put a human touch to the business, make us feel more connected with it, and makes the engagement with the brand higher.

Particularly a crowdsourcing business or organization, where its key to have your community engaged. And what better way to do it than using a tool that it’s proven that drives engagement?

These videos from Wikipedia are also because it’s of their simplicity: sometimes, is best not to complicate!

Threadless is one of crowdsourcing’s most successful stories, and they started doing it even before people actually started calling it “crowdsourcing”!

We found this mini-documentary earlier today (via a tweet by @IdeaBounty), which was done in partnership with Dell and tells their story and what they’re all about.

It’s really interesting, and people involved in this area should take notes during the video!

So without further ado, here it is:

You probably have already seen a watch by japanese brand Tokyoflash – they have the strangest watches and whenever they release one, it gets posted on almost every gadget blog and the like.

Now they are holding a design challenge where people can submit their own cooky watch designs or as they call it “unique wrist watch design”.

They say “the submissions can be 3D renderings, 2D graphic designs, illustrations, sketches or simply text ideas” and they are publishing the best ones on the blog, hopefully getting some of them into production.

Here are some more detailed rules:

1. Your idea must be unique, unlike anything seen before.

2. Your idea must be your own original work and free from copyrights.

3. Submissions must not infringe any third party’s rights, including images, trademarks and trade names.

4. Submissions should have an explanation of how the time is read, similar to other posts on the blog.

5. The maximum file size for submissions is 5mb. Please ensure your images are at least 700 pixels wide.

6. Please zip your images into one folder when submitting.

7. Please limit design descriptions to 120 words.

There’s no deadline there so we take it it’s an ongoing effort, and there are already some crazy concepts there on the blog.

Like for instance this one by 14 year old Tomek, from Poland:

Or this one from David Brophy in the UK:

Try to figure out how they work yourself, but likely if you can’t, get to the blog where they explain how to read each of the designs submitted.

It’s also a trend lately of crowdsourcing moving into product design, like Quirky for example.

So if you have a knack for watch design, bring over your best, craziest ones and submit them to Tokyoflash. We’ll see you there!

Over time, we’re seeing the figures around crowdsourcing getting higher and higher, and with further importance.

Proof of this is another great example, GE has a competition for students, businesses or pretty much anyone with an idea for Renewable Energy, Grid Efficiency, or EcoHomes/EcoBuildings, to submit them and the best ones will get funding from a $200 million total. For this, they’re teaming up with a few VC companies.

It’s called the Ecoimagination Challenge.

Here are some stats:

- 1.309 ideas logged already

- 33.210 votes

- 16.309  comments

- 16.291 users

Impressive! And what I find most importat, besides obviously the submission of ideas, is the comment part: this is fueling a great discussion about energy and its alternatives, which can boast not only better knowledge but also a greater awareness of the public for this cause.

And everybody wins! The public with new technology developed and GE and its VC partners, for business growth.

The competition will end at 30th September, and we’ll follow up on this as soon as there is an announcement on the funded ideas.

We’ve had a few posts about crowdsourcing initiatives in the movie business. Interestingly enough, yesterday Techcrunch TV posted a very interesting video on this subject, with Gene Massey from Cinema Shares.

Also if you get a chance after the video, check out the interesting discussion going on in the comment section on Techcrunch.

But first, here’s the video:

Dan Brown is a vlogger who started his career showing how to solve a Rubik’s Cube (a video now with close to 16 million views).

That was in 2007 and since then he’s built a fan-base, which he is using now to do a new show: ”Dan 3.0″ where he’ll ask them to make a decision for him on what to do for a whole year.

Sure this is a publicity stunt and just another reason to do a show (remember the dot com guy? Slight different but awfully similar, and that was back in 2010 when Dan Brown was just an infant!), but the core of the project is really about crowdsourcing decision making.

For that, rhere are plenty of this types of services out there (even Q&A ones can do the trick) for those with some trouble making decisions. Even Twitter can be used to help you make decisions, using your social graph.

But what about this project, what you make of it? Will it be just for fun or show another light on the power of the crowd?

The Guardian was reporting yesterday that one of the UK’s Government attempt at crowdsourcing has failed.

In an effort to crowdource the coallition’s programme, 9.500 entries were received but not one department took those into consideration for a change.

According to the newspaper, “its formal responses, published on each website, shows Whitehall regarded the process largely as an endorsement of what it was already doing.”

Sure, the use of crowdsourcing is not always meant to get the best of the crowd but more like to get their engagement, be it a brand or government in this case, but not acknowledging the crowd’s effort is a big no.

There are still other crowdsourcing initiatives from the UK government (one dealing with the treasury, other with laws), but this latest example doesn’t bode well for them.

Let’s see if they can turn it around and actually use the power of the crowd in an effective way.

This is a topic I’ve wanted to talk about a few weeks ago when the news came out, but we’ve had the server down last week and it kind of fell through.

So in May, the INTERPOL launched a program – Operation Infra-Red – to help out find 450 wanted criminals across the globe.

The thing is, with the deadline approaching (16th July) they released a call for for everyone out there to help out, and meant to leverage the power of the social networks ubiquitous in our everyday life.

Here’s what assistant director of Interpol’s Fugitive Investigative Support unit says about it:

“It is more likely that someone will recognize one these fugitives from a social networking site or a chat room than spotting them walking down the street, but no matter how a member of the public has the information, we would ask that they pass it on.”

As a side note, interesting use of video to pass the message along about the operation.

The results of the operation, released at the end of last week, were that they received information about 357 of the 450 fugitives, having arrested 131 (although no details about which numbers were before and after the social networks initiative).

This sure feels a natural step to the subject, as long steps are taken not to make people paranoid or invade innocent bystanders privacy.

In essence, it is the what the FBI’s Most Wanted List has been doing for years (and with the same goals), but taken to another level.

On this subject, the US government launched a few weeks ago their own app store (which can be found here), and amongst them you’ll find an FBI Most Wanted List app!

So what do you think, might this be one aspect of future criminal investigation / law enforcement / criminal catching?

The trend for crowdsourcing in filmmaking continues, this time in an even bigger effort and larger audience made possible by Youtube (and sponsored by LG).

Youtube partnered with Ridley Scott (director of Blade Runner, Gladiator, amongst many others) and Kevin MacDonald (director of Touching the Void and The Last King of Scotland) to have everyone film their day on Saturday and then submit it to the site.

Youtube is visited by millions of people every single day, and on Saturday, the top page of every video seen had link to the project, so you can see how this crowdsourced documentary effort reached more people than ever for entries.

They’re calling it a “unique experiment in social filmmaking” meant for future generations to watch, and the director will go over all the submitted entries to make the final film.

Interestingly, they also had some guidelines for participants, like film something banal” like going to work or breakfast time, the sunrise, your baby doing something interesting, going to the hospital to visit a friend, your birthday, going for a walk in the countryside, or something “much more meaningful and emotional,” such as the demolition of your favorite building or the death of a friend your wedding.

Plus, the director also wants people to answer some questions, like what do you fear the most, what do you love, what makes you laugh, and oddly, what’s in your pocket?

We’ll follow up on this as there is more news about it, or hopefully the full movie.

For more, check out the official Youtube channel of the project.

You guessed it, it was crowdsourced!

Until recently, India’s currency was represented with “Rs” (also used by Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka). But facing rival economies and symbols like €, $ or £, India decided it was time to get their own symbol.

So they launched a competition open to everyone, with a prize of Rs250,000 ($5,352), and the following conditions:

- it should be applicable to the standard keyboard

- be in the national language script or a visual representation

- and should represent the historical and cultural ethos of the country.

Yesterday, a jury from the Indian government selected the winning entry, from Udaya Kumar, a post-graduate student at Mumbai’s Industrial Design Centre.

This is an event of huge proportions. From now on and for many years to come, this will be the official rupee symbol, in a country with a population of +1 billion. A symbol that will be present everyday of their life.

Back to the symbol, acordding to Kumar, cited by the Indian Express, the concept is “based on the Tricolour and arithmetic equivalence. While the white space between the two horizontal lines gives the impression of the national flag with the Ashok Chakra, the two bold parallel lines stand for ‘equals to’, representing balance in the economy, both within and with other economies of the world.”

Contests of this kind have been happening for other events for years now (like the olympics, etc), so it’s not exactly new. But if we call it crowdsourcing it suddently seems new!

While it isn’t new, we have to see the importance and the impact this particular competition will have on an entire country and economy, and maybe influence the way other competitions will take shape in the future.