For the Next Two Weeks of Crowdsourcing

Hello Crowdsourcing readers. My name is David Cohn and Jeff Howe has asked me to pitch in here at the Crowdsourcing blog for the next two weeks while he is away.

A little background on me: I am no stranger to crowdsourcing. I've been writing about the concept at Wired since before the phrase was coined - whether "Open Source Biology," or musicians entrusting their fans to design album logos.

I met Jeff during the Assignment Zero project and since then have been Jeff's research assistant on the upcoming book "Crowdsourcing" which regular readers here are familiar with.

During that time I became fascinated with Crowdfunding and after pitching it to the Knight News Challenge, I received funding to figure out how crowdfunding could be applied to journalism. The project, Spot Us, is my attempt to pioneer community funded reporting. You can always find out more about me on my personal blog Digidave.org.

Why am I here: Jeff is away for the next two weeks and asked me to pitch in. Should be fun for all of us.

What I intend to write about: I have an obvious interest in crowdfunding and so my next post will be about my project Spot Us and crowdfunding in general. I promise - once I've gotten that out of the way, I will devote this blog to crowdsourcing as a general topic and will refrain from pimping out my own work (although I highly recommend it).

For the next two weeks I will attempt two blog posts a day. The morning post will be links. Any crowdsourcing news that catches my eye. The afternoon (or evening) post will be a closer look at one of those links or some other crowdsourcing news (might also be directed by reader feedback). I'll try to keep the preaching to a minimum, but hey - it's a blog and Jeff trusted me as a guest blogger because he knows I have opinions about crowdsourcing - so I'll share where appropriate.

How you can help: It would be silly of me, especially on a blog titled "crowdsourcing," not to ask the audience for help. So - if you have specific topics you've always wanted to see discussed here at crowdsourcing, don't hesitate to leave a comment. On a daily basis - please email me with links to any news worthy of note here at Crowdsourcing.

Comments

[Tom Powell]

I'd be interested in reading more about your views around Crowdfunding of creative endeavors. I recently wrote a round-up post on crowdfunding: http://coinnovative.com/part-2-crowdfunding-investing-and-donation-20/

It seems the main challenge is getting the critical mass of people to a specific project, leading me to believe that perhaps some kind of editorial control should be retained by the crowdfunding organization in order to focus the crowd on the few, most promising endeavors. It takes marketing, promotion, or that rare viral word of mouth to raise money.

Difficult to pull off, but as I found in collecting a whole host of crowdfunding projects in the above mentioned post, it's been applied successfully in a number of arenas.

[Digidave]

Tom
You hit on an excellent point: "It seems the main challenge is getting the critical mass of people to a specific project."

That's a big part of my next post (which will be about Spot.Us). But as I mention in the post - it's the problem that any crowdfunding project has. Example - Spot.Us has one pitch right now (hey, we just started, one at a time is fine by me). All it needs is 20 people to donate $10. It's an environmental story - which is a hot topic. So I know there are 20 people out there who would be willing to donate $10. I just need to find them. That's the hard part!

As for crowdfunding in the arts: Check out StrayForm and ArtHead (http://www.arthead.org/). I just did an interview with the founder of ArtHead today and I'll try and edit it to put up a post soon (no promises on the "soon" part.

Best
David (temporary Crowdsourcing blogger).

[kraloyun]

That's a big part of my next post (which will be about Spot.Us). But as I mention in the post - it's the problem that any crowdfunding project has. Example - Spot.Us has one pitch right now (hey, we just started, one at a time is fine by me). All it needs is 20 people to donate $10. It's an environmental story - which is a hot topic. So I know there are 20 people out there who would be willing to donate $10. I just need to find them. That's the hard part!