Guest Post: Exit Telecommuter—Enter Cloudworker

Besides being a regular correspondent and colleague, our guest blogger today, Venkatesh Rao, has the distinction of writing one of the most penetrating reviews of my book in print or online. Venkat does crowdsourcing research at Xerox, and has also been one of the most consistently interesting voices in the broad area of online collaboration, and I was pleased to have him contribute the following post. It's an open call for contributions to an interesting contest, but better, it's a thoughtful examination on how the crowd and the cloud, two overused and misunderstood terms, relate.

Crowdsourcing and Cloudworking

What happens when on-demand technology meets the crowd? You get the cloudworker: somebody who uses the power of work-anywhere-anytime technology to craft a my-size-fits-me career. Earlier this week, the not-for-profit site, cloudworker.org , launched in beta mode, with a contest that invites participants to submit anything they like—blogs, pictures of workspaces, videos, twitter feeds—that showcases their cloudworker lifestyles. The contest is rather festively titled "Light up your cloud." You can enter until December 28th (there's a bunch of cool prizes, including audio equipment, signed copies of the Crowdsourcing audiobook sponsored by Jeff, and signed copies of Adventures of Johnny Bunko, sponsored by Dan Pink). The plan for the site is to run monthly contests aimed at discovering, and perhaps inventing, the future of work.

The story of how this site came to be is pretty interesting, and I played a small part: coming up with the word cloudworker. (Random aside: the chemist Berzelius was more famous for coining terms than for doing actual chemistry. He came up with, among other things "catalysis", "polymer", "isomer" and "allotrope.")

Here's what happened: Last month, headphone-maker Plantronics ran a crowdsourcing contest to invent a replacement for the dated '70s term, telecommuter. The term has definitely been due for an update, given that increasingly, there is no defined 'there' to commute to or stable 'here' to commute from. Five hundred crowd-contributed entries were whittled down to 10 by a panel of judges, and the crowd stepped in again to pick the winner by popular vote. My dog in the fight—cloudworker—won the day.

The story might have ended there, since I had no plans to go beyond armchair analysis (I've been writing a series of articles on the cloudworker, and his granddaddy, the Organization Man on my business/innovation blog, ribbonfarm.com). But then some friends from an innovation/design startup, WilsonCoLab, decided it would be cool to take the cloudworker concept and run with it. Very flattering. So they launched cloudworker.org, another experiment in the modern tradition of using contests to do research. I donated most of the prizes I won from Plantronics (about $1500 worth of audio equipment) to the cloudworker.org prize kitty, and I like to think of what they are trying to do as mini X-prizes for inventing the future of work.

So if you think you are living out an innovative un-career that is helping define the future of work, do go and enter the contest. You might win, but more importantly, you'll get to participate in redefining the nature of work. But coming back to crowds and clouds, how do they relate?

Comments

[ShowDocument.com]

Hi,

For instant free collaboration on documents, try : http://www.showdocument.com

An instant live collaboration used to quickly show documents to friends and colleagues.
It allows co-browsing on any document, user uploads a document and invites friends to view it with him live
All the participants in the session see each others' drawing, highlights, etc.

[Jim Bennette - CEO of TheCrowd]

I love "cloudworker" although the term is probably bigger than the old term of "telecommuter". Where telecommuter is a term used for an employee of a company who simply works from home I see cloudworker as term used when you have several almost anonymous contributors to a much larger effort. You can almost picture a company like GM who allows credentialed people to "clock in" at will to contribute to an effort and the contributors get paid for their time.

Interesting.

TheCrowd is gathering........

[Venkat]

Hmm... interesting that you bring up anonymity Jim. That's one of the trickier things to analyze and I worried about it for a while. My current position: anonymity depends on where you are looking from. Jeff has anonymity in the definition of crowdsourcing, which makes sense if you are looking at it from the point of view of a CEO or something.

But from "inside" the subculture of a particular crowd, there is a lot of micro-celebrityhood going on I think. But the basic structure is still crowd. I think that captures things more accurately than Seth Godin's notion of 'Tribe' (which he tried to frame as a different entity, but his concept doesn't hang together well).

[Jim Bennette - CEO of TheCrowd]

Good point. That actually makes a lot of sense that there would be micro-celebrityhood as that really goes the concept of the wisdom of crowds; you have those who are very educated on a topic and those that are less educated and the combination is the "wisdom".

[Chris Witt]

When I first saw a cloud used in computer network diagrams to represent the net, I didn't like it. It seemed nebulous (pun intended), hard to pin down, insubstantial. Now, I kind of like the image precisely because it can't be confined or set in stone. I could warm to the term "cloudworker," although I doubt I will ever describe myself that way to my clients (mostly business executives).

I'm not a telecommuter, because I'm not, in Jim's terms, a company employee working from home. But I don't think I qualify as a cloudworker. I use the net primarily as a tool and as a resource, and I'm only beginning to see it as an interactive community. Is there a term for someone like me, somewhere between a telecommuter and a cloudworker?

[Jim Bennette - CEO of TheCrowd]

Chris - maybe you would be considered a "cloudwanderer" for the time being!!!!

[alan]

Chris, you work from home, but do you use cloud apps, non personal PC based usage, as a central part of the work you do?

I wonder if the term Cloudworker will become a commonly used term and your point, a mature professional will most likely hesitate to use the term, is well taken. Sad as it might be, you will most probably be left using the term self employed!

“What happens when on-demand technology meets the crowd?” Jeff, does the distinction “the power of work-anywhere-anytime technology” really suffice to be called a cloudworker?

I would suggest that unless cloud apps, rather than personal PC usage, that are available are being predominately used to support ones employment/business, the term might not make sense because it is too loose a definition.

Every PC user is now using the cloud, or should one say the internet, to some degree.

On the other end of the spectrum, this term “white trash data center customers” is interesting!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/02/microsoft_container_data_center/

Alan

[alan]

Or this: (CFW) Cloud-Feature-Worker: Nicholas Carr suggests: “We certainly need a nifty abbreviation for the merging of cloud services into traditional PC software, so let me suggest CaaF, for Cloud-as-a-Feature.

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/11/the_cloud_as_a.php

Alan

[Venkat]

Alan:

On-demand technology is pretty pervasive, so I wouldn't restrict the description to those whose 'foreground' work relies on cloud apps. Think about background stuff like IM, VoIP etc. These are cloud delivered and are the canvas on which the other work is done (whether it is client side MS-Word, or SaaSy Google Docs. And don't forget VPNs. The very fact of going through a VPN I think makes you a cloudworker, since your network position is obscured and virtualized :)

Chris: your post makes me wonder. When enough team members go 'virtual' is the nominal 'center' of things different (other than the fact that you are hard-wired inside the firewall as opposed to VPNed in). Socially, if you have a distributed team and the rest of your workgroup is VPNing in, your own personal work culture also becomes cloudy.

Venkat

[Chris Witt]

Venkat: For work I use the internet primarily for email and research. I access the intranet of some clients (using SharePoint?), when I coach a team (could be 20 or 30 of us) preparing an oral proposal for a large contract. I have a website, through which I produce a monthly ezine. And I've just recently started a blog. I've also recently put some energy into linked-in.

I couldn't do my work without email. For my book alone, I worked remotely with a coauthor, exchanging emails and draft chapters. (I did much of my research on the internet.) I've never met my agent face to face. (She's in LA, I'm in San Diego.) I work with my editor, publisher, and publicist (all in NYC), and with a pr agency (somewhere in Florida) almost entirely through email. And now I'm working with another set of people in London, since a UK publisher bought the foreign rights.

I guess I'd doing quite a bit through the internet. I just feel inept doing it. Like a stranger in a strange land, I'm trying to figure out the lay of the land and the rules.

[ahmedalaa]

thank you very much ,,

.......................................
www.ebdaa.yoo7.com

[Term paper]

Nice blog, its great article informative post, thanks for sharing it. Thanks for the information!

[Dissertation Examples]

Excellent post and wonderful blog, I really like this type of interesting articles keep it up.

Thanks for sharing you guys!

[Masters Dissertation Help]

Whenever i see the post like your's i feel that there are still helpful people who share information for the help of others, it must be helpful for other's. thanx and good job.

http://www.mastersdissertation.co.uk/

[kraloyun]

Whenever i see the post like your's i feel that there are still helpful people who share information for the help of others, it must be helpful for other's. thanx and good job.

[Dare Dorm College]

I like it..

[Haze Him Class]

asdasd

[Doctoral Dissertation]

I am short of words. This is certainly one of the superior blogs I have read. You are so perceptive, have so much genuine matter to convey

Doctoral Dissertation

[ElvaBarnett31]

According to my own analysis, billions of people all over the world get the mortgage loans at various creditors. Hence, there is good possibilities to receive a term loan in any country.

[business card scanner]

I think that Cloudworking working is the future, it saves money, space and time. The employee enjoy the free time and comfortability of working from home, less pollution created as there is no need to use transport. There are so many benefits that it would be peoples choice.

[Buy Online Rx]

I would be really interested to hear from anyone in the agile community who was successful in gaining a spot on the core PMBOK v5 committee. I hope there are some agile proponents represented. So please drop me a line if you were successful.

[Wholesale Electronics]

When i was young ,i had so many dream.

[mens health]

On the other hand the Times chart may have well been just a table. What was the use of the donuts? Your chart did a great job of actually visualizing the data and conveyed the illustrated concept much more clearly.

[gold buyer]

This is normally the way it has to be as no body can afford.

[fashion shoes]

Good blog, after a great informative article, thanks for sharing. Thanks for this info!