Crowdsourcing

Goodbye to All That ... and Hello to All This!

I should probably start off by apologizing for staying away from the blog for so long. But I won't. Sometimes life seems far more compelling—and certainly more demanding—than the blog. That said, I'm very happy to be back, and I look forward to providing far more regular updates in the coming (academic) year. And with that bit of foreshadowing ladled in, I have news:

I've left New York City, and for a time at least, my journalistic work. Tomorrow I'll start one year of study at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow. Generally there's no silver cloud in which I can't find a dark lining, but not this time. I'll sum up the Nieman gig thusly: You really, really want to be me. I have one year to take anything I want at Harvard and MIT. In return, I have to provide my benefactors with ... nothing! In fact, the only stipulation is that I do no professional work while I'm here. That's one deadline I'm sure to make.

Naturally the Nieman program has acquired something of a reputation as a paid vacation, but so far as I can tell that's patently unfair. The curators tend to screen for over-achieving, workaholic types, with the result that the fellows tend to be the types who'll close down the library night after night, despite the fact they're not receiving grades for their courses (we audit our courses.) To judge by my cohorts, this year will be no different. They are, without exception, a superlative bunch.

Niemans are accepted on the basis of a study plan: Mine is to continue researching the impact of social media—on business, politics and culture. I'll be doing much of that outside of my coursework, and plan on sharing much of what I find over this blog. To be continued ...

Crowdsourcing in the UK

Soon I'm going to get back to what I love best—writing about crowdsourcing. For a little longer I'll instead be writing about the writing of crowdsourcing, which is to say, promoting myself and my book. The British edition of the Crowdsourcing Book was published last week. As my regular readers know, the British version is identical in nearly every way except for one notable exception: The cover was crowdsourced, or to be precise, coversourced. The winning cover is markedly different from the US version. Compare:

(Ed's Note: You'll have to imagine the margins yourself.) It's a different approach than the US edition, as well it should be. It is also, by any measure, a pretty risky cover. I love it, but am also curious to see how it plays on English (and Australian! And New Zealand!) bookshelves. As it happens, I'll be able to find out firsthand, as I'll be spending much of next week in the mother country. If anyone out there happens to live in London or Rotterdam come check me out Wednesday at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (details here) or at the Emerce eDay event in Rotterdam the following day. (Don't even ask how I'm getting from one venue to the next. Hint: the Chunnel plays a role).

And for those of you actually reading my press (Hi Mom!), I've already received a few reviews pegged to the British release. The first appeared in the London Times. It's mildly critical, accusing me of giving too "breathless" an account of crowdsourcing's emergence. Ouch. I'd take some issue with that. The heart of my book—the middle section in which I dig deep into everything from iStockPhoto to Kiva.org to my own foray into crowdsourcing, Assignment Zero—contained a great deal of skepticism. But it's futile to quibble with reviewers, and I'm flattered to receive column inches in such an august publication. Management Today, Britain's leading business magazine, gave the book a rave, to my considerable satisfaction.

 

Crowdsourcing Book Excerpted on Wired

Today I published the first excerpt of the book on Wired.com. It's a close look at iStockphoto, and raises the question of whether the transformation we're seeing stock photography is merely the canary in the coalmine. I purposely chose a section that's meant to provoke some back-and forth. Hope some of that comes back to crowdsourcing.com. Should be up all weekend—enjoy!

Radio Days

Starting around 6 AM tomorrow morning I will be ensconced inside a conference room at Crown Books talking about crowdsourcing. And then talking about it again. And again. And again. I will be doing 27 radio interviews tomorrow, most of them back to back. I never—I mean, ever—tire of talking about this subject (Ed's Note: Or any other subject), but this might put my loquaciousness to the test. I kid. Sort of. I'm very, very happy there's been interest from all these radio stations, and it's actually easier to do 27 interviews in one day than it is make arrangements to do 27 interviews in 27 days. Here are the markets the interviews will be broadcast to. Hope you'll listen in!

6:50-7:00am    RALEIGH-DURHAM    WCBQ-WHNC-AM    NEWS FEATURE    ALVIN    LIVE

7:10-7:20am    FT MYERS, NAPLES    WGUF-FM    BOB HARDEN SHOW    BOB    LIVE

7:20-7:30am    BALTIMORE    WBAL-AM    MORNING SHOW    MALARIE    LIVE

7:30-7:40am    DALLAS    KRLD-AM    MORNING SHOW / AFTERNOON NEWS    MIKE    LIVE

7:40-7:50am    RALEIGH-DURHAM    WPTF-AM    NC MORNING NEWS    GEOFF    LIVE

8:00-8:10am    BALTIMORE, OCEAN CITY    WOCM-FM    MORNING SHOW    TBA    LIVE

8:20-8:30am    DETROIT - WINDSOR, CA    CKLW-AM    MORNING SHOW    LISA & MIKE    LIVE

8:40-8:50am    MIAMI - FT LAUDERDALE - WEST PALM    WFTL-AM    MORNING SHOW    RUSS    LIVE

8:50-9:00am    HARTFORD, NEW HAVEN, BRIDGEPORT, LONG ISLAND    WPLR-FM    MORNING SHOW    CHAZ (male) & AJ (male)    LIVE

9:00-9:20am    REGIONAL CT - ALSO IN RI, MA, NY    WNPR-AM - NPR    WHERE WE LIVE    JOHN

9:30-9:40am    ROCHESTER    WHAM-AM    MORNING SHOW    BETH & CHET    (TAPED)

9:40-9:50am    CINCINNATI, COLUMBUS    WLW-AM    JIM SCOTT SHOW    JIM    (TAPED)

10:05-10:15am    REGIONAL MN    WMIS-FM    MIDDAY SHOW    MARK    LIVE

10:20-10:30am    CHICAGO - AURORA, IL    WBIG-AM    MORNING SHOW    BRIAN & GREG    LIVE

10:30-10:45am    PORTLAND    KPOJ-AM    MORNING SHOW    CARL    LIVE

10:50-11:00am    TULSA    KMYZ-FM    MORNING SHOW    GREG & CHUCK    LIVE

11:05-11:20am    PORTLAND    KINK-FM    MORNING SHOW    SHEILA    TAPE

11:20-11:30am    NORFOLK, PORSTMOUTH, NEWPORT NEWS, VA    WHRV-FM - NPR    HEARSAY    CATHY    LIVE

11:30-11:40am    INDIANNAPOLIS, MUNCIE, IN    WERK-FM    MORNING SHOW    STEVE    TAPE

12:00-12:10pm    NASHVILLE    WFFH-WRLT-FM    MORNING SHOW    MARY    TAPE

12:10-12:20pm    CHICAGO - REGIONAL IL    WLPO-WAJK-WKOT-AM    MIDDAY SHOW    LOUANNE    TAPE

1:00-1:10pm    DALLAS    KLLI-AM    MORNING SHOW    PUGS & KELLY    TAPE

1:10-1:21pm    BIRMINGHAM    WAPI-AM    THE ROX REPORT    ROXANNE    LIVE

1:30-2:00pm    TRI-STATE - BASED IN CT    WICC-AM    MIDDAY SHOW    DAVID    LIVE

2:05-2:30pm    MILWAUKEE    WRJN-AM    NEWSTALK 1400    PETE    LIVE

2:30-3:00pm    SACRAMENTO    KSAC-AM - KAHI-AM    POP OFF RADIO SHOW    MARYJANE    LIVE

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27th                   

10:10-10:30am    BALTIMORE    WHFS-FM    TROY JOHNSON SHOW    TROY    LIVE

And the Rheingold Goes to .... Dell

When I do media interviews or public talks, I'm almost invariably asked two questions: 1) Are there any big companies engaged in crowdsourcing? and 2) Who is using crowdsourcing effectively? One would think I could provide one example that would answer both questions, but that's suprisingly difficult to do. As I say in my book: "We know crowdsourcing exists because we've observed it in the wild. However, it's proven difficult to breed in captivity." (Ewww. Did I just quote myself?) What I mean by this is that the most successful applications of crowdsourcing occurred organically as a function of astute people wanting to serve communities with which they were already intimately familiar. By contrast, companies that have set out to apply crowdsourcing consciously have a tougher row to hoe.

Howard Rheingold, namesake of The Rheingold Award

That's why I want to award the first Rheingold Award to Dell, Inc., for its IdeaStorm initiative. As I note in the book, IdeaStorm is essentially just an updated suggestion box. But oh, the difference the updates make. Dell launched IdeaStorm in February 2007 with the fairly modest goal of   enabling "you, the customer, to tell Dell what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop." This is the point when most wizened media observers roll their eyes. For the last several years we've grown accustomed to watching Fortune 500 companies pay lip service to social media without actually adhering to the principles that make the groundswell so powerful. To be honest, I thought IdeaStorm was just another example of this unfortunate, predictable trend. I couldn't have been more wrong.

It wasn't long before Dell was dealing with more than it'd bargained for. Within ten days Linux fanboys swamped the site, demanding a Dell pre-loaded with the open source operating system. At first Dell stumbled, moving to censor the, er, robust conversation that ensued. But then Dell showed it was serious about creating a partnership with its customers, announcing it would bow to the crowd and release a PC pre-loaded with the Ubuntu version of Linux. Go crowd. Go Dell.

Since then, Dell has quietly but persistently managed the site, taking pains to communicate with its community members and install changes to the site according to suggestions from users. Crowdsourcing generally requires a vibrant community, and such a resource can not be built overnight, and it can't be bought. It can, however, be built through a lot of painstaking effort and humility, which is just what Dell has displayed on IdeaStorm.

The fruits of the IdeaStorm partnership culminated on August 12, when Dell rolled out nine new laptops, all of which incorporated design elements proposed, promoted and debated by the IdeaStorm community. Instead of using IdeaStorm to put lipstick on a pig, Dell patiently cultivated debate and then implemented the best (and most popular) ideas into real world products. In other words, they listened instead of talking, and then they acted. Crowdsourcing doesn't always conform to the need for quarterly results, but it can handily reward patience and long-term thinking.

But don't take my word for it. Ann All at The Visible Enterprise wrote a fine summary of her interview with IdeaStorm's community manager, Vida Killian. She also wrote a study for Deloitte-Touche that contrasted Dell with other corporate attempts at online communities that have faltered. Here was one of my favorite insights:  "Financial benefits are harder to pinpoint, a fact that may lead some companies to pass on the idea," writes All. "Says Killian:

It’s not your traditional ROI model. Back to the culture, it supports the fact that you don’t need a hard number at the end of the day. It’s the right thing to do, we want to listen to our customers, so let’s do it."

Here here. Congratulations Dell on winning the very first Rheingold (and truth be told, inspiring its creation). Now I just have to figure out what a Rheingold should look like.

Announcing the Creation of the Rheingold Award

To paraphrase (and possibly offend) Gloria Steinem, a blog without an award to give away is like a fish without a bicycle. Undaunted by this fact, I've chosen to inaugurate a crowdsourcing award, which will be named the Rheingold, after the pioneering writer and techno-seer Howard Rheingold, who published the book Smart Mobs back when I thought collective intelligence* was an up-and-coming noise band. (Note: I've yet to hear Howard's reaction to this honor, for the excellent reason that hasn't been told he's been given it.) The award will be given intermittently, and according to my whim. The selection of crowdsourcing nominees will not, despite great irony, be crowdsourced.

Late-Breaking! Embargoed until 8 AM August 15! The winner of the Inaugural Rheingold will be awarded this Friday, August 15!

* I never actually thought collective intelligence was the name of a band. To my great delight, the panopticon informs me that a music label named Collective Intelligence does in fact exist. It may or may not be devoted to promoting bands within the noise genre. I choose to believe it does.

A New Look, and Leaving Las Vegas ...

You probably didn't even know I was in Las Vegas. That's okay, I barely did either. I arrived at 1 AM last night (after 12 grueling hours that started with me getting gridlocked on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and missing my plane), and I'm off again at the ungodly hour of 5:55 AM.

I was here to give my crowdsourcing talk to the Meeting Planners International. It's a conference for people who plan conferences. I think. I debuted the new slide show, which seemed to go off well. After the original article came out, the good folks in Wired's ad department built me a spiffy Power Point to use in my presentations. I never liked using it though, and when I started getting asked to do more talks this year I bailed on it and just told stories straight from the book. Then I started digging on Keynote last week. I love to hate Apple (without going so far as to buy a PC), but this is like the first time I used Photoshop. So many cool things to do. So many, in fact, that I had to have my wife vet my slides to make sure I wasn't adding funky animations just because I'd figured out how to do it.

But I'm off topic, aren't I? What I meant to say is, yes, I've retired the old banner from Crowdsourcing.com 1.0, and I'll be making a few changes to the sidebar. We figured as long as the book was coming out, why not put a common graphical identity forward. Plus, some of the sidebars (links from the article!) were scarily outdated. Should you care? Good heavens no. I just felt it shouldn't pass without mention. Plus, I'm jet lagged and oddly giddy from spending the last few hours listen to Styx play the wave pool at Mandalay Bay. (I want to dis them for playing a convention, but then who am I to point fingers?) Update: Still Hating Apple: Just before saving this post I opened Keynote to discover my 30-day trial had just ended—about 23 days early.

Question of the Day: Tell me again why I should stop worrying and learn to love the Evil Empire?

Meet David Cohn

I've just landed in the Catskills for a two-week vacation with Alysia and the tots. It's been nearly two years since we've had anything approaching a real vacation, and the first period of relaxation since the writing of the crowdsourcing book and the birth of our second child, so I hope you'll forgive me if I say it's well-deserved.

In the interim I've secured for your entertainment and edification the inimitable David Cohn. David and I first met through our work together on Assignment Zero, though David had actually interned for Wired in San Francisco a few years before that. David provided the grease that made Assignment Zero work, and I was so impressed with his smarts and diligence that I brought him on as my primary research assistant for the book. But David doesn't just write about crowdsourcing—he practices it too! A few months back David was awarded a prestigious Knight-Batten grant to form his own crowdfunding journalism project, Spot.us, a project I'm proud to day arose out of some of the research David did for my chapter on crowdfunding. I've asked him to devote a few blogs to Spot.us, but suffice to say I think it represents an exciting model for pursuing crowd-powered investigative projects.

If you need me over the next two weeks, check one of several small Catskill creeks. I'll be the guy trying to convince his not-quite-three-year old daughter that fish don't bite.

Updata

Despite the lack of activity on the crowdsourcing blog, there's much afoot in the crowdsourcing world. First off, the publication date of the Crowdsourcing Book is now August 26th. This is great and terrifying news. The fall is prime publishing season, the time when houses release all their biggest books. It's also smack dab between the Democratic and Republican conventions and the general election in November. Conventional wisdom holds that politics sucks all the air out of the room, so the fact Crown is confident enough to put my book up against the tide is an honor. I hope the book will perform well enough to meet their expectations.

I've spent much of the last month tying up final loose ends on the book and on the road doing more speaking engagements (Amsterdam—again—Austria and the Jersey Coast!). But at last the book is totally and completely done. I can't say I'm quite ready to write the sequel (or any other book), but it has been an immensely gratifying experience, both on personal and creative levels.

Finally, a bit of bad news. We've had to put the Crowdsourcing Appendix on hold for the time being. What this means is that we won't be running an appendix with reader comments in the first edition. We simply didn't have enough time to publish the rest of the excerpts and collect the comments into a publishable form. I'm to blame for this—I should have started the program a few months earlier. It's far from naught, however: The comments, and additional ones to be solicited following publication of the book, will be published in a subsequent edition of the crowdsourcing book, either in the form of an appendix or (as would be my druthers), in the marginalia, a la Clive Thompson's piece in Wired last March.

Assignment Zero and the New Crowdsourcing blog

For months I've been alluding to some big developments for both crowdsourcing the blog and crowdsourcing the model. Today all is revealed.

What's that on top of your blog? Crowdsourcing.com is now officially part of the Wired.com blog network. This won't obviously affect the reader experience (unless you're offended by the Wired house ad that's suddenly appeared above my banner), but it should make it more fun. For one, it will bring more readers to the blog and thus introduce more voices to our already lively comments section. Second, it should create some interesting cross-pollination with the other excellent Wired blogs in the network. From Bruce Sterling's inimitable commentary on Beyond the Beyond to our ever-whimsical, over-informed music blog, the Listening Post, Wired.com is now hosting some of the best blogs in the biz. I consider it high praise to be in their company.

What the Hell is Assignment Zero? Today Wired and Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.Net launched an ambitious research project that will use crowdsourcing to research, report and write about, well, crowdsourcing, in all its manifestations. It's called Assignment Zero, so named because we consider it ground zero for a new, hyrbid model of open source-slash-citizen media that we're calling Pro-Am journalism. The idea is to hook a team of professional editors and writers up with what we hope will be a vast team of talented, enthusiastic amateurs. Our goal is to bring the best of both worlds—the professional standards and respect for factual accuracy of the MSM on one hand; the infinite reservoir of knowledge and reporting power of the crowd—to bear.

Obviously I'm very excited about this. It will naturally—full disclosure—inform the book I'm writing. More than that, I think it's going to reveal some important aspects of crowdsourcing, from its potential to liberate creative potential to its inherent danger to exploit the collective. But rather than explain every detail of what we're doing, let me point you to the explainer Wired.com editor Evan Hansen and I wrote for the launch, and Jay Rosen's excellent, informative essay on the project, which will tell you all you need to know.