Crowdsourcing

Awesome! You F***in' Made That!

You all knew I'd have to crowdsource some element of a book on crowdsourcing, right? A few weeks ago my British publisher, Random House UK launched a "coversourcing" campaign which, if you didn't guess from the name, involves crowdsourcing the design for the dust jacket of the British edition of the book. It's pretty standard-issue crowdsourcing: The crowd submits the designs and votes on their favorites. It's already generating some awfully nifty covers, and I couldn't be happier to see my ideas given such wonderful visual treatment, as the title of my post—a riff on the Beastie Boys' crowdsourced concert film, Awesome! I F***ing Shot That!—surely makes clear.

I'm declining to endorse a candidate for the time being, but here's an example of the level of quality design coming in:

(Above: "Crowdsourcing" Cover Design, by hello.vickibrown)

Here are some details on the contest:

Design submissions will be welcomed until midnight GMT 10th February 2008. Following this period we will invite users to vote for their favourite Crowdsourcing designs between 11th – 25th February to create a shortlist of the 20 most popular designs. These will then be put to a panel vote from which the winning entrant will be chosen and crowned winner of the Coversourcing competition. The winner will be announced on 3rd March.

And here's the creative brief:

We are seeking a striking, iconic book jacket design which should engage on the strength of its concept and composition rather than rely on finishes and production values. The cover design should be bold, dynamic and eye-catching and should sit as comfortably on shelves at your local high street book shop as it would as a thumbnail image on Amazon. We’d love it if the chosen jacket was a collaboration - a true expression of the power of crowdsourcing. So if you want to collaborate with other artists & designers - illustrators, photographers, typographers - we heartily recommend it.

For more on creative direction and rules, go here.

I'd initially suggested Random House UK allow the crowd to pick the ultimate winner, but I understand the reasoning behind having a jury. Frankly, it's remarkable that a big publishing house would relinquish as much control over so crucial an element as cover design. Kudos to Adam Humphrey and his team in Random House's marketing department for putting together such a innovative promotion.

It is, as far as we can tell, one of the only times book cover design has been tossed out to the crowd. Guy Kawasaki—a guy who got more done yesterday than we did all year— conducted a similar campaign for his book The Art of the Start. If the final results are half as good as Guy's, I'll be stoked.

Award Season

A few days ago I received an email from an editor at the University of Michigan Press asking for permission to reprint the original Rise of Crowdsourcing article. I get more of these than you might expect. (University professors have to get my permission to xerox 30 copies of one of my stories; I officially grant blanket permission to all educational uses of my work, if they're reading this).

I almost zipped off a "You betcha" before reading more closely. The editor in question was from the annual anthology, "The Best Tech Writing—2007" (Here's a link to 2006's lineup.) Turns out The Rise of Crowdsourcing had been selected for inclusion in the anthology. More flattering yet was that the judge is Steven Levy, who's sort of a giant in my line of business and someone I've been reading since I was a cub reporter.

It was actually the second bit of good news to arrive within a few days time. Last week I learned that a Wired package about Second Life into which I'd poured a lot of blood, sweat and tears had been nominated for a National Magazine Award in the "leisure interests" category, and that both the magazines I worked for in 2006—Wired and Print Magazine—were nominated in the General Excellence category, which is a bit like getting an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Of course, to carry the analogy to its conclusion, that would make me a minor character actor in the movie, or perhaps the second assistant director on the second unit crew. Not that I'm complaining. I'll bask in reflected glory any day.

Assignment Zero Meetup in SF!

Hi Kids. Just a quick note to anyone in the Bay area who might be interested in the Assignment Zero project we launched last week. My esteemed (and I mean that, I esteem him highly) colleague David Cohn will be hosting a meet-and-greety kind of thing at a San Francisco watering hole. Here's details, lifted from David's blog:

It’s time for an Assignment Zero meetup.

I’m in San Francisco this week! On Thursday (March 22) I’m going to stop in at Wired Magazine’s office to try and drag as many people from the editorial staff as possible to a bar: 21st Amendment at 563 2nd Street San Francisco, CA 94107. I’ll be on the second floor starting at 4pm and I’ll hang around until 8pm — so there will be plenty of time to come and chat about what you want to cover for Assignment Zero, what crowdsourcing means for the future, how journalism can adapt to an evolving age and geek out in general.

As Steve Fox will surely tell you — a pub is where journalists get the real work done.

It’s amazing what can be accomplished over the Internet. But it’s even more amazing when people who collaborate over the Web meet in person to talk about how we can move forward. If you are a member of Assignment Zero or are just curious about it — please come. I’d love to chat.

                 

Crowdsourcing: The Podcast

A few weeks back Alex Howard from the online reference site Whatis.com produced a podcast on the meaning, usage and various applications of crowdsourcing. Part of the interview took place while I was in final negotiations for my book deal, so if I sound oddly elated and excitable, that's why. Alex knew his stuff going into the interview and asked some provocative questions. The podcast can be downloaded here.

Crowdsourcing: The Book

I was telling a friend the other day that the nature of book writing had changed. Back in the day a writer would receive a commission to write a book, hole up for a year or so and emerge with a near-finished product. The book might be based on an article that originated in a newspaper or magazine, but the works were entirely discrete. Today an article can become the basis for a blog, which then drives further articles, all of which become fodder for the lecture circuit, feedback from which reappears on the blog. If the subject strikes a rich, deep vein, then all this informs a book, which itself is heavily influenced by a continuing discourse facilitated by the blog and further articles. This sounds way more fun than sequestering oneself away in a garret for 12-plus months. The point is that the medium isn't the message anymore. The message is the message, and the medium is merely a delivery mechanism.

Now it's time to put this grand theorizing to the test. I've been developing a book proposal on crowdsourcing for the last several months, a process that reached a happy conclusion last Thursday when Crown Publishing Group bought the rights to publish the book, which is slated to hit shelves in the Spring of 2008. It's my first book and I should probably be more nervous than I am. Instead I feel a sense of giddy anticipation, like the feeling I get when a big trout starts feeding on mayflies just within casting distance (there's surely a more universal metaphor I could use, but hey, this is what comes to mind). One of the immediate effects of the deal is that I'll have much more time to work on this blog, which has been a guilty pleasure up to now. Naturally, I'll be involving contributors to the blog in the writing process, although I'm still mulling exactly how that will take place. And just as naturally, I'll expect you all to give me ideas on that count. I'm sure I won't be disappointed. Thanks to you all, and keep reading ...

Person of the Year: Me...

... and you, and you, and you and yeah, Mom, you too.

Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year is the newly empowered, review-writing, blog-posting, photo-taking, video-making prosumer. If the choice seems like a no-brainer to those of us steeped in the heady rhetoric of Web 2.0, let's remember that this is a risk-averse journalistic institution. (In 2001 Time named Rudy Giulilani Man of the Year, bypassing the obvious--if incendiary--choice: Osama bin Laden.) Viewed in this light, Al Gore or Nancy Pelosi would have made for a much safer choice. Time made a gutsy move and should be commended for it.

This hasn't been the general consensus among the blogging punditry. Some reactions were funny. Others were merely annoying. (When did Gawker go from vapid-but-funny to merely vapid?) And some, I thought, were right on target. But all this is besides the point, namely, my own self-aggrandizement. I contributed a spread to the package, an idea-map of sorts to the companies and concepts that make up Web 2.0. (You can read the text here, but the graphic somehow didn't make it online so it won't make much sense.)

I thought I'd lost the giddy elation of seeing my name in print back in college. But I may not be so wizened after all. Working on the package was a ball. Time produces three separate magazines for the POTY issue, only to choose one of them on the very eve of publication. So on Saturday night I sat down to watch a CNN special on the selection process with no more idea than any other viewer of who Time would pick. My chips were on Ahmadinejad. Then at the end of the hour Time managing editor Richard Stengel revealed his choice: Me! Tomorrow I'll go back to being perpetually unimpressed. Today I give way to giddy elation.

Upcoming Events

I know it's short notice, but if anyone's going to be in Second Life in about, well, 29 minutes, please stop by Colonia Nova for a roundtable discussion about the use of crowdsourcing in the metaverse (don't call it a video game!), Second Life. The event is being hosted by Gwyneth Llewelyn and the Kuurian Expedition. Topic include community, the shifting nature of work and what companies owe their crowdsourcees. Or at least, that's the agenda I'd like to tackle.

Second Life is a near-perfect crowdsourcing model, and it's also more mature than many of the companies to have emerged over the last six months. As such, they comprise a petri dish of sorts, and are starting to wrestle with some of the thornier issues inherent in relying on a community to create your product. With big corporations like IBM, and well heck, Wired Magazine throwing up a shingles in the SL metaverse, how much control should the company cede to the community in guiding that growth? I don't know, but today's discussion certainly won't be short on opinions. Click here for the teleporting coordinates, aka SLURL)