Team Crowdsourcing

Sharing our crowdsourcing research with the GovLab and the world!

[wisdominthecrowd]

Crowdsourcing Team Update

The crowdsourcing team has been hard at work on our two main goals:

Supplying a foundation of crowdsourcing knowledge catered towards each site team that fuels their experimental models; and

Producing a design guide, which includes case studies, primers, videos, and other components, to help decision makers grasp the opportunities and challenges of using crowdsourcing tool.

Some of the research is already available on the the GovLab wiki, which launched this week. Check out some of what we have already posted:

Open Innovation in Business: InnoCentive, TopCoder, Group Talent, Threadless

Crowdsourcing Wisely: Stack Exchange

Crowdsourcing Ideas: The UK’s Patient Feedback Challenge

Crowdsourcing Tasks: Zooniverse

[nprhereandnow]

This map shows the editing activity (more than 2.5 million edits by 1,100 people) on a crowdsourced map of the Philippines that the Red Cross and other relief workers are using to help them deliver aid.

Crowdsource Mapping Helps Recovery Efforts In Philippines

[wisdominthecrowd]

BuzzFeed's plan to translate its "listicles" is brilliant, brazen, and a little nutty, says @fmanjoo

Until recently, BuzzFeed's global ambitions were held in check because its listicles are published in English. But now, the site's posts will be translated by crowds of foreign-language learners.

Buzzfeed, much like the TED Open Translation Project before them, is turning to crowdsourcing in order to do all of their translation work. This is a great example of how an organization can use crowdsourcing to accomplish a large volume of small tasks that require some level of human intelligence - it's not really the kind of thing a computer can do automatically, but it also wouldn't make a great job description for any one person.

[wisdominthecrowd]

Crowdsourcing Wisely

This week we took a stab at building an idea map for our crowdsourcing research - it's a work in progress, but we're happy to have a blueprint out in the world.

We're putting a lot of effort into group process and client relations this week - thinking about how we work as a team, how we work with the GovLab, and how we work with the rest of the Capstone. It's been a good process, but also very much a learning process - it's not always easy to find clarity in an experimental model.

We're looking forward to a new week of research, writing, and exploration.

[wisdominthecrowd]

Update - Week 2

It's officially on the books - we are meeting on Thursday morning with The GovLab's very own Beth Noveck. We're hoping to walk away with some suggestions for our first series of crowdsourcing case studies, as well as a deeper understanding of some of the existing models of crowdsourcing. 

It's already becoming clear that one of our guiding questions will be how to get people involved in a crowdsourcing effort. Have you designed or participated in a crowdsourced project before? What made you get involved?

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Crowdsourcing is an online, distributed problem-solving and production model.

Daren C. Brabham

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Crowdsourcing platforms simplify the process of asking and answering questions.

https://raw.github.com/GovLab/smarter-governance/master/smarter-governance.txt

[wisdominthecrowd]

Update - Week 1

It's been a very exploratory week for Team Crowdsourcing - between our meetings with GovLab employees, reading Daren C. Brabham's book Crowdsourcing, and browsing the resources shared by GovLab over on GitHub, we're mostly working to take it all in!

The field of crowdsourcing is very new, and the resources and research are distributed throughout a variety of social sciences. We definitely have our work cut out for us, but it's exciting to think about the resources we'll be able to build and share.

[engagingnyu]

What is the model for successful, crowdsourced decisionmaking in a traditional institution of higher learning? 

Over the next nine months, our team will be exploring this question, and many others, in the context of New York University. Stay tuned.

[wisdominthecrowd]

Love the cartoon!

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This definition is wordy but complete. The key ingredients of crowdsourcing, then, according to a few dozen scholars who have published on the topic, are: 1. an organization that has a task it needs performed, 2. a community (crowd) that is willing to perform the task voluntarily, 3. an online environment that allows the work to take place and the community to interact with the organization, and 4. mutual benefit for the organization and the community.

Crowdsourcing - Daren C. Brabham, pg 3

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Our first customer development meeting with Andrew and Jill from the GovLab team - and Beth in the background!

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Welcome!

Welcome to the Team Crowdsourcing Tumblr!

We’re looking forward to sharing our questions, ideas, and opinions about models of crowdsourcing with The GovLab - stay tuned for more info.