Crowdsourcing for Business 2013

Editor's Notes

1. Just teaser, dont tell the story yet
2. This exactly is as well what fellow scientist wanted to proof back in 1906 Francis Galton, a British scientist who thought that people in general were stupid, went to the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition in 1906 and came away with an interesting observation - one that, to a degree, challenged his views. Visitors could pay to enter a competition to guess the weight of an ox at the show after it had been slaughtered and dressed. There was a prize for the best estimate. After the winners had been announced, Galton collected all the betting slips and analyzed them. At the time, he could never have imagined that his findings would be applied to financial markets in 2005, but Galton plotted the guesses of the ox's weight on a chart. Two things came to light. One was the shape of the curve. Some guesses were very high and some were very low, but the majority were clustered around the average guessed weight, giving a "bell" curve, named after its appearance. What was more striking, however, was that the average guess was, at 1,197lbs, just 1lb less than the actual weight of the dressed ox. Galton pondered his findings and the surprising accuracy of the average guess. Some had doubtless been made by visitors who knew nothing about oxen and who were stupid. Yet even a brilliant vet or scientist, or a team of them, would have struggled to guess as well as the crowd did. As Galton wrote later: "The result seems to be more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected." A second, albeit metaphorical, visitor to the livestock exhibition was James Surowiecki, a bright US business journalist who writes for the New Yorker magazine. Last year he published a book called The Wisdom of Crowds - Why the Many are Smarter than the Few. Its central premise, which was based on Galton's finding and could be viewed as counter-intuitive, was: "If you want to make a correct decision or solve a problem, large groups of people are smarter than a few experts." The story of Galton and the livestock show is not the only anecdote quoted by the book. Another comes from the television show Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
3. In an early example, Surowiecki refers to a study conducted by the British scientist Francis Galton. Galton was a believer in the power of the elite, noting "the stupidity and wrong-headedness of many men and women being so great as to be scarcely credible." But at a fair, he noticed a wagering competition in which people bet on the weight of an ox. Eight hundred people participated; some were butchers and farmers, others just idle guessers. When Galton averaged the estimates, he expected the result to be way off. Instead, the crowd had come within one pound of the ox's weight. The same is true of jellybean contests, in which people try to guess how many jellybeans are in a jar. The collective guess is often closer than any individual determination.
4. Just teaser, dont tell the story yet
5. Arecibo is the site of the world's largest single-dish radio telescope. The huge dish is 305 m (1000 feet) in diameter, 167 feet deep, and covers an area of about 20 acres. The surface is made of almost 40,000 perforated aluminum panels, each measuring about 3 feet by 6 feet, supported by a network of steel cables strung across the underlying sinkhole. It is a spherical reflector. This resampled one-meter resolution color image of the Arecibo was taken by Space Imaging's IKONOS satellite.
6. http://seti.berkeley.edu/
7. www.wikipedia.com Check for „public sector“ Click on the history tab to see who and when happend changes Make sure you understand Wiki is a technology, a way of collaborating on the web Wikipedia is a product USING this technology, ist as well the inventor and the most successful wiki so far We will as well use wiki technology for one of our projects
8. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10228666.stm
9. http://laurelpapworth.com/crowdsource-bp-oil-spill-and-social-media/
10. http://blog.designcrowd.com/article/202/crowdsourcing-is-not-new--the-history-of-crowdsourcing-1714-to-2010 1714: The Longitude Prize In 1714, the British Government was stuck for a solution to what they called "The Longitude Problem" which made sailing difficult and perilous (killing 1,000s of seamen every year). Seeking innovation, the British Government offered £20,000 for people to invent a solution (£20,000 in 1714 is around $4.7 million dollars in 2010). This is possibly the first ever example of crowdsourcing. The contest, considered almost unsolvable, was won by John Harrison, the son of a carpenter. Harrison invented the 'marine chronometer' (i.e. an accurate, vacuum sealed pocket watch). The aristocrats were hesitant to award Harrison the prize but eventually paid him the £20,000. This example of crowdsourcing is a fantastic one because it highlights one of the principles of crowdsourcing - innovation and creativity can come from anywhere. 1936: Toyota Logo Contest In 1936, Toyota held a logo contest to redesign its logo. They received 27,000 entries and the winning logo was the three Japanese katakana letters for “Toyoda” in a circle, which was later modified by Risaburo Toyoda to "Toyota". 1955: The Sydney Opera House In 1955 the Premier of NSW state of Australia, Joseph Cahill, ran a contest offering £5,000 to design a building for part of Sydney's Harbour. The contest received 233 entries from 32 countries around the world. The winning design is one of the most innovative landmarks. Architectural contests continues to be a popular model for getting buildings designed. 2000 to 2006: YouTube, Wikipedia, Threadless founded During this period innovative dot coms - now bookmarked household staples - began to launch and take-off. Not always used as crowdsourcing examples, but in reality: Youtube = crowdsourced entertainment / TV Wikipedia = crowdsourced knowledge 2002 to 2006: American Idol In 2002, American Idol Season kicked off Kelly Clarkson's career as well as a plethora of talent contests So You think You Can Dance, Next Top Model, Masterchef. These contests, often described as 'reality TV' are, at their core, public crowdsourcing contests that aim to produce an album, a cook book or a superstar (along with entertainment for 1 billion plus people). 2006: Crowdsourcing Jeff Howe coins the term crowdsourcing in Wired Magazine aritlce in June 2006. 2006 to 2050: Crowdsourcing Explodes An explosion of crowdsourcing related websites. From DesignCrowd (our site!) to Groupon to Digg - a large percentage web-based start-ups now rely on "the crowd".
11. Crowds? The great unwashed? Aren't crowds responsible for the stock market bubble, boorish behavior at baseball games and the rise of Britney Spears? Well, yes. And no, says author James Surowiecki. http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706/sr=8-1/qid=1162734925/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-0941810-4998248?ie=UTF8&s=books In his new book, "The Wisdom of Crowds" (Doubleday), Surowiecki -- who writes "The Financial Page" for The New Yorker -- shows how the combined intelligence and input of a group of people can create optimum conclusions, whether in a financial marketplace or a county fair. "When I started writing about business," Surowiecki says in a phone interview, "I wondered how and why markets work as well as they do.“ Markets, of course, are often thought to be simple beasts, the lowest-common-denominator results of many sources of information. The smart people are those who "beat the market," individuals who make profits or pursue innovation by rejecting conventional wisdom -- that is, the assumed thought of the big, dumb crowd. And yet Surowiecki noticed that, often, markets -- or other forms of collective thought -- were "smarter" than the individuals who participated in them. Markets weed out the weak, the poor ideas, the faltering processes -- and they're also capable of assembling the diverse information of their participants into the right answer. Smart as an ox-weighing In an early example, Surowiecki refers to a study conducted by the British scientist Francis Galton. Galton was a believer in the power of the elite, noting "the stupidity and wrong-headedness of many men and women being so great as to be scarcely credible." But at a fair, he noticed a wagering competition in which people bet on the weight of an ox. Eight hundred people participated; some were butchers and farmers, others just idle guessers. When Galton averaged the estimates, he expected the result to be way off. Instead, the crowd had come within one pound of the ox's weight. The same is true of jellybean contests, in which people try to guess how many jellybeans are in a jar. The collective guess is often closer than any individual determination. "The Wisdom of Crowds" is full of this sort of telling anecdote. In 1968, when the submarine Scorpion went down in the north Atlantic, the navy had only the most general idea of where it was. Yet, using the expertise of various experts in diverse disciplines, and combining them through mathematical formulas, a naval officer managed to determine its resting place within 220 yards. Or take SARS. Despite the virus being completely unknown upon first being revealed in February 2003, within two months, a group of labs was able to identify its source.
12. http://www.oilspill.labucketbrigade.org/
13. www.wikipedia.com Check for „public sector“ Click on the history tab to see who and when happend changes Make sure you understand Wiki is a technology, a way of collaborating on the web Wikipedia is a product USING this technology, ist as well the inventor and the most successful wiki so far We will as well use wiki technology for one of our projects
14. It started as so many times with some 16 / 17 year old NET GEN people Not accepting or perhaps just not knowing on how it has been done the last 100 years and how it should never have changed (as they might have been told in class) They just wanted to make money, but all they had was an idea and some technical skills to build a simple website Today they are multiple millionaires, just some 3 years later
15. http://jakenickell.com/
16. 06/25/12 http://threadless.com/
17. Ok it worked for knowledge, but would it work for business It always starts in entertainment, in games, information and communication Then moves on to business and becomes mainstream Then the media are discussing it and then finally Even schools (at least the few good ones out there) start to realize ist potential and applying it to their class curricullum
18. Crowdsourcing" has, virtually overnight, generated huge buzz, enthusiasm, and fear. It's the application of the open-source idea to any field outside of software, taking a function performed by people in an organization, such as reporting done by journalists, research and product development by scientists, or design of a T-shirt, for example, and, in effect, "outsourcing" it through an open-air broadcast on the Internet. Crowdsourcing has already had a huge impact on big companies like Procter & Gamble, as well as start-ups like Threadless.com, which rapidly became the third largest T-shirt maker in the United States. The fuel sparking the crowdsourcing flame is the potent combination of more highly educated people working in fields other than those in which they were trained with the greatest mechanism for distributing knowledge and information the world has ever seen: the Internet.
19. http://99designs.com/other-design-tasks/contests/infograph-flowchart-school-43645?orderby=&filterby=
20. From the album "Anoraknophobia" A wise man once said a flower is only a sexual organ, beauty is cruelty and evolution. A wise man once said that everything could be explained with mathematics. He had denied his feminine side. Now where is the wisdom in that? I came just as fast as I could through the dirty air of your neighbourhood. Your name on a grain of rice hangin' around my neck and a head like lead. This is the 21st century. I heard everything they said. The universe demystified. Chemicals for God. This is the 21st century. A wise man once wrote that love is only an ancient instinct for reproduction: natural selection. A wise man once said that everything could be explained and it's all in the brain. We lay on a velvet rug by the open fire. She blew air on my eyelids. I cried "What's it all about?" As she kissed my hair she said "There, there..." "This is the 21st century. I heard everything you said. The universe demystified. Astronomy instead. This is the 21st century. Can't you get it through your head? This ain't the way it was meant to be. Magic isn't dead. Come to bed, come to bed and rest your heavy head my love..." And slowly, from above, she showed the answer's something that can't be written down. This is the 21st century. Flash to crash and burn. Nobody's gonna give you anything for nothing in return. There's a man up in a mirrored building and he just bought the world. Would you want to have kids growing up into what's left of this? She shook her head, she said "Can't you see? The world is you, the world is me." Category:  Music
21. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu0OEsWbeuI&feature=related
22. https://www.sellaband.com/pages/how_it_works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SellaBand
23. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0SOXW_K56w
24. http://www.memrise.com/welcome/ http://www.youtube.com/memrise
25. Why it ’ s never been easier for people to (effortlessly) contribute The crowdsourcing trend will continue to shake up business processes and spawn endless innovations. after all, being given a chance to contribute, or to be a part of something bigger than themselves, will be forever popular. What ’ s next? With smartphones able to (constantly) broadcast a wealth of information, 2012 will see a number of novel IDLE SOURCING initiatives: products and services that make it downright simple, if not effortless, for people to contribute to the greater good. After all the reality is that most consumers, while they might want to contribute, often find it too difficult or too much hassle. Behind the IDLE SOURCING is (again) the proliferation of smartphones: the ubiquity of always-on, GPS and accelerometer-enabled devices means that consumers themselves can and will broadcast data about where and what they are doing, in order to effortlessly improve products, services and experiences. One warning: brands that launch idle sourcing programs without consumers ’ consent will be setting themselves up for unwelcome scrutiny if not exposure, no matter how much consumers stand to benefit. Example: First tested in March 2011, Boston based Street Bump app takes advantage of the sensors on smartphones to give city officials a real-time map of road conditions. Using the accelerometers and GPS technology in users ’ phones, the app registers when and where the user ’ s car has experienced a pothole and reports and logs the information automatically. Link: http://www.newurbanmechanics.org/bump www.trendwatching.com
26. Israeli crowdsourced traffic navigation app Waze reached seven million users across 45 countries in October 2011. Waze provides free turn-by-turn navigation alongside live information about road conditions, which is crowdsourced from other users. In Q3 2011, Waze released versions that included text-to-speech voice guidance, enabling drivers to access voiced traffic alerts. street bump Automated detection and reporting of potholes Link: http://www.waze.co.il/ www.trendwatching.com
27. Crowd-sourced car design October 2011 saw Fiat unveil the Fiat Mio in Brazil. The vehicle was created via a year-long design process in which 17,000 people submitted ideas to Fiat ’ s Brazilian website. The car ’ s final specifications were submitted under a Creative Commons License, making them available to anyone for distribution and modification. Link: http://www.fiatmio.cc/ www.trendwatching.com
28. http://thepoweroffew.com/ http://youtu.be/62CqLwVUoCQ
29. http://www.your-big-break.com/ Peter Jackson to judge NZ tourism crowdsourcing campaign by Jennifer Whitehead, Brand Republic 01-Dec-09, 12:15 LONDON - Aspiring filmmakers have the chance of getting 'Lord of the Rings' director Peter Jackson to watch some of their work in a new competition to promote tourism in New Zealand. Jackson, a native New Zealander famous for films like 'King Kong' and 'The Lovely Bones', is to be one of the judges of the 100% Pure New Zealand short film competition, which will see five finalists flown out to New Zealand to shoot and direct their own three-minute shorts. ADVERTISEMENT Judging entries along with Jackson are some of the team he worked with on the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, including executive producer Barrie Osborne. The competition, called Your Big Break, begins with a visit to the dedicated website , where a brief can be downloaded. The site also includes advice from Jackson and links to footage that may inspire writers. Entrants must write a screenplay for a three-minute film that they feel captures the spirit of New Zealand. Submissions can be made starting on 9 December and must be in by 15 January. After that, four of the finalists will be chosen via a panel of experts, including Osborne, and a fifth will be chosen by the public. The five completed three-minute films will then be viewed and judged by Peter Jackson and the winning film will run on US television in 2010. There is also a Facebook group and a Twitter feed devoted to the competition, following in the footsteps of this year's 'Best Job In The World' campaign for Tourism Queensland. George Hickton, chief executive of Tourism New Zealand, said: "'Your Big Break' is asking people to capture the essence of 100% Pure New Zealand and tell the world their story of how they see the youngest country on earth. "The importance of having two film industry legends involved with Your Big Break is immense. Their support will help ensure the project is noticed by the world's film industry, give it international reach and, we hope, result in some great stories."
30. http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/7P7Wj-wF3kE
31. http://blog.onthree.ca/2011/01/18/philly-looks-to-crowdsourcing-for-tourism-campaign/
32. Tourism Authority of Thailand Launches “The Most Amazing Show On Earth” Every journey has a story, and the Tourism Authority of Thailand is calling upon past visitors to share their stories of Thailand in its latest campaign for a chance to win a cash prize and become the inspiration for a film. In the recruitment phase of the campaign, the Tourism Authority of Thailand has sent out an open call for submissions. From April 8 onwards, TAT is accepting submissions of “Amazing Moments”, or unique stories from anyone who has visited Thailand in the form of photo essays. By logging on to http://www.MostAmazingShow.com, users can upload their photos or sync it to an album on Facebook, mark the regions/provinces to map out their journeys, add descriptions, and share the story with others via social media. These moments will then be collected and shown as part of “The Most Amazing Show On Earth”, a website where visitors can browse stories of Thailand from all over the world. By capturing real stories from real visitors, the TAT hopes to be able to give prospective visitors a diverse and realistic portrait of tourism of the whole country through the eyes of other visitors rather than an organization. In the second phase, TAT will develop a film inspired by the submissions. The film will be divided into short episodes to be broadcasted online, with each episode featuring different regions and provinces in Thailand and a sample of the experiences they can offer. In addition, the film will involve online participants further by allowing viewers of each episode to tag gifts related to each particular episode for a chance to win the gifts and have them delivered to a physical mailing address.
33. “ Share Your Washington” campaign The $300,000 “Share Your Washington” tourism campaign kicked off April 18. The mostly-online campaign asks Washington residents to invite their friends and family to visit the state, as a way to pump up a hospitality industry bracing for the imminent demise of the state Tourism Office because of budget cuts. Web viewers can click a button to instantly send scenic online postcards to their friends and enter a drawing for prizes from sponsor Alaska Airlines. Marsha Massey, who directs the soon-to-expire state tourism office, said there could be 20,000 new tourism jobs if each Washington resident got a friend to visit. ”This is saying, ‘You can be part of the solution — You can be part of economic development for the state,’ ” she said. Tourism officials expect people to see the campaign on Facebook or at www.ShareYourWashington.com, although there are also TV and radio broadcast versions, too. The new nonprofit Washington Tourism Alliance is working on a plan to take over the ad campaign as well as state’s tourism promotion website, www.experiencewa.com, when the tourism office closes June 30.
34. http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/index.aspx Crowdsourcing example: bmi uses Flickr photos in web design by Josiah Mackenzie on February 06, 2009 2 Comments I’ve received some good feedback about my post on crowdsourcing yesterday. Some of you wanted examples of how to integrate user-generated content (UGC) in web design. This morning I was looking for a flight out of London and visited the bmi website: If you take a closer look, what appears to be stock photography is actually a photo from Flickr: In a news release announcing the website design, bmi’s marketing director Katherine Gershon said: We…wanted to break away from traditional airline website design and re-create the feeling of flying on the website itself. The usage of flickr photography does just that and enables us to engage with online communities and we are really excited by the social networking opportunities of this relationship.
35. Getting the Irish to “Talk for Ireland” DiscoverIreland.ie has just launched a dynamic new campaign called “Talk for Ireland” aimed at getting people to talk passionately and with pride about holidaying in Ireland. The aim of the campaign is to encourage people to share their favourite destinations, activities, attractions and festivals with each other on the new DiscoverIreland.ie Facebook page as a way of encouraging people to take breaks in Ireland this year. “ To really get the ball moving we would like to encourage any tourism business already active in social media to share this campaign with their followers via their website, Facebook and Twitter accounts”. Those willing to share their favourite places to holiday in Ireland will have the chance to win weekly prizes, as well as entry into a grand prize draw where they’ll get to experience the current Discover Ireland ‘The Fun Starts Here’ TV ad for themselves! The competition will be promoted on the Breakfast with Hector Show on 2FM and the RTE Guide as well as a range of national newspapers. To enter the competition, participants simply have to upload a video, or a captioned image, onto Discover Ireland’s new Facebook page www.facebook.com/discoverireland.ie, which expresses exactly what it is they love about taking a break in Ireland.
36. The Canadian Tourism Commission was one of the first out of the gate, going so far as to turn everything from its global TV campaign to its website over to consumer generated content. (Full disclosure: we worked on this campaign). “ Locals Know” was named by Forbes Magazine as one of the Top 10 tourism campaigns of all time and resulted in significant increases in both domestic tourism and international arrivals. The two-year effort started with a domestic campaign challenging Canadians to share their local knowledge of great Canadian travel experiences. More than 4,500 Canadians responded with text, images and video. The best content was then re-purposed, warts and all, for the CTC’s global TV campaign.
37. http://www.thetalentjungle.com/hospitality_blog/item/675 http://www.mastersportal.eu/news/73/the-worlds-first-ever-student-crowdsourced-student-guide-for-the-iphone.html
38. There happen a rather huge change to the Internet as we knew it the last 10 years. Before we just changed in the way we could use new technologies for new design but still somehow replicate the world as it was know to us. Marketing was done as it was done for ages, to sell a product it was normally just digitalized and placed on the web. But the last 2 years something changed and new rules were created, something we today call Web 2.0 or the YOU Web Crowdsourcing" has, virtually overnight, generated huge buzz, enthusiasm, and fear. It's the application of the open-source idea to any field outside of software, taking a function performed by people in an organization, such as reporting done by journalists, research and product development by scientists, or design of a T-shirt, for example, and, in effect, "outsourcing" it through an open-air broadcast on the Internet. Crowdsourcing has already had a huge impact on big companies like Procter & Gamble, as well as start-ups like Threadless.com, which rapidly became the third largest T-shirt maker in the United States. The fuel sparking the crowdsourcing flame is the potent combination of more highly educated people working in fields other than those in which they were trained (think of the art historian peddling financial advice at Merrill Lynch) with the greatest mechanism for distributing knowledge and information the world has ever seen: the Internet. 06/25/12