Group items tagged

By Rose Holley, in D-Lib Magazine, March/April 2010, vol 16(3/4). This article looks at crowd sourcing -- more than "social engagement," the author defines crowdsourcing as individuals collectively working towards a common goal (e.g. correcting a news article) -- and how libraries might direct engagement in crowdsourcing.

In many cases, "crowdsourcing" (as per author's definition) is what we (KPI) are trying to accomplish with our Jams and other online engagements. The author offers a great checklist (with examples) for how to engage your "crowd" in your project. SM

By Soha El Borno on Idealware, August 2012; originally published by TechSoup. Article focuses on nonprofits, but walks readers through some major ideas behind crowdsourcing, including pooling knowledge, microvolunteering, and crowd creation. Real-world examples are given for each.

Apparently, crowdsourcing of scholarly work requires support just as online networks/communities require assistance for 'voluntary' members to identify desired outcomes within a fleshed out change model; design and rollout processes and collaborative technologies; sometimes analyze content generated, provoke movement or change in tactics, etc.

From About page: "InnoCentive is the open innovation and crowdsourcing pioneer that enables organizations to solve their key problems by connecting them to diverse sources of innovation including employees, customers, partners, and the world's largest problem solving marketplace." Innocentive works with corporations, non profits, government, etc. *See Resources section for white paper and webinar.

U.S. government's clearinghouse for public projects where they are looking for crowdsourced solutions. Some projects look for apps and other "innovative tools." Others are more like contests. You can browse by category or by government agency.

Developed by Texifter, a company founded by Dr. Stuart Schulman of QDAP (see tag QDAP), this is a text analysis tool, with the capability of "reading" text from a variety of social media sources (as well as WordPress) and crowdsourcing the analysis over a peer group of the user's devising. This software has replaced PCAT (an earlier product).

According to the About page, Tagasauris helps it's user-clients to generate metadata for their photos and other "knowledge-work." Users upload photos and a distributed network of Tagasaurus on-demand employees generate the metadata. Users are charged a fee for this service.

As of Sept 2012, video & audio are "coming soon." I'm not sure if they are yet equipped to handle "knowledge work." Also unclear where true crowdsourcing comes in. It sounds like they provide the (selected) crowd, rather than this being a platform one can employ to open work to the larger crowd.

Website for the new textbook Key Concepts in Geomorphology by Paul Bierman and Dave Montgomery, published by W.H. Freeman. This text is, in effect, being "crowd-sourced," with members of the community invited to vet the work and to submit "vignettes," which are brief electronic supplements.

From About Us, "OpenIDEO is a place where people design better, together for social good." Using an online platform and a very structured approach to problem-solving (inspiration, concepting, and evaluation) are followed, ideally, by implementation, all the while, harnassing the power of crowd-sourcing. See How It Works tab for a video that more effectively explains the process.

I found the video inspiring. OpenIDEO's work is very similar to ours, though they use the power of the crowd while ours is (usually) at least somewhat restricted. But I love the clearly delineated process, the idea that more is better, and the fact that each of us might be stronger in one aspect of the process than the other(s). The website, too, is inspiring, as the homepage lays out all of the projects, with a barometer to describe where each project is in the process.