With the potential of producing massive amounts of ideas for virtually every type of human endeavor, what can we do with those solutions that just don’t work. The good stuff is the tip of the iceberg. The less useful stuff ( I will never dis the crowd, because… it’s a crowd!) or the “guano” ( what a cool word for bird feces!) must still be useful somehow. Re-cylced as it were.
We need to build an aggregating device that can find meaningful connections within all the missteps. I’m half serious about that last thought. I'll work on getting fully serious at some point.
The original image bank crowdsourced for their content with varying degrees of editing. You don’t need to be a professional illustrator to get your work into an image bank. And why not. Server size and bandwidth are not as much of an issue today. Of course not many will buy some badly rendered clip art, but getting it posted in the first place brings satisfaction to the creator. It’s all good, sort of. And even one sale puts money in the both pockets - creator and seller. The neat thing for the seller or content provider is that these tiny incremental sales for even average work may still add up to a substantial number. The crowds make it so.
It’s the age of self-syndication. I syndicate, therefore I am ( an artist, or something like that…)
When the crowd speaks who listens?
One day I’d like to compile the comments from anonymous readers of any major news article. It’s a microcosm of the world in terms of the extremes in thinking. But the lunatic fringe is over represented it seems. Or at least I hope it is. It’s a fascinating cross-section of hate, bile, ignorance and occasionally, genius.
Crowds votes for the best solution?
Not sure that ever works. And there are those who game the system too. Duping friends and acquaintances into participating in the vote. Genuine, lucid comments are rare as is unbiased voting. ( I base this on just a few contests I've been following, so it's a broad generalization, but it's also part of the way we are wired: support your friends even if they stink a little.)
Who actually reads the brief?
Even within a traditional agency structure the creatives are encouraged to read the brief dozens, if not hundreds of times. Read and re-read. The solution is in there somewhere, but only if it’s a good brief. Judging by the comments from the crowd, it’s astonishing how many individuals have not thoroughly read the brief. Or simply do not understand it.
Global briefs, local talent?
Communication / advertising design is inherently driven by culture and language. Big ideas are media and language neutral, but to begin a real dialogue with the consumer the execution of the idea needs local interpretation of language and image. “Google translate” does not really help here.
Gödel or google?
They both like math. What has this to do with crowds? It's all about numbers and networking in the end. For both sides. The crowd and the ones who harvests the output. The more contests a single creator gets involved in the better the odds of a payout. That's obvious. But the tendency for some, is just to focus on the competitions they have a background in, if the community is open, it is just as satisfying to participate less familiar territory. For example, I've engaged a friend of mine who's a natural when it comes to construction and material sourcing to participate in the $300 dollar house project (see post). The crowd can network for those who have expertise in a particular field, then join forces to participate in that contest. Like 1bigbrain!
