The dynamics of schooling fish, flocks of birds and crowds.

I’m not suggesting that the “crowds” participating in contests and competitions are like fish or bird, but the dynamics of schooling fish when a predator is present makes the crowd behave like an organic “whole”. Moving, swaying and constantly changing shape to keep the ranks closed to the predator.

This may not be the best analogy, but watch what happens when the client gives high marks to a particular solution. It’s not surprising that all the new solutions coming in start to look like the favorite, moving in the same direction. That’s good and bad. It may be good for the client but rough on the crowd. If you have the best new direction it’s hard for everyone else to ignore it, creeping in on your ground-breaking efforts. That’s were the “blind” contests come in. No one sees anyone else’s solutions during the life of the contest. But does this run counter to whole rationale of having a crowdsourced challenge in the first place?

Online forums and Crowds.

“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it….."

Ayn Rand

When the crowd speaks, who listens? It’s hard enough communicating a point of view face to face with a colleague. Now imagine posting a comment, critique, observation and then try to accommodate the rebuttal or counterpoint, or clarification. It’s cumbersome and frustrating.

Reasonable discussions and thoughtful threads are hard to maintain in a crowd forum where everyone has a vested interest in their own work and advancement.

What's the better way?

Selective Crowdsouring

To refer to crowds with an expertise in a particular field and harnessed for crowdsourced projects, the term that appears to be catching on is the "selective crowd". I think we should crowdsource for a better one! "Selective" sounds a little elitist. How about the "expert crowd"?

The creative crowd is everywhere.

Unintentional art ( or the found imagery of postering and “de-postering”)

It’s not real art, it’s just found imagery on fences and hydro poles that has elements of visual interest in it. The intention was first to inform via posters: announce a date and event, push a productor service, etc. Then there’s the struggle for the advertising real estate. Someone posts over an existing one, or tries to remove it and only succeeds in tearing it half off. And of course mother nature has a go at it too.

The result, unintentional crowdsourced art. Although calling it “art” may be a push. At the very least it’s visually interesting. (yes, I cheated a bit by improving the contrast via photoshop, but the elements are as-found.)

Tapping the crowd for their best holiday snaps.

Developing a multi-media campaign to promote tourism:

I turned to the on-line community in search of the most unique and relevant photographic imagery of the province, sorting through over 11,000 photos.

It seemed like a natural thing to do. When working on developing some concepts for New Brunswick Tourism, it occurred to me that some of the most spirited and passionate photography is on the harddrives of those that had already visited the province. You can't compare the technical quality of snap shots to the portfolios of professionals, but sometimes you can get exceptional storytelling and passion in them. You just have to look at a few thousand first!

(this campaign direction never went further, but the possibilities of using crowdsourced -- and compensated -- imagery are exciting)

Can you build a house for 300 bucks?

Well, somebody out there can. We just have to find that one brilliant idea. WIth over a billion brains online, imagine every one ( ok, at least 500, in the true crowdsource community) bringing their brand of thinking and concept "tools" to this task. Ideas from those in the building industry aside, I would be more interested in hearing from an arborist or dentist. What kind of solution would they come up with? There's a thought experiment in this notion that would be worth investigating. The old term is "lateral thinking". More on that later.

http://www.jovoto.com/contests/300house/ideas

What’s ego got to do with it? (and the death of the dog and pony show)

Creating ideas is certainly not the same as selling them. It's a lot harder for one thing.

In fact, in the crowdsourced world, you are encouraged NOT to put a spin on your presentation, especially if it’s a concept proposal that you’ve written. Concept statements are encouraged of course. In fact I think they should be mandatory and have a set of text fields that must be filled out before uploading. It forces the creators to focus on their idea in one sentence or two; it demands that you have a real idea and not just the hint of one. Too often creators will simply regurgitate the brief, describe the visuals or repeat their headline in place of a real concept statement.

The presentation in the analog world can too easily supercede the “quality” of an idea. No where to hide online. If your idea does not work, no amount of spin or bravado will sell it. Dog gone, pony dead.

(Note on visual for this post: it was a print ad that I did many years ago - that headline never ran of course)