Boy, it seems that everything is coming up crowdsourcing these days, doesn’t it? Talk about hype! All of a sudden marketing contests like Dunkin’ Donuts’ design our next donut campaign isn’t just a contest anymore, it’s crowdsourcing. (ok, maybe it is, kinda). It seems like anything that involves more than a couple of people is crowdsourcing. Need more proof we’re boiling over? Take a look at the growth in Google searches for “crowdsourcing” over the last few months.
(I love the spike in 2006 right after Jeff Howe’s Crowdsourcing book was published. )
So for all this hype, expectations are perhaps getting a bit out of hand. Yesterday I read a blog post saying that crowdsourcing really isn’t all that useful for humanitarian efforts. Isn’t it just a bit early to declare that? That’s kind of like concluding in 1990 the Internet isn’t all that useful.
We all hear daily about great examples of success with crowdsourcing (and some not as successful) but let’s remember we are still very early on. I’ll be the first to say we don’t have all of the answers, yet. There is so much more to discover, learn and improve on for tapping collective wisdom. We constantly come up with new crowdsourcing models, adjust incentives, voting styles, and find better ways of analyzing the data that results, and there is just SO much more room for growth.
That’s what makes what we do here at Chaordix so exciting. Not that there is so much hype, but that we know the best is yet to come. So maybe Ushahidi isn’t that useful for the relief aid worker on the street today, but in the future, I’m positive relief agencies will learn how to use this valuable crowdsourced information and network for their benefit, and the benefit of the victims of natural disasters. Just as I’m equally sure for everyone reading this post, your company or organization will also soon be benefiting from some sort of crowdsourcing in the not too distant future. (even if it’s just to design your next donut.)