8 crowd insights from 8 crowdsourcing workshops

By

[This post first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website]

Over the last two weeks I have delivered 8 keynotes or workshops on crowdsourcing across Western Europe. Most of them have been highly interactive sessions, bringing out new ideas or highlighting common issues or concerns. Part of the intent has been to gather input from many participants on what to cover in

There is much to share. For now, I will quickly review the events I’ve run so far and highlight just one insight that was prominent in the questions or discussions from each event. Many of themes mentioned were in fact echoed across several events. I will write soon in more detail about a number of these topics.

– Ketchum Pleon Amsterdam client presentation
Insight 1: Know when to use open calls and managed crowds.
A question that frequently arises when you discuss crowdsourcing is how to manage the sheer quantity of input you can get. Of course the best approach depends on what type of crowdsourcing you are doing, but the first answer is in the filtering mechanisms that you use, which enable the most valuable input to become visible. However another approach is to use a closed crowd, where participants are selected by quality or profile. In this case you can take a ‘managed crowd’ approach in which a more individualized approach optimizes outcomes. While many definitions of crowdsourcing refer to an ‘open call’, in fact in many siutations restricting the pool of contributors will lead to better results.
Read more →

Video of TheNextWeb keynote on The Future of Crowds

By

TheNextWeb produced a good quality video of my keynote at TheNextWeb Conference 2012, shown below.

It doesn’t show all of my full motion graphics presentation, though it frequently cuts to show segments of the visuals through my keynote. I will create and share a full video of my motion graphics presentation along with the audio of me speaking, however as I’m travelling it may take a little while to complete.

Here is a brief overview of the structure of the presentation:
Read more →

La valeur du crowdsourcing: Atelier à Paris

By

Je viens de faire une courte vidéo à propos du crowdsourcing.

Dans mon livre Getting Results from Crowds, qu’on pourraît traduire par “Obtenir des résultats des masses”, j’explique comment les organisations, petites et grandes, doivent procéder pour bien utiliser le crowdsourcing.

À Paris, le 3 mai, je présente avec le Boostzone Institute un petit-déjeuner à propos du crowdsourcing. Je vais parler en détail des opportunités, des défis et de comment les entreprises doivent s’y prendre.

J’espère vous y voir!

Future of Crowdsourcing workshop at Crowdsourcing Summit in Cologne

By

On April 28, immediately after my keynote at TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam, I will travel to Cologne to run a workshop on the Future of Crowdsourcing. Unfortunately I will miss what looks like an excellent Crowdsourcing Summit on April 27 as I will be speaking in Amsterdam that day.

I’ve made a short video to introduce some of what we’ll be covering in the Future of Crowdsourcing workshop.


Read more →

Every business document should be in the cloud and concurrently editable

By

I’m at the Melbourne Google Enterprise Atmosphere on Tour event, the first of 25 events around the world. I am doing the keynote on The Evolution of Business at the Melbourne and Sydney events, giving an external perspective which happens to be highly aligned with the Google vision.

The event included a Google Apps demo. Since in my organizations we have used Google Apps for several years the demo initially seemed very straightforward to me, though in fact I did see a number of features that we are not yet using that would be useful.

The demo seemed to be over-emphasizing the concurrent editing and collaboration features of Google Docs, which I think of as pretty basic. However it struck me that in fact the vast majority of organizations represented in the audience still store most of their business documents on a hard disk somewhere. The number of documents being emailed between people inside companies today is still massive.

That is crazy. Emailing documents back and forth is fraught with staggering problems, not least version control.
Read more →

Le Crowdsourcing en France: une opportunité de créer le futur

By

Je suis enchanté de faire une présentation à Paris 3 mai avec Boostzone Institute. Dominique Turcq de l’institut et moi avons discuté depuis longtemps de notre intérêt commun qui est le futur du travail et des organisations.

Je vais parler du “Crowdsourcing”. Mon nouveau livre Getting Results From Crowds vient de paraître, et en mai-juin je fais des keynote et des ateliers sur le sujet à Sydney, Amsterdam, Cologne, Londres, Bruxelles, New York et San Francisco, entre autres.

Pour moi, un futurologue, c’est quelqu’un qui aide les gens à réfléchir à propos de l’avenir, afin de prendre de meilleures décisions aujourd’hui.

Quand je regarde l’avenir du monde des affaires, il est clair pour moi que le crowdsourcing, ou faire appel aux masses, vont être au centre de comment le business, la société, et les entreprises vont changer.
Read more →

Themes of the day: Consumerization of IT, Crowdsourcing for small business, Crowdsourcing in PR

By

These are frantically busy days, which is squeezing my ability to blog and capture some of the fascinating stuff flying by. In coming months I think I’ll try to do more ‘mini-blogging’, just capturing quick thoughts and impressions rather than writing up every interesting speaking engagement or media appearance I do.

Yesterday I gave three presentations, and I’d love to write (at least) a full blog post about what we covered for each one. However that’s not possible, so I’ll just share quick thoughts about each topic and what I will try to write more about later.

The day started by giving the keynote at a Consumerization of IT event run by CIO Magazine, supported by HP and Microsoft.
Read more →

Yammer and why activity streams are a key foundation for integrated applications and organizations

By

I caught up with some of the Yammer team this morning, including Chief Customer Officer David Obrand, while they are in town for the Yammer on Tour series. 

I was particularly interested in talking with them about Yammer’s shift to activity streams. In the massive convergence of enterprise social platforms that we’ve seen over the last years, one of the major emerging spaces is activity streams.

Last year I wrote about activity streams in the context of Tibbr’s launch. Tibbr put activity streams squarely on the map, by integrating status messages from people with notifications generated by enterprise software including ERP, CRM, and HR systems. Employees are able to follow their colleagues and they can also follow updates on any activity, including events, projects, or even invoices. Tibbr was very well positioned to do that given Tibco’s history in providing enterprise integration middleware.
Read more →

Grow your business faster! Crowdsourcing and Crowd Business Models workshops in Sydney

By

Following the launch and fantastic response to Getting Results From Crowds we will be running a series of workshops around the world on creating value using crowds and crowdsourcing.

The first ones will be in Sydney on April 16, followed by a number to be announced shortly in Europe and the US (see our call for crowdsourcing workshop partners).

See the event page for full details on the workshops.
Read more →

Ten years from now: What we will do, have, and not have

By

This morning I appeared on Channel 7’s The Morning Show talking about the world 10 years from now.

A few of the things I mentioned in the interview include:
Read more →