Launching my new book today! Getting Results From Crowds

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Today we are launching my new book Getting Results From Crowds: The definitive guide to using crowdsourcing to grow your business!

This has been, in all, many years in the planning and making, and I’m extremely happy with how it has come out. It is definitely my most useful book, and while it’s hard to compare it with my other books as it has a distinct purpose and design, it is in some ways my best work.

I’ve believed in, followed, and worked with crowds for over a decade. My 2002 book Living Networks had many examples of what we currently call crowdsourcing, including being the first of many business books to describe the Goldcorp challenge, and mentions of Elance, InnoCentive, and Procter & Gamble’s Connect & Develop program, before any were well-known.

Today much of my work is around the future of work and future of organizations. The most powerful single force shaping work and organizations is the rise of distributed work, often drawing on crowds. I have used crowdsourcing platforms extensively for the last decade, and studied and learned how to get the best results from these. Our group business model is centered on the effective use of crowds.

The Getting Results From Crowds book website has a whole stack of resources, including:
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Tech-savvy children are driving the future of education

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Last week I participated in and spoke at an Education Roundtable organized by Telstra, which brought together a small group of very senior executives in all layers of education in Australia. In the same way that I have been drawn into discussions on the future of government over the last 18 months, I am finding myself increasingly frequently asked to engage with decision-makers on the future of education.

There is much I want to share from my presentation and the fantastic discussion at the Roundtable, but for now I’d just like to point to the excellent Telstra White Paper launched at the event, titled Personalised Learning. The White Paper itself is the outcome of an Education Roundtable held a year earlier, and interviews with a variety of Australian senior educators and government officials.

The White Paper’s Executive Summary makes five points, in summary:
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12 Themes for 2012: what we can expect in the year ahead

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Towards the end of each year I share some thoughts on what awaits in the year ahead.

It is actually a lot easier to look years into the future than just a single year, as while we can readily discern broad trends, the major events in a year are usually unforeseeable, though they may express the longer-term directions. However as the pace of change accelerates, it is becoming a little easier to see the themes, if not the specifics, of the year ahead. My Map of the Decade shows the 14 ExaTrends that are shaping this 10-year period. Today I launch my 12 Themes for 2012, in conjunction with Future Exploration Network.

2012: 12 Themes

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Below is the text for the 12 themes, though they are better viewed in the slides above, as the images used are an intrinsic part of the themes. Alternatively download the pdf of 12 Themes for 2012 (10.6MB)
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Book research: Looking for case studies/ leading practice in using crowdsourcing

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I am in the final stages of completing a book on how to use crowds and crowdsourcing effectively, which I am co-authoring with Steve Bynghall.

We are using brief case studies liberally through the book, however we need a few more to flesh it out.

We’d love to hear from you if you have been using crowdsourcing tools or approaches extensively enough to have learned useful lessons, and believe you have valuable insights to share from your experience.

To offer your case study or experience, please use the contact form on crowdsourcingresults.com. Please let us know very briefly:
– what you have learned
– what you have found most useful in your use of crowdsourcing tools
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Using social media to track and drive organizational success metrics

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This week I was MC for the AHRI HR Technology conference, and ran one of the workshops on the following day, on Creating Results Using Social Media.

A real highlight of the conference was the Social Media: Risks and Rewards panel, which I chaired, with the participation of a fantastic cast of Peter Williams of Deloitte, Steve Barham of LinkedIn, Laurel Papworth of The Community Crew, and Sam Mutimer of ThinkTank Media.

It was a fabulous discussion, and we covered a lot of territory in the conversation.

One of the many topics discussed was the use of social media to track metrics and correlate these with organizational success metrics.
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Workshop content: Creating results using social media – the HR perspective

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Tomorrow is the Australian Human Resources Institute HR Technology conference. I will be MC for the conference day, and will also run a half-day workshop on Creating Results Using Social Media on the following day.

I thought I would share the visual content we will be using during the workshop. As usual, the slides are not intended to be useful by themselves, but to provide supporting content for the activities and discussions of the session.

Workshop: Creating Results With Social Media in HR

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Watch a robot surgeon peel a grape: the extension of human powers

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This awesome video from New Scientist TV shows a surgical robot with a human operator peeling a grape. This technology greatly augments what human surgeons can do, and also provides a platform for telesurgery.

The New Scientist article Watch a surgical robot peel a grape, says:
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Looking for talented editors/ writers / project managers / social media on cool tech, media, and future topics

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We have just posted an ad on Elance, looking for editors/ writers/ project managers for some of our existing and forthcoming online publications.

Please apply on Elance if this seems like a match, or pass it on to others if you think it might be of interest. If you have questions before applying you can use our contact form. We hope to find some awesome people!

Talented editors/ writers / project managers / social media for cool tech and future topics

We run a series of content websites on topics related to technology, media, and the future, among many other activities.

We are looking for highly talented editors/ project managers who can drive quality content and traffic on these sites.
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Keynote slides: The Power of Social Media and Future Organizations

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This morning I am giving the external keynote at a closed conference for senior client executives run by a major professional services firm. They know the technical content they are presenting is rather dry so my role is to provide a highly engaging kick-off to the day (spouses are invited too) which is also practical and useful for attendees.

As is quite often the case these days, my client asked me to combine two of the topics from my general list of speaking topics, bringing together the ideas from The Power of Social Media and The Future of Work and Organizations. In fact every presentation I do is customized for the specific context and audience, including many topics not on the list, but it can be useful for clients to use the general speaking topic list to work out what they are looking for.

Here are the slides to my keynote. The usual disclaimer: the slides are designed to accompany my presentation and not to be viewed by themselves, but you still might find them interesting.

Keynote: The Power of Social Media and Future Organizations

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The global polarization of work: what we can do about it

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Today I gave the keynote at an invitation-only meeting of senior executives looking at the future of their industry. My role was to bring perspectives on the broader drivers of change in business.

One of the central themes of my keynote was the future of work and organizations. There are of course many facets to this, but one of the fundamentally important ones in considering the future of business and society is in how work is being polarized.

On the one hand, the elites who have outstanding talents or expertise, combined with the ability to collaborate effectively, have extraordinary choices. They can choose the employers who give them the most flexibility, the highest pay, or the greatest work satisfaction, depending on their priorities. They can work freelance for companies anywhere in the world, usually working from the comfort of their own home or local co-working space. They can live and work pretty much wherever they want in the world. As connectivity reaches deeper and broader into developing countries, a far broader pool of talented people can reasonably aspire to this lifestyle.
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