Is Crowd-sourcing Useful for Initiatives?
Crowd-sourcing is Useful for Initiatives
Crowd-sourcing initiatives is useful. It has been around since human groups gathered around a fire and discussed problems collectively. The advent of the Internet made it unnecessary for everyone to be present at the same place. It is not clear how far crowd-sourcing will develop, but its progress is rapid and it is producing results. The word “crowdsourcing” was defined by Merriam-Webster in 2006’ “Crowd-sourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community …a general search for answers, solutions….” (Courtesy © Wikipedia)
Some examples of crowd-sourcing initiatives and information sources are:
- A short-animated film by Crowdsourcing.org, narrated by Crowdsourcing.org’s Founder, Carl Esposti, Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding Explained
- There is an ongoing effort by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to use crowdsourcing to collect ideas on how to best build out America’s broadband infrastructure.
- Crowdsourcing has been used to produce legislation of the type useful for Initiatives especially in Europe: Crowdsourcing in policy and lawmaking in Finland
- There is a list of well over 100 crowdsourcing projects (Courtesy ©Wikipedia)
- UK Government wants to improve the way public information is communicated
However, despite the apparent promise, the management of focused crowds and the specific ways in which crowdsourcing will be used in the Initiative process are not yet clear.