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Thoughts on CrowdConf 2011

document Distributed Knowledge

Thoughts on CrowdConf 2011
Posted on November 8, 2011

Because I was hosting a breakout session for CrowdConf 2011, I was pretty excited going into the conference. Who would be there? What cool demos would I get to see? Who would have the next big idea [that could I use it at Servio]? Below I run through each of the companies and highlight what I found to be notable. I conclude the post with some thoughts and speculation on the industry and the future of labor. Highlights: Coffee & Power New company started by Philip Rosedale that feels similar to an Elance/Guru/oDesk. The marketplace was supposedly built using crowdsourcing only. The founders also created an iPhone app quickly after launching Coffee & Power, using only the “platform.” I use platform loosely because Rosedale refers to his site as a platform but it feels more like a marketplace than an extensible platform… I like the fact that it has its own built-in currency even though there are a ton of complications related to digital currencies–the proliferation of them makes me think the headaches are worth it though… Creating a job, posting a skill or bidding on work appears super easy but there‟s only a light layer of organization. There is a form of credibility system but it feels pretty lightweight. (“so-and-so is trusted by x number of people”) Ultimately, I feel like I‟m looking at a nice version Craigslist.

DST These guys are an old guard outsourcing company founded back in the 60s as a back office record keeping service. They‟re supposedly really big now–from what I can find they‟re a multi-billion dollar per year business. Not bad. What‟s interesting to me is that they‟re not even approaching the problem from a crowdsourcing perspective. The way they look at it, they‟ve been solving complex, distributed workflows for years–and doing it in highly regulated markets (financials, mutual funds, etc). These guys are launching what I would call a platform for getting work done. It‟s the logical step for a business already working with distributed labor channels. The product is suppose to be flexible enough to plug into companies such that the company can design a workflow with their software and then tap into on-demand labor when needed. There was no real demo of this software, so I‟m a little skeptical of the depth of execution: Is it all talk and lots of hand-waving about the future of labor organization or do they have something that could plug in at Coca-Cola? From a strategy perspective, these guys don‟t strike me as making a strong technology play but I do think they have the distribution channels in place (i.e customers paying top-dollar and sustained budgeting for expanding lean-labor needs). UFOStart These guys setup a site for crowdsourcing startups/businesses. The founders were saying “platform” but it also felt more like a website than a platform. What they showed must have been mockups or screenshots from a private section of the site because I haven‟t been able to locate a login button on the site (but there is a sign out button that doesn‟t work!)

From what I can tell, they‟re looking to blend the needs of different participants in a business venture (investors, idea-peeps and expertise-providers) in hopes that people on the internet can carry out the necessary steps to have successful businesses. They essentially posit that you can run a completely distributed business and that to get the services you require, you either need to provide capital, skills or ideas and UFOStart is a site for channeling each of those needs/offers. Supposedly everyone gets compensated through shares or money or both. I definitely think there is room for collective ownership but it‟s all about the details and without a login, there are basically no details. LingoTek This was a long sales pitch in my opinion. The speaker didn‟t seem particularly prepared to talk about anything but LingoTech. It may have just been a case of thinking “buyers, buyers, buyers” and then that not being the audience (or maybe it was just me). LingoTech is integrated with Oracle and Jive (and probably others I didn‟t see) which I thought was good because it positions them to strong distribution channels. (i.e the localization manager can say, “well, they‟re integrated with the corporate infrastructure, so we should use {this platform}.”) WRT to Jing he said, “companies need translation in order to understand what they‟re customers are saying on their own websites.” LingoTech also have providing Translation Memory/Glossary Support, Fuzzy Match. LingoTech uses the following MTs: Google, Bing, ProMT. Ultimately, I saw a company really focusing in on the translation industry with tools that are needed to remain competitive. It should be interesting to see if LingoTech can challenge LionBridge. (My money is against LingoTech because nothing “oooo, ahhhh, that‟s a winner” came out of that breakout and that‟s what will be needed to unseat the market gorilla).

Humanoid My friend Jason left Servio to become the first employee at this company, so first it is cool to see something public of the work he‟s been doing. Humanoid is a platform for doing simple tasks. They supposedly have a UI for building projects. I wasn‟t able to get a demo. What I like is that “humanoid” grew out of SpeakerText‟s need to have a better platform option than Amazon Mechanical Turk. Basically, what AMT was providing was total crap in terms of quality (this is what the founder Matt said). To circumvent this, they built their own platform. Cool. This is a play taken right out of ReWork. What I don‟t like is that they claim it‟s a platform that “anyone can use” but they don‟t have any exposed UI for it–or at least one that I could access. This makes me feel like it‟s all talk and no walk, but I know my friend Jason is good so there‟s got to be something to see under the hood! They also claim that hopefully through machine learning, they‟ll be able to continually reduce the need for human labor because the “system will know how to answer the question once it‟s been trained by the crowd.” That seems like a mighty claim that actually has some feasibility to it in my opinion. It‟s all about the type and scope of work. For example, there are some great synergies between their parent company SpeakerText and some of the alternative offerings they have (translation, OCR, etc). It‟s likely that type of work they‟re referring to and not “video creation” or something complex like that. “Industry Champions” (Panel Discussion) Panel consisting of CEO of Trada Niel Robertson, VP of Amazon Mechanical Turk Sharon Chiarella, and CMO of uTest Matt Johnson, LiveOps EVP of Sales Matt Fisher.

Two notable take-aways: 1) The established, focused, skill-based crowdsourcing companies (uTest, LiveOps and Trada) start thinking about attrition and have solved the attrition problem before trying to tackle the enterprise market. uTest thinks they‟ve got this down– and I will say from talking with their Director of Public Relations (reports to CMO who I‟ve heard speak a few times), I believe they‟ve put some real effort into building a sustainable crowd of testers. 2) The VP of Amazon Mechanical Turk basically said, “I don‟t think there‟s much merit to crowdsourcing companies claiming to „test‟ people before accessing projects and using that as a quality control measure.” For some reason a company that has absolutely no quality control process in place making that claim smacks of denial and makes Ms. Chiarella sound like she has no idea what‟s going on. It just may be that I can say this because I‟ve seen the results of testing. I‟m such a fan that crowd-focused quality control measures were a focus of my talk! Their Advice for Companies:
    

Crowdsorucing is about humans (so treat them like that) Crowds are constantly evolving and creating massive data problems (so solve the data problems) Never lose site of the fact that you have two customers: workers and vendors Iterate into Existence: Test, tweak, test, tweak, solution and then scale

Common Myths about Crowdsourcing:
  

It‟s easy (it takes a lot of money, a real solution to a real problem and time to develop) Crowdsouring is a “silver bullet” for all problems Crowdsourcing means bad quality

Crowdsouring.org These guys had a bunch of pretty cool graphics put together on the crowdsourcing industry. I really liked how they breakdown the different implementation types into easy-to-digest images. I say “they” because I have no idea how many people work with Crowdsourcing.org or if it‟s just Carl Esposti doing all the work. These guys look like they do a lot of crowdsourcing consultation work–and mostly on the buy side. Esposti‟s breakout session was a focus on designing crowdsourcing solutions for companies. We need to be a bit more cosy with him and clarify that our work platform can solve all of the complex workflows he showed (because he said, “Only some of these can be solved with crowdsourcing” which implies that his perception of the technologies is in some way skewed or biased). ClickWorker Their GM/VP of Sales and Marketing Mark Allen claims they are “crossing the chasm” right now. It still seems like they‟re struggling with low-end work and a lack of notable customers to carry the company across the chasm. Reflections and Speculations Overall I had a great time getting to spy on my industry cohorts. I certainly made some good contacts that I look forward to fostering in the future. So far as how people are solving real problems, my impression is that crowdsourcing as a business methodology is still all over the place. People are just scratching at the surface of what is the future of labor. My current attitude is “wow, we are just lightyears ahead of everyone else.” I felt like “crowdsourcing” is still not thinking about labor in the future–or if the company is thinking about labor distribution, they‟re seeing themselves as simple market places for labor. A market place for labor feels more like something we‟d find back in a Renaissance-Era village than in a post-internet society.

I didn‟t see anyone solving the really complex workflows. Most companies seem to skirt this by creating a one-to-one, task-creator to labor-provider model. This means companies are either making Craigslist 2.0s or creating ill-defined platform plays designed to solve the same damn simple projects we had figured out two years ago–and quickly realized there is NO money in! What I didn‟t see was a company saying, “We built a platform that any company can use to mimic their own organizational structure and tap into other on-demand workflows.” DST was the closest to this vision and he didn‟t provide a demo; he showed a picture of their existing workflows (for clients) that meld in-house and crowdsourced labor. Pretty lame but at least they get the trajectory of where labor structures will ultimately arrive. I can also tell that companies in this space are still struggling. LiveOps and uTest struck me as the most up-beat. That isn‟t to say that the other companies aren‟t getting deals; I‟m sure they are. I just don‟t think we‟re seeing a group of companies that are expanding quickly–i.e. there‟s no run-away company starting to take the lion‟s share of the current market (and so likely the lion‟s share of the future market). I‟m encouraged that we‟re getting a strong base in content creation but it‟s clear that we still have a lot of experimenting to do before we‟ll arrive at the billiondollar business. I‟m also convicted that when we do arrive there, we‟ll have one of the most adaptable, 20th century-resembling labor forces that isn‟t just a hodgepodge of “chaotic market place activities” but a truly on-demand labor force ranging up and down the skill spectrum.

Description
Author James DiPadua conclude this post with some thoughts and speculation on the industry and the future of labor. He gives the highlights of the recently held CrowdConf 2011 based on the following companies: Coffee & Power, DST, UFOStart, Humanoid, Crowdsourcing.org and Clickworker.

Tags: ClickWorker, Coffee and Power, CrowdConf, CrowdConf 2011, Crowdsourcing.org, DST, Humanoid, James DiPadua, UFOstart

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