Web's Largest listing of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding events
Web's Largest Directory of Sites2,337 crowdsourcing and crowdfunding sites
It’s kind of ironic that Forbes decided to Crowdsource its list of “Names you need to know in 2011” feature (here), and received the suggestion via Facebook from Martha Bebinger that Jeff Howe had better be included!
Jeff, who coined the term “crowdsourcing,” in a 2006 article for Wired magazine and who wrote the book, 2008’s Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business is working on his second book about what lies beyond crowdsourcing.
We’re thrilled to announce that Jeff Howe will join Crowdsourcing.org’s team as a regular contributor to our editorial roster! Besides writing posts on the site, he will engage members of the online community through Twitter and in live chats hosted on the site.
Jeff Howe looks back on his first encounter with the phenomenon of crowdsourcing and ventures a cautious look into the future. Five years have already passed since Jeff Howe's groundbreaking article in Wired magazine was published, which marked the beginning of the crowdsourcing movement. "Not a day passes that I am not surprised at how quickly the model developed and what great ideas emerged from this," Howe said in his keynote speech during in Berlin. Click here for German.
A few days ago, Crowdsourcing.org contributor Jeff Howe moderated a panel in Boston that featured crowdfunding bill sponsors Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) and Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC). Crowdsourcing.org also had one of our camera people there to capture the whole thing on video, and we're going to be presenting it to you in segments.
Fünf Jahre ist es schon her, als Jeff Howes bahnbrechender Artikel im US-Magazin Wired (Ausgabe 14/2006) erschien und den Beginn der Crowdsourcing-Bewegung markierte. Titel: „The Rise of...
I coined the term crowdsourcing five years ago in a June 2006 article in Wired magazine. I started my blog the same day the article went live on Wired's site, and for the next three years I covered the rise of crowdsourcing in everything from radiology to journalism to bird watching. When I was writing my book, How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, I used the blog to collect edits and feedback from, well, the crowd.
After three years of ceaseless writing and researching on the subject it was time to move on--literally and figuratively. In late 2009 I became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, and relocated my family to Cambridge. In the last two years I've studied subjects ranging from US intellectual history to transmedia storytelling to the connection between social capital and social networks. I started teaching--one course each at Harvard, Boston University, and Northeastern University--and teamed up with the Atlantic.com to create the largest book club in human history. And in September I'll begin a tenure-track position in the journalism department at Northeastern University.
And through all this crowdsourcing was never far from my mind. I've often said I could happily spend the next 30 years of my life studying the emergence of such new forms of economic production as crowdsourcing. What I learned in the last two years is that I might not have a choice: Everything I studied, everything I taught, and everything I read was filtered through the formative lens of that pervasive concept of online collaboration.
Jeff Howe, the man who coined the term "crowdsourcing", discussed about the topic entitled, "Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business”, during the...
When I coined the word crowdsourcing five years ago, the phenomenon itself hardly existed. Oh sure, there were a few glaring examples: Wikipedia, of course, and that massive hurly burly of user-generated content known as MySpace. NASA, I recall, was already experimenting with using volunteers to measure asteroid craters. But the original article was, in a sense, an act of prognostication. I was saying, "This is how things will be." It was a gamble, and it happened to pay off.
A lot changed between 2006 and 2008, when my book was published. In writing the book I faced an entirely new challenge. I no longer had to predict the future; I had to analyze and interpret the present. Books force you to create taxonomies by their very structure: Chapters are subdivisions of a larger subject.
The problem was that examples of crowdsourcing now proliferated across every domain of human endeavor. When asked what couldn't be crowdsourced, I used to answer: a restaurant. Then one day a Washington Post reporter called to ask me what I thought about a new--you guessed it--crowdsourced restaurant. My answer to that question these days? Everything can be crowdsourced. I figure it's best to play it safe.
In trying to bring some coherence to this dizzying variety of online collaborations I came up with four basic categories:
I had an interesting exchange in Berlin a few months ago. I'd traveled to Germany to speak at CrowdConvention 2011, and there was the usual amount of revelry that follows a conference. At some point I landed in a conversation with an architect and graphic designer living in Rio de Janeiro. They asked what I did, and I naturally mentioned crowdsourcing. They stared at me quizzically for a moment, and then a lightbulb seemed to flash over their heads. "Is that kind of like crowdfunding?" asked the architect.
The act of crowdfunding may go back thousands of years, but the word itself was a splinter-term from crowdsourcing. To the best of my knowledge, it was first used a few months after my original crowdsourcing article was published to describe the business model behind the Dutch start-up, Sellaband (in which people contribute small amounts of money to musicians to help them record an album).
Over the last five years I've often said that crowdfunding might well outlive its parent, crowdsourcing. The crowdfunding model possesses a simplicity - lots of people contribute small amounts of money toward a cause, any cause, in which they believe - crowdsourcing does not. That day isn't quite upon us - at least outside Brazil - but I've decided to spend the next month or so devoting all my attention to crowdfunding.
There's so much activity in this category, and yet very little united coverage. It's my aim to correct that state of affairs, and as always, to spark some robust conversation.
Editor's Note: For the next month Jeff will focus his attention on the subject of Crowdfunding. Jeff will respond personally to all member posts, questions and comments.
Jeff Howe aka 'The Father of Crowdsourcing' talks about the early years when he first coined the term "crowdsourcing" and how the idea has grown.
Last year, uTest and Crowdly (formerly Appswell) kicked off the first Crowdsortium Boston meetup. Due to its great success Crowdly, uTest, and our sponsor Article One Partners are hosting...
Jeff Howe moderated a panel hosted by WeFunder in Boston this morning that featured crowdfunding bill sponsors Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC). Afterwards, he provided Crowdsourcing.org with this brief summary.
Jeff Howe talks about crowdsourcing. Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects. In June of 2006 he...
In this video, Scripps alumnus Jeff Howe talks with Director Bob Stewart about his work as a journalist and professor, as well as his time on campus in the early 1990s. He also talks about the...
Jeff Howe, the author of Crowdsourcing : Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, discusses the role crowdsourcing plays on Capitol Hill, and how it's been used recently...
Crowdsourcing is in its infancy and like any emerging industry, there lies a great deal of learning ahead regarding the do's and don’ts of crowdsourcing. How to embrace the new opportunities, leverage the platforms, build your own, manage and incentivize the community if you are running a crowdsourcing business or discerning what work to crowdsource and what type of initiative not to crowdsource, you need to understand and avoid crowdsourcings seven deadly sins?
The term “crowdsourcing” desperately needs some boundaries. Too many people have liberally applied the term to all manner of online—and offline—phenomena, but I argue crowdsourcing is, in fact, quite a narrowly defined concept. It is important to rein in crowdsourcing, because if the term rests on muddy foundations, people will continue to draw unstable, untested conclusions about the power and purpose of this model. I have dedicated my young academic career to the study of crowdsourcing, and I want to assert a clearer definition of crowdsourcing here for the sake of continued scholarly study and practical application.
The publishing industry is becoming increasingly digital as it transitions from a traditional model for producing books into a technology-augmented era where the very definition of books is being altered. The affordability, selection, and convenience associated with digital book production and sales have prompted major publishers to jump on new strategies to maintain profitability. Knowing how rapidly and significantly crowdsourcing is impacting all things digital, is there a role for the crowd to play that will change the publishing industry even further?
Crowdsourcing is being tipped as one of the big things to watch out for in the coming years. In essence, Crowdsourcing websites harness the power of their community to achieve common goals quicker and more effectively. The debate continues defining what crowdsourcing is and what it is not but what’s unquestionable is that it’s having an impact on the way we do business!
As open-source software developers learned long ago, asking a pool of people to create something can be faster, cheaper, and more accurate than putting a project in the hands of individuals....
Founded in 2010, the industry website, Crowdsourcing.org, is a neutral organization dedicated solely to crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. As one of the most influential and credible authorities in the crowdsourcing space, Crowdsourcing.org is recognized worldwide for its intellectual capital, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding practice expertise and unbiased thought leadership.
