crowdsourcing

These days there is a software library for nearly every occasion. Many of them are well designed and well implemented. Unfortunately, almost none of them have documentation presented in a way that allows a new user to quickly understand the basics and put it to work effectively. » Read more

Mozilla partners with public media to empower citizen engagement in U.S. election coverage

Tuesday's State of the Union Address from U.S. President Barack Obama will include something special: crowdsourced captions and subtitles provided by everyday citizens around the world. » Read more

If you're an RPG (role-playing game) player, even on the fringes of that community, you remember what happened when the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons came out a few years ago. It wasn't pretty. A lot of fans didn't like the changes. Now that it's time for the fifth edition, Wizards of the Coast (which owns the game) is asking fans what they want it to look like. » Read more

Last week, the Iceland Constitutional Council, made up of 25 Icelandic citizens, presented a bill to their parliament outlining a new constitution. The bill contains 114 articles in nine chapters, and includes elements for a more open government. It appears that the population will be given the chance to vote on the new constitution after the Alþingi (national parliament) reviews the draft.

In April 2011, Iceland decided to rewrite their constitution by crowdsourcing ideas and suggestions from the Internet. We've taken a look at the draft constitution and there are several articles that create a more open government for Iceland. » Read more

Neighborland is a new ideation crowdsourcing startup that gives citizens a “fun and easy way for residents to suggest new businesses and services that they want in their neighborhood.”

Founded by Candy Chang, Tee Parham and Dan Parham, and funded by the Tulane Social Entrepreneurship program with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, it launched in alpha mode this June in New Orleans.

Co-founder Dan Parham shares his thoughts on the new venture. » Read more

After the recent economic crash, many governments had to overhaul both financial structure and fiscal regulation. The majority, including the US government, formed a plan of attack using the same bureaucratic and economic venues in use for centuries. Politicians come to the table with plans and ideas based on their own thinking and research. Some use these opportunities to filter in their own agenda, hidden in layers of jargon and political colloquial, to be reviewed and passed (or passed on) by a body of politicians behind closed doors. » Read more

When you ask children what they want to be when they are older, how many of them say they want to be a manager? I've certainly never met one who had such aspirations. In part this is because management is a pretty amorphous concept to a ten-year-old. But it's also because we adults aren't exactly singing the praises of the management profession either.  For example, in a 2008 Gallup poll on honesty and ethics among workers in 21 different professions, a mere 12 percent of respondents felt business executives had high/very high integrity--an all-time low. With a 37 percent low/very low rating, the executives came in behind lawyers, union leaders, real estate agents, building contractors, and bankers. » Read more

Open source programmers understand the value of freedom; the idea of "freedom of speech" and supporting licenses such as the GPL are the basis of thousands of successful software projects. Can these ideas be applied to other areas, such as the ages old discipline of classical music? The Open Goldberg Variations Project thinks so. » Read more

Is crowdsourcing the enemy of innovation? Four panelists shared their experiences in a SXSW panel this morning.

"Crowdsourcing is a blunt instrument," said Robson Grieve, moderator and president of Creature, which recently redesigned the Seattle's Best logo, resulting in quite a bit of customer reaction, similar to many recent logo changes from The Gap to Tropicana to Starbucks. Crowdsourcing encompasses a lot of ideas and practices that have a little bit in common.

Do we work for the crowd now? » Read more