Crowdsourcing - PMI on when to - not to

So many people are really keen on Crowdsourcing - harnessing the Wisdom of the Crowd. But is it the right approach for all problems ? When I dissented, I found myself up against GroupThink, for daring to question Crowdsourcing's applicability in all circumstances.

The June issue of PMI's "PM Network" has a good article which tackles Crowdsourcing. I liked their comment "Crowdsourcing doesn't work for everything. Crowds won't organize into complex structures, but they will respond efficiently with simple tasks and motivation" - sourced from Chris Townsend, I-Nova Software, Lyon, France. He believes that "companies should carefully choose which project tasks are appropriate and determine how they'll manage the process .... Project teams must also have a strategy for evaluating crowdsourced results and incorporating them into the project."
  
Nearly 10 years ago I encountered crowdsourcing as "Future Search", being promoted by Launceston Council. I bought their book and have used it in various situations ever since.

Neighbourhood Committees, aka Precinct Committees, provided one vehicle for Local Councils around the world to use crowdsourcing in their decisionmaking processes, also specialist advisory committees. Crowdsourcing is what we did, when I chaired Wollongong City Council's Cycleway Planning Liaison Committee. Cyclist stakeholder reps advised us where cycleways should go - based on actual cyclists' use during a comprehensive revamping of the citywide strategy. These are key vehicles for enriching communities by promoting Social Capital.

Likewise crowdsourcing has been used for years in the Total Quality Management (TQM) Small Group Activity (SGA) approach to problem solving - dating at least from the 1980's. I saw some great examples of worker "ownership" of complex engineering problem solutions, when we as techo's were temporary advisers to the work crews.

However, even earlier, Sherry R Arnstein's "A Ladder of Citizen Participation" was first published in July 1969 - sharing its birthday month with NASA's Apollo - Moon Walk space exploration. It is considered by many to be the pioneer work in community consultation or "crowdsourcing". Happy 40th Birthday Crowdsourcing !

So I have found many helpful references on the value of "crowdsourcing" via the RSS feeds in my Google Reader - including in its various guises.


 
Looks like some innovative opportunities with the intersection of Sherry R Arnstein's Citizen Participation Ladder and Clay Shirky's Crowdsourcing via Wisdom of the Crowds

Posted via web from kerrieannesfridgemagnets's posterous

Community Social Capital & Web 2.0

As a WCC Councillor, I met many people who contributed to our community in various ways, such as sports, service clubs, scouts, guides etc. Three interesting people whom I met who contributed differently, were Brian Martin and Stephen Hill from UOW, as well as Les Robinson. Today such contributions are recognised as contributing to a community's social capital.

About 20 years ago activists saw the potential for communities facing crises to utilise the then expensive computer technologies. Schweik Action formed in Wollongong, in 1986, to promote nonviolent responses to aggression and repression. Members, such as Brian Martin, saw a role for ICT, but recognised its then limitations. Although social tools, such as Web 2.0, hadn't emerged.

Later, crisis events such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans generated highly emotive community civil society collapsing stories. However in July 2008 Wikinomics reported that Web 2.0 Social Networking tools were used by citizens, to ensure that rebuilding of their city was done in ways that made sense. Gurus such as Alan Gutierrez ran crash courses in social networking. They used tools such as Flickr, WordPress, Yahoo Groups, and Google Maps to prioritise rebuilding, ie occurred in the right areas soonest. Governments do not always have the right knowledge at hand in such crises to get the prioritisation right. In fact this was recognised in the 1980's, when the concepts of community empowerment & development were being explored. Gartner also observed similar community use of social networking with Hurricane Gustav .. "For example, as Gustav approached, Ning created a hosted wiki. Within 24 hours, volunteers copied useful emergency management information, such as links and feeds from Katrina Web sites, and updated them. These citizens also provided neighborhood and regional updates."

Wikinomics February 2009 Blog postings suggesting how communities can use Web 2.0 to engage in participatory regulation echoes the earlier views of Brian Martin and Les Robinson.

Professor Stephen Hill, former Jakarta-based UNESCO Director, made similar observations of respecting locals' needs in rebuilding Bandar Aceh, Indonesia after the 2004 Tsunami. Huge international aid was unleashed. Despite locals being traumatized, their input was necessary , to ensure the aid efforts were not focused on solutions irrelevant to the local context. Looking to the future, electronic communications - initially radio, but also ICT are considered vital for future tsunami type catastrophes.

And as reported in Geoff Brown's yes!andspace blog, even prior to the tragic February 2009 Victorian Bushfires, an enthusiastic volunteer has directed the Victorian Country Fire Authority's Incident Summary RSS's feeds to a Twitterfeed - saving Bandwidth for the CFA's website. Others are retweeting the message. There have been suggestions of using phone systems to spread emergency warning messages. Twitterfeed via mobile phones might be one way to spread disaster alert messages as more people become users.

According to Les Robinson, of Social Change Media, it is not just technology that counts in social capital. Les sees the important role of social entrepreneurs in change process- refer his 7 Doors Model & social marketing. He comments on the Diffusion of Innovations Theory, which treats change as a wave passing through society. An example would be changed community perceptions of Climate Change & Global Warming, whichformer Australian Prime Minister, John Howard failed to recognise.

Toronto Web 2.0 Summit - Government 2.0

As a former City Councillor who supported E-Tools for community consultation, I observed some great examples of community social capital, including Web 2.0. So Toronto's Web 2.0 Summit sounds intriguing. Billed as an interactive forum to explore how Web 2.0 technology can change the way governments interact with citizens, create policies and make decisions - see agenda.

The Summit features Councillors, Community Groups, Council officials, industry reps eg Anthony D Williams of Wikinomics - "Government 2.0 :Unleashing Wikinomics in the City of Toronto". Also Mark Sturman, whose Keynote Address was well received. Interesting how he used Mozilla Wiki to develop speaker notes and invite collaboration, also referencing Beltzner's Changing the World slides (large). I liked Sacha Chua's blog posting on her experience as a Gen Y panelist.

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Social Capital, Community Activism - Web 1.0

Recently I had a chat with a young Web 2.0 enthusiast who had bemoaned the failure of WCC & community groups in the Illawarra to utilise Web 2.0 e-technology tools. He and fellow UOW Informatics students had prepared assessment tasks, where they drew conclusions on the failure to use such e-tools in community engagement. It struck me that in fact many E-tools had been used over the previous 25 years, however this may have largely passed under some people's radar.

Personally, I felt as a WCC Councillor in the late 1990's, that WCC's Web started out as corporate spin - "pretty graphics"web pages, that really lacked substance. It seemed to be in marked contrast to its self styled "City of Innovation" tag. I used to describe this as Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome. The local business community remained sceptical in 1998, when I suggested that local tourism could be marketed on the Web. Although by the 2008 ICAC Inquiry into WCC, business's e-reticence had clearly evaporated.

Wollongong has been described as "a big country town", with nearly everyone connected to each other through family, education, workplace, sports and/or social activities. Often they were in more than one network, so it was not hard to achieve a tightly networked system across the region, in Social Network Analysis speak. Many community groups embraced early Apple computers' word processing capability by 1984 & subsequently bulletin boards, Usenet-Listservs, fax machines etc. From late 1996 in the very early days of the Internet, activist groups began the Great Leap Forward to Web 1.0, way ahead of WCC. Sydney escapees, such as Les Robinson, who had done a seachange to the south coast, provided inspiration. (Les also operates in the SME corporate sector, promoting the concepts of social capital & social entrepreneurs. Interestingly ONA thought leaders, such as Laurie Lock Lee, extended this concept later to the larger corporate sector.)

By Y2K, individual groups were getting "joined-up" more formally to create a broader social movement, instead of the earlier isolated/fragmented groups. These groups were able to share knowledge and experience at an explosive rate - email traffic was heated at times, both within groups and with WCC. I had seen the Net's potential for the community from 1997, although for many local government councillors it would have been daunting to set up their own web page then - needing to learn HTML. But thanks to past uni assignments in Fortran, Pascal & C languages, I was able to pick up some basic HTML & set up my own web pages. They enabled communication with more in my community, sharing knowledge, disseminating information much faster.

But WCC didn't seem to "get" this new coalition antagonist. This social movement's members quite capably created their own communication media, when they felt locked out by the mainstream channels. In doing so, this social movement was creating significant precursors for its use of Web 2.0 when WCC found itself sacked in March 2008 eg

• Local : IRATE, Workers Cancer Inquiry & more /Sandon Point Aboriginal Tent Embassy & Sandon Point Archives
• ex Cr Kerrie - policies & media & zoning history / Ecopolitics Conference - Illawarra Environment issues 1907-1993
• RAID Rally- giant NSW community activist groups coalition protest at Hyde Park - groups from the whole eastern NSW coast - including Wollongong - October19 2008 - reported on Sydney TV media news

Despite WCC axing its official community engagement committees, aka Neighbourhood Committees, many continue to function highly effectively, but now outside WCC's umbrella. Today, post WCC ICAC 2008, new groups are emerging, eg WAG (Graham Larcombe) & Reform WCC (Arthur Rorris). They have developed a new charter of Governance for Wollongong, and are currently running a John Hatton Essay Award competition , with the theme - How would I best create democracy in Wollongong? They are building a new civic space, which respects governance and community democracy priniciples, utilising Web 1.0/Web 2.0 tools. Even the Illawarra Business Chamber has got into the act with a code of conduct for its members - to be honest I am amazed that they didn't have one already - but good to see they have now.