The pencil gave way to the
pen. The pen, an "ink based manual graphic display device". You
can doodle with it. If you doodle your ideas you might be noodling.
Noodle on a paper napkin in a bar after work with your co-workers and
you may just invent the 5.25" Floppy Disk. Noodle on a cocktail
napkin and you've got a 3.5" Diskette. Those days are long gone.
Now
we "collaborate", in "the Cloud". We don't know
what anyone looks like, sounds like, smells like, or feels like. There's
more human interaction in shopping than in a week's work. At least
there used to be. Say hello to Crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing:
The
act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or
contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an
open call. (Wikipedia)
Econsultancy
has a list of Crowdsourcing sites it calls "kickass". So I looked
and liked one in particular. 99designs
Say you need a
logo, website, or brochure. Just go to 99designs and put out the call. It
works like eBay in reverse. Instead of listing a waffle iron and
taking bids, you offer money for a waffle iron and pick one
from what you get. Instead of an Auction you have a Contest.
Maybe a snappy logo for
CNCI. I go to 99designs and "Launch a Contest"
offering $295 (the minimum) Prize Money for a logo I describe as best I
can. A deadline is set, just like eBay, and logo designs pour in from the
pool of 80,000 registered designers. We collaborate, in the cloud, and I
don't even care if they smell. They could be sitting at a card table in a
folding chair wearing "Pink" sweat bottoms and a spaghetti stained
wife-beater drinking 16 ounce cans of Olde English 800 while smoking
Parliment's for all you know. Anyway. I pick a winner, the winner gets
the prize money, I get the logo.
That's how it works, and you
can use it from either end. Maybe you want to design websites and don't
know where to get paying clients. Join the crowd of designers and you'll
have a bajillion willing-to-pay clients to pick and choose from. Maybe
you want a website but don't have a designer, join the crowd and
you'll have a bajillion designers to pick and choose from.
Don't know what a website is
worth? Easy. Go look at what people are offering for Prize Money and how
many designers are competing. Crowdsourcing is alot like eBay in that
respect and both are very good tools to find what something is worth. eBay
deals with products, 99designs deals with creative services. crowdSPRING is another
one, similar to 99designs, but with it's own flair and, at least for
the moment, bigger prizes.
Ever had that brilliant
original idea for something? The one that would make you a bajillionaire if
you just had a prototype. There's Crowdsourcing for that too. Ponoko will make your gizmo. We're
talking more than felt and white glue here people. Laser cutting, robotics,
widgets, cool stuff you can't do in your own garage.
No mentors, friends or
co-workers to talk, commiserate or collaborate with? No problem. Join Kluster and pick your very own
kluster, from a bajillion people. Where Facebook is
social-personal-networking, and LinkedIn is social-business-networking,
Kluster is social-personal-business-working. Talk marketing, pricing,
trends, products, business in general with peers from around the
world.
The people managing the crowd
get paid. Maybe you pay to launch a contest, maybe you pay to be member so
you can enter contests, maybe you pay a monthly fee to network in klusters
.
Join the Crowd, or not, that's
your call, and that's Cocktail Talk.
