Archive for the ‘crowdsourcing’ Category
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(Un)classes – community powered learning
10th August 09
Posted in crowdsourcing, culture
We just stumbled across (Un)classes (thanks to Julius Solaris | @tojulius).
A potentially strong application of collaborative intelligence . . . with a twist.
(Un)classes starts with the premise that everyone has something to teach, and much to learn. But, pragmatically, few of us are going to sign into formal programs. Casual learning (as they frame this form of education) is aimed squarely at people who lead hectic lives but still want to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.
(Un)classes is thus in effect a marketplace for matching interests with passion, simply connecting people who’d otherwise have few ways of directly collaborating in this way. It’s deliberately informal, with few rules and none of the stuffiness that could surround what is in effect a ‘learning’ service.
(We’re also reminded of the campaign BBH New York helped create for one of BBH’s clients, NYC & Co, around using one’s skills, passions, and willingness to help address some of NYC’s most important issues: What’s Your Blank?)
The depth of the (Un)classes offering seems quite shallow at the moment, but as people sign up, and choice and quality deepen, it will be interesting to see whether the idea takes off. We wish them luck.
More details at: http://www.unclasses.org/about
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“Big is easy, small is hard”: Print is Mobile
3rd August 09
Posted in crowdsourcing, design, mobile
Author: Adam Glickman
Following our piece looking at journalism (a review of the transformational change at the Telegraph Media Group) and fiction (interview with Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher at Penguin), our interest in the profound changes occurring in the publishing industry continues with this look at the opportunities in mobile.
We often talk about the future of mobile media and what it will all look like, but what about the future of the mobile media of the past? The notion of carrying around your reading as reams of inked paper might disappear, but the written word certainly won’t. So it seems a very natural progression for print publishers to move from paper to digital by simply reformatting for small screen mobile devices. But the considerations are vast. And more importantly, how much do people really want to use their phones as reading devices anyway?
We recently met a company called ScrollMotion, a New York-based iPhone app developer that is hard at work answering these questions. The company have been steadily creating a suite of new tools for traditional print media companies to better engage their readers via apps on mobile phones, and in the process, quietly making publishing deals with a wide range of top-notch publishers. Their growing client list is impressive and includes Conde Nast, Hearst, Time Inc., Tribune Company, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon & Schuster, Random House, and Wiley.
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“Sharing is the essence of creation”
24th June 09
Posted in crowdsourcing, culture, transformational change
Wow, are we looking forward to seeing this film in full.
“RiP: A Remix Manifesto” – a film about remix and copyright culture. It explores copyright issues in the information age, where the media landscape is being profoundly transformed, and the distinction between producers and consumers is becoming blurred, to say the least.
This is the trailer and it’s uplifting, provocative, challenging and inspiring, all at the same time. Full of complex debates and clearly coming with a strong point of view on how those debates might be – must be – resolved (so not everyone will agree with this, by any means, but heh, that’s good right?).
Features contributions from Gilberto Gil, Laurence Lessig, Cory Doctorow, and many more. We’re particularly looking forward to seeing the awesome Lessig in action again: “There is no way to kill this technology, we can only criminalize its use” – Laurence Lessig.
Download the film in full, paying what you think it’s worth: http://www.ripremix.com/
Check their blog: http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/rip-a-remix-manifesto/
Follow them on Twitter: http://twitter.com/remixmanifesto
(Thanks to Marc Schiller – @marcdschiller – for the heads up)
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Bring the noise: making music with the masses
17th June 09
Posted in creativity, crowdsourcing, music
We have been playing with this really impressive collaborative & spoken word tool, Bb 2.0, and melting our brains thinking about the possibilities, and where this could go next
Conceived by Darren Solomon, from Science for Girls, but with plenty of help from users, the tool is based around the insight that it’s possibly to play multiple videos on YouTube simultaneously. It’s similar to, but according to Darren pre-dates, the Kutiman YouTube mash-up videos (which are also awesome pieces of remixed art).
Darren & team go into the why and how in more detail in their FAQ, which are worth checking out. It’s an interesting experiment around using the crowd to conceive of and produce music, but one critical element stands out for us – the role of Darren as both editor (he filters and selects all the music chosen) and overall creative director (his vision, his direction, his imagination). In debates around the use of the crowd – in this case the musical talents of the crowd – the pivotal role of the editorial director is frequently overlooked. In a crowdsourced world the role of the ‘creative’ is more important than ever.
Thanks to @aaronkoblin for the tip off; his own version (kind of) of this is of course his pretty brilliant ‘Bicycle built for two thousand’ project.
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“I’ve always been interested in microscopes”: an interview with Aaron Koblin
12th May 09
Posted in creativity, crowdsourcing, data
"House of Cards" promo www.aaronkoblin.com
As you may just have heard (we’ve been a tad over-excited…) data visualisation maestro Aaron Koblin came into to talk to us yesterday. He kicked off with a showcase of his work, from his exquisite grad school visualisations of flight paths (see post below) to his latest embryonic projects for Google labs. Along the way he showcased extraordinary visualisations of the ebb and flow of information in cities and around the globe, experiments in crowdsourced sound design and perhaps his most famous project, the Radiohead “House of Cards” promo.
Visualisation of SMS messages in Amsterdam www.aaronkoblin.com
In showcasing his extraordinary portfolio he touched on a number of powerful and provocative themes which we followed up on in our interview. Themes around the power of social context to make data compelling, the power of data visualisation to embrace the complexity of our lives today and the tension between the human and the machine present in crowd-sourcing engines. He also shared his key learnings from life at the front line of data visualisation:
Looking at everyday things in new ways completely changes your perspective: there is no ”mundane” data when you set it in context.
Use multiple visualisation techniques: there’s more than one way of seeing things
Stay true to the data, not the “real world” : There is a random-ness to data-it will make patterns you never anticipated. Respect the random-ness.
You don’t have to use all the data : sometimes seeing patterns is about what you leave out
Set the data free: open-source and let other people play with your data
Following his talk, very graciously agreed to be interviewed by Labs about our (and your) burning questions around data visualisation. It was a fascinating conversation for us and we hope for you. So over to Aaron….and many thanks to those who submitted questions for him.
Why do you think the world has suddenly gone crazy for data visualisation? 18 months ago it was a struggle to get anyone interested in data and now it’s the new rock and roll…
I guess it’s really the times that we live in, now you have tools like Twitter and Facebook and things that are widely used not just by the nerds but by everybody. Popular culture has also just all of a sudden embraced the power of storytelling through data and the relevance of all the data to their lives. All kinds of things have happened that simply weren’t possible before – the author you look up to, the musician, etc. they’re sharing all kinds of things – you can be intimately living their lives along with them and you see all different types of applications.
Do you think it’s partly about the explosion in the amount of data currently available, the data trail we leave behind us now or the fact that companies have more data than they can process so they end up giving it away?
I think ultimately the biggest change is that the data is now relevant to people’s lives. Before most of the data was about infrastructure at best and a lot of it was locked away or presented in aggregate form. When you’re presented with a huge lump sum number that has no context it’s just not interesting, but now when you get these granular stories, things that are saying at this specific point in time here’s the way that things changed, just by giving it that context and social relevance it becomes interesting.
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Crowdsourcing Our Logo: The Crowd has Spoken
24th April 09
Posted in crowdsourcing, design, social media
And boy, did we get an earful.
To quickly recap: As a innovations unit tasked with exploring new models in communications, we needed a logo that can convey our mission and philosophy. So it made sense to try crowdsourcing to experiment first-hand with how all this might fit into our industry down the line. In the process, we hoped to find fresh talent who are marketing their skills in new ways.A lot of people asked why would we do something like this? Don’t we have great designers in-house? Doesn’t that stuff commoditize design? Isn’t that exploitive?
That’s beside the point: the pros and cons of crowdsourcing design can be debated ’till we are blue in the face but the fact is, the model seems to work and therefore deserves our attention.
Currently, we believe it works best for small or start-up clients. But as the model evolves it has a lot potential to work for larger clients with more demanding needs.
These new technologies aren’t going away, so it’s now our duty to understand how to work with them. We can continue to insist that us trained professionals are irreplaceable by the untrained crowd (and end up like our poor friends in journalism), or we can start figuring out how to turn eggs into omelets. From our viewpoint, this isn’t about preparing for the day that creative agencies can outsource design, it’s about preparing for the day that clients can outsource creative agencies.
BBH Labs believes that in the not-too-distant future, creative agencies are going to resemble expanded networks, with core teams overseeing expansive partnerships rather than the more vertically-integrated models existing today (more to come on this topic later). We see these kinds of partnerships and platforms happening across media increasingly already.
The task now is to find out how to build these new models in a way that is fair to all involved. Crowdsourcing our logo was the first tiny step in a larger Labs process to come – the medium was the message.
(For full post click below)
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Crowdsourcing continued…
10th April 09
Posted in creativity, crowdsourcing
One week into our Crowdspring experiment and I’ve been pointed to some thoughtful debates on the subject as well as those whose tone resembles an angry mob.
From the latter crowd I keep hearing this analogy that using Crowdspring is akin to outsourcing (complete with images of dank foreign sweatshops). If were going to trade in metaphors, I would counter by labeling this crowd protectionist. (Picture angry immigration opponents rallying to protect US jobs they probably don’t want in the first place.)
This isn’t outsourcing and this isn’t bootlegging. This is simply about an expanded marketplace. And as long as your product is best-in-market, you’ll always have best-in-market work at your door.
One last thing I need to note as some are accusing us of being exploitive and that bothers me greatly. (MORE BELOW)
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