18 Days In Egypt: A Crowd-Sourced Documentary

18 Days in Egypt aims to be a crowd-sourced documentary about what happened there. Launched just a week ago by former New York Times video journalist and current Knight fellow at Stanford University, Jigar Mehta, the site wants to tackle the difficult task of providing the right context for the raw videos and news that others have posted and collected.

Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne: Panelists Needed!

This October Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne will be holding a panel discussion on the topic of Crowdsourcing: Wisdom of the Crowds. This is a very exciting topic and one that is increasingly prevalent in tech articles and University experiments.

We are interested to engage to any Melbourne-based women working in tech or sciences that apply the principals of crowdsourcing to their work. This doesn't need to be on a grand scale- the basic prinicipal of crowdsourcing is that solicits tasks performed by a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.

Essentially surveys are a form of crowdsourcing. The facinating impact of current social software technology is that it is even easier to connect people to a cause or task.

If you are interested to be a part of our panel discussion and are located in the Melbourne area, please contact me: jessica.lowry@gmail.com

Ask the Audience

When was the last time you watched, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? Harnessing the collective wisdom of many is a great way to find the right answer. The audience is rarely wrong.

Several years ago I read, 'The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations', It's a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.

In a recent report entitled Social Influence Marketing published by Razorfish, Bob Lord states:

"We respectfully suggest that what you say — or your agency says — about your brand or your product matters less than what your customers say about you. And what matters most to them is what your brand does."

You can read the entire report here: http://fluent.razorfish.com/publication/?m=6540&l=1

I think this example from Cadbury is the future of advertising. It's not about what the company thinks is best for it's brand - it's about what your customers want to buy.