Crowdsourcing 101 for GLAMs
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Opportunities and strategies for crowdsourcing in the cultural heritage sector (GLAMs) are the focus of this presentation by Olaf Janssen, project manager for the KB, National Library of the Netherlands You’ll read what crowdsourcing is, what motivates people to spend their time & money on it and how it differs from old-school voluntary work. You’ll also learn what added-value and advantages it can bring, compared to frequently mentioned downsides. Furthermore a number of tips for setting up and running successful crowdsourced projects are given. Then we'll focus on crowdsourcing within the cultural heritage sector. We distinguish six forms of crowdsourcing within GLAMs, each illustrated by a number of examples.
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Crowdsourcing 101 for GLAMs
- 1. Crowdsourcing 101 for GLAMs Olaf Janssen, Project manager @ National Library of the Netherlands (KB), March 2012 olaf.janssen@kb.nl - @ookgezellig - slideshare.net/OlafJanssenNL/
- 2. Crowdsourcing 101 for GLAMs Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums = cultural heritage sector Olaf Janssen, Project manager @ National Library of the Netherlands, March 2012 olaf.janssen@kb.nl - @ookgezellig - slideshare.net/OlafJanssenNL/
- 3. 4. Advantages 1. What’s crowdsourcing? & added value 2. Motivation of participants 5. Pitfalls 3. Crowdsourcing vs 6. Crowdsourcing & GLAMS traditional volunteer work
- 5. J. Surowiecki Jeff Howe 2004 Wired, June 2006
- 7. Outsourcing to the crowd Open call to undefined group Everybody can contribute Time, knowledge, money, work All talents & contributions welcome Irrespective of expertise, motivation or duration Social overvalue
- 8. Suggestion box 2.0 ?
- 9. 1. What’s crowdsourcing? 2. Motivation of participants
- 10. Money no driver
- 11. Mix of Egocentrism Altruism
- 14. Earning status
- 17. Belonging to a group
- 18. Working for the public good
- 19. Having fun
- 20. 1. What’s crowdsourcing? 2. Motivation of participants 3. Crowdsourcing vs traditional volunteer work
- 22. Crowdsourcing 1.0 Clearing snow
- 23. Crowdsourcing 1.0 Bird counting Clearing snow
- 24. Crowdsourcing 1.0 Bird counting Clearing snow Meteor counting
- 25. Crowdsourcing 2.0 = Crowdsourcing 1.0 +
- 27. Major differences 1.0 vs 2.0
- 28. Huge reach & impact
- 29. Huge reach & impact Huge choice
- 30. Huge reach & impact Huge choice Anywhere, anytime
- 32. Crowdsourcing examples Encyclopedia #6 site worldwide!
- 33. Crowdsourcing examples Pedestrian bridge in Rotterdam, the Netherlands
- 34. Crowdsourcing examples Counting dead bugs on your numberplate
- 35. Crowdsourcing examples Live USA border patrol
- 36. 4. Advantages 1. What’s crowdsourcing? & added value 2. Motivation of participants 3. Crowdsourcing vs traditional volunteer work
- 37. 1. Tapping into knowledge & creativity outside organization
- 38. 2. Direct feedback about products & services
- 39. 3. Stronger relation between product & consumer
- 40. 4. Many hands make lighter & cheaper work
- 41. 4. Many hands make lighter & cheaper work Amazon’ s Mechanical Turk
- 42. 4. Many hands make lighter & cheaper work Google’s reCaptcha
- 43. 5. Many hands make better work
- 44. 5. Many hands make better work Linus’ Law
- 45. 5. Many hands make better work Eric Raymond, on software Linus’ Law
- 46. 5. Many hands make better work Eric Raymond, Not: Linus Thorvald, on software on motivation Linus’ Law
- 47. 5. Many hands make better work Eric Raymond, Not: Linus Thorvald, on software on motivation Linus’ Law “with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”
- 48. 6. Viral network effects, word-of-mouth advertising
- 49. 6. Viral network effects
- 50. 6. Viral network effects
- 51. 6. Viraldo you a favour, “I network effects you return me a bigger favour”
- 52. 6.want this, not because it’s good, but “I Viral network effects because it will soon become unavailable”
- 53. “I believe you, because your look like an 6. Viral network effects authority figure”
- 54. 6.need to be congruent with my earlier “I Viral network effects believes & decisions”
- 55. 6. Viral A.k.a. social proof network effects “I do this, because everybody does it”
- 56. 6. comply with your request because “I Viral network effects I like you”
- 57. 6. Viral network effects
- 58. 6. Viral network effects Liking
- 59. 6. Viral network effects Please buy this, we are friends, aren’t we? Liking
- 60. 6. Viral network effects But what about the quality? Liking
- 61. 6. Viral network effects And do I really need it? Liking
- 62. 6. Viral network effects C’mon girls, nevermind quality or needs, if we don’t buy, we’ll disappoint our friend Liking
- 63. 6. Viral network effects Liking
- 64. 6. Viral network effects
- 65. 6. Viral network effects
- 66. 6. Viral network effects Social proof
- 67. 6. Viral network effects Social proof Ahumm, I do this, because everybody else does
- 69. 4. Advantages 1. What’s crowdsourcing? & added value 2. Motivation of participants 5. Pitfalls 3. Crowdsourcing vs traditional volunteer work
- 70. 1. Keeping participants motivated • Permanent communication with participants • Showcase (intermediate) results & successes • Show appreciation & respect for contributions • Be open, enthusiast & equal
- 71. 2. Quality & quantity of contribs • R.O.T. “75% of contribs unusable” • Selection of “pearls” is labour-intensive • Every contrib must be published & credited • More quality with reward-system?
- 72. 3. Poor collaboration tools • Limited possibility to re-use & expand ideas of others • Open software dev tools are exception
- 73. Example of good collaboration tool
- 74. Example of good collaboration tool
- 75. 4. Copyright / IPR
- 76. 4. Copyright / IPR
- 77. Tips for successful crowdsourcing http://bit.ly/tMwGRv
- 78. Tips for successful crowdsourcing http://bit.ly/tMwGRv
- 79. Tips for successful crowdsourcing http://bit.ly/tMwGRv
- 80. 4. Advantages 1. What’s crowdsourcing? & added value 2. Motivation of participants 5. Pitfalls 3. Crowdsourcing vs 6. Crowdsourcing & GLAMS traditional volunteer work
- 81. My name is Johan Oomen from the Institute for Sound & Vision in Hilversum, the Netherlands…
- 82. .. and I‘m Lora Aroyo from the VU University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- 83. We’ve researched Opportunities and Challenges for Crowdsourcing in the Cultural Heritage Domain …
- 85. … and we’ve identified 6 types of crowdsourcing in GLAMs!
- 86. Here we go…
- 87. 1. Correction and transcription Inviting users to correct and/or transcribe outputs of digitisation processes (images and/or OCR)
- 88. 1. Correction and transcription
- 89. 1. Correction and transcription
- 90. 2. Contextualisation Adding contextual knowledge to objects, e.g. by telling stories or writing articles / wiki pages with contextual data
- 93. 3. Complementing collections Active pursuit of additional objects to be included in a (Web)exhibit or collection
- 96. 4. Classification Gathering or correcting descriptive metadata related to objects in a collection = social tagging = user generated metadata = folksonomy
- 99. 5. Co-curation Using inspiration/expertise of non-professional curators to create (Web)exhibits
- 100. 5. Co-curation
- 101. 6. Crowdfunding Cooperation of people who pool their money together to support efforts initiated by others
- 102. 6. Crowdfunding
- 103. 6. Crowdfunding
- 104. That’s it! Thanks! Any questions ? olaf.janssen@kb.nl @ookgezellig
Notes de l'éditeur
- Opportunities and strategies for crowdsourcing in the cultural heritage sector (GLAMs) are the focus of this presentation by Olaf Janssen , project manager for the KB, National Library of the Netherlands
- You’ll read what crowdsourcing is, what motivates people to spend their time & money on it and how it differs from old-school voluntary work. You’ll also learn what added-value and advantages it can bring, compared to frequently mentioned downsides. Furthermore a number of tips for setting up and running successful crowdsourced projects are given. Then I’ll focus on crowdsourcing within the cultural heritage sector . We distinguish six forms of crowdsourcing within GLAMs, each illustrated by a number of examples.
- The Wisdom of Crowds , in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals, Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry, among other subjects. In June of 2006 he published "The Rise of Crowdsourcing" in Wired. Het is een ontwikkeling die voortvloeit uit de eerdere ontwikkeling van user-generated content . De term werd het eerst gebruikt door Jeff Howe en ontstond uit een samenvoeging van de term outsourcing met crowd , het Engelse woord voor menigte. From the business perspective crowdsourcing can be defined as: outsourcing traditional business activities to people outside the company or organization (according to Jeff Howe ). Crowdsourcing is more extreme than outsourcing – subcontracting to well-defined external partners, usually within a formally contracted and agreement and closed relation. It is an open call to an undefined group of volunteers to contribute to a business activity.
- Show video
- Crowdsourcing invites large groups of anonymous volunteers to help collectively realize an idea, product or service by contributing work, knowledge, time or money. Contributions from all participants are welcome, irrespective of expertise-level, duration or motivation. In other words, everybody can offer its specific talents. The starting point of the organizer is to profit from the individual contributions of group members. The force of crowdsourcing lies within the new ways to elicit and bundle the efforts of the public. People offering social overvalue – the abundance of potentially useful and available, yet often hidden knowledge, dedication and help - play key roles.
- But according to some crowdsourcing is nothing more than a modern twist of the traditional suggestion box.
- Motivation of crowdsourcers
- Participants of crowdsourcing projects are often not primarily driven by material motivators (e.g. earning money).
- More frequently they get a kick from the underlying immaterial reward, combining egocentric and altruistic factors.
- Key ingredients in this mix include: satisfying curiosity, seeking challenges, earning status and getting recognition within a community, intellectual enrichment, belonging to a group, working for the public good, or simply having fun. Most of the times participants are able and motivated to contribute ideas, but contributing to the actual exploitation of that idea is often of a different magnitude. For instance, designing a new beer recipe (‘open beer’ project) is relatively easy to do, but building a brewery and setting up distribution and marketing channels is a fully different ballgame.
- met ingrediënten uit de volgende lijst: het bevredigen van nieuwsgierigheid, uitdagingen aangaan, status & erkenning binnen een community verwerven, waardering krijgen, intellectuele verrijking opzoeken, bij een groep horen, voor de publieke zaak werken of simpelweg plezier hebben.
- Research on crowdsourcing projects has shown that many consumers consider it an increase of social status when their ideas, software or content is used in the product development process of well-known commercial companies.
- That sounds pretty much like old-school voluntary work. Is it the same meat with different gravy ? Nowadays small people are vertically challenged and spinsters are “happy singles”. Similarly, crowdsourcing is basically a cool phrase for collective voluntary work.
- Crowdsourcing 1.0 indeed goes back to the old days, for instance bird counting , counting meteors or clearing snowy roads.
- Social media and modern communication tools (Twitter, Facebook, wikis, smartphones, mobile internet) have enabled human networks to give new momentum to voluntary work under the new name crowdsourcing (2.0).
- Characteristics and differences from ‘old’ voluntary work are among other things:
- By using social media for the open call, its reach and impact can be enormous. These worldwide networks go beyond the persons the organizers already know about.
- No musts, lost of flexibility. You do not need to become a member of an organization or club to be able to contribute. You can pick the projects that are just your thing. Every contribution is welcome, be it big or small, once, twice or many times.
- Contributions are less time and location dependant: you don’t need to be at a specific spot at a specific time to make a donation. On the Dutch petition site petities.nl you can be pajama-activist any time you want.
- Heel Wikipedia – zie mijn eerdere artikel Most visible & best-known Crowdsourcing example No 6 site in the world
- Crowdfunding a pedestrian bridge in Rotterdam Vanaf vandaag kunt u meedoen aan de Luchtsingel! De Luchtsingel is een voetgangersbrug in het centrum van Rotterdam die wordt gerealiseerd via crowdfunding , oftewel financiering door de menigte. Iedereen kan deelnemen aan de totstandkoming van deze brug. Als deelnemer betaalt u een bijdrage in ruil voor naamsvermelding op een plank, element of brugdeel. Na invullen van het deelnameformulier komt u terecht in de betalingsomgeving van iDEAL. http://crowdfunding.imakerotterdam.nl/
- Counting splashed bugs on your number plate to map the spatio-temporal variation in insect density Hoe werkt het? Iedereen kent het, insectenlijken op de autoruit. Tot schade aan de autoruit leidt het vrijwel nooit maar het zorgt wel voor overlast. Zeker grote insecten zoals hommels en bijen kunnen een flinke ravage veroorzaken. De uiteen gesplashte insecten zijn vaak moeilijk te verwijderen en het zicht wordt belemmerd. Jaarlijks komen door het verkeer miljarden insecten om. Door het aantal gesplashte insecten per autorit te registreren krijgen we een beeld van de variatie in insectendichtheid in de ruimte en in de tijd. Je kunt eenvoudig meedoen door voor vertrek de kentekenplaat schoon te maken, de kilometerstand te noteren en na de autorit het aantal insectenlijkjes op de kentekenplaat te tellen en het aantal gereden kilometers te bepalen. De gegevens kun je in het formulier hiernaast invullen. Splashteller.nl is er ook in een mobiele versie voor het doorgegeven van splashes. Het onderzoek Op dit moment is er geen enkel beeld van hoe gevarieerd het aantal vliegende insecten is, waar de variatie door bepaald wordt of hoe het aantal insecten zich over de jaren ontwikkelt. Er zijn grote zorgen dat het aantal insecten afneemt en dat dit gevolgen heeft voor vogels maar ook voor de economie (minder plaagbestrijding en bestuiving van voedselgewassen). Met de gegevens die via de Splashteller worden doorgegeven hopen we de volgende onderzoeksvragen te kunnen beantwoorden: Hoe varieert de dichtheid aan insecten in verschillende delen van Nederland? Hoe varieert de dichtheid in de tijd zich door het jaar en door de jaren heen? Hoe wordt de variatie in dichtheid bepaald door weersomstandigheden of omgevingsfactoren. Wat zijn de meest insectonvriendelijke dagen en tijden om met je auto te gaan rijden?
- The Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition (TBSC) has joined BlueServoSM in a public-private partnership to deploy the Virtual Community Watch, an innovative real-time surveillance program designed to empower the public to proactively participate in fighting border crime. The TBSC BlueServoSM Virtual Community WatchSM is a FREE service consisting of a network of cameras and sensors along the Texas-Mexico border. This network feeds live streaming video FREE-OF-CHARGE to the user's computer, which they can access by creating a FREE account at www.BlueServo.net. Users will log in to the BlueServoSM website and directly monitor suspicious criminal activity along the border via this virtual fenceSM.
- Advantages & added value of crowdsourcing For the organizing party crowdsourcing can deliver added value in multiple ways. We’ll discuss six:
- Tapping into knowledge & creativity outside the organization Because the (creative) expertise outside company walls can deliver significant added value, it is important for organizations to try to trap it. Lego has set up competitions where consumers can develop their own toys ; the winning designs are produced and can be bought in regular shops. The winners can come from any age group, as a number of popular products now on sale were designed by children.
- Direct feedback about product & services When a company gives the public the opportunity and space to voice their comments in an interactive dialogue, the organization can use this free user feedback to improve their products & services.
- Stronger relation between product & consumer Crowdsourcing gives consumers the feeling they have a real voice in the products or services a company is delivering. They feel they are actively listened to and their ideas are taken seriously. For a moment consumers feel part of the organization. This generally leads to improved appreciation and a stronger relation between the two parties.
- Many hands make lighter & cheaper work
- Big and thus traditionally expensive jobs can be cut into small, simple activities that can be by executed by large numbers of volunteers at (nearly) zero costs. This ways mountains can be moved and costs can be cut down significantly. A well-known example is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a modern twist to bob-a-job. With this mechanism companies have access to a flexible labour pool .
- Another example: to verify a real human is behind a PC, you are often asked to copy-type higgledy-piggledy arrays of characters - so called captchas - when logging into a website. Libraries can use this workflow in a clever way by cutting up old manuscripts that cannot be correctly OCRed into single words and having these copy-typed by humans at login-time. When enough people do this, you automatically get a complete OCR-file for free. Google’s reCaptcha is a much used application for this process.
- When in the example above you make sure that the same captcha is typed by multiple users repeatedly, the likelihood of errors diminishes.
- By Linus Torvalds introduces his "Linus's Law", which is that every motivation that makes a man do something can be classified under "survival", "social life" and "entertainment.“ As a result, he writes, progress is defined as reaching a higher category: not doing a thing merely for survival, but for social reasons, and then, even better, just for fun.
- Linus' Law (in Eric Raymond’s version: with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow ) also turns out to be applicable to creating web content.
- The crucial role of social media in crowdsourcing makes it relatively easy to induce viral word-of-mouth advertising for your crowdsourced project or product.
- Robert B. Cialdini is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University . He is best known for his popular book on persuasion and marketing , Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Influence has sold over 2 million copies and has been translated into twenty-six languages. It has been listed on the New York Times Business Best Seller List. Fortune Magazine lists Influence in their "75 Smartest Business Books."
- 6 key principles of persuasion by Robert Cialdini
- Reciprocity - People tend to return a favor, thus the pervasiveness of free samples in marketing. In his conferences, he often uses the example of Ethiopia providing thousands of dollars in humanitarian aid to Mexico just after the 1985 earthquake, despite Ethiopia suffering from a crippling famine and civil war at the time. Ethiopia had been reciprocating for the diplomatic support Mexico provided when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. The good cop/bad cop strategy is also based on this principle.
- Scarcity - Perceived scarcity will generate demand. For example, saying offers are available for a "limited time only" encourages sales.
- Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform objectionable acts. Cialdini cites incidents such as the Milgram experiments in the early 1960s and the My Lai massacre.
- Commitment and Consistency - If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment because of establishing that idea or goal as being congruent with their self image. Even if the original incentive or motivation is removed after they have already agreed, they will continue to honor the agreement. For example, in car sales, suddenly raising the price at the last moment works because the buyer has already decided to buy. Cialdini notes Chinese brainwashing on American prisoners of war to rewrite their self image and gain automatic unenforced compliance. See cognitive dissonance.
- Social Proof - People will do things that they see other people are doing. For example, in one experiment, one or more confederates would look up into the sky; bystanders would then look up into the sky to see what they were seeing. At one point this experiment aborted, as so many people were looking up that they stopped traffic. See conformity, and the Asch conformity experiments.
- Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people that they like. Cialdini cites the marketing of Tupperware in what might now be called viral marketing. People were more likely to buy if they liked the person selling it to them. Some of the many biases favoring more attractive people are discussed. See physical attractiveness stereotype
- A person is more likely to meet a request for help he receives from a friend or family member than directly from a remote organization he is unfamiliar with and which was not pre-selected by his peers. The modern version of the Tupperware-party in other words. Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people that they like. Cialdini cites the marketing of Tupperware in what might now be called viral marketing. People were more likely to buy if they liked the person selling it to them. Some of the many biases favoring more attractive people are discussed. See physical attractiveness stereotype.
- When additionally the Facebook page of the project has many Likes , it must be a cool thing you simply can’t afford to miss out on. Consensus lets us know people feel comfortable following the crowd because generally there’s safety in numbers. When we see someone has thousands, or tens of thousands, of Twitter followers, or 500+ LinkedIn connections that sets in the minds of many that those are people worth following. If that wasn’t the case then why would so many others connect with them?
- When additionally the Facebook page of the project has many Likes , it must be a cool thing you simply can’t afford to miss out on. Consensus lets us know people feel comfortable following the crowd because generally there’s safety in numbers. When we see someone has thousands, or tens of thousands, of Twitter followers, or 500+ LinkedIn connections that sets in the minds of many that those are people worth following. If that wasn’t the case then why would so many others connect with them?
- Cialdini's Principles of Influence Applied to Social Media Liking is the principle that tells us people prefer to say “Yes” to those they know and like. To engage liking in social media, here are two simple things to focus on – similarities and compliments. When you try to connect with someone it can be as simple as putting a personal message that highlights something you have in common in a Facebook friend request. I have many Facebook friends around the world because of this principle. I got those friends because I reached out to many of Dr. Cialdini’s Facebook friends and when I did so I included a personal message to let them know I knew him and was a one of his trainers. He was our connection or similarity if you will. Compliments are easy to use also. If you’re trying to connect on LinkedIn a personal message is the preferable way to go, also, rather than the standard, “I’d like to add you to my professional network.” In your message include something that you admire or appreciate about that person, letting them know that’s part of the reason you’re reaching out, and the odds they’ll accept your request will go way up. Reciprocity is the principle that describes the reality that we feel obligated to give back the same form of behavior first given to us. For example, on Twitter quite often simply choosing to follow someone will lead them to follow you in return. That’s why most people’s “Following” and “Followers” numbers are so close. I don’t advocate following everyone just because they followed you first but the vast majority of following happens that way. One other way to engage this principle is to reach out to others to help them. Whatever you have in terms of time, talent or expertise, look for ways to give some of that away because those who avail themselves will naturally want to help you when you need it. Consensus lets us know people feel comfortable following the crowd because generally there’s safety in numbers. When we see someone has thousands, or tens of thousands, of Twitter followers, or 500+ LinkedIn connections that sets in the minds of many that those are people worth following. If that wasn’t the case then why would so many others connect with them? Regularly working whatever networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Cinch, etc.) you’re on will eventually pay dividends because the more people who are connected to you the more others want to be connected too. Be patient because it can be like a snowball rolling down a hill. It takes time to see the snowball grow but once it gets going watch out! Authority highlights the reality that people like to follow the advice of experts. What is your expertise? Do you highlight it somehow on your social media networks? If you aren’t then you need to start because it gives people a reason to want to connect with you. Until a several years ago I was like many other sales trainers but my passion for influence and persuasion led me to go deeper in that particular area. Now that I’ve started blogging, people in more than 160 countries have taken time to read what I write. When that fact is shared it’s amazing the instant credibility with others. Consistency is the principle of persuasion that tells us people feel psychological pressure to behave consistently with what they’ve previously said or done. The key to tapping into this principle is either knowing what someone has said or done in the past or getting them to commit to you in some way. Getting them to commit to you is easy to do because all it takes is asking questions. Sometimes the person will say no to your request but when they say yes the odds that they’ll follow through go up significantly. So if you need help, ask people. You’ll be surprised at the number that will do so because social media is about connecting, helping and growing. Scarcity describes the reality that people want what they can’t have or what they perceive to be rare. For me something that I can highlight to tap into scarcity is the fact that only about two dozen people in the world are certified to teach influence and persuasion on behalf of Dr. Cialdini. When people learn that fact it makes them more curious and they naturally to want to engage me. What do you have that makes you rare, unique or different? Get that out there and it will make more people want to connect with you. This is a very brief overview of how you can use the psychology of persuasion to make your time and effort in social media more worthwhile. Hopefully you’ll find the tips useful. If you’ve seen how you’ve successfully used some of the principles in your social media circles please leave a comment so we can learn from you.
- Downsides, pitfalls & points of attention Besides its big advantages, crowdsourcing inevitably also has a number of downsides and points of attention the organizer needs to be aware of when planning or running participatory projects with the public. We’ll discuss four of them.
- Keeping participants motivated To make a crowdsourcing activity a success (semi-)permanent motivation of participants is essential, especially when they are asked to contribute for longer periods of time. Sustaining the crowd’s motivation is not easy, the organizer is required to visually demonstrate & disseminate the (intermediate) results, most commonly via social media. Further preconditions are mutual respect, trust, openness, equality and enthusiasm; these sort of things can only be built over time.
- Quality and quantity of the contributions Crowdsourcing gives equal opportunities for everybody that wants to participate, you do not have to meet certain criteria. It can be questioned if all contributors are actually qualified for the activity at hand. There is a risk that a large percentage of contributions are low-grade; a rule of thumb is that about 75% of submissions is effectively unusable. Also large numbers of inferior contributions will give practical problems, as it will take a lot of effort and time to hand-pick the valuable pearls from the mud. Furthermore, all submissions, irrespective of quality, must be published and communicated about with the senders. Last but not least there will be differences in style of the contributions, which is especially relevant in crowdsourced writing and photography projects. Fitting these into the overall product can be cumbersome. The quality of submissions can be influenced by giving people guidelines and templates. However, not all crowdsourcing projects are suitable for predefined fixed formats and guidelines can be ignored or misinterpreted easily. More attention for the desired quality of the contributions can be generated by offering (financial) rewards and clear reward criteria.
- Limitations in current collaboration tools In many crowdsourcing projects the volunteer submits his individual contribution via an online collaboration tool. The current generation of tools offer users only limited possibilities to build on contributions from others and generate synergies. Positive exceptions are tools for open software development. In contrast, employees within companies often have direct access to the knowledge and experience of their co-workers when working on a collaborative project. The added value of crowdsourcing volunteers is likely to increase with the next generation of tools
- My Starbuck Idea
- My Starbuck Idea
- Copyright / IPR issues Crowdsourcing is impossible without volunteers. The rule that IPR developed in paid employment is automatically transferred from the employee to the company is not valid for crowdsourcing in general. In many projects the rights for exploitation of the contributions are often exclusively claimed by the organizing company. Because crowdsourcing is a relatively new phenomenon, many participants are not (yet) aware of the copyrights on their contributions. With the rise of new, low-barrier licensing models such as Creative Commons, many more people will become aware of the role of IPR in crowdsourcing. The widespread use of these open forms of licensing can have limiting effects on the possibilities for exploitation of the crowdsourcing results by commercial companies. Another copyright-related problem that might occur in certain crowdsourcing projects is the uncertainly if the person contributing an idea is also the inventor of that idea, he might actually have copied (or stolen) it. It can take a lot of time & effort to find out who is the legitimate owner.
- Jasper Visser, author of the very interesting blog The Museum of the Future , has made a list of 30 do’s for designing successful participatory and crowdsourcing projects .
- Here’s the full list, now all as do’s, with some additional ideas that didn’t fit in the presentation. Use it to your benefit and please add your thoughts when you feel I’ve missed some. Ask your potential participants a clear question or a clear task . A clear question is never ambiguous, unless you’re looking for (and only looking for) different ways to look at its ambiguity. Run a couple of real-life test sessions with your question. Even if it’s an online project, ask people in the street your question and see how they respond. Change the question all the time. Once people only respond with the answers you’re looking for, you’ve found your question. Ask a question that is meaningful to people. Questions that might be labelled emotional or highly personal are good. Not everybody will answer them, but the answers you’ll get will be so much more valuable. Pinpoint very specific groups of people you’d like to reach with your project. Design to meet their demands and answer to their needs. Preferably, involve this target group in the design of your project. That said: don’t exclude anyone from participating if they really want to. Be extremely clear about your limits to what people can contribute, and keep these as limited as possible. Racism, hate, advertising and unlawful things are usually enough to exclude. Accept all other contributions , regardless of they way in which you perceive their quality. Every time a person took the trouble to contribute to your project, this contribution is valuable (you can use peer reviewing to maintain overall high quality). Do not put limits on the length of a contribution , unless these limits are an explainable part of the project. Also, don’t limit the number of contributions per visitor, but design your system in a way that it gives all contributions equal importance. Quick win: even unwanted contributions can tell you something, so when moderating, don’t delete these, but make them invisible. Some of the best things I discovered about how to design good projects I learned from stuff that happened by accident. Never ever fake contributions , not even the first 10-20 to get the project going. Even though you think you might be a great ghostwriter/actor/impersonator, many will see through it immediately. Use your own name if you want to contribute. That said: there’s nothing wrong with asking your inner circle to be the first to participate. Encourage colleagues to join in and share, tell your friends . All crowdsourcing is incrowdsourcing in a way, so you better have this work to your advantage. Furthermore, don’t use VIPs to get your project underway . Next to the life’s story of Richard Branson or the photography of Anton Corbijn, my contribution will be so small I better not even contribute. In my experience VIPs that are not raised by the community serving the project will have a negative impact on your project. If you want discussion around contributions, specifically ask for discussion or design your system in such a way that new contributions show up near related ones. In my experience, people prefer to present their thoughts as a new contribution, not as a reaction to another contribution. Design a straightforward process to contributing, preferably as simple as possible and integrated in the normal things people do in your institution. Think about the different steps of the process (making contact, getting people interested, engaging them and making them enthusiastic) and make sure all these are well designed and work towards your goal. Furthermore, to your contributors, divide the project in clearly distinguishable phases . For instance, first everybody can tag words, then people can review earlier contributions to select the best and then final description is uploaded to your collections database. Crowdsourcing is not only about participation . It’s just as important to reach people with your project (PR, marketing, etc.), to continuously improve and redesign your project (project management) and to evaluate and report on the project. Focus on these elements as well. Design for different types of participation . Not everybody is a creator (deciphering words, telling stories), some people prefer commenting or rating or collecting. Make sure your project caters to these different needs and gives a place to everybody. Make participation almost invisible , for instance by making it part of the normal stuff people do in your institution or by counting and measuring things they very easily do (like taking guidebooks or making photos). Look for ways to merge participation in the digital and physical world . In my experience the best crowdsourcing projects seamlessly integrate online and offline, focusing on the objective rather than the choice of medium. Create a safe environment for people to contribute . Make it somewhat private, but also special. For instance, in my experience voting and selecting works best when it is kept individually and small, whereas creating (once done) deserves a bit of an audience. Don’t focus on beautiful websites and wonderful installations too much, focus on highly functional design . Some of the best crowdsourcing projects I’ve seen where made on a shoestring budget with stuff that was lying around. Celebrate contributions with contributors . All contributions are special, and everyone who dared to contribute is a hero, so openly celebrate contributions, and: Give credit to the contributors . Unless the idea behind your project is different, make sure you overdo the amount of credit you give contributors. Keep their names next to the photos forever , and use their contributions in future publications of which you send them a free copy (with credit line), invite them to openings and special tours. Because, always, always give feedback on the results and process . Keep people informed about everything. What happened with their contribution? What is going on with the project? And not just after 6 months, but all the time. Keep them in the loop. Have fun and make your crowdsourcing project fun . Share optimistic stories with the people that participate, focus on the small successes, share the unique things that happen, and, Allow for participants to have fun . Even if you’re mostly looking for serious contributions, the contribution that is a bit off but makes you smile is always one of the best ones you will get. (Sometimes this smile is a tear.) If you think the joy of participating and your continuous feedback isn’t enough, only give away relevant prizes . iPads are cool, but hardly ever relevant. Involve the people on the floor in your galleries in the project . Quite often, a human voice explaining the project or making people enthusiastic is the best tool to get people to participate. Continuously evaluate your crowdsourcing project and make sure you have budget to make changes once you’ve started. As a rule of the thumb I use that in participatory projects, only 1/3rd of resources should be spend on the launch version, and 2/3rds should be saved for improvements and iterations.
- Within the Dutch cultural heritage sector crowdsourcing is currently a highly trending topic. In the light of ever decreasing government funding many GLAMS are increasingly looking at how the public can be mobilized to support their business activities.
- Oomen en Aroyo, researchers from the Institute of Sound & Vision and the VU University of Amsterdam have researched (PDF) opportunities and challenges for crowdsourcing in GLAMs. In this paper they distinguish six ways crowdsourcing is used.
- http://www.cs.vu.nl/~marieke/OomenAroyoCT2011.pdf
- Correction and transcription: Inviting users to correct and/or transcribe outputs of digitisation processes, mostly images and/or OCR MONK , help to improve a search engine for old manuscripts Transcribe Bentham, transcription of 12.400 manuscripts from Jeremy Bentham , an important philosopher and social reformer from London (1748-1832)
- Digitalkoot, play games to give high-quality OCR to the national library of Finland (check that lovely brochure). Winner of the DISH Award 2011
- The Victoria & Albert museum asks the public to crop photographed versions of their objects.
- Contextualisation : Adding contextual knowledge to objects, e.g. by telling stories or writing articles & wiki pages with contextual data.
- Description of the Book of Kells (or any other cultural treasure) on Wikipedia
- 1001 Stories of Denmark. User can contribute their own stories, photos or videos about 1001 heritage locations in Denmark. They can also read or augment submissions from other people. Oneindig Noord-Holland (“Infinite North-Holland”) is a similar initiative from the province of Noord-Holland in Netherlands
- Complementing collections : Active pursuit of additional objects to be included in a (web)exhibit or collection.
- In the project Europeana1914-1918 the public can upload photos, letters, postcards, souvenirs, stories or anecdotes about WWI. It is also possible for them to have physical objects digitized. By using the expertise of the German national library and Oxford University Library these materials are used to complete the existing WWI-collection on Europeana. The Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre has an elaborate collection of newspapers from the area around Kincardine, Ontario, Canada. Sadly the collection has some gaps from the 1930s, ’40s en ’50s. The museum asks the public for help in filling these gaps.
- The Museum of Broken Relationships is a traveling museum to which people with broken hearts can submit personal belongings that remind them of their ex-loved ones. Vulgar exhibitionism or useful self-help?
- Classification : Gathering or correcting descriptive metadata related to objects in a collection. Also known as social tagging, user generated metadata or folksonomy. In the year 2012 a widespread phenomenon.
- Since 2008 the Dutch National Archive has uploaded to Flickr hundreds of photos from their own collection and from the Spaarnestad Photo collection. Users were asked to enrich these objects with tags and comments. This has been very successful, so far users have added thousands of tags.
- The Dutch Institute for Sound & Vision has developed the online game Woordtikkertje (“Word-tag”). With this attractive low-barrier game users can annotate the archive of the Dutch TV-series Man Bijt Hond (“Man bites dog”) in a playful manner.
- Co-curation : Using inspiration or expertise of non-professional curators to create (web)exhibits
- A good example of co-curation was Click! A crowd-curated exhibition in the Brooklyn Museum in summer of 2008. In line with the adagium “the expertise outside museum walls is greater than it is inside”, the audience was invited to select, rank and evaluate this photography exhibition. A similar approach was used for Split Second.
- Cooperation of people who pool their money together to support efforts initiated by others. More specifically: collecting money for supporting, expanding, conserving, enriching or opening up the collection. During times of ever decreasing government funding possibly the most relevant and important crowd-activity GLAM need to tackle.
- Museum Meermanno, the oldest book museum in the world currently runs Boek zoekt vrouw , man en bedrijf (“Book wants a wifte, husband and company” - a wink to the very popular TV-series Farmer Wants a Wife ). In this programme both individuals and companies are invited to adopt a book to prevent the museum from having to close down
- Stadsherstel Amsterdam (a company for city restoration) wants to restore the ‘ Dik Trom School ( Dik Trom being a famous character from Dutch children’s literature) in the village of Etersheim on the shores of the IJsselmeer. The money for this project is being raised using crowdsourcing.