I’m at a panel at sxsw about using social media for advocacy. Here are the presenters:
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Amy Sample Ward |
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Beth Kanter |
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David J Neff |
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Holly Ross |
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Kari Saratovsky |
Short stories about crowd sourcing
Beth
Beth started a blog called spider school. She was writing about how nonprofits can use the web. She would get emails from people she didn’t know pointing out grammar errors and typos. She decided to start a feature called spider school police and give a digital badge to anyone who found typos or errors.
Amy
NetSquared facilitates offline events all around the world. Amy organizes a group in her city, and she tries to ask people to speak, but people don’t self-select to speak. One month we didn’t have any speakers, so we asked people for recommendations. They came through with programming for a whole year.
Holly
It’s been imperative for NTEN to utilize the community to keep up with technology trends.
Kari
Case Foundation opened up to the public and encouraged them to get involved in the grant solicitation. People provided feedback on applications, and they finally did a crowdsourced vote of who should get grants.
David
David has recruited volunteers. He has also built a website to allow people to tell their cancer stories including stories, video, and artwork.
About the panel
All the content for this session has been crowdsourced, including the powerpoint presentation. They launched a social media for social good case studies. It had a submission form which they opened in January. They had a ranking system so that people could rate the case studies. We selected case studies based on that ranking and the focus of the panel. They didn’t have funding for the panel, and it actually took very little effort to demonstrate to nonprofits how easy it is.
The Hybrid Model
The hybrid model has been a popular method of crowdsourcing. There is some good and some bad that comes in when you start crowdsourcing. The hybrid model has some responsibility with “experts” and some responsibility with the crowd.
Freerange Studios
Freerange Studios did a project called utopia where they did $30K worth of free work. Anyone could enter, the audience narrowed it down to the top twenty, and then they made the final decision for which project they wanted to work on.
Seattle Free School
The Seattle Free School uses social media as the entire operation mechanism. The idea is that it’s free to teach and learn within the community. It’s how they operate and how they grow. They use social media to distribute the roles of the members, so there’s no mail or fliers. It was even created through social media.
Invisible People
Invisible people is very good at story telling, helping people understand that homeless people aren’t different or scary. They crowdsourced who they should interview. The most amazing thing about the project is that he is unafraid to look away from an issue that almost everyone else looks away from.
Open Green Map
Open Green Map helps communities map themselves. Community members can enter any locations they consider to be green, like bike racks, eco-friendly restaurants, etc. The whole project is open source, so you can take the code and use it for any mapping project. They are actually creating change in their community.
Trends in submitted projects
The organizations who participated were not household names. Most of them mentioned that they had no marketing budget, and they relied on the power of social media and their communities.
Open Street Map
Open Street Map allowed people to add streets to a map. It is the main application being used by relief organizations to share which roads are accessible and blocked.
The Uptake
The Uptake covers Minnesota politics, and they livestream and let people comment in real time. Using the time stamp on the comments, the editors could easily find the video highlights and put them together.
When does crowdsourcing suck?
Anytime the legal department is involved. Any time you are writing by-laws or mission statements – things that need to be carefully worded and come from within the organization.
How can we use crowdsourcing to add value to the target population?
Crowdsourcing is one of the values that we have as social change organizations. We have to live by our values, and not just voting online, but actual online collaboration. The community will tell you what sort of research they want to accomplish together.
How do you prevent crowdsourcing from being a resource suck?
Crowdsourcing within a community is already part of the way a community operates. If you’re crowdsourcing to the crowd, you’re probably doing something simple like an online vote.
Netflix prize
Netflix has offered a prize to individuals who can improve their recommendation algorithms.
How do you convince your senior management that some of the best ideas come from outside your organization?
There are huge benefits to build community. You are bringing great people into the process. If your management doesn’t get it, then quit and bring your resources to an organization that gets it.
How do the panelists define crowdsourcing?
Amy
I’m not the best at everything, and I have to trust people outside my brain and empower them. An expert is someone who has a really good network.
Holly
Some problems should be solved by experts, but sometimes experts lack diversity that only large crowds can provide.
Kari
It’s a recognition that you can tap a wider audience than might exist in your own organization.
Jeff
There are smart people outside your organization. You should tap that potential.
How do you get people to work for free?
It provides value to them. They get to work with a community, which makes everyone more effective and efficient. But you shouldn’t ask for people to provide professional services for free. That’s disrespectful.
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bethkanter
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Sarah Davies
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Beth Kanter
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Rebecca Petzel
