ANZATech is organizing two very interesting events this week in Silicon Valley.

The Australian Innovation Showcase on November 9 at 6-9pm at Silicon Valley Bank, features as keynote speaker Andrew Lacy, who co-founded Tapulous, one of the most successful mobile app developers to date. Since Tapulous was acquired by Disney earlier this year (at a price estimated at $35 million), Andrew has become SVP of Disney Mobile.

The following day, on November 10 ANZATech is running the one-day Innovative Leadership Forum, with a great cast of speakers including a keynote from Bardia Housman, who sold his company Business Catalyst to Adobe last year.

The contest and the redesign were both smashing successes, at least from a crowdsourcing perspective. DesignCrowd suggests that a similar approach could be adopted by international organizations or other governments looking to engage their populations through crowdsourcing initiatives. They interviewed the winner of the contest; here were some of the high points:

• Both international and distinctly Indian design elements played into Udaya’s symbol.
• 8,000 initial entries were narrowed to a short list of 3,000 from which the five finalists were selected.
• The judging panel consisted of both design experts and representatives from India’s government
• The five finalists received 5,000 rupees (~$113 US) with Udaya receiving an additional 250,000 rupees (~$5,000 US) for winning the competition.
• Udaya will donate his winnings in full and is more thankful for the fame, love and affection he has received.
• He loved that the competition allowed for public participation, and thought one improvement over the current model would have been to choose the final winner through a public vote

Read the full text of the interview and see how the winning design might be used.

This week’s Future of Crowdsourcing Summit will take a deeper look at international crowdsourcing trends.

In the meantime, what national or international projects do you think could benefit from the power of crowdsourcing?

There’s a good interview with Gary Swart at business advice website Business Pundit where he explains the difference between oDesk and some of his competitors.

First he explains that oDesk is much more than a marketplace but a “global employment platform…always focused on off-term, time-based work, giving employers tools to more effectively manage and pay these remote tasks.”  So whilst other platforms may be more about smaller one-off fixed fee contracts, oDesk is about managing contractors as a virtual work-force. In my view that has to be more conducive to long-term work relationships.

oDesk’s technology platform is sophisticated (and I can confirm this as an oDesk user myself). Contractors can manage their work diary, payment details, receive messages and see other members of their virtual team.  Management can effectively have a dashboard of time billed of all the contractors in their “team room.”

I perceive that oDesk attempts to provide protection for both employer and contractor, not only within the technology but some of the initiatives such as oDesk Staffing, which gives some US-based contractors access to health insurance and retirement plans.

In the interview Swart explains perhaps the most unique and well-known element of their technology.  Employers can check that contractors are actually working during any hour of billed time, as oDesk will take six randomly timed screen shots of the contractor’s desktop.  If the contractor lets this happen, then they are guaranteed payment for the time worked.

I was surprised to find that oDesk’s technology platform was built before the marketplace element was added to the site. Swart mentions that the technology has been “the backbone” for the company’s business model and hints that where competitors have tried to replicate something similar it has not worked so well, because the communities there tend to be more interested in fixed price work rather than payment per hour.

It strikes me that oDesk have stumbled on something that may be a real game-changer as a way of managing a virtual or project-based workforce.  I wonder what would happen if they integrated collaborative technologies into their team-room space – for example Yammer-style micro-blogging – whether it could edge closer to a complete virtual workspace solution?  Certainly with oDesk’s continuing growth, their offering is bound to become even more sophisticated.

Edelstein describes CloudCrowd as a “Labor-as-a-service” platform. Clients, some of whom are Fortune 500 companies, outsource their projects to ClowdCrowd.   CloudCrowd use their project management expertise to break these down into smaller tasks which are then delivered to a group of 10,000 registered users, all of whom receive their instructions via Facebook.

Because of the efficiencies built into CloudCrowd’s approach, there are no associated start up costs for the client.  According to Edelstein  “CloudCrowd knows that task design engineered by experts delivers superior results, so it partners with its clients, working directly with them to determine their needs, and then utilizes its set of proprietary tools to engineer tasks, peer reviews, and workflows that deliver accurate, high quality work.”

I think there are two interesting features here. Firstly clients already get a value-add through utilizing the project management skills, tools and processes which are available in-house at CloudCrowd. So the service is way beyond acting as a middle-man between client and labor.   There’s also a trial phase, to ensure that that the selection of tasks is correct. Secondly delivering tasks through Facebook means there is already an established distribution channel, which presumably means reduced development costs for CloudCrowd and an easier experience for those who have registered.

Edelstein then goes on to talk about the type of work that the company carries out (internet research, content creation etc.) and the type of people who do the work, which is anything from single mothers to students to the retired.

Crowdcloud have also introduced a self-service website for one-off tasks with a very quick turnover, aimed at individuals and small businesses, called EditZen.

An interesting article. I’m intrigued to see where Edelstein goes next with CrowdCloud.

ONE:  Unilever, the second largest advertiser on the planet, used crowdsourcing design website Idea Bounty to get an idea for their TV advertising campaign. They have also used MoFilm to generate short films for several brands, getting over 10,000 contributions.

TWO:  Starbucks crowdsource suggestions and ideas for improvements via dedicated website My Starbucks Ideas.  At the time of writing there were over 23,000 suggestions about  coffee and espresso drinks alone!

THREE:  The General Electric (GE) Ecoimagination project describes itself  as a place “where businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students share their best ideas on how to build the next-generation power grid – and just might get funded.”   Partnering up with several venture capital funds, innovators submit ideas to the website around themes of renewable energy, grid efficiency and eco-buildings  GE and their partners have pledged up to $200m to invest in the most promising start-ups, with the winner to be announced late 2010.

FOUR:  Proctor & Gamble have a programme called “Connect & Develop” which aims to source product and service innovations from outside the firm.  They say “in the areas in which we do business, there are millions of scientists, engineers and other companies globally. Why not collaborate with them?”  Ideas are submitted via a secure portal.

FIVE:  Amazon were one of the first major corporates to operate a crowdsourcing model with the launch of Mechanical Turk in 2005.  It operates as a marketplace for workers tocomplete “Human Intelligence Tasks” – essentially tasks which can’t be done by computers, such as extracting information from web pages.

There will be more exploration of how crowdsourcing is changing the business landscape at the Future of Crowdsourcing Summit 2010.  We believe more global organisations are going to follow the likes of Unilever and Starbucks.

Freelancer.com is the world’s leading micro-outsourcing website with over a million registered professionals from 234 different countries.  Originally founded in Sweden in 2004, the company was bought by Australian firm Ignition Networks in 2009.  The site is clearly aimed at small businesses – so that the “local craft store or fish and chips can get a website built for $200 or so and start taking orders online.”

This month the firm launched its first two country-specific sites for Australia and New Zealand.  The reason for the Aussie site is not only because the site is Australian-owned, but because Australians are already “prolific” users, both as registered professionals and employers.  The firm are even crowdsourcing ideas for promoting the site in Australia, as shown in the image below.

Source: freelancer.com

Barrie confirms that Freelancer.com may roll out other sites “in regions where it makes sense..just like eBay did. We want to be the eBay of services.”   Currently the Australian and New Zealand sites give access to the same global database of outsourcing opportunities available on the main Freelancer.com site.

This new strategy, along with the launch of a new API in April, seems to mark a growing confidence in the potential of the global micro-outsourcing market. Could it become the standard way smaller companies seek services and hire professionals around the world?

The opportunity identified by txteagle involves tasks like “describing the contents of an image, rating the quality of Web search results, or transcribing and translating text from another language.” (Read Kate’s original article on Technology Review) The platform is based on unique tasks that are difficult for even the most advanced artificial intelligence but that are relatively simple for untrained workers. Interesting economies can be achieved in the distribution of work to nations where micropayments are a significant source of income. (i.e. places where $3 per day is at or above the common working wage)

Txteagle continues the trend we’re seeing of nontraditional work arrangements.  Factors like data transferability, the increased ease of breaking work into separate tasks, and the development of tools to track, aggregate and assess the quality of work performed remotely have made this happen faster than we ever thought possible. The shuffling of the typical work-life arrangement into patterns that better fit the needs of an increasingly non-traditional workforce has had a huge impact both on both domestic and global business. These trends will likely accelerate as technologies that allow more seamless video-conferencing and cloud-based collaboration continue to emerge.

The upcoming Future of Crowdsourcing Summit will bring together a group of leaders with a wide array of perspectives on crowdsourcing technologies and the emerging opportunities that they are helping to make into reality.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear what you think of txteagle’s approach to mobile crowdsourcing, let me know in the comments!

Imagine your favorite bar or restaurant, everyone is there carousing and having a good time. The night is just starting to kick off and the day’s murmur of activity is building to a roar. As the evening crowd rolls in, the whole atmosphere of the place relaxes. Everyone is having a great time, talking loudly, gesticulating wildly and generally just letting loose. You approach a table of friends, eager to join in on the banter…

But instead of their usual dialogue – talk of work and kids and life – you find in its place a lively exchange of ideas. One of your friends is mid pitch on a new idea he just had that combines the power of solar energy and crowdsourcing to select the best potential sites for new energy businesses. You grab a seat eager to hear what she’s saying, but, just as you do, another of your friends jumps in. Now he’s off on a tangent about how a new opt in recommendation engine could redefine the publishing model into something truly sustainable.

If this happened to you, it just might happen that you’d be in one of the latest gatherings of the Digital Cowboys. The Digital Cowboys hold monthly gatherings just like these where people get together to share ideas for new digital businesses and ultimately select a “winning” idea that carries the night. The idea for the gatherings comes from the minds behind AD:DYNAMO and is quickly opening eyes as to the possibilities of local, crowdsourced idea generation.

The most recent gathering resulted in Rock Me, a digital business that “offers the public the opportunity to fill venues like the under-utilised Cape Town Stadium with their choice of musicians and artists.” The idea incorporates fundamental crowdsourcing concepts like the ability to vote and interact around the potential bands and musicians.

What the Digital Cowboys do on a small scale, the upcoming Future of Crowdsourcing Summit does on steroids: bringing together lots of intelligent, forward thinking people to talk about all the combinations and possibilities. We hope you’ll join in on the fun!

In the meantime, imagine you’re back in that restaurant and its your turn to pitch an idea, what would you propose?

Let us know in the comments!

There’s a great balanced article on IT website ZDnet in Dion Hinchcliffe’s Enterprise 2.0 blog about the potential of crowdsourcing.   It’s a good introduction and overview of the subject.

Hinchcliffe starts out by pointing out the two main different business models for crowdsourcing – one selecting a winning result, one more collaborative, which are summarised in the graphic below.  In my view there are also some business models which utilize both methods, such as Quirky.com.

Source: ZDNet

He then cites a Forrester research paper which suggests 61% of adults in the US are prepared to “co-create.”  This suggests huge potential and a “vast and ready reservoir of talent that can be tapped into inexpensively by most businesses.”

He also argues that most of the crowdsourcing start-ups in this area tend to be focused on serving smaller companies, who do not have the financial muscle to achieve through traditional means what crowdsourcing can offer.    I agree with Hinchcliffe, but I also wonder if this is partly cultural – a suspicion from large corporates outside the technology and media sectors that crowdsourcing is a fad, and that there are lingering questions of risk and quality.

Hinhcliffe then suggests four common sense steps for businesses who want to dip their toe in the crowdsourcing pond.  These are

1. Look for areas where traditional methods aren’t working in your business today

2. Identify candidate crowdsourcing services

3. Engage in pilots with your candidate services

4. Move successful pilots into operation while cultivating new contributors

It’s a fairly straight forward approach but his message is to give crowdsourcing a try, which judging by general media coverage and the levels of interest generated, really is happening right now.

This chart from Google Trends shows just how much crowdsourcing is the topic of the day.

When Jeff Howe’s original article in Wired magazine The Rise of Crowdsourcing put the concept and word into widespread visibility, the massive spike in search traffic showed that we were primed and ready for it.

Jeff Howe’s book Crowdsourcing , helped along by some solid promotion, also generated substantial interest.

It was only after that that crowdsourcing started to grow as a topic of general interest, gradually and consistently moving upwards over the last two years until surging over the last three months.

I’m not aware of anything in particular that has led to that surge, other than the fact that the idea has reached critical mass, and business and society today is completely ready for it.

Which is exactly why we are running Future of Crowdsourcing Summit .