Crowdsourcing

I read Crowdsourcing in a day. 

I'd taken it to the hospital, where I was due to spend a few hours having intravenous medication. 

As so often happens in hospitals, the time stretched from a few hours to many and I finished the book and promptly left it behind. 

Damn. 

I'd turned the corners on so many pages and written notes about ideas to discuss with friends and clients. Even if I got another copy it wouldn't have all that...

It was exciting. I realised reading it that of course fundraising - or at least the type of online and direct mail fundraising I do - is a type of crowdsourcing.

Kiva (www.kiva.com) is a fantastic example. You can go there and search through the profiles of a range of micro-entrepreneurs in a huge range of countries, and lend a maximum of US$25 to any one entrepreneur. 

You get wonderful reports of their progress (translated by volunteers) and can re-lend the money when you get it back. Does anyone ever keep it and not re-lend, I wonder?

I went to our meeting dying to figure out how to utilise crowdsourcing for myself. What a great concept. I wondered ... could I crowdsource copy? Or perhaps copy concepts? 

We decided to discuss this book by looking at each person's business, one-by-one. to see what the concept of crowdsourcing could offer.

Our mediator hadn't finished the book but was determined to get a website up for herself, if only as an online brochure so that when people heard of her they could look her up. 

I wondered after the meeting whether she could crowdsource mediation materials and guides. Other people could contribute ideas and sources. It would get people coming to her site, give them a way to be involved.

The shop owner and the advertising person were not at the meeting. The publisher saw lots of opportunities - but the challenge lay in how to be unique. As a boutique publisher, she produces publications for her clients, who then give them to their customers. 

Perhaps her travel magazines could be written by contributors? Nice idea, but already done.

The content of her in-house magazines could be contributed by readers, but would they? And she'd have to get the client buy-in. Would she be doing herself out of business?

The producer of custom and specialist stationery was already on her way, having implemented Google analytics and re-done her website. 

The fun of this book club is not that we read and analyse the books to see what we think of them. The value lies in what we can get out of the book to use now, for our businesses, and in what we can contribute to each other.

The idea of crowdsourcing is nagging away at me. I'm sure it must have some other possibilities ... perhaps I'll get another copy of the book.

Next book: The Three Laws of Performance. Rewriting the Future of Your Organisation and Your Life, by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan.

Our first meeting - Groundswell

We started with Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. 

I had just read it and recommended it to my friend Gillian, because I knew that she was determined to climb the new media mountain and was pursuing every avenue she could find to educate herself and devise a strategy that would keep her ahead of the game.

I was inspired by the possibilities. I could see lots of ideas for my clients (I am a fundraising consultant) and I was filled with enthusiasm about what was in it for others.

The idea for a Women's Business Book Club came up at Gillian's Christmas party. She always has fabulous parties, full of interesting people who do fascinating things, and wonderful conversations.

We talked about starting a book club, then somehow the conversation came round to business books. The response and interest in a business book club was overwhelming, so we began with just a handful of people.

One member works in advertising. Another creates high quality and custom stationery products. Another is in publishing and another has a wonderful shop full of beautiful things. The final member is a consultant mediator.

I was hungry to work out how to apply the ideas I found in Groundswell. It was full of things about how to use social media, what social media was and lots of juicy case studies about how other people were using it.

A friend of mine heads up a major health charity. I was dying to send him the book so he could read about the online communities set up by similar charities in the US.

Some of us were familiar with most of the practical information about what social media was and how to use it. But some had never come across it, and the possibilities it presented for their work and their businesses was mind blowing.

The retail shop full of gorgeous things need no longer just have a Sydney audience. It could be marketing around the world, taking advantage of the "long tail".

The specialist stationery business could be building communities of people using the products, discussing how they use them and recounting stories relating to them.

The mediator was struggling, trying to come to grips with the idea of setting up an initial website.

The publisher, whose business is profoundly affected by the move from offline to online, was deeply attentive, grappling with how to apply these issues to her business.

The member whose home we were meeting in blew in late, having come from a wonderful Greek wedding (unfortunately no plate smashing) to join us and dive into the discussion.

Our conclusion was that the book was interesting, fascinating even, and marked the beginning of something big for us. Next book: Crowdsourcing, by Jeff Howe.