Crowdsourcing For Dummies

Give your business the edge with crowd-power! Crowdsourcing is an innovative way of outsourcing tasks, problems or requests to a group or community online. There are lots of ways business can use crowdsourcing to their advantage: be it crowdsourcing product ideas and development, design tasks, market research, testing, capturing or analyzing data, and even raising funds. It offers access to a wide pool of talent and ideas, and is an exciting way to engage the public with your business.

Crowdsourcing For Dummies is your plain-English guide to making crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and open innovation work for you. It gives step-by-step advice on how to plan, start and manage a crowdsourcing project, where to crowdsource, how to find the perfect audience, how best to motivate your crowd, and tips for troubleshooting.

Auteur

David Alan Grier is a writer, teacher and consultant on labour, technology, communication and management. He is Associate Professor at George Washington University, where he teaches International Science and Technology Policy. He is also the 2013 President of the IEEE Computer Society.

Contenu

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Conventions Used in This Book 2

What You're Not to Read 2

Foolish Assumptions 3

How This Book Is Organised 4

Part I: Understanding Crowdsourcing Basics 4

Part II: Looking at the Different Forms of Crowdsourcing 4

Part III: Building Skill 4

Part IV: Getting All You Can Get from the Crowd 5

Part V: The Part of Tens 5

Icons Used in This Book 5

Where to Go from Here 6

Part I: Understanding Crowdsourcing Basics 7

Chapter 1: People Power: Getting a Feel for Crowdsourcing 9

What is This Thing Called Crowdsourcing? 10

Seeing how crowdsourcing works 10

Looking at crowdsourcing forms 11

Considering Why People Crowdsource 13

Introducing three key strengths 13

Benefitting from crowdsourcing 14

Considering reliability 15

Being a Crowdworker 16

Becoming a Crowdsourcer 17

Chapter 2: Getting to Know the Forms of Crowdsourcing and Crowdmarkets 19

Harnessing the Power of Divided Labour 20

Keeping the job whole 20

Splitting the job into big pieces 21

Dividing the job as small as you can 22

Letting the crowd divide the job 23

Using crowdsourcing to raise money 24

Looking at the Rules that Govern How Crowdmarkets Work 25

Distinguishing between contract and contest markets 27

Understanding collaborative and independent crowdworking 27

Combining the two rules 28

Chapter 3: Infiltrating the Crowd 29

Following the Crowdworker's Steps 30

Taking Lessons from Your Time as a Crowdworker 32

Lesson 1: Crowdworkers have names and reputations 32

Lesson 2: Crowds need training 33

Lesson 3: Crowds want clear instructions 34

Lesson 4: Crowds are free to move 34

Joining the Staff of Wikipedia 35

Registering as a worker 35

Choosing a task 36

Completing a task 36

Submitting a task 36

Leaping into the Market with Amazon's Mechanical Turk 37

Registering as a worker 37

Selecting the task 38

Qualifying and completing the task 39

Donning the White Lab Coat: Zooniverse 41

Chapter 4: Joining the Crowdforce 43

Deciding to Join the Crowdforce 44

Considering Your Options 46

Looking at microtasks 47

Competing for the contest 48

Lining up for macrotasks 48

Wading into self-organised crowds 49

Searching for careers in crowdfunding 50

Getting Up and Running on a Macrotask Crowdmarket 51

Choosing a market 51

Setting yourself up on the market 52

Building your portfolio 53

Protecting Yourself as a Macrotasker 53

Making the Bid in Macrotasking 54

The proposal 55

The covering letter 55

The résumé 57

Setting the price 57

Learning from the process 58

Completing the Macrotask 58

Remembering the goal 58

Communicate, communicate, communicate 59

Working across cultures 59

Keeping good records 60

Getting an extra recommendation 60

Part II: Looking at the Different Forms of Crowdsourcing 61

Chapter 5: Creating Crowdcontests 63

Reaping the Benefits of Crowdcontests 63

Deepening understanding 64

Faster, better, cheaper 65

Understanding Types of Crowdcontest 66

Running a Crowdcontest 67

Stating the goal 68

Writing the rules 69

Publicising the results 72

Improving the Crowdcontest 73

Splitting the contest 74

Building a stronger crowd 75

Running a series of contests 76

Considering an Example: The Business Logo 76

Running a logo contest yourself 76

Using a contest service to run the contest for you 77

Chapter 6: Raising Money with Crowdfunding 79

Knowing the Basics of Crowdfunding 80

Seeing crowdfunding as a community activity 80

Using the crowdmarket 81

Deciding between all-or-nothing funding or partial funding 82

Understanding the fee 83

Running a Crowdfunding Project 84

Writing the budget 84

Describing your project 85

Setting a deadline for a decision 86

Contacting the crowd 87

Considering an Example: Creating a Playground 88

Building a budget 89

Writing a letter 89

Setting a timeline 89

Getting the crowd 91

Accumulating Equity for a Company 91

Making a pitch 92

Using a platform 93

Paying the fees and getting the funds 93

Attracting the crowd 95

Waiting for results 96

Examining the results 96

Using non-equity funding 98

Chapter 7: Making Use of Macrotasks 99

Getting to Grips with Macrotasking 100

Seeing the Benefits of Macrotasks 101

Identifying Macrotasks 103

Thinking process, not organisation 103

Identifying independent tasks 105

Choosing what's important 105

Finding a fixed deadline 106

Requiring special skills 106

Preparing the Macrotask 107

Naming the manager107

Putting together a statement of work for macrotask workers 108

Beginning the Macrotask 110

Choosing a site 111

Posting the project 111

Inviting workers to your job 112

Choosing a Macrotasker 112

Reading the covering letter 113

Reviewing the proposal 113

Assessing the portfolio 113

Checking the reputation 114

Judging qualifications 114

Interviewing 115

Making the selection 116

Managing the work 117

Protecting intellectual property 118

Ending the Macrotask 118

Paying the macrotasker and closing the books 118

Assessing the experience 119

Considering an Example: Creating an App 119

Checking that your task is a macrotask 120

Writing the statement of work 120

Posting the job 121

Hiring the macrotasker 122

Following the work 122

Ending the macrotask 123

Chapter 8: Managing with Microtasks 125

Identifying Tasks That You Can Microsource 125

Knowing How the Microtasking Process Works 127

Keeping tasks short and simple 127

Creating the basic task 128

Finding the basic data 128

Writing the instructions 130

Pricing the tasks 131

Training and validating workers 132

Checking the results 132

Assembling the work 134

Working through an Example with Mechanical Turk 135

Creating the task 135

Laying out the work 138

Starting with a test run 142

Reviewing the work and retrieving the results 143

Reviewing the prices of your microtasks 144

Chapter 9: Combining the Intelligence of Self-Organised Crowds 145

Getting to Grips with Self-Organised Crowds 146

Determining What You Need the Crowd to Do: Information Gathering and Decision Making 147

Gathering information 148

Making a decision 150

Gathering and deciding 150

Designing the Process 151

Finding the crowd 152

Preparing clear rules 153

Motivating the crowd 154

Looking at the results 155

Organising a Prediction Market 156

Finding prediction markets 157

Establishing the rules 158

Laying down the rules 159

Assessing the result 160

**Part III: Buildi…