Normally we run for the hills when we hear things like, “5 Unbelievable Social Media Tips your Business NEEDS to Succeed,” or “10 Things to Kick Start your Businesses Social Media Marketing Strategy.” Most of the time these articles just outline ideas that are common sense and are not worth the time it takes to read them.

There are a few exceptions, one of them being when Ross Kimbarovsky, co-founder of crowdSPRING, is the writer. crowdSPRING is a place where small businesses can crowdsource their graphic and web design needs.

Ross does a great job of outlining 10 suggestions for small businesses to get into social Media Marketing, as well as basic and advanced strategies for each. The lengthy article covers the basics of getting started with a wide variety of Social Media tools.

Check out the article over at Readaloo,

10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tools, by Ross Kimbarovsky: http://www.readaloo.com/10-small-business-social-media-marketing-tips-10

- ( Ryan Offenhartz )

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eine Plattform die unterschiedliche Ressourcen an einer Stelle zusammenführt, in Form von Entwicklern, Designern usw. die Besonderheit des Chicagoer Unternehmens ist, dass hier schon mehr als 40.000 Freelancer und Entwickler über eine Plattform allokiert werden.

Mehr unter dem nachfolgenden Link. Dieser Link führt auf eine externe Website, bitte lesen Sie zuvor den Disclaimer.

http://www.crowdspring.com/

http://3vuonline.wordpress.com/

Check out the Latest updates for the 3VU mass add friend follow tool at http://www.3VU.com

ufathom, freelance, outsourcing, outsourced  bpo, homeshoring, international, india, russia, USA, UK, it, programming, seo, work, legal, accounting, engineering, designer, designers, writers, translation, find, global, procurement, elance, odesk, rentacoder, getafreelancer, 99designs, crowdspring, 37signals, freelanceswitchoffshoring, kpo, ito, jobs, web, design, website,

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If you find an blogger you like, please Join Me in following Them.

My Thoughts Enclosed…Rb

If you find any broken Tweets or Links, please report them in the comment section.

If you like what you see, may I recommend you start following me on Twitter to enjoy the benefits of real-time content as it materializes.

If you choose to follow @rlavigne42, please leave me a comment. I will make sure to check out your Tweets in return.

If you see a Tweet you appreciate, please Pay it Forward by ReTweeting it.

If you find an blogger you like, please Join Me in following Them.

My Thoughts Enclosed…Rb

If you find any broken Tweets or Links, please report them in the comment section.

If you like what you see, may I recommend you start following me on Twitter to enjoy the benefits of real-time content as it materializes.

If you choose to follow @rlavigne42, please leave me a comment. I will make sure to check out your Tweets in return.

If you see a Tweet you appreciate, please Pay it Forward by ReTweeting it.

If you find an blogger you like, please Join Me in following Them.

My Thoughts Enclosed…Rb

One of my favorite new finds from the last few months, Edward Boches, recently offered me this encouragement: “Read. Think. Write.” I’ve been knee-deep in his first two objectives on this controversial topic, primarily in the advertising, marketing and design worlds for the past few months. Here goes the third.

Crowdsourcing isn’t new. It goes back way further than this, but 10 years ago, the rap/rock band Korn, decided they had a strong enough following to which they would entrust their next album design (Issues). A winner was selected, the reward was seeing your design in every CD store in the U.S., and the band accomplished what they set out to do: they empowered and connected with their community.

In the past decade, technology and platforms have been developed that allow the community to mobilize around a brand or product much quicker and in much larger numbers. I won’t stay at the surface but for a few lines here, but social media has spawned a new trend…and that’s probably an understatement. Social media allows consumers to freely comment on, discuss and ultimately change the brands they care about. Once brands realized this, why wouldn’t they take advantage of this new, powerful crowd?

From a marketing standpoint, the benefits are twofold as I see it:

1. Empowering your consumers builds a stronger community. It’s Social Media 101.

2. Marketers can’t help but notice the financial appeal. Everyone has access to these design communities via platforms such as CrowdSpring or 99Designs. Hopefully your agency offers more value than production design or development because marketers can get hundreds of design submissions or open source contributions for next to nothing. That should make you a little nervous.

Obviously, “benefit” number 2 is where the controversy lies. The trend is drifting into the scary zone for agencies and designers who fear that some of their services are becoming commoditized. Some agencies will protest; some will embrace it. Crispin Porter + Bogusky caught quite a bit of backlash, offering a mere $1,000 prize for a logo contest for Brammo. They received almost 800 submissions and a lot of pissed off designers who started a Twitter rebellion. Fact of the matter is, CP+B and Brammo probably received the PR they were hoping for – the only explanation for such a pathetic reward.

Agencies are going to be forced to embrace this, ensuring that they offer A LOT more value to their clients than development or design. Those that fight it are going to get hurt.

There’s your intro. Here’s my contribution:

*I’m working under the assumption that you’ve quit trying to fight or deny crowdsourcing and have embraced it as a potential value-add for your clients.

Here’s the question you have to wrestle with: do you ethically approach the topic or do you use it, using the design and development communities in the process? I may have been a bit leading in how I posed that question, but let me build some context around it.


Chipotle, a brand I’ve always admired, recently closed their mychipotle.com video crowdsourcing campaign (sidenote: this entire campaign is under the guidance of Chipotle’s national agency of record Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners). On the surface, what they set out to do is an example of crowdsourcing at its best. Similar to MyStarbucks or Dell’s Idea Storm, they created a platform on which their community could engage and contribute to the brand. Good so far. They initiated a video contest, asking members of the community to create a story around their favorite burrito. Still looking good. Up to this point, they’ve utilized crowdsourcing for the first benefit I listed above. They have a unique and strong enough brand with which their community wants to engage. Rightfully so, they let them.

Here’s where it starts getting messy.

I had lunch with a regional marketer for Chipotle a couple of months ago. As an ad guy, of course I would love the opportunity to work with a brand like Chipotle, but my primary purpose for the meeting was to make the contact and learn a little bit about their regional strategies. I didn’t bring up a potential partnership once, though this woman knew me and my agency. As we wrapped up lunch (at Chipotle of course…and no pun intended), she smiled, shook my hand and…wait for it…suggested that my agency create a video and submit it to the contest. I thanked her for the lunch but won’t be having another one in the near future.

I checked out the site after our meeting and read the fine print. Chipotle owned the rights to every video that was submitted…not just the winner.

Chipotle and BSS&P had the community, the platform and the contest idea to do something really great and strengthen their community. But they screwed it up. (1) By inviting (or even allowing) agencies to participate, they didn’t make it about the community; they made it a way to take advantage of people and save some money. (2) They further took advantage of the crowd by claiming rights to all video submissions, whether chosen or not. I don’t even have to explain how messed up that is.

Chipotle, sorry to burn you. I love your brand, your stores and your food. But you messed this one up. And to be sure I’m staying consistent with my comments on Ben Kunz’s Starbucks rant, I searched for an opportunity to privately provide this feedback and couldn’t find one.

Summary: Crowdsourcing has tremendous benefit in strengthening community loyalty to a brand; it can also be abused. If you haven’t yet, embrace it, and start thinking about why your clients need it, but be sure you do it the right way.

Just got back from the Vancouver launch of “Twitterville”, authored by Shel Israel. For those who are not familiar with Shel, he has also written “Naked Conversations”, that one co-authored with Robert Scoble (@scobleizer).

Shel Israel & Ferg Devins

A good chunk of the Vancouver Twitter community turned out for the launch at Canvas Lounge. Some of the people I came across were @jaypiddy, @hummingbird604, @CathyBrowne (who’s actually mentioned in the book!), @raincoaster, @cognoscento, @johnbiehler, @tinybites and @bluelimemedia, among many others.
Shel graced us with an entertaining and informative presentation about the book. Here are some of the points, along with a few pictures for good measure:

• People, communications and conversations are changing. Whereas prior to social media conversations took place from the “top down” (i.e. – from the upper ladders of corporations down to end consumers), the advent and adoption of social media have reversed that.
• Shel’s perspective is that Twitter has a small-town feeling, where conversations start out similarly to two neighbours chatting across one fence. At first, the chat may be superficial, but then a deeper rapport is created. Conversations are one-on-one. Twitterville tells stories that were relayed to Shel through Twitter.
• Wondering how to stand out in the social media crowd? “Outgenerous” your competition. By giving more (advice, that is), people get to know that you’re the person to go for insight in your field… which increases your reputation.
• Social media gives companies a chance to humanize their brands (as told by @MolsonFerg – Ferg Devins – head of public affairs in Canada for Molson Coors and one of the case studies in Twitterville)
• Wondering if anyone can make money off Twitter? Just look at the example of @CrowdSPRING. According to Shel, CrowdSpring’s business model is basically to tweet RFPs. The company makes a 15% revenue based on the value of each proposal that is approved.
• Yes, Twitter can be used in more “traditional” fields. Just look at how doctors at Henry Ford Hospital “tweetcasted” a live, robotic surgery – one tweet at a time. time. Results from tweets kept on arriving even after the surgery was over: because the type of surgery performed is elective, the increased exposure created more inquiries from private clients. More students were interested in practicing at Henry Ford. More innovative doctors were keen to bringing their skills to the hospital.
  

  Shel Israel

  Shel Israel explained that his attraction to Twitter is that it is one tool which allows people to act more like in real-life. Hence why it’s probably so popular.

Other observations, these from the question & answer period:

• Instead of monitoring what everyone is saying about its brand, Dell only looks at conversations coming from those with slightly positive or slightly negative perceptions. They ignore what comes from consumers who have pretty much made up their minds that Dell sucks. Instead, they focus on consumers who they have a chance to transform into advocates. To do so, they use a mix of measurement tools that include Radian6 as well as… Google (who would’ve thought?)!
• Another member of the audience (I’m so sorry I didn’t catch his name. All I know is that he sounded slightly British) brought up a couple of very valid points: to measure your influence on Twitter, don’t look at you number of followers. Instead, examine how relevant your followers are to your message. Number of RTs is also a great index to measure the value of what you’re communicating.

Cathy Browne. She is in Twitterville!

Ok. It’s late at night, so this post is going out as is. Hope you get some good value from it!

Quercus, Inc. Logo

UPDATE: Here is our new logo!

UPDATE 9/9/2009: We are now down to three options and I’ll take it from here. Thank you very much for everyone’s help! I really appreciate your input!

Heading out of this economic messiness – I hope – and it feels like time to update our logo. Quercus is

Current Quercus Logo

using an online community of graphic designers called CrowdSpring and we would love your help!

We will be choosing one design to become our new logo. Check them out and then weigh in below what you like, what you don’t like, etc. Don’t focus too much on the exact color or font but mostly the idea and feel of the logo.

Click here (link removed) to check ‘em out and then let me know your opinion below in the comments.

This will be fun! Thank you and have a great night!

Brad

::blowing the dust off::

::ahem::

hello.

crowdspring has a contest going on right now for in our own backyard. the monetary reward = zero. so, why participate? i’m not going to explain… i’ll just repost the contest and pass the info along… i’m sure you can figure it out for yourself.

Give Back

Give Back is our community’s way of helping worthy non-profit and charity causes. Creatives have agreed that for these special projects, no monetary awards will be given. crowdSPRING will waive its fees and will assist the organizations with posting their project. We will collaborate together to help those less fortunate. Give Back projects will work just like standard projects, including contracts, wrap-up, notifications, etc. To help the learning process along in these projects, we will encourage creatives to collaborate and to provide constructive feedback to each other.
We will find ways to recognize creatives whose work is selected. Among other things, we will write in our blog about the project and the winning creative, the work will appear on a Hall of Fame type page that we are developing (this page will display winning designs), and we will look for ways to profile the winning creative(s) on our home page.
We’ll ask the winning creatives in Give Back projects to propose other worthy non-profits and charities that can benefit from this effort. We hope that in this small way, we can help non-profits and charities around the world.

Creative brief

It’s been 40 years since the idealism of Robert F. Kennedy and the Johnson administration’s “War on Poverty” placed economic injustice at the heart of American political and social discourse. Since then poverty has fallen off the national agenda, and for decades the poor in America have been mostly invisible.

Today, the issue of poverty is again poised to emerge at the center of our national conversation. We have an idealistic new president who has known poverty and who has committed to working on the critical issues that are expanding poverty’s ranks. And, in stark contrast to the indifference of mainstream media, there is a renewed spirit of civic engagement, particularly among young people, in the United States today. Within this framework we find ourselves at a moment in American history when addressing poverty, particularly as it affects children, can once again be incorporated into mainstream priorities. After decades of inattention and even backlash directed at those of lesser means, our collective conscience is finally ripe for change.

In Our Own Backyard is an organization of photojournalists committed to the cause of social justice in the United States. Our inaugural project is a multimedia examination of the daily struggles of impoverished Americans: a comprehensive and innovative campaign that will affect the way the general public and policymakers think about poverty in America.

We believe that increasing awareness about poverty is a critical prelude to building support for initiatives that can create lasting impact in the lives of disadvantaged people. Visual story-telling is unique in its power to achieve that awareness, and it can foster empathy for those living in poverty in a way that text and statistics alone cannot.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT US:

We’re a non-profit 501(c)3 organization composed of photojournalists who are among the most recognized in our profession. Many have devoted their entire professional lives to documenting the lives of poor people and those who suffer injustice. A few are younger and more committed to the newer ‘personal vision’ esthetic, but most of us are classically trained and very content oriented. All of us want to use our skill to renew public awareness about domestic poverty. We believe that change doesn’t happen in a vacuum and that the failure of poverty to gain traction with the public is partially a result of the lack of visibility for the issue, partly a result of inaccurate or incomplete stereotypes about who poor people really are and the obstacles they face, and partly a result of a defeatist belief that poverty is insoluble. We intend to use the transformative power of visual journalism — still photography, multi-media and video — to address those misconceptions.

HERE IS WHAT WE NEED:

A great logo, simple yet dynamic, contemporary yet classic. Simple, right? LOL
Unless we want to change the color scheme on our website: http://inourownbackyard.us/ we should probably have a logo that works well with that color scheme.

OUR TARGET AUDIENCE IS:

We want this campaign to resonate across the broadest spectrum of people possible. I know that’s not particularly helpful, and, if you held a gun to my head I’d have to say our hope for change lies primarily with younger people: middle school, high-school and college students. They are the children of Obama, just as we were the children of Kennedy. Thirty years of Reaganism has left people my age disheartened and people 25-45 disengaged. (I would say disillusioned but that’s not possible, because for the most part they never had any illusions.) We want people to dream again of a more just society…with criteria for success greater than “Are you better off than you were four years ago?’

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okay… so, there it is. go HERE if you are interested in participating.

The Crowdsourcing Review explores the world of crowdsourcing from the client perspective – the positives, the negatives, and the possibilities and limitations of the concept.

Key topics:

• Reviews of the crowdsourcing experience from the client perspective
• Reviews of crowdsourcing sites and tools like 99designs.com, crowdspring.com, cambrianhouse.com, innocentive.com, innovationexchange.com, vencorps.com, and kluster.com
• Ratings and recommendations on crowdsourcing tools
• Crowdsourcing methods and best practices

Written by Thilde Vesterby

Echoing Green is a network of committed social entrepreneurs who believe that positive social change is within our reach. See their inspiring launch video:

Echoing Green consists of active investors who are not just providing funding. They also help the social entrepreneurs achieve their maximum potential through training, networking opportunities, consulting and championing

The network works on several social media platforms. They get their green messages across to more than 4,000 followers on Twitter, their videos have been viewed by more then 6,000 people on their own YouTube Channel, and they upload pictures on Flickr. The Echoing Green fan page on Facebook has a little more than 1,000 fans who interact with the social entrepreneurs. A lot of the content on the platforms is created on The Spark Blog on echoinggreen.org where you can read news, trends, stories and innovative ideas from the social entrepreneurs.

It seams as if Echoing Green is good at crowdsoursing too. Just take a look at their T-shirt designing contest; Designing for Change.

Here they encourage people to submit their design through crowdSPRING.com where each design is made public for votes. crowdSPRING.com is a creative community where you can post a creative project and get people all over the world to come up with solutions. We have made good use of crowdSPRING.com when we developed the logo for Mindjumpers and the logo and style for our latest project I do 30.

Echoing Green is a really inspiring website and excellent use of all the potential that lies in social media.

This is an image from another contest I had entered. The idea was to create a letter sized advertisement for a new product a company was selling. The theme for the advertisement was “like nothing you’ve seen before.” I quickly was asked to withdraw my entry because “we are an international corporate company that caters to large businesses. having a moose person in diapers is very inapropriate for our brand image. i would prefer if you withdraw it.”

Well I liked it…

Written by Jonas Klit Nielsen

It all started three months ago when the agency Think House and our agency bumped our heads together to try to come up with a campaign for an environmental cause that isn’t that sexy.

We are talking about laundry and saving CO2 by washing at 30°C instead of 60 – a small thing we all can do to help the environment.

See more of the campaign universe on Ido30.org

But it’s not just a story of washing at lower a temperature. It’s also a message; a statement and a clear signal to the politicians and the major companies attending the COP15 (The Climate Conference held in Copenhagen later this year), that we want more climate friendly choices so we as individuals can help our planet.

After looking into it, we decided that the only way to do this successfully was to develop the campaign with help from a lot of people that support the environment. We decided to let people that already do their laundry at 30°C set a good example and tell the rest of the world that whey do 30 – which is why we named the campaign I do 30.
So by using all the new media, like social networks, blogs, micro blogs and communities, we set off.

A few examples

When creating the logo for the campaign we used a crowdsourcing community called CrowdSpring which is a community of 30.000 creatives from all over the world. We posted our brief and the submissions started pouring in. We got more than 200 suggestions for a logo. We chose this one:

The idea for the web video was to show actual people from all over Europe, who believe in doing something for our planet. We decided to travel to Rome, London and Paris besides Copenhagen to meet people. We used social media like facebook and Twitter to get in contact with people who would either be in the video or help guide us in the different cities and help finding people who would be in the film. Everywhere we went people were fantastic, and a lot more people than you see in the video was filmed or helped out. Thanks to everybody who helped.

So now the campaign is on its way and we are hoping that a lot of people will help us spread the word about our little message, so we all can make a huge difference. People can join on either our facebook page or on ido30.org.

Next huge step of the campaign will be attending Roskilde Festival where you can find us in the Climate Community Area doing free laundry at 30 °C and exchanging warm beers for cold .  And of course enjoying the sun, music and party.

If you have any questions or ideas to make the campaign even better we would love to hear from you. Just send us an email at contact@ido30.org

The campaign is powered by the Danish bioinnovation company Novozymes who makes the enzymes in detergent that makes it possible to get your cloths clean at lower temperatures.

Visit I do 30 on Ido30.org on our blog or join the campaign on facebook.

Most often you don’t have too much choice in your business card, you get the company standard. Generally you can choose which contact details are listed – I haven’t seen a twitter address on any from my company yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Occasionally you can chose some style or colour detail. However if you run your own company you can choose every detail.

Tod Defren, a principal at SHIFT Communications, chose a social media option to develop a design for his business cards, posting a brief and a price on CrowdSPRING. He’s pretty happy with the results, but says it was done as an experiment and seems rather amused that the negative feedback from some in the design community. (There are some other social media options to bid for offers on design work, Elance covers more than just design, Zooppa is more advertising).

I like several of the results collected by Tod Defren, and I don’t agree that he’s “outsourced the identity of his company” the visual identity has been defined and a brief given for some talented freelance designers to take a chance. I hope he gets a result there that he’s happy using, and one of the designers gets the money and the credit for it.

If none of those designs appeal perhaps he can talk to this guy who’s spent 25 years perfecting a business card.

The graphic design market is gaining momentum via social media and blogs. It seems the current way to introduce myself into it is to chime in about spec work online — or as I call it, the logo contest model — as used on sites like CrowdSpring and 99Designs, as opposed to RFQ sites like Elance and Guru. So here goes.

The first thing I’ve decided is not to lose sleep over the existence of such sites, or bother with movements that protest them. They serve a niche, and as a businessman who likes the Golden Rule, I know there are expenses I’ll have for which I’ll wish there was a crowdsourcing portal, so I can compare bids. Like the TV commercial says, “When ______s compete, you win.”

“Yeah,” you might say, “but spec work is wrong.” It depends.  

What’s Your Objective?

If you approach your craft with the goal of keeping busy (designing more, marketing less), then you’ll love CrowdSpring. You will also starve to death. If your goal is to maximize your pay per hour worked, averaging in your necessary business maintenance and marketing time — call it the Golden Ratio — you’ll keep CrowdSpring to a minimum.

Here’s my plan to integrate contest-type sites into my workflow. (I’m posting it in the form of advice for you, but understand, this is based on the flimsiest first- and second-hand experience, but mostly having thought about it for a while, and reading this, and this. It’s what I plan to do.)

Don’t bother with these sites until you get some momentum in more traditional, quote-based work. Once you have, don’t never spend more than a few minutes on these contest sites per day, probably a total of an hour a week.

On the sites, you can search-limit and sort contests by kind of work, time remaining, number of entries, or prize amount. (And yes, I’m purposely using sweepstakes language. Sue me.) If there were a way of sorting the contests in order of suckiest entries, that would be ideal. In lieu of that, sort in order of number of entries, starting with zero.

Open each entry in order, without too much regard for the prize (unless it’s a laughably small amount; use your discretion). Read the brief, and use your favorite brain exercise to see if an idea comes to mind. If after a few minutes nothing does, or you don’t like what does, stop, flush your brain, and go to the next one.

If after reading the brief you get an idea that blows you away (and don’t we all love it when that happens?), commit it to vector immediately, skipping a pencil sketch, if you can. When you’re about 80% happy with it, where at least the basic idea is represented well, ready it for submission. Noodle it at least three more times, improving, honing, and put those into the queue. Don’t forget, these people are expecting to buy this idea as is, and you want that, because any custom work is diluting your Golden Ratio of money per hour. Besides, five or six variations from one contestant tends to intimidate the next visitor, and drives this contest down the next guy’s list sorted by entries. But just to emphasize, your entries all have that same kick-ass basic idea. If they don’t, don’t enter them.

Once you prepare the art and make thumbnails (GIFs or PNGS; see their instructions), only then do you enter them together, using pleasant, persuasive language in the accompanying text. Don’t let minutes go with only one entry; you’re being watched.

Once you enter one contest, or if after an hour of searching nothing strikes you as worthy of entry, leave, and get back to work. If something else pops into your mind later, return, and if there are still no entrants, or the entries are suitably sucky, submit it. If you find yourself daydreaming about the design challenge, trying to solve the puzzle, break that habit before it starts, and get back to work. People holding logo contests aren’t paying you to think. At least not for long periods of time.

Carpet Bomb vs. Sniper Rifle

The objective here, clearly, is not to carpet-bomb the contests with entries, which works better in a quotes-based environment, but rather to target the most likely contests, like a sniper.

If your entry is as good as you think it is, the entrant will email you wanting changes. Depending on what they are, this is a good thing. If they’re suggestions on how to better stage the basic idea, or requests to change the typeface or color scheme, you can assume you’ve hooked him. Even if he suggests a rather drastic change, try to see the big picture; it might be as good an approach as yours, or better. Handle the changes the way you would any other client, and submit. Make each transaction a design revision as well as text; don’t just converse with him. Time is money, and he set the price, not you.

This flow of requests for revisions might or might not stop. If they go beyond a certain point (which you set), have prepared a boilerplate statement that goes something like,

I think we both see the merit of my idea, or you wouldn’t be asking for so many revisions. Experience tells me that, when it’s time to apply the logo to various media and surfaces and sizes, changes and variations need to be made anyway. Tell you what: I offer free revisions (you set a limit here) once you become my client, and I can give you my full attention and range of services. Looking forward to working with you on Monday (whatever day the contest ends).

In other words, “Negotiations are over. You love me. So pick me.” (Unlike this post, use only business words, not contest words.)

The day before the drawing, send him a reminder that you’re looking forward to working with him, and attach a revision to your best entry, even if cosmetic.

If you win, make good on your promises, follow through, and get him to know how serious you are about his happiness. There should be a sensation of a switch being thrown. Before, he was an entrant. Now, he’s a client!

If you lose, chalk it up to experience, be glad you limited your lost time this week, put the best pieces into your portfolio, and move on.

Why Bother With Contests At All?

Ultimately, with your Golden Ratio in mind, you’ll use both the contest sites and the quote sites as marketing opportunities. Once you’ve worked with any of these submitters, when they need more design work, you want to loom as large in their mental (or literal) Rolodex as the listing site. Neither you nor he are contractually obligated to ever again use the service that introduced you. You want them to go back to you, and forego the sites — both kinds.

They think they’re shopping for art. But you’re shopping for clients. Until you build that clientele, since you have to make a living, emphasize quoting, and frequent Elance, et al. But don’t rule out contests.

P.S. I look forward to getting a transcript, in whatever form, of the “Is Spec Work Evil?” session yesterday at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin. Please comment here to tell us all where to find it. Thanks.

Crowdsourcing

In recent years we’ve seen a shift in the way Stock Photography has been managed. Photography has gone from a very expensive, tightly managed, billion dollar industry down to what is now a $10 per picture business. With the help of iStockphoto and other other stock photo sites online, you can buy a royalty free license for between $5 – $10, a far cry from where we were just a few years ago.

Don’t look now, creative services is the next industry under attack. With the availability of Adobe Creative Suite we’ve turned everyone with a computer and access to a peer-to-peer file sharing server into a graphic designer. And anyone who can muddle their way through a Myspace web page design, now considers themselves a designer. And now this new crop of creative spark plugs have an outlet online and it’s called – crowdsourcing.

There are several websites popping up that give designers, whether good or bad, trained or not, skilled journeymen or doing their first project, the chance at doing real design work, the key word being chance. Customers post creative briefs directly to the community, which then competes to create a design that best fits the clients’ needs. A typical “assignment” will draw dozens of submissions. The winner receives a nominal fee (as little as $200), and the client receives a logo or website design at a fraction of what a professional agency might charge. The losers get zip. Computer Operators from around the world play Designer and submit their work in response to the posted creative brief – with hopes the client will like what they’ve done and they’ll be paid.

Truth is, nearly a hundred or more computer operators will participate and only one “winner” will be paid. This is something this industry has long frowned against called Spec Work.

The AIGA and other industry leaders have come out to support the No Spec Work movement launching http://www.no-spec.com/, while computer operators all over the world get to play art director and designer with hopes of maybe being paid for their walk into the world of working creatives.

Is graphic design, both print and web, going the way of stock photography?

Several recent articles have been written on this topic, and I’ve collected them here. You owe it to yourself and the future of your career to read these posts and understand what is happening. Join the hundreds who post comments to each article online, get involved, or not. Something is going to come of this mess – who knows what.

Wired recently posted a follow up article on Crowdsourcing, referencing an earlier article included below:
Is Crowdsourcing Evil?
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/03/is-crowdsourcin.html

They reference their earlier story on the topic also interesting here:
Rise of the Crowd
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html

Wired mentions its participation in a debate at the 2009 SXSW, Sunday March 15 featuring Wired Editor Jeff Howe, Designer David Carson, Mike Samson from Crowdspring and others. Hopefully we’ll find transcripts of this conversation soon.

Forbes writes a one sided story about Crowdspring.com and the sparks start flying.
Forbes reports on Crowdspring
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0216/062.html

AIGA responds to their position on spec work: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/position-spec-work

Designers unite to create:
http://www.no-spec.com/

In response to all of this, Cheeses of Nazareth commissioned the $50 logo and post their accounts of the story are here:
http://www.160over90.com/blog/2009/02/17/the-50-dollar-logo-experiment/

It´s simple – it´s called crowdSPRING!

crowdSPRING is an online community that brings marketeers and creatives together. Right now there is more than 10.000 creatives from all over the world working through crowdSPRING.

7 days – and less than 350$ later we got more than 80 different logos submitted by people from Canada, USA, India, Argentina, United Kingdom, Rumania, Australia and Belgium to choose from.

It starts with us posting a brief on our project, and putting out a reward – we could go with what ever – but the higher the reward – the more likely it is that people submit to oure project. An important little note is that crowdSPRING guaranteed that we will get 25 submissions or we will get our money back.

During the 7 days – we give the creatives feedback on their submission – and make sure that its going in the direction of something we like.

Our project were – make a logo for our company “MINDJUMPERS – Viral Marketing – With a special focus on social networks”

This is our new logo!

Made by edtz from Singapore

It´s not the last time we will use crowdSPRING….

Se how crowdSPRING works

ame across this post this AM, compliments of Smash Magazine and recommended by @crowdSPRING. I found these images VERY Inspiring…

35 Beautiful City Photos

KoRaYeM

Cairo, Egypt

miguelyn

Rapanui, Chile

Gaston Batistini

Paris, France

Joan Leong

Singapore

Portiman

Rome, Italy

szeke

Machu Picchu, Peru

Thomas Ebenhan

Lisbon, Portugal

Foureyes

Badalin, China

David Giral

Bastide du Village de Monpazier, Périgord, Dordogne, France

Serijo_r

Saint Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow, Russia

Juanma Alvarez

Valencia, Spain

Ævar Guðmundsson

Reykjavik, Iceland

Giuseppe Finocchiaro

Oia, Greece

Alex Marlowski

Haram al-Sharif, Jerusalem

Svensson

Paris, France

Thomas Ebenhan

Berlin, Germany

Franco Farina

Barcelona, Spain

Colin Allan

Carrbridge, UK

Katarina Stefanovic

London, UK

Joaquim Granell

Pisa, Italy

Razu Ryza

Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

Eric Toriel

Marrakech, Morocco

Ben Visbeek

Zugspitze, Germany / Austria

Joep Roosen

New York City, US

Andrea Kamal

Hamburg, Germany

Franco Farina

Barcelona, Spain

Andrey Permitin

Moscow, Russia

Ruben Seabra

Madrid, Spain

David Rocaberti

Tokyo, Japan

Jasbir Singh

The Great Mosque, Makkah, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Sean Mantey

Newcastle, UK

Joep Roosen

Rotterdam, Netherlands

Joanot

Giza Plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt

butterflyscream

Pisa, Italy

Istvan Kadar

Pura Luhur Uluwatu Temple, Bali

André Luiz Martins

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Fulvio Pellegrini

New York City, United States

Last Click

Mark Bowman

Lilla Torget (Little Square) Malmo, Sweden

Sources and Resources

• Wired.com Photo Contest: Cities
  See the entrants to Wired.com’s city photo contest.
• ePhotoZine – Architecture, a beginner’s guide
  A beginner’s guide to architectural photography.
• Universe Today
  Photos of cities from space.
• What Are Architectural Landscape Photos?
  A guide to the history of architectural landscape photography.
• Metro Arts and Architecture
  A guide to the 50 most beautiful subway systems in the world.
• Flickr Favorite City and Street Photographers
• Architectural Photography Inspiration

I have been away enjoying the Australian summer but I have been thinking about this post for some time. Last year I posted a list of the sites that nourish my thinking about teaching, learning and educational technology. During 2009 I am going to write about these sites as a synthesis of themes and links. I hope to post once a week to capture something of a week’s news and discussions. It is my way of responding to and contributing to communities of practice that are growing by sharing (Kim Marshall, Beth Kanter and Richard Byrne are the most recent discoveries for me!).

This first post looks at blog posts published in the week beginning 11 January (back from my holidays then!). At present I am thinking that I will not include directly Ning and Wiki posts. Both are flourishing and I am working on this Ning site developed for IACSS09 and this wiki for a canoe slalom community in Australia. I have joined the Digifolios and Personal Learning Spaces Ning site developed by Cristina Costa.

I list the sites on the Nourishment page by a person’s first name and so for the first post in Food for Thought I am going to pick up on a post by Will Richardson before my start date on Why Blogging is Hard …Still (9 January).   Will’s discussion on blogging concludes with this observation:

…I still feel every time I press “publish” is a good thing on balance, not something to avoid as much as to embrace as a path to a greater awareness of myself and of the world around me.

In the week in review Will has posted about his on-line reading habits and the strategies he is developing to change his on-line practices (12 January) (interesting to note Tony Karrer’s discussion of an information radar in this context). This post and the comments received give some excellent insights into reading possibilities. (Shortly after reading Will’s post I found Benjamin Stewart’s post about Storytelling and noted his observation that “I see my own online identity in a constant state of flux as I am constantly trying out new technologies that best serve my own learning and teaching practice”.) Will posted a short piece about a fascinating in-car conversation with his daughter (13 January). His last post of the week was a discussion about Web 2.0 (15 January) and he addressed some of the issues arising from Howard Gardner’s work (amongst others). Will comments that “Whether we think this new learning landscape online is a good thing or not, the reality is that it’s not going away, and that having the skills to make the most of the opportunities here are only going to become more and more important” and asks “But how do we make that happen for those who don’t find the entry point as easy as most of you reading this have found it?”

Wesley Fryer posted thirteen times last week. Amongst his posts were items about Photodropper (11 January), Gabcast and WordPress (12 January), CrowdSpring (12 January), Kaplan University’s video It’sTime for a New Kind of University (12 January), videoconferencing with Google Chat (13 January), the ISTEconnects Blog (15 January), and digital storytelling (15 January). After reading Wesley’s final post of the week (17 January) I wondered about the kind of conversation his ‘8 year old American Girl doll and movie fan’ would have with Will’s daughter. I think it would be a fascinating journey.

..vt posted this week about internet access in Africa (15 January) and shared news of plans to support rural access to internet opportunities.

Viplav Baxi continued his exploration of ideas arising from CCK08 with a discussion of Montessori and Connectivism. We can now add Viplav’s son to the car journey with the Richardsons and Fryers!

Meanwhile at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, Vicki Davis posted about YouTube and sharing (12 January), Yuan.CC maps, Flyr and Woophy (13 January), Images4Education ” a space to share exciting digital possibilities to help learners develop 21st century multiliteracy skills through active learning”, the Future of Education community (Sharon Betts posted about this too), ScreenToaster (see Sarah Stewart’s post too), and the Global Education Collaborative (16 January), a link to Michelle Krill’s post on Image Choices, vFlat Classroom wiki, and Diigo (17 January).

Tony Karrer wrote this week about developments at the eLearning Learning Community and on the same day (13 January) discussed his approach to developing an information radar. Tony looked at networks and communities (14 January) and discusses social networks with a range of readings to extend the post. Tony’s final post of the week was a short item about his work with Beth Kanter on a nonprofit technology portal.

I missed Tomaz Lasic’s Gazump post in December, having written about George Oates I should have been more alert about employment status. (I thought some of the comments on Tomas’s post resonated with Steve Dembo’s post earlier this month.) This week Tomaz’s posted about Memetics (10 January) and I tried not to get too distracted by following up his post link to Susan Blackmore.

It was a busy week at the O’Reilly Radar. The week started with a post by Tim O’Reilly (11 January) on Work on Stuff that Matters in which he discusses: working on something that matters to you more than money; creating more value than you capture; taking the long view. This post is followed up in some video interviews later in the week (15 January). Nat Torkington linked to Brooklyn Museum’s development of a socially networked museum membership. He links too to Doppir’s personal annual report plans (16 January).

Terry Anderson posted twice this week. In his first post (15 January) he discusses name confusion on open, distance and e-learning and in the second guides readers through configuring Google Scholar (16 January).

Susan Sedro’s post this week introduced her readers to Motivator.

This week Sue Waters posted a second article about Flickr and explored possibilities for personal learning networks. She posted about global projects too and discussed Bringing us together and Around the World with 80 Schools. Sue’s Google Reader, Edubloggers, has a range of stories this week including news from Richard Byrne of developments at Google Earth (I noticed too this post about Google Maps by Scott Leslie and this post by Stephen Downes). In her Mobile Technology in TAFE blog, Sue has been revisiting the 31 Day Project (10 January) and links to the 31 Day Challenge wiki. She discussing emailing a new reader (13 January) and running a first time reader audit on your blog (17 January).

Stephen Downes is my primary link to educational technology, learning and much, much more. His OLDaily starts my day in Australia and has done so for many years (the metrics listed by Stephen here suggest a lot of people do the same). My weekly review will focus on Stephen’s Half an Hour blog. I post here Stephen’s welcome statement on Stephen’s Web:

I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle.

Where they are able to form networks of meaningful and rewarding relationships with their peers, with people who share the same interests or hobbies, the same political or religious affiliations – or different interests or affiliations, as the case may be.

This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods, freely created and shared, not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealth or influence. This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward.

Stephen’s Seven Things You Don’t Know About Me was posted on 11 January. Item 5 on the list “I have my own discipline, or so I tell myself. It is that area where media, education, philosophy and computers intersect.”

Seth Godin’s week was a full one! Amongst many of the posts this week were posts about: how to send a personal email (11 January); “If you write online, on a blog, on Twitter, on Squidoo, even in the comments section of a site, you are a published author” Don’t get sued (13 January); the end of newspapers “The magic of the web, the reason you should care about this even if you don’t care about the news, is that when the marginal cost of something is free and when the time to deliver it is zero, the economics become magical” (14 January); Twitter and Squidoo (15 January); online interactions (17 January);  and a post on love … “The goal is to create a product that people love. If people love it, they’ll forgive a lot. They’ll talk about it. They’ll promote it. They’ll come back. They’ll be less price sensitive. They’ll bring their friends. They’ll work with you to make it better. If you can’t do that, though, perhaps you can make your service or product less annoying” (18 January).

Sharon Betts wrote about Speekaboos, No Child Left Behind, and Glogsters this week.

Sarah Stewart has had a hectic week preparing to leave New Zealand for a six-month stay in Queensland. Her posts included a discussion of evidence based medicine and Web 2.0 (13 January) in which she observes that:

it is vital that we integrate the principles of Web 2.0 into our practice so that evidence-based information is freely available to all, health practitioners and consumers. That we work together to share and collaborate, and find alternative ways of communicating and disseminating information to the traditional journals that are locked up, and only available to those who can afford to pay to read them.

Other posts include: working environments (13 January); designing a virtual birthing unit (14 January); using Facebook to network at a conference (16 January); ethical issues for health professionals who blog and Twitter (16 January); ePortfolios (16 January); and Doodle (17 January). Quite an output for someone with a sock dilemma!

This summary covers approximately one quarter of the blogs I monitor. I found writing this review fascinating. It makes explicit for me the kind of reading I do independent of feeds. I tried to avoid diverging from the W to S posts and realise that I have some issues to address identified in Lee Gomes’ Wall Street Journal post Why We’re Powerless to Resist Grazing on Endless Web Data which I found via Tony Karrer’s post about infovores linked to in his information radar post. Perhaps it is because I am a vegetarian I am so attracted to grazing!