Last fall, Google launched Project 10^100, a call for ideas that would change the world by helping as many people as possible.  Google will choose 5 winning ideas (to be announced shortly) and has pledged $10 million US towards their implementation.  While the design of the contest isn’t very innovative—Google is essentially passing around a suggestion box, and the rewards are traditional grant-style funding—the company seems to have learned from previous crowdsourcing disasters. Here’s what they’ve done right (and what every company tempted to let the people decide should keep in mind) and what they haven’t:

1. Appeal to principles.
The project asks how the world could be changed by helping people. The 10^100 website is well-designed, with an appealing video.  It seems like this project is important, not just something a marketing department was too lazy to do and left up to the public.

Normally, when asked its opinion, the crowd likes to see the mighty fall.  If we’re not members of the community affected by a vote, for example the caring users of a product that we vote about, we have very little incentive to make the right choice.  When Time magazine put its Most Influential Person of 2009 up to an Internet vote, for example, the crowd chose the founder of 4chan, the forum where memes are born and productivity goes to die.  (The crowd in question was made up mostly of forum posters, who were later accused of hacking the vote, not magazine readers.)  Not only did Time have to honor what it called a “stunning result,” it had to acknowledge the influence of the forum that a 2008 Time article, quoting Star Wars, referred to as “a wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

Google isn’t using the crowd’s ideas for a new ad campaign or its own website, but for charity.  Project 10^100 appeals to people’s altruism, not their desire to make themselves heard.  If you submit silly ideas, that is, you’re not hurting Google, you’re hurting the starving children of the world.

2. Review ideas…
Even though they received 154,000 submissions from 170 countries, a team of 3,000 Google employees reviewed them all, eliminating jokes or infeasible suggestions and combining similar ideas into 16 larger projects.  This could be seen as controversial—the project website allows you to see “suggestions that inspired [each] idea,” but never credits specific users with these ideas.  The FAQ explains that with 154,000 submissions to sort through, they may have simply “missed some people,” which is plausible but unfortunate.

An idea review, however patronizing it seems, could have prevented other crowdsourcing disasters.  In 2008, the New York Mets baseball team asked fans to vote on a new song for their 8th inning sing-along.  Five million voters apparently thought it would be fun to Rickroll the stadium, so Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” was played once, booed, and returned to the shelf.  Voters were willing to write-in an obvious joke on their ballots, but were less enthusiastic when it was carried out.  (Or, more likely, those who voted knew they wouldn’t be going to any Mets games and actually sitting through the song.)  The crowd’s ideas and votes do not always reflect what a community—in this case, Mets fans—really wants.

3. …then let the crowd vote.
People still like to feel involved, though, and that’s why Google’s decision to let the public vote is smart.  The company could have simply reviewed ideas and selected winners, saving itself the effort of logging hundreds of thousands of votes.  Instead, Google let people review the 16 chosen submissions themselves.  Not only does Google seem to care about making a difference, it seems genuinely interested in what people think.

4. Get expert advice.
The five winning projects will ultimately be selected by an advisory board of experts in the projects’ fields.  While the experts will take voters’ choices into account, Google’s FAQ makes it very clear that they reserve the right to “discount any votes that [they] deem invalid.”  While this means that Google’s project is not strictly crowdsourced, it’s also protected from the attempts at vote-hacking which plagued Time’s contest.

Of course, this depends on the advisory board, an area where some companies have not fared well.  Kraft’s naming its vegemite-and-cream-cheese spread ‘iSnack 2.0′ is often cited as a crowdsourcing (and marketing) disaster, though the name was recently ‘corrected‘ to ‘Cheesybite.’  Kristen Vang of thinqdesign, however, points out that while the crowd submitted the unfortunate name, someone in Kraft’s marketing department actually selected it as the winner.  An advisory board doesn’t guarantee good results.

5. Use common sense.
The five selection criteria for winning ideas are simple and intuitive: reach, depth, attainability, efficiency, and longevity. Even if you don’t necessarily agree with utilitarianism (the philosophical position that states that what makes more people happy should be pursued), these guidelines are straightforward and represent a strong choice by Google to try to define ‘the project that will do the most good.’

Is Project 10^100 a new and innovative way to crowdsource?  Not really.  It will be interesting to see which ideas are selected and how Google implements them, though. The plan is to partner with existing organizations, who are perhaps better equipped than Google to judge projects’ feasibility.  This grant-style approach is fairly traditional compared with the pay-for-solution incentives or rewards for incremental improvements offered by other so-called crowdsourcing efforts we’ve posted about.

Google’s accomplishment here is learning from other crowdsourcing disasters.  We look forward to the project’s conclusion and, as the 10^100 website says, “may those who help the most win.”

Photo from gruntzooki’s photostream on Flickr.

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As co-inhabitants of planet earth, and as neighbors to one another – we are equally responsible for the future of the human race. Google took the initiative. The the first step towards this goal is by summing up the best, most brilliant ideas of our generation – Project 10^100. A compilation of ideas, proposals, and actions plans shared by you and me –  with the aim of effecting change in the world we live in.

Vote for your best bet – the idea which you think will have the greatest impact to everyone’s lives. Your vote for one of these ideas will help Google’s advisory board to choose up to 5 projects to fund, at which point they’ll launch an RFP process to identify the organization(s) that are best suited to implementing them.

As a Filipino, I am biased for the propositions that are most needed by my country – Disaster Preparedness (that we have lacked as proven by Ondoy), Good governance, and Micro-entrepreneurship. Check out my best bets below and vote, yes vote for a better tomorrow:

My top choices are in yellow fill.

I woke up this morning planning to blog about some quarter-life issue of mine. Until I opened my mail box and found an interesting link – Project 10^100. That was then I realized I’m not the only human being in this world going through life’s issues.  A million, billion earthlings are in the mercy of the hand of destruction. The planet is at high risk. And we have all taken a role in its slow death. If you want to make a difference, or at least owe the accountability – make your vote today.

Make CHANGE happen.

Un anno fa, Google ha lanciato un concorso internazionale per selezionare le idee top per un mondo migliore. Il criterio centrale? Aiutare quante più persone possibile. In palio: $10 milioni. Il progetto si chiama Project 10¹⁰⁰.

Più di 150.000 individui da 170 paesi diversi hanno inviato le loro idee. Le migliori sono state raggruppate in 16 gruppi distinti. Spaziano dallo sviluppo di sistemi informatici per mappare e rendere più efficaci le risposte a catastrofi naturali e umanitarie, alla creazione di un sito internazionale per monitorare l’operato dei settori pubblici del globo, e renderli più trasparenti e onesti.

È ovviamente difficilissimo scegliere quale di questi gruppi debba vincere (e quindi in che maniera verranno spesi questi $10 milioni), perché sono tutti più che meritevoli e i problemi che si propongono di risolvere di simile urgenza. Noi di The Hub Milano abbiamo tuttavia votato per la creazione di un fondo a sostegno degli imprenditori sociali, che investa concretamente in idee socialmente responsabili e imprenditorialmente sostenibili per un mondo migliore.

Ora tocca a voi dire la vostra. Votate per Project 10¹⁰⁰ qui. 

The American innovation machine is at work, thanks in part the Google’s Project 10¹⁰⁰, “a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.” After receiving more than 100,000 responses, Google will narrow the submissions down to 100 semi-finalists on March 17. Ideas were submitted to in the following categories: Community, Opportunity, Energy, Environment, Health, Education, Shelter, and Everything Else.

The remaining 100 ideas will be narrowed down, by a public vote, to twenty semi-finalists. Finally, an advisory board will choose five winners, who will have their ideas funded by Google. Google has set aside up to $10 million to implement these projects.

We pass along one of the many submissions here, from a new friend in Seattle. Chad Maglauque decided that people should be able to bring renewable energy, cheaply and conveniently into their homes. So he invented the Jellyfish Wind Appliance that plugs into any American electrical outlet, and is quiet, safe and easy to install. I don’t meant to sound like I am peddling for this product (or rather, this idea), but I love the ingenuity and the ease that average people could power their homes.

According the product information on its website, the Jellyfish can generate up to 40kWh per month, which is enough to power the average home that uses energy efficient light bulbs. The company expects to introduce this product at around $400, but through economies-of-scale hopes to reduce that retail price to $200.

I hope you will join me in supporting this idea if it makes it through to the final 100 semifinalists of Project 10^100. Set up a reminder for yourself to vote on this and all of the ideas on March 17th here.

Talking to my parents the other day, I learned that there is a new recycling incentive program in my hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. According to my parents, they get a certain number of points based on the weight of their recycling. These points can then be spent at participating retail reward partners. What first struck me was how this program provided a near-immediate economic incentive for an important activity we don’t do enough of. (Well, ok, the first thing that struck me was, “Cool, they have a little microchip to automatically keep track of the weight of your recycling!”) Sometimes green activities get an unfair reputation as being in the realm of the well-to-do, or something that only people with excess time and money can even afford to do. Though I think a lot of green activities are actually also economically beneficial by their very nature, others are structured in a way that makes it hard for overworked and underpaid individuals to engage in them. Programs like this are important in giving people that extra nudge it sometimes takes to get them to do something for the environment.

The next thing this program got me thinking about is how it could help keep local businesses afloat while the economy is tanking. The national program Sioux Falls participates in, Recyclebank, partners with a lot of big businesses. There’s nothing wrong with getting big businesses to go green, but it seems like a city such as Portland would have a lot of small businesses that would be interested in taking part in a program like this. If recyclers could get vouchers to spend at farmers’ markets and co-op groceries, local bike shops, used book stores, or even Tri-met, the environmental benefits would be twofold (at least!). These businesses would benefit by getting more customers, despite an economic climate in which it is very easy for consumers to be tempted by cheap, big-box stores that often don’t have as much invested in local job creation and the surrounding environment.

Of course any program like this has a lot of details to work out to make sure it actually accomplishes what it is working towards (for example, getting people to recycle things that don’t weigh very much, like almost all recyclable goods except glass), but supporting promising new projects and technologies is the only way to move forward and figure out what works.

Speaking of innovative projects, Google’s Project 10^100 is almost at the voting stage – check it out!

Lets Save The Earth and Green…, Plants Tissue Culture for Save The Earth

Read more Project 10^100………

Anda memiliki ide yang mampu mengubah dunia atau setidaknya membantu kemaslahatan umat? Segera kirim ide Anda ke www.project10tothe100.com. Dapatkan hadiah 10 juta dollar AS (sekitar Rp 93 miliar).

Ya, perusahaan raksasa internet Google Inc mengadakan sayembara adu brilian ide untuk merayakan HUT ke-10 dengan hadiah total 10 juta dollar AS. Syaratnya, ide itu harus benar-benar baru dan diyakini menguntungkan bagi kehidupan manusia.

Program itu dinamai Project 10^100 (dibaca 10 untuk ke-100) dan diumumkan melalui CNN, Kamis (25/9). Tim juri akan memilih lima pemenang dan akan diumumkan Februari 2009. Panitia menerima ide dalam 25 bahasa hingga 20 Oktober 2008.

“Ide ini bisa besar atau kecil, berteknologi atau sederhana tapi brilian. Tetapi, semuanya harus memiliki dampak. Kami sadar ada banyak ide brilian yang memerlukan dana dan dukungan untuk menjadi kenyataan,” bunyi rilis Google.

Ide bermanfaat yang dimaksud Google adalah seperti penemuan alat Hippo Water Roller. Dikembangkan di Afrika, alat ini bisa mengangkut 24 galon air dan dapat digeser dengan mudah. Alat ini mempermudah warga setempat mengangkut air bersih ke rumahnya. Selamat mencoba!!Semoga berhasil!!

Google is celebrating 10yrs of its existence and has come up with another project called Project 10^100. This initiative by Google will seek input from the public and a panel of judges in choosing up to five winning ideas, to be announced in February.

People are encouraged to submit their ideas, in any of 25 languages, at www.project10tothe100.com through October 20. Entrants must briefly describe their idea and answer six questions, including, “If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?”

Official Google Blog describes how it all works

How it works

Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced “Project 10 to the 100th”) is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Here’s how to join in.

1. Send us your idea by October 20th.
Simply fill out the submission form giving us the gist of your idea. You can supplement your proposal with a 30-second video.

2. Voting on ideas begins on January 27th.
We’ll post a selection of one hundred ideas and ask you, the public, to choose twenty semi-finalists. Then an advisory board will select up to five final ideas. Send me a reminder to vote.

3. We’ll help bring these ideas to life.
We’re committing $10 million to implement these projects, and our goal is to help as many people as possible. So remember, money may provide a jumpstart, but the idea is the thing.

Good luck, and may those who help the most win.

Also read: [How-To] Get more from your iPod Battery

Bose’s iPod Docking Station: A clear winner

[How-To] Scroll to any point in a song on iPod

You can also follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vaibhav1981

Do stay tuned to Technofriends for more, one of the best ways of doing so is by subscribing to our feeds. You can subscribe to Technofriends feed by clicking here.

Cheers

Vaibhav

Last Saturday, I was told about the USD 10 million funding from google to kick-start ideas that could help

better people’s lives. The only thing that crossed my mind at that time was… USD 10 million dollars.  I

didn’t put much thought to it until today.

I’ve simplified the context for this competition,

“A pool USD 10 million dollars for up to 5 ideas, that can better people’s lives.”

But actually, is the context of this competition as simple as that ? IMHO, NO !! (well at least for me)

Google is actually giving us the greatest gift of all, which is a platform to contribute beyond ourselves.

10 million doesn’t cut it for a radical change but its a kick-start. This project is about the opportunity to

present a noble idea to the world . Its an opportunity to fulfill our dreams, and its the opportunity for us to

give , at least our ideas to better lives of others.

This project reminds me of one of my favorite videos, which is from Tony Robbins during his talk at Tedtalk

06.  For me, the essence of Project 10^100 is all in this talk.

From

Google Official Blog

Official Project Page

Tony Robbins TedTalk06

Digital Magic #12 :: Big Thinking

Google is sponsoring a contest:

Project 10¹⁰⁰ is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.

May those who help the most win!

- – - -

Also, here are a few people making a difference:

Students here in our district are using: Kiva.org.

Craig and Mark Kielburger: Free the Children.

Sarah McLachlan: World on Fire.

Click for World on Fire Video

- – - -

Things that make you go hmmmmmm…

Are these ideas worth talking about with students?

How can you use one of these links/ideas in your classroom?

Do our students believe that they can make a difference in the world? 

- – - -

Did you miss an edition of Digital Magic? Is there one you want to look back on again? Here are all the editions of Digital Magic in reverse order, (most recent first).

Have a great week!

Project 10^100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Your idea on how to change the world may get up to $10 million in funding from Google. For how it works, see here.

Project 10^100

Just bumped into this Google page soliciting ideas on how to “change the world by helping as many people as possible”. Project 10^100 (that’s the name of the project) will select five (5) finalists and will bankroll their implementations with a $10M fund.

Now I’m trying to squeeze my brain for some really pretty cool ideas but all I’m getting is a pretty vague one involving GIS/Geohazard mapping. Anyway, the deadline is still on October 10 so there’s still time to refine things.

1. Official Google blog – The future of mobile
The future of mobile according to Google

2. Technorati – State of the blogosphere 2008
Blogging alive and well globally

3. New Media Age – Little Britain duo front UK launch of Funny or Die site

4. BBC News – MySpace launches net music store
Fox tries to own online music with the backing of the major record labels

5. MediaWeek – Guardian retains top spot among newspaper websites

6. The Guardian – Tories launch first official blog in web overhaul
The Conservative Party re-launches its website ahead of its conference

7. BBC News – Mayor sees London as ‘wi-fi city’
Boris Johnson wants to invest in Wi-Fi

8. EMarketer – Extending the Social Network
A look at what influences people’s opinions of new products

9. Read/Write Web – Project 10^100: Google Wants to Help You Change the World
Google launches a CSR initiative

10. Mashable – Twitter to Launch Special Site for Tracking the Presidential Debates
Twitter follows the US election

In line with celebrating 10 years of existence and the origin of its name (googol), Google is holding a contest titled Project 10^100 (Project 10 to the 100th). With the tagline “may those who help the most win,” the contest is to fund ideas that will have a wide impact.

Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time, so many people, of all walks of life, could use so much help, in both little ways and big.

Maybe the answer that helps somebody is in your head, in something you’ve observed, some notion that you’ve been fiddling with, some small connection you’ve noticed, some old thing you have seen with new eyes.

The deadline is October 20, 2008, and voting begins on January 27, 2009. Google is pledging $10 million to implement five ideas. TC-I encourages its readers who have an idea with a potentially far reach – to India and beyond – to submit an entry. They’re also accepting video submissions, and you may submit any text or speech in Hindi, if you prefer it over English. Find out more about how it works, along with the categories and evaluation criteria, here.

Singularity is a blog dedicated to technological transformations and social change. I’ll save the full meaning of a singularity for a later date; instead, I’ll mention a singular company pursuing social change in new ways. In honor of it’s 10th birthday, Google introduced Project 10^100, a competition “call[ing] for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible”. Winners receive a portion of the $10 million prize pot. The catch? It’s got to be realizable within 1 to 2 years. Submission deadline is October 20.

In case you’re short on ideas, check out Y-Combinator’s top 30 ideas they would like to fund: Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund.

Let the brainstorming begin…

Nhân dịp sinh nhật 10 năm của mình, gã khổng lồ Google lại khiến cho cả thế giới phải sửng sốt một lần nữa khi tung ra giải thưởng 10 triệu đô la cho bất kì ý tưởng nảo có thể mang lại lợi ích to lớn cho nhân loại. Giải thưởng này sẽ được trao cho ý tưởng được coi là có khả năng “giúp được nhiều người nhất”. Người đăng kí có thể đưa ra ý tưởng trong tất cả các lĩnh vực trong đời sống :

1. Cộng đồng (Community) : ý tưởng để kết nối nhân loại, xây dựng cộng đồng, giữ gìn và bảo vệ những nét văn hoá đặc trưng.

2. Cơ hội (Opportunity) : ý tưởng giúp cho mọi người có thể tạo được cơ hội cho chính mình và giúp đỡ cho gia đình nhiều hơn.

3. Năng lượng (Energy) : ý tưởng về những loại năng lượng mới an toàn hơn, sạch sẽ hơn và rẻ hơn.

4. Môi trường (Environment) : làm gì để giúp cho các hệ sinh thái trên trái đất trong lành và bền bỉ hơn.

5. Sức khoẻ (Health) : ý tưởng giúp cho mọi người luôn có được sức khoẻ tốt, và sống lâu hơn.

6. Giáo dục (Education) : ý tưởng giúp cho cộng đồng có được một môi trường giáo dục tốt hơn, toàn diện hơn.

7. Tổ ấm (Shelter) : làm gì để tất cả mọi người đều có được một mái ấm an toàn và hạnh phúc.

8. Những lĩnh vực khác (Everything else) : những ý tưởng không nằm trong các lĩnh vực được nêu trên.

Ý tưởng của người đăng kí sẽ được lựa chọn theo 5 tiêu chí chủ yếu :

1. Tầm ảnh hưởng (Reach) : có bao nhiêu người có thể được giúp đỡ nhờ ý tưởng của bạn?

2. Chiều sâu (Depth) : có sức ảnh hưởng tới cộng đồng ra sao? Ý tưởng của bạn có đề cập đến vấn đề nào cấp bách hay không?

3. Tính khả thi (Attainability) : ý tưởng của bạn có thể thực hiện được trong vòng 1 hay 2 năm không?

4. Tính hiệu quả (Efficiency) : ý tưởng của bạn đơn giản và mang lại lợi ích như thế nào?

5. Tuổi thọ (Longevity) : ý tưởng của bạn có sức ảnh hưởng tới cộng đồng trong vòng bao lâu?

Với phạm vi đề ra, các ý tưởng sẽ không bị bó buộc trong phạm vi công nghệ thông tin, mà tất cả mọi người, mỗi cá nhân đang mang trong mình một ước mơ đều có thể tham dự, miễn là ý tưởng đó có tầm ảnh hưởng lớn tới cộng đồng.

Hạn chót để nộp ý tưởng là ngày 20/10/2008. Google sẽ lọc ra 100 ý tưởng xuất sắc nhất và cho công chúng bình chọn. Sau đó, 20 ý tưởng nổi bật sẽ được chọn vào vòng chung kết. Cuối cùng, ban giám khảo chọn ra 5 ý tưởng xuất sắc nhất để được nhận tiền tài trợ của Google.

“Trong suốt 10 năm xây dựng và phát triển, Google đã học được một bài học rất lớn. Đó là ý tưởng lớn có thể nảy sinh từ bất kỳ con người nào ở bất kỳ đâu và trong bất kỳ thời gian, không gian nào đó. Ví dụ, từ nhu cầu đối với một trình duyệt web có đủ sức tải được ứng dụng web giàu (rich web application) mà Google nảy sinh ý tưởng và phát triển thành công Google Chrome. Còn Google News được sinh ra nhờ sự kiện 11-9”, Google phát biểu.  (Đoạn này mình lấy từ báo Tuổi trẻ)

Thông tin chi tiết về Project 10^100 các bạn có thể xem tại đây.

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