It all started with John Griffiths’ idea that he somehow wanted to try live international crowdsourcing for a workshop during the 2011 Market Research Society Conference. There were just 3 problems
- How technically could that be achieved?
- How many people might come to the workshop?
- And how would we manage them and what would we crowdsource ?
Although the company that provides technical a.v. support to the conference were very capable – they had even in the past organised a live link to the space station, it turned out that the humble Skype worked perfectly for our needs. (There must have been major sighs of relief in the MRS Conference budget department).
On the day, we were connected live with Jaroslaw Cir in Prague, Hanne Kristainsen, founder of Creative Creatures in New York, Kate Tribe (Tribe Research) in Australia and Han Zantigh, MD of Brainjuicer in China. They were our crowdsourcing mentors and were in the four corners of the room, available for consultation.
As John and I had recently formed Electric Learning, it seemed logical that we should teach crowdsourcing and how it can be used in research – in the interactive, immersive style that Electric Learning is becoming known for. I had just read Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal. Despite the title, its a very positive book; it finds the value in gaming and discusses how to apply game theory to learning. Not gamification note – game theory, which is about flow, engagement and motivation, and is social as well as individual.
So our workshop delegates were allocated into teams, given a mission, given trade-able resource cards, (see right for some examples) various ways of winning points (including asking good questions of the mentors) and a time limit, to come up with ideas for using crowdsourcing as a research method. And in true crowdsourcing style, the ‘crowd’ voted on the best idea at the end of the workshop.
Many thanks to those who took part, nominated us and voted for us. We won the Award for Best Workshop. The judges said
This award is judged on the interactivity, practicality, originality and management of workshops held during the conference. In their highly interactive and original workshop John and Joanna asked competitive teams to consider a group generated issue where crowd sourcing might be relevant. Among the resources available were four leading experts on crowdsourcing techniques in Sydney, New York, Prague and Shanghai who could be individually consulted on Skype and who judged the presentations. The result was a high level of creative energy and involvement from every participant.
“The session epitomised what a good workshop should be: highly interactive, very original, well structured and managed by the leaders, and with real learnings for the participants”
