Third Tuesday Vancouver Live Blog

Comments 12 by Rebecca Bollwitt

The April meetup for Vancouver’s Third Tuesday group will be taking place at 7:00pm at the Network Hub (422 Richards Street 3rd floor) – the video below explains.


(the music looping in the background is from a song by Boston-area singer/songwriter Phil Ayoub).

The live blog will begin in just a few hours at this url, stay tuned for updates.

Speaker: Monica Hamburg of MonicaHamburg.com, Me Like the Interweb, and Your Dose of Lunacy.

Update: 18:55 Arriving at the Network Hub I took a seat near the back, by the window, and watched as some familiar faces filled the room. David, Nancy, Isabella, Colleen, Narvey, Tanya, Gus, and the folks from Meme Labs.

View from the Network Hub

Photos will be appearing under my Flickr tag: ThirdTuesday.

Update: 19:10 Thanks to the Network Hub for providing the space this evening, man this chair is comfortable!. I just met Gregg Scott, one of my Twitter contacts.

Update: 19:15 Monica is up, ‘crowdsourcing‘ is the topic. She just asked me jokingly to make her sound a little more intelligent in the live blog, but I don’t think my words here will do her speech justice at all really. Monica explains crowdsourcing for business as opening up the playing field in terms of communications from the company, as well as clients and the general public. “Sometimes the comments on a blog post are just as interesting as the post’s content,” affirms Monica. She gives examples of crowd-powered sites, a big one being the whole Wikipedia network and moves on to the music industry with Sell A Band.

Sell A Band’s tag line is “You are the record company”, giving power to the artists and the fans – allowing them to contribute to the band’s success and funding. On to movies, there’s NetFlix which also involves user and viewer reviews. One more site is Threadless, which encourages you to be creative, they simply help deliver the good created by the masses. Personal note – all of these open concepts for funding, coding, sharing of ideas and formulas reminds me of the topics covered at today’s Open Web (my day is rounding out quite nicely).

Monica Hamburg at Third TuesdayUpdate: 19:30 Another example of crowdsourcing is getting your consumers to find the solution for you – using the collective intelligence using a “solvers and seekers” method. (Side note from me: huge example of crowd-sourced advertising is the Canucks Ultimate Fan contest where they got fans to submit videos and photos to become a part of the season’s advertising campaign).

Monica mentions motivations – a) here’s some money now do something b) “people will do better inherently if they’re genuinely interested in the problem,” … “Passion is far more important.” Also, “it’s essential to reward people,” reward people adequately – don’t think of crowdsourcing as free labour and free promotion.

“People want to feel connected – they want to feel like they’re a part of a community,” says Monica. My own example, if you love toothpaste, why not talk about toothpaste and getting it out of that damn tube with other toothpaste enthusiasts? Why then wouldn’t the toothpaste company want to pay attention to your community?

Update: 19:35 Failures. Watch for a lack of leadership, the too many cooks issue, be organized, have editors. Crowdsourcing is considered a “beautiful failure” by its creators at Wired.

“My big pet peeve about crowdsourcing is crowdsourced books. It’s not because they don’t work, they just suck,” remarks Monica. Everything seems over processed, over chewed, and there’s no single voice.

Isabella, David and Nancy at Third TuesdayUpdate: 19:40 “He who writes the minutes of the meeting, controls the outcome of the meeting.” Keep things on track but don’t censor. Be really open to feedback – if you ask for opinions from people then ignore them, well that just doesn’t work. Be transparent as well, open up but you don’t need to reveal all. Give people very clear ideas about what they’re going to get from the exchange. Example, Threadless – if you design a shirt, here’s what percentage you’ll take home from sales.

Also, be sure to target the right audience – is your main demographic even online? Do they trust social media?

Problems. “Once you value something at a low amount, that becomes problematic,” says Monica in regards to exploitation. “90% of everything is crud,” which is an interesting quote which reminds me of Barcamp 2006! Crowdsourcing isn’t short turn. Monitor, pay attention, nurture the baby, it can’t run on its own. It’s also not the answer to everything.

Question period at Third TuesdayWith crowdsourcing, social media is crucial. Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc. that helps navigate people to and from your goal. Passion: People need to have a reason to engage. Community: Like-minded consumers and users need to be nurtured. Respect: Be transparent, communicate, and offer rewards.

Update: 19:50 Question period. First question is from Raul who thinks Wikipedia is crap when it comes to reliable information. Monica admits it’s not the be all and end all, but it is useful and folks should do their own proper research, “it’s good for what it is.” The discussion moves from the ethics of the wiki to a note by Rastin who says aside from a lack of leadership causing the failure of the practice, a lack of coordination can have the same detrimental effect.

Update: 20:00 From the audience, getting there first isn’t as important as getting your content out there for your audience. Take your time and do it right. Watch out for information and content overflows/floods. On another note, Bruce makes an excellent point from the audience that the “reward” a lot of people are looking for is CREDIT.

Are there any tips on how to start, how to get that crowd? First, find people who are already in a community, for example those who already blog about something specific. My personal example, want to crowdsource those toothpaste enthusiasts? Find dentist user groups, pro-dental Facebook groups, dentist bloggers, etc. that’s a start. Colleen’s example is releasing an infant version of your application and opening it up by invitation for people to test, try, submit reviews, help with the code, open up the code, and be a part of creating the final product.


Photo credit: Raul on Flickr

Primitive forms of crowdsourcing? Monica brings up the image of a WANTED poster from the old west which transformed into “America’s Most Wanted” and relying on the populace to produce for your cause.

Update: 20:20 Big thanks to the organizers, the creator of Third Tuesday who is in the room, Tanya, Monica for the GREAT talk, and the Network Hub.

Update: Thank you to everyone who entered the contest for the gift card. Above is photographic evidence of Monica drawing the winning card, which belonged to Gus from Marketwire – congrats Gus!

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12 Comments  —  Comments Are Closed

  1. Third Tuesday Meetup – Media sponsor is Miss604.com « Random Thoughts of a Student of the EnvironmentTuesday, April 15th, 2008 — 4:37pm PDT

    […] Hamburg speaking about CrowdSourcing and Rebecca Bollwitt (aka Miss604.com) as the media sponsor. Rebecca will be live-blogging. This one is organize by Tanya Davis (aka NetChick) and Tod Maffin (CBC’s Chief Geeky […]

  2. RaulTuesday, April 15th, 2008 — 10:55pm PDT

    Great liveblog post and as always great to see you. Photos are available on Flickr. I am unbelievably tired, can’t even bring myself to write a coherent comment.

  3. My Second Third Tuesday Vancouer Meetup « Gus DigitalTuesday, April 15th, 2008 — 11:08pm PDT

    […] the attendance. Granted I could have just logged onto the computer and read the live blog that Rebecca was giving at the […]

  4. Tanya (aka NetChick)Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 — 11:18pm PDT

    Thanks for the great live-blogging, Rebecca! 🙂 We all appreciated the notes!

    Cheers…

  5. Gregg ScottWednesday, April 16th, 2008 — 4:33am PDT

    It was great to meet you Rebecca. It’s so interesting that media of any form raises the profile of it’s creator. I felt like I knew you even though I am a complete stranger to you.

    Like Crowdsourcing itself this MeetUp showed the diversity and intelligence that exists in the Vancouver tech and blogging community.

    To compliment your live blogging I’ve posted the text of my TwitterCast.(http://is.gd/6vN) I don’t know of the usefulness of these bullet points but it’s nice to have a transcript nonetheless if not for me then for Monica’s next presentation!

  6. Monica HamburgWednesday, April 16th, 2008 — 5:19am PDT

    Thanks so much for the awesome live blogging! You rock!
    P.S. How do you type so fast! 🙂

  7. What I learned from Crowd Sourcing from Monica Hamburg – A Third Tuesday recap « Random Thoughts of a Student of the EnvironmentWednesday, April 16th, 2008 — 6:09am PDT

    […] Raul @ 6:09 am First of all, my congratulations to Monica Hamburg for an excellent talk, to Rebecca for a phenomenal live-blog (AND for the prize giveaway, even though I didn’t win – great to see GusF win though!) and to […]

  8. Monica HamburgWednesday, April 16th, 2008 — 8:00am PDT

    Just a few things to clarify what was easily missed by my quick talking:

    “solvers and seekers” refers to a company called InnoCentive – it’s their terminology, not mine.

    Same with the statement “He who writes the minutes of the meeting, controls the outcome of the meeting.” – not my brilliant words – it’s an axiom I discovered when reading the Wikinomics Playbook (the wiki-ed E-book – (“draft”))

    For reference, the Wired article where they speak of Assignment Zero being a beautiful failure is http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_zero_final?currentPage=all

  9. 3Ts – Hoorray! « Me Like The Interweb:Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 — 11:29am PDT

    […] talk was live-blogged by Rebecca Bollwitt (Miss604). I can’t imagine live blogging any event – you have to have a mind like a steel trap and […]

  10. (Tanya aka NetChick) This Chick’s Life- » The MID-WEEK Socializing Game & UpdateWednesday, April 16th, 2008 — 2:35pm PDT

    […] fun! Monica rocked her presentation on Crowdsourcing, and everyone seemed to have a great time. Rebecca live-blogged the event, so check out her entry if you missed it and would like to know more about […]

  11. ThirdTuesday: CrowdSourcing with Monica HamburgWednesday, April 16th, 2008 — 4:13pm PDT

    […] The Network Hub again and was sponsored by Rebbecca Bollwitt – our very own Miss604, who was also live blogging the event. The event was also live tweeted (not sure if I just made that name up) by Gregg […]

  12. Third Tuesday Live Blog: Social Media for Change » Vancouver Blog Miss 604Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 — 7:54pm PDT

    […] Question: How do you moderate the entries and make sure there is no messages of pure hate for the companies? How to balance criticism and praise? Should we fear the crowd-powered content? […]

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