Crowdsourcing Insight from great #TIEcrowd event in Sydney this evening.

Twitter is useless, and does not have real world value!

I think not.

On a business trip from Melbourne to Sydney today, I checked my Tweetstream and noticed a tweet from @deswalsh mentioning the #TIEcrowd event ( Getting Results from Crowdsourcing, the Insight Exchange) in Sydney this evening. 10 minutes later I was signed up and looking forward to a stimulating evening, and I wasn’t disappointed. Thanks again @rossdawson for my Just-In-Time social everything fix.

The format was great. 4 five minute slots by some interesting speakers, with ample time for questions and discussion, followed by 4 fifteen minute ‘speed dating’ discussions with knowledgeable panelists. I learned a few things and met some interesting people as a bonus. I’m looking forward to the next event.

Some Take aways:

• @lukerides from seggr challenged our thinking on thought leaders being the Content Curator vs the Content Creator
• @hollingsworth from Task Exchange discussed the value of online communities and business success, with some practical tips. (Good to see you again, Tony)
• @TobyLeads discussed building blocks of SME marketing. Niche->Keywords->Leads

The speakers were

• @YvonneAdele from Ideas Culture driving Crowdsourced brainstorming into the enterprise, and overcoming corporate resistance, so clearly has it figured out…
• Matt Barrie from Freelancer.com on leveraging the world’s talent. Great energy!
• @aleclynch from DesignCrowd discussing the key Crowdsource candidates, and
• Phil Sim (can’t find you on Twitter?) giving the customer’s perspective and lessons learned. I liked the term ‘Cloud Labour’. Nice one…

Some clarity. Crowdsourcing is Not Outsourcing

• Outsourcing = Defined Service or Product delivered by the lowest bidder.
• Crowdsourcing = Best Service or Product selected from multiple bidders for an aggregated price. Arguably, better quality over cost. Thanks @aleclynch

This presents some interesting opportunities.

For those of us with many years Corporate / Enterprise Outsourcing experience, and keen to ride this Crowdsourcing wave, I see many previously solved challenges and therefore opportunties. We’ve learned these lessons the hard way, and with some minor tweaks, can apply some of the learning to Crowdsourcing. Watch this space…

…and some challenges

• How do we leverage this into the enterprise space?
• How do we get at all that untapped IP?
• What if we Crowdsourced our corporate employees? Across enterprises?
• What about IP?
• How does the Crowdsource-ee differentiate themselves?
• What about the vertical project management expertise that the customer of Crowdsourced resources/services/products has to build in-house? and the unseen costs and overhead for this?
• How to overcome resistance to the ‘offshore/nearshore/outsource’ label and the often negative perceptions / experiences attached to this?

I’ll leave it there for now. Your thoughts and feedback is, as always, most welcome!
For more on the #TIECrowd event, check out Tony Hollingworth’s post here