New Florence. New Renaissance.

The New Way to Work

On this Labor Day, noticed that elance has a contest with a $ 10,000 award

“Answer this question: What Does “The New Way To Work” Mean To You? If you’re a writer, write a story that tells us how you are a part of this new world of work. If you’re a graphic designer, design something. Videographer? Video something. Developer? Create an app. You get the picture. As an entrant, you are free to enter your Submission in any format you choose so long as it can be published to the Web.”

One small correction to the elance graphic...they should have shown the worker in his pyjamas - the work-at-home dress code :)

Crowdsourcing at the Guardian

“Imagine you’re a major national newspaper whose crosstown archrival has somehow obtained two million pages of explosive documents that outed your country’s biggest political scandal of the decade. They’ve had a team of professional journalists on the job for a month, slamming out a string of blockbuster stories as they find them in their huge stack of secrets.

How do you catch up?

If you’re the Guardian of London, you wait for the associated public-records dump, shovel it all on your Web site next to a simple feedback interface and enlist more than 20,000 volunteers to help you find the needles in the haystack.”

Nieman Journalism Lab

Crowd-Sourcing the World

"Eagle says that distributing questions to participants in such developing countries via text messages or audio clips could make certain tasks more economical, such as the translation of documents into other languages, or rating the local relevance of search results. It could also provide a welcome source of income for those involved."

MIT Technology Review

SAP tries more "crowd" innovation

For years now, SAP has cultivated its SDN - Developer Network, with vibrant participation from its partner community, particularly service providers from India.

Today, at TechEd in Las Vegas, it announced a relationship with InnoCentive to broaden out its crowd reach through use of prize based competition. Larry Dignan describes the first 3 prize driven projects.

Wanted: Bicycle Mechanics

New York Times on how NASA through various contests is benefiting from innovative amateurs outside tis ecosystem of professionals and contractors. Crowdsourcing comes to space. The 2008 contests are listed here.

The Beauty of Crowds

It seems like in the last few years we have discovered crowdsourcing, the wisdom of crowds - that crowds need not be unruly.

I was fascinated by a recent ad run by the Ireland Development Agency - IDA which presented crowds as interpreted in  "A study of a Thousand Heads" by Irish artist Louis le Brocguy more recently known for his head portraits of Bono, Mandela among others.

Of course his tapestries allow for even denser visions of crowds like his Hosting of the Táin

and his Men of Connacht.