wired does a crowdsourcing experiment

Influx Insights — 2007-06-06T19:25:52Z

Assignment Zero is a great initiative from Wired magazine, it's open sourced journalism. The first big assignment was ironically, the topic of "crowdsourcing", Assignment Zero's own "crowd" interviewed Wikipedia super contributors, photo editors who buy micro-stock, the folks who created Bar Camp, Innocentive (Eli Lilly), Crowdspirit, the photo agency Scoopt, etc...

In all, the crowd conducted 80 interviews.

Crowdsourced journalism has been done around the world in various guises, but what makes Wired's effort stand out is the clear and well managed editorial process. The "crowd" were guided into the assignment, briefed and helped, rather than just left to go for it.

Like an effort to tap into users, it helps when the brief is good.

Think about how other publications can use "crowds" as "research army" to help journalists piece together elements for stories and as additional content that can be accessed by readers looking for the source material.

crowd sourcing cola

Influx Insights — 2007-06-03T17:52:41Z

At http://cola.trnd.com members of the word-of-mouth-network trnd (Munich) are re-developing Open Source Cola. It's a soda designed to work like Wikipedia.

Everybody can be part of the process just by adding ideas and comments. All participants take part in the final recipe, decide which ingredients will be used and how the new product will find its way to the consumer. They discuss the different ideas for the recipe as well as a strategy to launch and sale the Cola online.

Originally Open Cola was an experiment to explain the principle of Open-Source software. The Toronto-based Open Cola Company became better known for the drink, than the software it was supposed to promote. Up until 2004, it had sold about 150,000 cans of Open Cola. Since the company's demise, the Open Cola recipe is now under GNU General Public License, which means everyone can modify, produce and sell it.

The trnd company have turned Open Cola into an open source project, providing a wiki, a blog and the FAQ site. It started by analyzing the German Cola market, then moved on to setting up goals and a timing plan.

At the moment, visitors to http://cola.trnd.com prefer a Cola with organic ingredients and alternative sweetener (like honey or maple syrup). There are also a couple of other ideas around, including the suggestion that the Cola should be sold as a concentrate with a variety of flavors and a number of different suggestions for a brand name.

Written by Claudia Dolle, who's currently interning at Influx.

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wired does a crowdsourcing experiment

crowd sourcing cola