Can the story of crowdsourcing be told without the crowd? Perhaps it can be summed up in a roundabout way, but in order to truly capture the essence of crowdsourcing, the best points of reference are the ones actually participating. At least, this is the theory behind our recent ventures into crowdsourcing content of various mediums via the HeroX platform. Our main competition -- Crowd Content -- has just three days left in its submission period. Feeling like you're ready to wax poetic on the subject? There's still time to participate! But if you're looking for a little more inspiration before you dive in, have a read.
1. Video Storytelling Consolation Prize
Not long after launch, the High-Performance Fast Computing Challenge came to an unfortunate and sudden end due to external risk factors that couldn't be mitigated. When faced with this serious let-down to the innovator community, HeroX did a nimble pivot and kicked off the best consolation prize we could muster up: the Fortran Storytelling Competition. The name might sound strange, but it was the direct result of a large number of comments (more like wisecracks) about the fact that the Computing Challenge was based on an "ancient" code language called Fortran. Old dude and has-been jokes flooded our forum as well as the Reddit post announcing the launch - the HeroX team was at first amused, and soon after -- very much inspired.
After announcing the supercomputer crowdsourcing competition was canceled, we immediately put out a call for the community's personal backstory with the programming language Fortran, making it as low-barrier to entry as possible. All it required was a short (1-4 minute) video telling the tale of how each entrant began working with Fortran, and the fascinating industries and projects in and on which they worked as a result.
The results were fantastic. A number of -- admittedly, mostly older -- competitors submitted funny, heart-wrenching, and all-in-all fascinating back stories about their efforts to use the programming language for a variety of applications (most of which were pretty intense.) In the end, we got to get a real look at our community and the life experiences that ultimately led them to participate in crowdsourcing.
2. Open-Ended Call to Action
As mentioned earlier in this post, the Crowd Content challenge was the "flagship" of crowdsourced content for HeroX. It's also still open for submission, and everyone (really, everyone) is encouraged to take a stab at what crowdsourcing is all about for them. Sound broad? That's intentional. The call for content in this particular competition is one where the competitors can really take the reins. Seems like the best path to truly authentic accounts of what crowdsourcing "means." Just as regular crowdsourcing projects don't come with prescribed solutions, Crowd Content doesn't assume any one truth about what the power of the crowd, the state of innovation and disruption, or a deeply, increasingly connected world means for us and our future. The beauty of not subscribing to any particular narrative is that we get to fully embrace what "the crowd" -- our community -- is telling us, and make that our truth. By inverting the "authority" dynamic regarding crowdsourcing thought leadership, we actually get something more real than we could have speculated.
3. Subject-Specific Content
While Crowd Content casts the widest possible net for different perspectives, there's something to be said for narrowing the field a bit, as well. In the name of field-narrowing, and to see where it landed, HeroX has also begun experimenting with challenge-specific content crowdsourcing with the Super Sweet Content Challenge. This particular challenge is now officially open for submission, and is seeking videos, long-form essays, curated content (with credit!), research papers, or editorials that illustrate endless possibilities for a breakthrough -- inside of a specific field of crowdsourcing. Check out the challenge page itself to learn more.
Ultimately, the best way to understand something is to find a primary source. That's exactly why the best authorities, opinions, experts -- whatever you want to call them -- on crowdsourcing are the people directly engaged with it. You won't find them just anywhere -- and seeing as we have one of the largest communities of innovators and challenge-sponsors on the internet, we figure our own "backyard" isn't a bad place to start.
