What Happens When 500+ Crowdsourcing Wonks Get Together?
Earlier this week at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, the first-ever conference dedicated solely to crowdsourcing took place. The one-day event, called CrowdConf, was organized by our friends at Crowdflower and sponsored by a number of firms, including oDesk, Elance, GetSatisfaction and your very own uTest.
There were a lot of great panels, presentations and interpretations of what qualifies (and what does not) as “crowdsourcing.” And it was very cool to see all the different concepts and companies that are being built on the crowdsourcing model. You can follow the Twitter hashtag of the event here if you’re interested.
One of my big takeaways is that these companies’ strategies for community recruitment and engagement will ultimately define their success or failure. For some crowdsourcing companies, it seems to be an afterthought. Other companies (including us) believe that the investments made in community profiling, rating systems, matching algorithms and learning programs are strategically important.
It will be fascinating to watch this space evolve, and to help pave the way for crowdsourcing to mature as a reliable, powerful model for getting work done. That’s why uTest is a founding member of the recently announced Crowdsortium, whose mission is to enable crowdsourcing companies to share best practices and resources.
We’ll be sure to post pics and vids from CrowdConf later on this week.
