Crowdsourcing: Radio Days

Crowdsourcing: A Definition

I like to use two definitions for crowdsourcing:
The White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

The Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.

Crowdsourcing in the News

July 27, 2008: The Washington Post
While I was on vacation The Post's Jane Black dropped a line to ask me what I thought about crowdsourcing in restaurants. Naturally, I replied that I don't think about crowdsourcing in restaurants. In fact, I'm always asked when crowdsourcing doesn't work, and I've tended to use just such retail examples as this. After all, do you really want the crowd making your tofu chili? This sure shows my lack of imagination. Turns out that a few entrepreneurial restaurateurs are doing just this. Black's piece made A1 in yesterday's paper.
March 25, 2007: New York Times and NPR's On the Media
Another twofer: First, in yesterday's Times Jason Pontin takes a first-hand look at Mechanical Turk, ChaCha.com and Jeff Bezos' notion of "artificial artifical intelligence." His experience is less than satisfactory, and a reminder that not everything should be crowdsourced.
My favorite NPR show, On the Media, interviews TPM Muckraker's Paul Kiel about the site's recent experiment in crowdsourcing. Muckraker asked its readers to parse the 3,000 emails pertaining to the firing of federal prosecutors that Dept. of Justice released last week. Within hours Muckraker readers were ferreting out compromising passages, some of which led to news leads for MSM pubs, further evidence that the crowd has a promising future in performing investigative functions. Shady politicians (is that phrase redundant?) beware.
March 19, 2007: New York Times and Detroit Free Press
Today's a twofer: The New York Times' David Carr writes about Assignment Zero in his column, "The Media Equation." I edited David a few times at the now defunct Inside.com (It shined brightly but briefly). If memory serves, he could recall obscure circulation figures on certain newspapers and magazines from memory. No mean media critic, in other words. So I was elated to see him give Assignment Zero a cautiously optimistic treatment.
Crowdsourcing also made the Detroit Free Press today, where religion writer David Crumm writes about how theologians and pastors are using the model to let their congregations "shape a church's worship and programs." I haven't followed the crowdsourcing in religion angle as much as I'd like, and this is a great introduction to the subject.
March 16, 2007: Radio: WNYC - Crowdsourcing and Music
Does user-generated content threaten the recording industry? That presumes there's still a recording industry to speak of. I'm kidding—kinda. But CD sales get more and more anemic and companies building businesses out of unknown bands—call it music by the crowd—look more and more interesting (and viable) all the time. Yesterday I was on one of my favorite WNYC shows, "Soundcheck" discussing all this and more. Stream or download the show here. You can listen to my segment alone (it runs about 20 minutes), but I recommend you listen to the opening segment on the bizarre-but-intriguing midomi.com. Midomi is a social networking site that allows you to search for music by singing a few bars into a microphone connected to your computer. Soundcheck brought in a trained opera singer to put Midomi's software to the test, with humorous results. American Idol-meets-Myspace-meets-iTunes-meets-voice-recognition-software. That's some mash-up. What will those Stanford smarties dream up next?

August 25, 2008

Radio Days

Starting around 6 AM tomorrow morning I will be ensconced inside a conference room at Crown Books talking about crowdsourcing. And then talking about it again. And again. And again. I will be doing 27 radio interviews tomorrow, most of them back to back. I never—I mean, ever—tire of talking about this subject (Ed's Note: Or any other subject), but this might put my loquaciousness to the test. I kid. Sort of. I'm very, very happy there's been interest from all these radio stations, and it's actually easier to do 27 interviews in one day than it is make arrangements to do 27 interviews in 27 days. Here are the markets the interviews will be broadcast to. Hope you'll listen in!

6:50-7:00am RALEIGH-DURHAM WCBQ-WHNC-AM NEWS FEATURE ALVIN LIVE

7:10-7:20am FT MYERS, NAPLES WGUF-FM BOB HARDEN SHOW BOB LIVE

7:20-7:30am BALTIMORE WBAL-AM MORNING SHOW MALARIE LIVE

7:30-7:40am DALLAS KRLD-AM MORNING SHOW / AFTERNOON NEWS MIKE LIVE

7:40-7:50am RALEIGH-DURHAM WPTF-AM NC MORNING NEWS GEOFF LIVE

8:00-8:10am BALTIMORE, OCEAN CITY WOCM-FM MORNING SHOW TBA LIVE

8:20-8:30am DETROIT - WINDSOR, CA CKLW-AM MORNING SHOW LISA & MIKE LIVE

8:40-8:50am MIAMI - FT LAUDERDALE - WEST PALM WFTL-AM MORNING SHOW RUSS LIVE

8:50-9:00am HARTFORD, NEW HAVEN, BRIDGEPORT, LONG ISLAND WPLR-FM MORNING SHOW CHAZ (male) & AJ (male) LIVE

9:00-9:20am REGIONAL CT - ALSO IN RI, MA, NY WNPR-AM - NPR WHERE WE LIVE JOHN

9:30-9:40am ROCHESTER WHAM-AM MORNING SHOW BETH & CHET (TAPED)

9:40-9:50am CINCINNATI, COLUMBUS WLW-AM JIM SCOTT SHOW JIM (TAPED)

10:05-10:15am REGIONAL MN WMIS-FM MIDDAY SHOW MARK LIVE

10:20-10:30am CHICAGO - AURORA, IL WBIG-AM MORNING SHOW BRIAN & GREG LIVE

10:30-10:45am PORTLAND KPOJ-AM MORNING SHOW CARL LIVE

10:50-11:00am TULSA KMYZ-FM MORNING SHOW GREG & CHUCK LIVE

11:05-11:20am PORTLAND KINK-FM MORNING SHOW SHEILA TAPE

11:20-11:30am NORFOLK, PORSTMOUTH, NEWPORT NEWS, VA WHRV-FM - NPR HEARSAY CATHY LIVE

11:30-11:40am INDIANNAPOLIS, MUNCIE, IN WERK-FM MORNING SHOW STEVE TAPE

12:00-12:10pm NASHVILLE WFFH-WRLT-FM MORNING SHOW MARY TAPE

12:10-12:20pm CHICAGO - REGIONAL IL WLPO-WAJK-WKOT-AM MIDDAY SHOW LOUANNE TAPE

1:00-1:10pm DALLAS KLLI-AM MORNING SHOW PUGS & KELLY TAPE

1:10-1:21pm BIRMINGHAM WAPI-AM THE ROX REPORT ROXANNE LIVE

1:30-2:00pm TRI-STATE - BASED IN CT WICC-AM MIDDAY SHOW DAVID LIVE

2:05-2:30pm MILWAUKEE WRJN-AM NEWSTALK 1400 PETE LIVE

2:30-3:00pm SACRAMENTO KSAC-AM - KAHI-AM POP OFF RADIO SHOW MARYJANE LIVE

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27th

10:10-10:30am BALTIMORE WHFS-FM TROY JOHNSON SHOW TROY LIVE

Posted by Jeff P Howe on August 25, 2008 at 03:10 PM in BFD Announcements | Permalink

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Comments

Geez Jeff! 27 in one day is ridiculous. Sounds like Crown has a hell of a promotion team. Good luck. I'm chiming in on the 9am WNPR (Connecticut) show with you tomorrow, too.

Posted by: Daren C. Brabham | August 25, 2008 at 05:12 PM

...also, is your book tour bringing you to Salt Lake City at any point? Utah's got some good fly fishing, I hear. And I'll buy you lunch!

Posted by: Daren C. Brabham | August 25, 2008 at 08:58 PM

Awesome! Can't wait to catch up Daren, on-air or off ... I'm dying for the book to take me to Salt Lake, though it hasn't happened yet. Besides offering you as host it's home to the Provo River, one of the premier trout rivers in the country.

Posted by: Jeff Howe | August 26, 2008 at 05:16 AM

Your garrulity might indeed be stretched to the point of zombie like rhetoric as the twenty seventh interview draws near Jeff, fantastic opportunity to spread the word though.

Huge congratulations on reaching the day of publication, I hope all goes well and good luck!

Alan

Posted by: Alan Booker | August 26, 2008 at 06:13 AM

@Daren: Were you on later in the segment? I missed you, buddy.
@Alan: I'm on interview 18 and I'm already sounding like a zombie. Thanks for kind wishes.

Posted by: Jeff Howe | August 26, 2008 at 10:12 AM

Yeah I'm in the third/last segment, at about 36 minutes in. After your segment (which was first), they did a segment with InnoCentive/Threadless, and then on to me and Douglas Rushkoff.

You can listen to it here:

http://www.cpbn.org/program/where-we-live/episode/crowdsourcing

Posted by: Daren C. Brabham | August 26, 2008 at 11:49 AM

Hey Jeff - big congrats.
Hope to see you chatting up the Canadian airwaves soon too!
Shazz

Posted by: Shazz | August 26, 2008 at 12:58 PM

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Crowdsourcing

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Crowdsourcing in the News

August 25, 2008

Radio Days

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