Crowdsourcing

It's an idea that has become increasingly popular in the developed world. However, I think the developing world stands to gain the most from its benefits. You’re probably familiar with the term ‘outsourcing’, where we export our work to India or China because it's cheaper. This idea is a little bit different and (hopefully) doesn't bring to mind sweatshops or layoffs. The idea is this: Imagine a large puzzle with thousands of tiny pieces. Most of the puzzles you and I know have all of these little pieces conveniently placed in a box, the work now is to put these little pieces together to make that winter cabin or giant puppy. So let's take this puzzle, but now the pieces are, instead of in a box, scattered around the country or around the world. And the puzzle isn't made of cardboard, it’s made of information. This information gets communicated through a variety of mediums and is pieced together by man and machine to get a better picture of the puzzle trying to be solved. There is no single expert, rather it utilizes the composite knowledge of the crowd.

This is crowdsourcing.

One example we're all familiar with is Wikipedia. This is an encyclopedia put together by various resources, and is continually edited and updated by people like you and me who may not be an expert on the entire subject, but aggregating bits and pieces of information that we each have stitches together the world's most extensive encyclopedia. Another example involving business is one called Amazon Mechanical Turk. This is a service created by Amazon to outsource little pieces of work to a whole lot of people. These jobs usually take less than a few minutes to complete and pay you a wage in cents. It’s not day-trading and wouldn’t make sense to quit your job and do this full-time, but it is a great way to supplement your income, especially if you run a store out of your home, have frequent downtime and a regular internet connection like my friend here in Subirana. The last example I’ll give, though unpopular, is Google. I mean when Google compiles your and my information and sells it to ad companies. It’s using little pieces of information from each one of us, turning them into trend charts or profiles and selling them. (I could have included them on this blog to turn a small profit from all of you… let me know if you don’t mind and I’ll add them).

Ease of access to the internet has caused this type of interactive collaboration to proliferate. Though, another popular method for aggregating data is the use of mobile phones. For use in the developing world this is key; SMS in particular. There is a group, a non-profit actually, called Ushahidi that developed an open-source software to aggregate and even map information from a variety of inputs including SMS, tweets, and email. Ushahidi is Swahili for testimony. The software was originally developed in Kenya to map incidents of violence and peace efforts after a controversial election in 2008. It has since been used to map the location of earthquake survivors in Haiti, crime reports in Atlanta, and distress messages during the infamous Snowmageddon. Ushahidi has also developed a compact web-based version of the software called Crowdmap where you can find a list of current projects or ‘deployments’. It turns out there’s a current project in Honduras to track and map healthcare resources, and has expanded to include disease outbreaks, incidents of violence, and demonstrations. This information helps people coordinating medical brigades or aid and relief efforts during a potential health crisis.

I’ve known about this type of technology for some time and I have been in the process of trying to figure out a business application for it. Specifically, what kind of information about coffee crops, exports, etc. would the cooperative benefit from tracking? Is there a larger organization with more manpower that would aggregate this information that would also benefit from this information? Who would the information come from and who would be able to or want to access it? I also just discovered that a microfinance organization called Funder and one of the mobile service providers Tigo are offering text message subscriptions to coffee, grain, and vegetable prices. Think of all the potential these kinds of resources have. Ideas welcome.

P.S. I got my stitches out this past Thursday, after a week. And I have spent every day since my last post in bed… a full week. I rediscovered the joy of solitaire and I’m on my way to becoming a computer chess master.