Crowdsourcing Event Timelines with HistoWiki

Posted on May 23, 2013 by | Leave a comment

3349572686_dae2224f87_oAnyone who is familiar with the movie Vantage Point knows that different perspectives tell a different story, and unlike holography – one truth does not necessarily reflect the sum of truth, so an experiment like Histowiki could be a controversial issue. However, it might also add depth and context to events that otherwise seemed unanchored and random.

Topics that are currently up for scrutiny and commentary include the Google Glasses timeline, US Coverage of the Benghazi Embassy Attack, the Tea Party Scandal, the God Particle, and Bob Dylan (among others).

All a user has to do is create a member profile, submit a topic and begin citing and sharing sources. Other comments can be contributed in the user comments section. But it’s still being built and as the work-in-progress confirmation email will tell you “As soon as some spokes in this wheel are in place, I will get notifications of those further changes with HistoWiki.com sent to you via email.” It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

And, unlike other wiki pages, Histowiki is ad-supported, which may effect its subscription rates and user participation. However, the subjects that are treated so far do seem fairly fleshed out.

What other topics would be good for timeline review? I, for one, would be interested in the drama of the Boston Marathon as reported by the news. Do you think this could further focus or distort communal storytelling?

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Guest Post: Why the E2 Conference Matters

Posted on May 17, 2013 by | Leave a comment

The following is a guest post by Romi Mahajan. Mahajan’s work on network intelligence and sincere marketing has been mentioned in several other blog posts. Here, Mahajan talks about the importance of certain abiding themes in enterprise level business and which ones will be discussed at E2.

Over the last few years, certain themes have taken over the collective imagination of technology and business professionals including:

• The Rise of Cloud Computing
• The Advent of “Social Business”
• The Flock to Mobile
• The Opportunities provided by Big Data

That these themes have become dominant is not simply happenstance – they are a product of the tectonic shifts in business and technology. Through scientists’ and engineers’ flights of imagination, these enabling ideas were invented and made possible. It is now up to all of us to make them stick, to make sense of them, and most importantly apply them to the way we conduct business.

Which brings me to my excitement about the upcoming E2 Conference in Boston; there, we’ll find the right combination of the high-level views of the changing world of enterprise software and the “practical” view of ways in which each of us is implicated in this sea-change.

I’d suggest you join me there.

Romi Mahajan is president of KKM Group. Prior to joining KKM, Mahajan was chief marketing officer of Ascentium Corp. A well-known speaker on the technology and media circuit, he serves on a variety of advisory boards and speaks at more than a dozen industry events per year.

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Do You Hate Fun and Bangin’? Don’t Read this Post.

Posted on May 16, 2013 by | Leave a comment

bwfmobileIn a unique opportunity, IdeaScale had the chance to interview the mystery CEOs of the much-talked-about, upstart start-up Bang with Friends whose mobile application went live last week.

In case you missed it, Bang with Friends is an application that allows you to discretely select people from your Facebook friends list who you would bang with (or hang with). No one knows that they’ve been chosen until that friend chooses you back and you both simultaneously receive a notification. The rest, as they say, is up to you.

The CEOs’ saucy attitude continues to come across in their answers to our interview questions that remain as frank and unphased by the nature of their product (as you’d expect). They may have been criticized and praised for their new product, but whatever they might say, we think BWF is here to stay.

IS: Do you think of BWF as dressed-down crowdsourcing (pick as many bangs as possible in hopes of the right one)? Is BWF just crowdsourcing a bang?

BWF: That’s perhaps the most interesting description of the “shotgun approach” strategy some people utilize.  Fortunately, it’s not real crowdsourcing on the bangs (so the crowd doesn’t get to choose who you bang)!

IS: Do you think it’s more likely that users will get laid using your tool than using “old fashioned” 1-1 methods?

BWF: Absolutely!  We recommend a healthy dose of existing strategies plus using Bang With Friends to help uncover those friends-with-benefits opportunities!

IS: Have any relationships formed as a result of BWF hook-ups?

BWF: Hell yes!  We’ve heard from lots of people who ended up forming relationships beyond just friends-with-benefits arrangements.  The best relationships are where your partner is a good friend as well.  Mix in some great sex and you have a recipe for success.

IS: What should a user’s motto be on Bang with Friends? “Looking for the right bang” or “always be banging”?

BWF: We’ll let our users decide what fits them best.  Bang With Friends is about cutting through the BS, and that includes not telling our users what they should be looking for.

IS: Is there anyone who shouldn’t bang with friends?

BWF: People who hate fun and banging?  Oh, and we restrict users to ages 18 and up, so anyone who doesn’t meet that requirement.

IS: What does your mom think of Bang with Friends?

BWF: My parents took a bit to process it, but are ultimately very supportive.  After all, I got here somehow!

IS: What’s the question that you’re shocked no one has asked you yet?

BWF: Who was the most bangin’ reporter to interview you?

IS: Who was the most bangin’ reporter to interview you?

BWF: You, of course! ;)

Looking forward to seeing what’s next in the Bang with Friends universe. Curious to learn more? You can check out the app here.

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Introducing IVAN: Crowdsourced Environmental Issue Tracking

Posted on May 14, 2013 by | Leave a comment

7825968422_e651ff8c56_oIt happens rather frequently, I’ll be driving through a spray of pesticide or I’ll notice a car that is chugging black smoke behind it down the highway.  It’s a terrible blight on my experience, but also on the environment and what makes me so annoying to be around is that there’s generally nothing to do but roll my eyes and begin complaining to whoever is nearest to me.

Now: with IVAN’s technology that is live in Imperial Valley, Coachella, Kern County, and Fresno in California, there are several things that I can do with that information. I can text, email, call, or upload information that is disruptive and environmentally unsound to this environmental mapping service that pinpoints specific complaints so that others can review and respond to that information. You can follow-up and find out what’s being done about the issue that you’ve reported or volunteer to become a member of a task force that takes responsible for cleaning up.

It’s a rather empowering set-up that IVAN is offering to local communities. IVAN is the Imperial Visions Action Network whose functionality includes: real-time mapping, detailed reports, user alerts, and support to implementers.

Most interestingly, IVAN is based on the same technology that developed Ushahidi. Ushahidi has been providing open source, information collection for a variety of purposes (including reports of ethnic violence that relate to particular neighborhoods, disaster reporting, and more). It’s great that it continues to be used towards purposes that are generally geared towards making the world a better place.

What other purposes could Ushahidi be applied to? What sorts of environmental problems do you see in your community?

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HealthTap Raises $24 Million

Posted on May 9, 2013 by | Leave a comment

3234420195_3ff3ffe4d5_bIt is a fortunate thing to have health insurance and to be able to go see a doctor when something goes wrong, but like so many first world problems, I am annoyed at numerous inefficiencies in the process. Or at least the lack of alternatives to the process. But, as of today, an alternative is able to report a substantial amount of secured funding. And now a connection with a real, bonafide doctor is within the palm of my hand on my iPhone.

HealthTap is a new application that allows patients to post their questions that are instantly routed through the HealthTap network of doctors who can peer review one another on questions that match their specialities. Questions are limited to 150 characters (although more characters can be purchased for .99). What’s the incentive for health care professionals? HealthTap is making a play to become a single source of truth about doctor reputation and efficacy. Essentially, HealthTap becomes (for physicians) a marketing tool with which they can attract new clients.

So far, 739 million answers have gone out to more than a million users. And including other rounds of investment, this brings HealthTap’s fundraising to a comfortable $37.9 million. How they will monetize HealthTap is not yet quite clear. Will it be in selling enterprise-level plans to health care institutions? Or sharing its large stores of data with researchers and developers? It’s still not clear yet.

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Global Collaboration Is Only Possible with Language Translation

Posted on May 7, 2013 by | Leave a comment

3987972050_2cbd76b6c3_zLet me introduce you to Alessandra: an Italian lawyer at an international bank who is working in Milan. She’s got some great ideas about how their mobile application development might impact their terms affecting their top 100 clients, but the development team is operating in Asia and there is no common language between them. The challenge of facilitating communication remains much the same as it would have one hundred years ago: the communications might be faster, but there still needs to be a third party that connects the two teams in a common language.

Without a global language, global collaboration will continue to run into this issue, but there are numerous tools that are making that easier every day (including cloud translation services or IdeaScale’s user generated content translation tool).

In order to better understand what the state of world language usage is, however, IdeaScale invited researcher Sergey Lobachev to speak to our global communities about which languages are going to prove most useful in global communities in the coming years. It will allow global companies to prioritize the languages that they cultivate within their business by sharing which languages are appearing most often in print, on websites, on blogs, and on Twitter.

To learn more about the language landscape, register for our complimentary webinar on Wednesday, May 15th, 2013 at 2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. PST. We’ll also be able to speak about IdeaScale’s translation capabilities.

What is the future of the world language landscape? How else can global companies collaborate?

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Good Idea or Bad Idea: Crowd Sushi

Posted on May 2, 2013 by | Leave a comment

4589436979_e745c54ca1_oOver lunch the other day, someone told a story of a friend of ours who had traveled to China. He stopped in for some sushi that was catering to American tourists and as our friend looked over the menu, he casually and affably offered the suggestion that they include the typical “Seattle Roll” (typically containing cucumber, avocado, raw salmon, and masago, tobiko or cream cheese). The employee nodded encouragingly so our friend continued offering other typical, Americanized sushi variations. It wasn’t long before the manager had come out from the back with a sheet of butcher paper and was taking vigorous notes, diagramming every variation and idea that occurred to our friend. Later, it became common practice to have patrons jot down their sushi recipe suggestions and share them with management for possible inclusion on the menu.

Also, legend has it that at Kane Sushi in California the menu is on the walls and has been developed by enterprising customers. They diagram out a sushi suggestion and if the restaurant likes it and can satisfyingly recreate it, they laminate it and hang it on the wall. One Yelper writes, “a nice touch to the establishment is the overwhelming selection of custom sushi rolls, which keep growing depending on customer imagination.” Menu creativity never stagnates when you have a large group invested in making it grow.

Now, my first instinct is to grimace a bit, thinking that raw fish recipes aren’t something that I want amateurs messing about with. But the real lesson here is that anyone can be involved in the ideation process as long as the experts are the ones assessing and implementing. As long as I’ve got some great sushi chefs at the helm, there’s no way that they’re going to let a disappointing product end up on their menus, which means I can taste a civilian-inspired, chef-approved creation – yielding culinary surprises that weren’t even on my radar. This is a similar lesson for other ideation programs – the work of evaluating ideas should belong to the people who know what they’re doing, but the gift of suggestion and innovation should come from anywhere.

Are there some things that the crowd shouldn’t weigh in on? What kind of sushi combination would you invent?

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To Build or To Buy (Innovation Software): That is the Question

Posted on April 30, 2013 by | Leave a comment

166300185_b65024d5ee_oEvery seasoned salesman has had this question posed to him on a semi-regular basis, “What is the value of buying your software when I can just build my own?” Not surprising, since we are living in an age in which IT teams are nearly ubiquitous at organizations. It’s not an unreasonable thought, but the answer is almost always the same (no matter what kind of software an organization is considering).

“Buying software is going to make your life a whole lot easier and your program a whole lot more successful.”

This is generally the beginning of a much longer explanation that has to do with the costs associated with building, the ability to scale to a need, the resources that are required and the possibilities offered by a wealth of software providers (among many other things). This goes for a number of different types of software: customer relationship management, ideation, project management, etc.

There is, however, a time to build.

Readers that download our To Build or To Buy white paper, will learn the six business considerations that buying a software solution will impact and the two questions that lead a business to build their own solution.

Readers will also learn about an IdeaScale client that made efforts to build and implement their own solution over the course of six months. That solution, in the end, wasn’t able to handle the necessary volume of traffic and IdeaScale replaced their platform with our own solution within a week to great results.

What are your build experiences? Your buy experiences?

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Global Collaboration: A Linguistic Profile

Posted on April 25, 2013 by | Leave a comment

_xVWz3EV-J9XraqyMyF8LmsmUCNljaqaCMX8-vPMZdAThere are many challenges to operating in numerous countries, but chief among them are the language barriers that disrupt true company collaboration. In order to offer some further insight into a global language profile of the digital universe, research and records management specialist, Sergey Lobachev, will present findings on the top languages in global information production: which languages to prioritize, where those languages are appearing, and what the barriers to access continue to be.

IdeaScale offers clients the ability to automatically translate user generated content that is generated within IdeaScale community. This is particularly useful for global corporations, but Lobachev’s research will help further refine the global strategy. To further elucidate the capability, Rob Hoehn will join to talk about IdeaScale’s approach to translation.

Tuesday, May 15th, 2013
10:30 a.m. – 11 a.m. PST

For more information about Lobache’vs research, read his paper.
For more information about IdeaScale, please visit our site.

Speakers:
Sergey Lobachev, Information and Records Management Specialist

Register here for this complimentary webinar.

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Hot Topic: Community Moderation

Posted on April 23, 2013 by | Leave a comment

492098001_736a71e3b1_oIdeaScale often receives questions about best practices and ideas for training and encouraging successful moderators. The questions go something like this:

-What role does moderation play in a successful community?
-How do you encourage moderators to do a good job?
-How can you make a moderator’s job easier?

A lot of these questions are things that we look into; researching statistics, alternative methods, and, of course, reaching out to our most successful clients to find out how they’re driving the product.

In this case, the process and practices run quite the gamut, with some clients simply require conversational engagement with community members from their moderators and others who create imaginative and complex idea procedures that include in-person workshop retreats or panel review sessions.

At IdeaScale, we’ve found some of the common threads that we think will be useful to anyone looking to better manage their community and conversation. We’ve assembled them into a tip sheet and are always looking for stories from you.

Download our Moderation Engagement Tip Sheet here.

How do you engage your communities? What is the process that governs the innovation process at your organization?

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