“Crowdsourcing is the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a large group of people or community (a crowd) through an open call” – Wikipedia
We, the editors of “The Portland Bottom Line”, have issued an open call to our social networks and beyond for contributions to the book: We’re seeking 150 members of Portland’s sustainable small business community to co-create the book. “The Portland Bottom Line” is a crowdsourced book.
What is crowdsourcing?
Jeff Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” in his June 2006 Wired Magazine article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”, expanding it in the 2009 book “Crowdsourcing”. Crowdsourcing harnesses the collective intelligence of large numbers of diverse, autonomous individuals. Crowdsourcing includes crowdfunding, crowdvoting, crowdwisdom, and crowdcreation, a type of co-creation of which ”The Portland Bottom Line” and Wikipedia are examples. The crowdsourcing principles predate the term: collective intelligence principles and methods have been used in decentralized collaboration and problem-solving.
The Internet has enabled crowdsourcing to engender many cool projects. Crowdsourcing democratizes knowledge by flattening the hierarchy of the expertise-based economy: Everyone has expertise that crowdsourcers can tap into.
“None of us is as smart as all of us!”
Crowdsourcing “The Portland Bottom Line”
What makes “The Portland Bottom Line” crowdsourced compared to traditional edited compilations? A traditional book editor targets specific authors for her compilation. Except for two dozen colleagues in our seed contributor pool, the call for “The Portland Bottom Line” contributors is completely open (contributors/chapters must meet certain criteria). It allows us to tap into a larger pool of experience than we could otherwise. Traditional edited volumes tend to gather smaller numbers of authors contributing longer pieces. “The Portland Bottom Line” asks a large number of authors to contribute shorter chapters.
Nods and inspirations
“The Portland Bottom Line” isn’t the first crowdsourced book out there. The “Age of Conversation” series; “Connect! Marketing in the Social Media Era” (no longer available); and “the3six5 project” (in progress) have all been created using crowdsourcing methods. In fact, these projects also inspired “The Portland Bottom Line” – their leaders deserve my full credit: Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton; Jeff Caswell; and Len Kendall with Daniel Honigman. I’ve enjoyed participating, making new connections, and realizing the potential of the method for doing good.
Even as a self-proclaimed “cautious fan of crowdsourcing”, it’s my pleasure to say it again: “The Portland Bottom Line” is a crowdsourced book.
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Image credits: Dieter Drescher and TwOsE
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