I’ll try to get the Twitter feed back into the sidebar, and get the category support back up. Hope this doesn’t get in anybody’s way!

The concept of crowdsourcing is still growing, and finding uses in corporations, groups, and lately governments. Here are some of the most interesting crowdsourcing tools, and use-cases by governments.

Corwdsourcing Tools:

Ideascale: (Free-$99/mth) Seemingly the “big boy” on the block, and has been used by the Obama administration to crowdsource ideas. Allows for the submitting, moderating, voting and commenting on ideas- and also allows for the wiki-editing of existing ideas.  Overall a very clean interface, and has iPhone and Twitter/Facebook support. The $99 version allows for custom branding and design.

Uservoice: (Free – $589/mth) Very much like Ideascale, but however integrates the idea of “private forums” that allow users to contribute some ideas privately. Also, philosophically, is different from Ideascale in that it limits the number of votes users get to get them to choose their top 3 ideas. Provides an easily-embeddable widget for websites.

Get Satisfaction: (Free-$289/mth) More of a helpdesk system than an crowdsourcing tool, Get Satisfaction nevertheless is one of the leading players in the helpdesk industry. Makes it easy for people to ask questions, share ideas, report problems or give praise. Offers open APIs, widgets, and support for iPhone apps. Even has an iphone app developed by a third party developer, which can be found here.

Other interesting options: Kampyle, IdeaTorrent, Fevote, Crowdsound, Voxpopuli, Google Moderator (not exactly a crowdsourcing tool, but a Q&A management tool)

Interesting Mobile Crowdsourcing Apps:

So far most of the apps I’ve looked at are more of open, mobile helpdesks than idea sourcing tools- but most have some form of allowing people to submit ideas. Nevertheless here are the most interesting ones, most of which use the iPhone as a platform.

Screenshots from the iTunes store

Citizen Connect (iPhone platform, City of Boston): Integrates a simple iPhone app with political will- users have reported getting reported holes filled within 24 hours. It allows users to report graffiti, potholes and any problems around the city, making full use of the geolocation and camera of the iPhone.

Screenshots from the iTunes store

Do-it-yourself Democracy: (iPhone platform, California only) Like Citizen Connect, it allows citizens to report problems using the camera and GPS of the iPhone- but takes the idea further by allowing citizens to do almost anything from proposing local initiatives to emailing their Mayor.

Similar applications: GORequest (California), The Extraordinaries (a fantastic crowdsourcing app that doesn’t really fall into this category, but deserves to be mentioned)
PS: If anyone is interested in building something like this in the Singapore context, please contact me here.

I just outsourced my first job via Elance- basically to find somebody to splice and code the Locra site from a basic Photoshop file to CSS-compliant webpages. As a team of mostly busy undergraduates, working on Locra means a trade off with either academics, activities, or sleep- and it unsurprisingly things move quite slowly as school life gets in the way. Hopefully, by outsourcing activities which are simple but tedious we will be able to move faster. It has been almost a year since the project has started and it is about time to make it happen.

This also made me think a bit about the opportunity cost of education. A few days earlier I received a warning from my scholarship provider as my grades for the past quarter had fallen well below an A- average (though my career average was ok). Outsourcing the more mundane tasks, and focusing on the important things (good grades?) will hopefully be better in the long run, though expensive in the short run. Typing this on a Saturday night (sigh) with 2 midterms next week, I sure do hope this works.

The current look of the Redsports site

It was interesting listening to why Les talk about how he started Redsports. He had started off developing Redsports as a photography news site, and slowly gathered volunteers and helpers to cover the many sports events in Singapore, while also finding advertisers and sponsors to keep the site going. The sheer scale of what he had accomplished was amazing- he had effectively started a sports media company of his own, with volunteer reporters and photographers, and a revenue model to sustain it- all of this from his home coffee table.

Talking to him confirmed my belief that sometimes all it takes to spark change is a dedicated individual who is willing to change things. I was a not-very-good waterpolo player in secondary school who did not continue the sport in junior college. A small part of the reason was that nobody seemed to notice whether I played or not (how immature I was then!). Though my eventual decision was based on many other factors as well, I wonder if a few mentions on a site like Redsports would have given me the positive encouragement to continue playing. In a society where academic achievements are perhaps over-recognized, sites like Redsports provide crucial recognition to the arena of athletics in Singapore.

It was amazing listening to Les. In Singapore, where the local newspapers’ sports desks consist of re-broadcasting foreign sports news, Redsports fills a crucial gap in the news industry. By covering the school/varsity sports scene he attracts the eyeballs of the youth population- most notably the 16-25 crowd who are in JC/Poly/Uni. The marketing opportunities of Redsports, if fully exploited, would be incredible- and knowing Les, the funds would probably be put into developing the sports scene in schools.

PS: I talked to Les about a few ideas on how to improve the usability of the site- and how to make it easier to crowdsource photos and articles- something like the Bleacher Report. If you’re an expert in web usability and are interested in helping the school sports scene drop me an email and I’ll put you in contact with Les.

One thing that we talked about was about a social enterprise in the Bay Area, which was doing work in the country he had visited. He had worked there for a short while, and I asked him what he thought of its work there. He raised an interesting point- he said that he wasn’t sure whether the founders were doing it for the cause, or for their own personal branding. I had heard about this from others as well- that the founders were more interested in building hype and letting the world know what they were doing, than doing actual work to help people.

Personal branding- an industry in itself

It was interesting, and it made me reflect back to the many times in the past I had had the chance to talk to founders of charities. Some struck me as intensely ideological, wanting to make a change in the world, while others struck me as more interested in enjoying the political/social capital they had accrued as “noble founders” of a charity. I could place most of them somewhere along this spectrum- some had started out in the former category before sliding to the latter.

I recall sitting in a swanky office of a local UN-linked nonprofit in Singapore, facing a founder who had his legs up on his table while telling me that his clout with the UN “made the government scared of [his] power”. Yet another time was hearing nurses in a church-linked community hospital complain about their church-appointed socialite overseer, who hardly spent any time in the hospital but yet was present for every charity gala dinner.

It was something interesting to think about: Mike Del Ponte, of Sparkseed once told me that the most powerful question to ask someone was “what do you want?”. Perhaps it is ever more important in the social enterprise/nonprofit world to ask oneself that question, to avoid one’s ego getting in the way of the larger social mission. I have been guilty of this more often than not- and often the blurry line between doing it for the ego and for the cause is difficult to define. But it something I have to be aware of and avoid, to prevent the I in me to blind me to inadequacy.

However something to note- I was initially quite excited about it. Pepsi giving away millions of dollars every month to change the world? That, till this caught my eye on their site.

May my project help someone overseas?

No, all Applications must be submitted by US residents and must benefit projects taking place and serving the US.

Those are some pretty clear words. Granted, its their money and they can choose how to use it- and there are many causes in the US that need as much or more help as the world outside. But by launching an online social media campaign (read: global audience) about refreshing the “world”, and then excluding everyone else in it but the USA, it sends the message that only the US matters to them. Pepsi sure is a global brand- just don’t expect it to refresh the world.

I’ve started to adopt it and it is really good. I’m using a pretty technology based set-up to implement the GTD system- namely Remember The Milk, Evernote, and Instapaper. All of them sync between my laptop and iPhone (and even airport computers!), so it makes my “dorm workspace” fully mobile.

My to do list in RTM

I’ve started to get really interested about life hacks, which are productivity tricks that programmers/people employ to make life easier. A few of the best blogs for it are Life Hacker, Life Hacks, or 43 Folders. You won’t regret reading them- promise.

I recall visiting friends in NUS and SMU over the summer break, and the general reaction to me telling them I was now an engineer was one of “what?!” Many of them were studying business (or some combination thereof), and a great many harbored ambitions of going to work in a finance or banking outfit. The remaining lot either wanted to be doctors or lawyers, and some perceived engineering subjects as somewhat of a “dumping ground”. The few technology startups I saw were staffed by mostly foreign students.

It was in general a huge difference from what I was used to in Silicon Valley, where engineers are in the greatest demand by startups and corporations alike. Singapore’s push to become a financial hub has created jobs in the banking and finance sectors, but perhaps we have not yet developed a “dependable” technological innovation industry that makes us less suspect to the vagaries of global finance. The earlier Solow, and later Romer and Jones model of economic growth unanimously point to productivity growth (either through technological innovation, or more efficient allocation) as the key driver of sustained economic growth. Singapore arguably has a limit to which it can further reallocate its resources; thus technological innovation may remain Singapore’s long-term option for the future. And innovation does not mean research- it means research that can be spun off into start-ups (e.g. Google, etc) or sold as commercial technologies.

At this point it is interesting to look at another country which has done so. Israel, a country of relatively similar circumstances, has one of the largest technology industries in the world, as this fascinating article writes (it also includes a reference to Singapore, in a not-so-positive way). A quote from the article:

Israel’s economic growth has not been based on easy credit or a real estate boom, but on the technology-driven productivity gains that economists believe is the key to sustained economic growth.

Interesting stuff. Perhaps Singapore’s future lies away from her entrepot past- where the country’s fortunes were made on her being a hub for business, trade and finance- and instead lies in producing ideas, the new goods of the global economy.

“Text messages save lives”- An example of how technology is a “game changer”

This year has also been one for changes. My academic paths as well as interests have changed over the past year, perhaps due to the exposure (for the first time) to many other areas other than the humanities. Classes such as Technology for Social Change and Liberation Technologies has shown me how technology and the sciences can change the world. I have also come to appreciate the field of engineering, especially the way engineers think. I may now be pursuing a degree in Computer Science or Computer Systems Engineering.

This change in direction comes at a good time; I am thankful for the flexibility of Stanford’s system, which allows for it. The ensuing journey, though, is tough. I am letting go of my progress in the Economics major, which I had been doing relatively well in. The engineering classes I am taking now take up far more time than last year’s courseload, and I have to work twice harder than anyone else to bring myself up to speed on physics and math. Yet in doing so I have come to appreciate the way both the humanities and sciences view the world; in a way I cannot put in words, they are incomplete without the other.

How will this impact my future in the civil service? To be frank, I have no idea. Yet I believe strongly in the ability of technology to change societies and communities for the better. The newfound ability to be able to build tools that can make life easier for everyone else is liberating, as compared only being able to analyze them and affect them through policy. I realize, increasingly, that the world needs both, and thus an understanding of both is increasingly important.

During freshman orientation, Stanford’s Vice Provost Dean Julie said that we should not expect to leave Stanford the kind of person we came in as. Back then I had assumed it meant that we would graduate with more head knowledge about the subject we were to study; what I had not grasped was that the college experience might irrevocably change our interests and mindsets. As Dean Julie said, “your college experience WILL change you,” and perhaps it has- hopefully, for the better.

The WiserEarth site

We pitched Locra.org to Angus and Wibowo, the director and chief editor of WiserEarth over 2 hours. They were able to tell us where we were headed in the right direction, and offered us great advice on how to move forward. It was humbling to listen to them talk about how WiserEarth came about and how they planned to move it forward, tapping on their veteran wisdom.

Meanwhile, things are looking up for Locra.org. After the summer lull, we are ready to pick up, reorganize and move on. Along the way we have managed to hit a few new ideas which look very promising- I’ll write about them another day. Next week we begin recruitment, and from there things will be much more interesting as we move forward.

On another note, paying for the taxi ride from the San Francisco Caltrain station to WiserEarth’ office in Sausalito cost a fortune. The public transport outside of the city is non-existent, and I can’t rent a car till I’ve had my license for a year. Thus I might be getting a cheap car if finances allow, and will be going for my driving test soon.