Engaging the Crowd

Paul Dombowsky - IdeavibesShawn Ripley – Urban Resilience

Introductions

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Paul Dombowsky – founder and ceo of Ideavibes and Fundchange

Crowdsourcing and social product development and examples

Shawn Ripley – CEO of Urban Resilience

Citizen engagement models and how crowdsourcing and social media fit

Welcome

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What we’ll cover today:

• Practical Crowdsourcing - what is it and how can you use it?• Social media and its part in engaging and mobilizing crowds.• Citizen Engagement through crowdsourcing – successful case studies.• How to tap into the conversations that are already going on to make better

decisions.• What is social product development? How can that help you acquire new

customers?• Best practices and how to implement in your organization. How to satisfy the

skeptics.

Challenge #1

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Traffic congestion is a major challenge to the environment, quality of life, and economic growth of Vancouver. How would you encourage your fellow citizens to make alternative choices for getting around the city each day?

Challenge #2

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Brand X needs help with the new version of their app to ward off cheap competitors and to avoid losing customers. As a current or potential customer, what would you do to the app to improve it?

DefinedAn engagement process whereby organizations seek input from either open or closed communities of people, either homogenous or not, to contribute ideas, solutions, or support in an open process whereby the elements of creativity, competition and campaigning are reinforced through social media to come up with more powerful ideas or solutions than could be obtained through other means.

Why Bother?Organizations have a difficult time engaging with their communities to strengthen their relationship and be citizen/crowd focused. Internal or external, the community has ideas that can be harnessed that come from diverse backgrounds, experiences and education.

Crowdsourcing

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Citizen Engagement for Calgary Web 2.0

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• There are many one way conversations happening:• Blogs

• Calgaryherald.com/blog• Calgarycitynews.com• Calgary.ca/centre-city• Centrecitytalk.com• Blog.calgarymayor.ca• Ward11calgary.ca

• Make no mistake – your citizens want to be involved in transforming the City of today to City 2.0.

• Where is the engagement? Where is the innovation happening?

Driven by Social Media Platforms

Engagement – Who Participates?

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Millennials (born ’91 and after)

Gen Y (born ’81-’91)

Gen X (born ’65-’80)

Boomers (born ’46-’64)

Civics (born ’45 or earlier)

ExplicitExperts

Emergent Experts

(community leaders, front line stakeholders)

General Audience

Who is your crowd?

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CITY

EngagementTargets

Where Innovation / Crowdsourcing Fits

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Community

Open SpaceHow we gather

Social Media

How we talk

Leadership

How we inspire & enable

Open Innovation

CrowdsourcingWhere ideas come from

Innovation: Crowdsourcing vs The Survey

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Crowdsourcing Surveys

• Lends itself to diversity of participation• Fewer barriers to participation• Drives innovation – new ideas from left

field that have merit• Easy to interpret – the crowd generally

makes things clear• Comments are focused

• Great for solidifying preconceived ideas or directions

• Hidden• Requires interpretation which is open

to biases by reviewers• Doesn’t encourage creativity

The Appeal

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• Crowdsourcing surfaces new perspectives

• Invites participation from nontraditional sources

• Infuses real energy into the process of generating ideas and content

• Empowers people when they feel their voice is being heard

• Technology can enable participation by disenfranchised (ie. PCs in libraries/shelters with citizen engagement campaigns)

• Builds engagement and relationships with new audiences

Things to Watch For

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• Excessive lobbying and promotion

• Narrow crowds product narrow results

• No follow-through causes creditability hit

• If you say you are generating solutions for X, communicate what happened and why

• Broad ideation campaign descriptions will result in less focused results BUT too narrow will restrict creativity

• Dismissing ideas that seem far fetched

• Ideation often requires refinement – understanding what your crowd is saying by ‘x’

NYC Citizen Engagement Program

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Example 1: Citizen Engagement

San Francisco Engage4change Citizen Engagement Program(2 weeks)

• No. of Engagements = 2252• Referrals = 64% from Twitter• Cost = 500 ice cream cones ($1,000)• Humphry Slocombe’s Crowd

= 320,000 twitter followers and Facebook Friends

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Example 2: Citizen Engagement in SF

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Example 3: Open Innovation with Citizens

City of OttawaHave a Say Sustainability Campaign

• No. of Engagements = 5700• Goal: 1500• Drivers: Twitter, Facebook, Media

Event (related)• Number of ideas: 200• English and French

Launching in April, 2012

Designed to move ideas for improving Scouts and the web experience from email to an open innovation platform.

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Example 4: Myscouts Innovation

Crowdsourcing starts with a Question /Problem

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• Needs to be:

– Clear and compelling

– Not leading

– Allow for open innovation

– Encourage participation

– Allow for outliers to feel comfortable

Possible Application:

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• Land use determination – who drives the agenda and the conversation?

• Two approaches• Opportunity driven

• Innovation driven

• The difference lies in where the ideas come from

• From the user or the customer

• From the supplier

Possible Application – Land Use:

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Opportunity Driven (supplier) Innovation Driven (customer)

City Posts Challenge

Crowdsourcing used to generate ideas

Crowd determines their preference

Feasibility Review takes place

Developers invited to respond to specific RFP

City releases RFI

Developers Respond

Short list

Consultation

Study

Selection

• Ideas and information produced by and on behalf of the citizen or the crowd

• Crowd is empowered to spark the innovation that will result in an improved approach to governance

• Move away from ‘Vending Machine Government’

• Responsibility is shared between citizens and staff

Government as a Platform

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Pay TaxesExpect

ServicesRepeat

Crowdsourcing Pros and Cons

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PROS• Reduced time to market

• Reduced risk due to early customer input

• Increased customer lifecycle value

• Broader source of innovation

• Strengthened brand through participation

• Organizations can’t have all the brightest people on staff

• Ideas don’t have to be discovered by internal R&D teams to be capitalized upon

• Benefits from varied experiences

CONS• Less control

• Needed trust not easily come by in some organizations

• Requires community management

• Suffers if crowd is too narrow

• Disruptive to traditional timelines for product roll outs

• First attempt is risky until you understand your crowd

• Need to know your target audience

Social Product Development

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• Create social media conversations for:– Idea/Requirements gathering

– Validation (strategy, requirements, usability +)

– Use Cases, User Stories

– Persona development

– Beta recruitment

– Success stories

– Testimonials

– Usability / Product Appeal

– Scalability

Social Product Development

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Product Management

Customers

Advisory Boards

Technology

Trends

Industry Trends

Competition

Partners

Prospects

Crowd sourcing

Stake-holders

Investors

Influencers

Analysts

IdeaStorm was created to give a direct voice to Dell’s customers and an avenue to have online “brainstorm” sessions to allow them to share ideas and collaborate with one another and Dell. Their goal through IdeaStorm is to hear what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop.

In almost three years, IdeaStorm has crossed the 10,000 idea mark and implemented nearly 400 ideas!

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Example 1: Innovation from the Crowd

Quirky is an all in one product development shop for inventors.

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Example 2: Product Development from the Crowd

Threadless runs regular campaigns to select designs that are then produced and sold to a ready-made market that participated in the product selection.

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Example 3: Product Selection by the Crowd

Starbucks uses the same platform as Dell and Salesforce.com for their social product development.

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Example 4: Product Selection by the Crowd

Example 5: Salesforce

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What do your current customers want to see on your roadmap?

What features are needed to turn prospects into customers?

Democracy?

1 vote = 1 customer

Best Practices

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• Have a clear strategy for using crowdsourcing• IP Ownership• Competitive visibility

• Break things down so crowd is clear what you are looking for• Build trust

• Be open in your communications about the crowd’s role in the process

• Do what you say you are going to do

• ABEYC – always be expanding your crowd• The crowd needs to be big enough – but not too big

• ABRYC – always be refining your crowd• Creating diversity is as important as creating size

Build a Social Product Strategy

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• Reach customers & prospects where they live – join in the conversations that are happening already

• Capitalize on valuable customer and prospect insight

• Develop a culture of collaboration

• Implement the right social technology to get the job done

• Communicate results and intentions and be open as possible

• Let conversations happen in the open

• Be crowd friendly on an ongoing basis

How an Engagement Platform Works

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Implementation Process

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City creates website landing

page

City develops campaign in

Platform

Initiative launched –

site live

City promotes initiative

through social media /

traditional media

Citizens post ideas

Moderator checks and

releases ideas

Citizens share ideas with

their crowd

Citizens vote/comment

on ideas

Results analyzed & presented

• Easy to set-up and deploy• Able to run multiple campaigns at once• Can run Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding Campaigns• Build stickiness and community around those that engage

(sign-in and see past votes, comments, ideas)• Hosted solution (in Canada)• Able to be implemented on existing website or set-up in

new, destination site• Social Media connected• One of few sub $1000/month solutions

Ideavibes Citizen Engagement Platform

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• Platform• Consulting support to help you get going through our

partnership with Urban Resilience• Social media support• 45 Day Trial to get started and run your first campaign

What we offer

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Thank youPaul Dombowsky | 613.878.1681 | paul@ideavibes.com | www.ideavibes.com