Professor Uses Wisdom of Crowds to Engage Students

Not sure about you, but I personally found astronomy a bit challenging back in my college days.  For me it wasn’t challenging because it was a hard topic necessarily; mostly because it was a topic where I was not particularly interested.

I bring this up because a good friend of mine was telling me that his daughter takes an astronomy class that uses the wisdom of the crowd to keep students engaged.  I have always known that crowdsourcing will play a part in the education process, both formally and informally.  Using the wisdom of crowds to keep college students engaged is intriguing, to say the least.

The professor of this class created wireless voting consoles with four simple buttons labeled A, B, C, and D, placed at each seat.  Periodically during the class lecture, the professor poses a question and asks the students to vote on the right answer.  What they found is that “the crowd” (the students in this case) are right more than 80% of the time when polled.  My friend’s daughter has found that it actually keeps the students much more engaged and interested in the topic.  

This concept is very similar to “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”, where the contestant has three different lifelines to try and determine the answer to a question.  One of these lifelines is to poll the audience for their opinion to the answer; the audience is right 91% of the time.   In contrast, another lifeline available to the contestant is to call a friend, a claimed “expert”, to assist with the answer of a question.  In these cases, the expert is only correct 65% of the time.

Despite the possibility that the majority of these students will not move on to be astronomers, could the learning technique be a new way of teaching some subjects?  Might it be sufficient in entry-level elective classes, such as astronomy, for a professor to get the “wisdom of the crowd” of a class to about 80% and not push for “experts”?

As I like to push my thinking outside of the box, I can’t help but wonder what the outcome would be if more classes were to engage in teaching practices embraced by this astronomy professor.   Would we create more experts, if this practice of teaching was also complemented with a grading system that focused on the collective wisdom of the entire class as opposed to the traditional individual grading system?

I think that what this professor has done is really revolutionary, and it is clear to me that we have not even begun to leverage the wisdom of crowds yet.

The Crowd is gathering…….

Wisdom of Crowds Steers Coldplay’s Strategy for Viva La Vida

When a band creates a new album the music label tries to guess which song should be the single that best represents that album.  It is the “selected” single that the label will spend massive promotional dollars for things like a CD single, music video and radio play.   This is all done as a way to promote the album, as that is where the label makes most its money.  Hence the art of this process is to try and predict what the crowd will like best. 

Because a music label cannot possibly afford to promote every song on the album, if they are incorrect in their prediction and they select the wrong single it can have a negative impact on the overall sales of the album.  This means that the record label has wasted a lot of money and possible doomed an otherwise good album or even the entire band. 

Last year Coldplay released their new highly promoted and anticipated album Viva La Vida.  Their label, EMI, chose the song Violet Hill as the lead single to promote the album.  In doing so, EMI created the standard promotional content and programs around the song including free early downloads for a week.   Violet Hill was released on May 5 digitally, as CD single and a music video.  As a way to leak more of the album out EMI then released the second single Viva La Vida on May 7 digital only.   In conjunction Coldplay did an advertisement for Apple’s iTunes in May and used Viva La Vida as the song.   

The interesting thing was that even after all the promotion around Violet Hill it was Viva La Vida that became the big hit as an almost overnight success.  Viva La Vida quickly reached the top spot of the UK Singles Chart and Billboard Hot 100.  According to Wikipedia it was “the band's first number-one single and a Transatlantic number-one.  Viva la Vida was well-downloaded in the internet, becoming iTunes' second best-selling song of 2008”. The crowd spoke and with its wallet.

EMI, responding to the crowd, scrambled to appease the market by going back to make a music video and a CD single for the song Viva La Vida long after the album was released.  Both were released on July 29, 2008.  Arguably it was because of this change in focus to the single Viva La Vida that powered the success of the compilation becoming the worldwide best selling album of 2008 according to Wikipedia.

In a very direct way the collective wisdom forced EMI to change its strategy quickly and with that change they were able to ensure that they matched the market trends.  I’ll tell you – this “wisdom of crowds” stuff is powerful!!!

The Crowd is gathering……

When Will Large Media Listen to the Wisdom of the Crowds?

I popped in the Ratatouille DVD the other night to watch with my kids.  As we waited for the movie to begin, I saw a commercial that talks about content stealing. You’ve probably seen it - the one where loud music is playing and they draw the analogy of people stealing stuff from stores as being equivalent to accessing unauthorized digital media.  As I was watching this commercial for the 100^th time, I wondered - at what point will the business models of large media companies catch up to the opportunities for distribution, based on the wisdom of the crowd? 

I whole-heartedly stand behind the protection of the rights for content creators. I believe those who knowingly propagate illegal distribution of this content for their own profit should be punished.  At the same time, large media is focusing on the wrong thing – we are not lacking in technology to make more video content more readily accessible. This technology has existed for many years now.  In reality, large media companies have been reluctant to evolve their business models as rapidly as the technology has evolved to support that content.  The biggest issue for large media companies is that they do not want to cannibalize the existing markets of terrestrial TV, box office movies, and DVDs.  On top of this, these companies saw what happened to the music industry with the Napster epidemic - I’m empathetic to this concern and I get it.

On the other hand if there was ever a time to evolve – that time is NOW.  If we were to take the pulse of the wisdom of the crowd on the topic of easier access to more legal video content with reasonable business models, I am 100% sure that the result would be overwhelmingly positive.  I am not saying that there is an easy way to solve this problem and I understand the complexities behind them. In my years spent working in the digital media space, I learned that it’s best to cannibalize your own market before some else does it for you. In this case, consumers are unknowingly doing that for these large media companies.  In fact, the wisdom of crowd has already had its say, demonstrated by the large number of people accessing unsanctioned content regularly.  People that I know who access content via things like BitTorent do so because it is easy not to save money.

Recently, RedOrbit (http://tinyurl.com/d2wgrg) published an article stating that “executives are now concerned that the recession will cause more users to view stolen shows and movies.”  I find this totally preposterous.  A down economy does not suddenly make everyone a thief.  In fact, it is proven time and time again that in a down economy box office sales go up!  According to Media By Numbers, box office revenue for 2009 is up by 17.5 percent even though ticket prices have increased.  Attendance is up 16 percent, which means box office revenue increases can't be attributed to higher ticket prices. This is the biggest surge in the box office numbers in about two decades.  I am not seeing an increase in arrests because people are sneaking into theaters to avoid the ticket price.

When you calculate this all up, the wisdom of crowds is saying that people are willing to pay for content - they just want it to be easy.  Richard Cotton, general counsel for NBC Universal, told the New York Times, “Young people, in particular, conclude that if it’s so easy, it can’t be wrong.”  I say, wrong, wrong and wrong again.  The truth is that TV seems free because we pay a monthly fee and we just get everything that is there.  With my Comcast service, the content that costs extra is clearly marked and I have to accept it.  Most people cannot draw the difference in their minds between that experience and the Internet.  I pay my monthly internet fee and I get whatever is there and when stuff is not free, it is clearly marked.  Most people are NOT celebrating that they have just stolen free content from someone – they do not even think about it because they have no idea that it is stolen!

I believe that if it is easy, people will do it, which includes both access and business model.  According to Wikipedia, as of January 2009, iTunes has sold 6 billion songs worldwide.  Apple has figured out a model that is easy to access and payment that is easy to accept.  Apple is now moving to a completely DRM free (DRM is the protection technology that prevents open sharing) library by the end of April 2009.  That tells me that Apple is listening to the wisdom of the crowd and adapting.

Now if Steve Jobs can begin to apply that same wisdom to his stake in large media we would be all set.

The Crowd is gathering.........

(Launching coming at the end of April) 

Can the “Wisdom of Crowds” Calm Economic Fears?

This morning, President Obama’s top economic advisor, Lawrence Summers talked about the “excess of fear” among Americans about the economy.  Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, went on to say that "fear begets fear” and that "is the paradox at the heart of the financial crisis.”  I find this particularly interesting as I see crowds turn into mobs with fear eating away at our lives. 

My wife said other day that it seems like the whole world is depressed right now.  Her observation was based on the fact that large media is focused negatively on economic turmoil.  I realize that we are not in a growth period and that things are not great economically. At the same time, I cannot help but wonder if Mr. Summers has a point - that we as a community are pursuing a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Several years ago, I was on the 6:30AM commuter flight from San Jose to LAX on my way to see a customer.  Immediately after take off, the pilot came on the loud speaker and explained that we had a collision with a large bird.  The pilot said that although he did not see anything wrong with any of the cockpit instruments, it was better to be safe than sorry.  He told us that we were returning to the airport to check it out.  Being that this was the first flight in the morning, most people were still half asleep and calm.  About 5 minutes into our journey back to the airport, a woman two seats in front of me started to make an odd yelping sound.  When the flight attendant went to check on this woman’s well being, the woman yelled out that she did not want to die.  The flight attendant told her that this was a routine procedure but the woman did not hear a word she said.  As the woman was sobbing, all she could say was “my sister died on an airplane and I do not want to die”.

At this point, everyone became a bit uneasy and the chatter among the other passengers got noticeably louder and more excited.  I have to admit that I suddenly felt a bit uneasy as well.  As it turned out, we got back to the airport safely and there was nothing wrong with the airplane whatsoever.  At this point, I was done with flying for the day and I called the customer to say I was not coming.

The point of this story is that one person changed the whole temperament of the crowd in mere seconds.  Mr. Summers insists that "what we need today is more optimism and more confidence."  I wonder what the result would be if we could take the “wisdom of the crowd” within the entire country on the feeling of the economy.  I know that certain places like Detroit and the financial districts of San Francisco and New York would not be very upbeat, but what about other places in the country?  The key with the wisdom of crowds is to capture the opinions of a large diverse group and give everyone in that group the same vote weighting.  Unfortunately, large media lets negativity have a much larger vote than positivity and hence they are analogous to that woman on my flight while US citizens are the passengers.

Again, I am not saying that things are rosy, but I do look forward to the day when we can truly take the wisdom of the crowd on topics like the economy.  By doing so, we might be able to fulfill Mr. Summer’s plea for optimism and confidence.

The Crowd is gathering…………

(Thanks again to my editor Julia who makes me look smart!!)

Crowdsourcing a New Home

Late this past Saturday afternoon, we had just returned from a family bike ride on a very pleasant day.  While I was putting the bikes away, a nice couple passed by and cheerfully said hello as they continued their stroll.  When they were almost past my house I could hear them talking amongst themselves.  Suddenly they turned and said, “Excuse us sir, but we are looking at buying a house up the street and we were just wondering if you like the neighborhood?”  They explained that they were not from the area so anything I could tell them would be helpful; we will call them Ted and Sue.  As someone who has been burned in a real estate transaction, I was more than happy to give Ted and Sue my opinion.

Although Ted and Sue had probably already made up their minds on purchasing this new home, polling a few people on the street most likely put their minds at ease.  The process Ted and Sue undertook in researching their new home was prudent albeit limited and time consuming.  They had looked at five or six homes that day and when they found one they liked they walked around the neighborhood to get a feel for the area.  Then, they saw someone who looked approachable and figured they would ask some questions.

In this process, Ted and Sue were reliant on the opinions of the few people that might have been outside in their yard at that exact time.  While our street and neighborhood is a great place to live, they could have easily ran into someone who just had a bad day and as a result might not have gotten a good understanding of the area.  Worse, there could have been no one outside at all and they would have gotten zero feedback.  In this case, Ted and Sue would have had to make a $900K purchase without any neighbor data points, which is how 99% of the country makes their decision on a new home today.  In reality, the intangibles of a neighborhood like culture, ages of the existing residents, daily traffic conditions all can make or break your desire to live there.  With the exclusion of the information from the buyer’s real estate agent, the process of buying a home is almost entirely in a vacuum. 

There are a few websites that do allow people to write reviews and ask questions.  The problem with this is that users are back to the same situation that Ted and Sue found themselves: reliant on the few who have taken the time to write something.  This does not come close to a crowdsourcing solution where the collective wisdom of the masses contributed.

The good news is that all of this data does exist, if only in our minds.  In the example of Ted and Sue, they were totally reliant on one opinion, which may or may not have been helpful or representative of the real environment.  What Ted and Sue really needed was to crowdsource this decision to see what 500 people thought about our neighborhood.  With this information they could then compare wisdom of crowds for our neighborhood against the same for the other neighborhoods they had been considering.  From there the individual opinions of the few chance encounters on the street could complete the picture for them as opposed to being the entire picture.   Just imagine the possibilities.

The Crowd is gathering…………… 

The Crowd Starts to Expose

Ok ok ok, so I have received many questions about what the heck we are really doing here at The Crowd. Is it a blog? Is it an application? Is it going to be fun? Is it for me to use? When will it come? Will I like it?

Well, I am glad that the mystery is working…our goal is to build up the mystique behind it. Why? Because that is what stealth mode companies do. This is done to drive some hype around the idea so that when it becomes publicly available, everyone rushes to use it.

This blog is really meant to provide insight into the way we see the world. Although our mission is simple, the foundation is abstract. The concept that we base our whole vision on is that the collective wisdom of many is more intelligent than a smart few. If you were to take a room of 1000 people and combine that room with a three- foot high by one-foot wide jar of jellybeans and ask everyone in the room to guess the number of jelly beans in the jar, the mean of those guesses would be very precise, give or take a few.

Our mission is to “harness the collective wisdom of the world and make is accessible to everyone”. Sounds ambitious, but we are confident that we have figured it out. The key to The Crowd is that it is built by the people for the people and we are simply facilitators. This means that we are building consumer applications that will enable you, the consumer, to contribute and access this wisdom. The Crowd will be accessible in the places where you spend most of your time online; The Crowd will be within the "crowds".

Is this as revolutionary as the Wright Brother’s invention of a flying vehicle? Arguably not. Could we have figured out for the Wright Brothers if there was a market for such a vehicle? Absolutely!

I realize that I have not answered all the questions again, but that is the goal: create some mystery and hype around the product so that at launch people rush to use it. The Crowd’s public launch is at the end of April so everyone will soon know what exactly is going on. Some time before that we will invite a few to check it out first to ensure that we have built something that is mostly bug free. If you are interested in an early peek – become a follower of this blog. Either way, keep reading because we have SO much more to talk about!

(Thanks to my editor Julia - you're the best!)

Cell Phone Usage Up 4X From 2002 – Good For Collective Wisdom

Back in 1989, I was a very young man employed as a project manager at a PC company called Emerson Technology.  At that time, cell phones were rare but were growing in popularity among executives.  Because of my job, I often had a cell phone at my disposal and people used to stare at me in disbelief that a guy as young as me would be talking on a cell phone.

This morning, AP reported that now 6 in 10 people in the world have a cell phone and the subscriber base has grown from 1B in 2002 to 4.1B at the end of 2008 (http://tinyurl.com/blmege).  Surprisingly, fixed or LAN line usage only increased from 1B to 1.27B during that same time period.  Internet usage is only at 23% of the world’s population. 

In our history, the greatest technologies invented have been related to transportation, energy and communication. In reality, both transportation and energy inherently powered better communication.   Think what the combustible engine and the airplane both have done for business.  For many people who live in third world countries, this new level of communication means new power: power to call the doctor when their child is sick, power to call a neighbor for a ride to the local village, power to call a relative and ask to borrow money.  More importantly, this gives them the power to have their “say” in the world. 

Each person in the world has something to contribute in some way, shape, or form; whether it’s an experience, opinion, vision or idea.  Without proper communication systems, the rest of the world misses out on these valuable treasures.  With this new adoption rate of communication technology, we are now able to begin to harness this information as a collective wisdom.  If information is power and communication is the conduit to that power, I see this increase in a “connected” world as one of our most valuable and powerful tools.  Once this collective wisdom has been harnessed and made accessible, this tool can be applied to almost an infinite amount of problems and opportunities alike.

The Crowd is gathering………….

(The Crowd launches at the end of April 2009)