As I combined sugar, spice and all things nice into the latest batch of holiday treats, it made me wonder that as Crowdsourcing starts to become a more recognised practice, is there a way to ensure the perfect Crowd mix? With blur Group Crowds now exceeding 8000 here’s some things we’ve observed about that magical mix.

1) Pareto Principle lives in Crowds. Not surprisingly, the experience we’ve had at blur Group as we’ve built our Creative marketplace has shown that the 80:20 rule still applies. In a Crowd where attendance is voluntary some Crowdies will participate in everything from social discussion to pitching for the creative projects, whereas others are happy to be passive Crowdies. This isn’t a good or bad thing; it’s just the way that groups will inevitably work and the task of a good Crowdsourcing ecosystem is to keep it interesting for all.

2) A Crowd needs bread and water. The Crowd, like all ecosystems, needs to be nurtured. In many  traditional Crowdsourced projects,  the Crowd rushes in to service the project. Fear of missing out is what keeps people breathing.  As Crowdsourcing moves beyond a low-cost, large-scale, test alternative for a small subset of a company’s requirements and becomes the first port of call for project delivery across all functions, looking after the Crowd becomes a function in its own right. In just the way that companies have realised that they must improve their in-house platforms like intranets, the Crowd needs its own platform to communicate with project owners, and with each other. This moves the Crowd from ‘survival of the fittest’ to a civilised community.

3) Social Media becomes the Crowd lynchpin, the main method to communicate and orchestrate.  Whether it’s recruitment of Crowd members or project updates Social Media has to be the mechanism used: nothing else can deliver the rapid, instant nature of this form of Communication, or its ability to level out the interaction playing field.  Businesses realised they needed to bring Web 2.0 in-house to make Enterprise 2.0 to ensure they could thrive; now this extends outwards to the Crowd .

4) Successful Crowds create their own Communities, or Crowdlets. In just the same way that user-generated content has been the holy grail of Web 2.o, Crowdlets, self-generated and managed communities, become the prize of successful Crowds. When the Crowd works out its own way of working together then those wanting to make use of the Crowd will get the best mix of participants. This is where Agency 3.0 will flourish; as Creative agencies realise that they are not competing with individuals sitting in the Crowd, but are actually better off teaming up and being part of this.

All this suggests that, just as with my holiday cooking, you need to think about the ingredients rather than just hoping for the best results. Here’s to the sweetest of Crowds!