The Future of Crowdwork: CrowdCamp Workshop at CHI 2012

Think big! What would it take to make crowdsourcing and crowdwork a more sustainable, fulfilling, and efficient sector of economic and social production? (photo by John McNabb, cc-by-nc-nd)

This weekend, Andrés and I attended the CrowdCamp Workshop at CHI in Austin, Texas. The workshop was structured a lot like a hackathon, with the objective being to work in teams to produce projects, papers, or research.

The group I worked with coalesced around a proposal made by Niki Kittur, who suggested that we envision how crowdsourcing and distributed work contribute to solving grand challenges, such as economic inequality and the ongoing impact of the 2008 financial crisis.

We then spent the better part of the weekend outlining an ambitious set of scenarios and goals for the future of crowdwork.

While many moments of our conversation were energizing, the most compelling aspects derived from the group’s shared desire to imagine crowdwork and distributed online collaboration as potentially something more than the specter of alienated, de-humanized piece-work that it is frequently depicted to be.

To spur our efforts, we used a provocative thought experiment: what it would take for crowdwork to facilitate fulfilling, creative, and sustainable livelihoods for us or our (hypothetical or real) children?

Despite the limits of this framing, I think it opened up a discussion that goes beyond the established positions in debates about the ethics and efficiencies of paid crowdsourcing, distributed work, and voluntary labor online (all of which are, to some extent, encompassed under the concept of crowdwork in this case). It also hellped us start imagining howwe, as designers and researchers of crowdwork platforms and experiences, would go about constructing an ambitious research agenda on the scale of a massive project like the Hadron Collider.

If everything goes according to plan, this effort will result in at least a paper within the coming few weeks. Assuming that’s the case, our group will be sharing more details about the workshop and our vision of the future of crowdwork soon.

Five things I learned this week (future tense edition)

Kolob Reservoir, Utah (August, 2012).

For this edition of my occasional “five things” series, I’m trying out a twist on the usual theme (ideas, places, people, or things that I’ve run across in the preceding week) by discussing five things I’ll learn about next week.  So, without further ado, here are five things I am excited to encounter in the coming days…

1. CHI and CrowdCamp – I’m headed to Austin, Texas at the end of the week to present at CHI and participate in the CrowdCamp workshop. The lineup and agenda for CrowdCamp look incredibly exciting – the plan is to rapidly brainstorm, design, and (if possible) implement crowdsourcing projects. Given the past accomplishments of many of the other people who will be in the room, I’m excited!
2. New Zion Missionary Church (no website) – As part of my Austin trip, I hope to make a pilgrimage or two to as many of the regional holy sites of barbecue as I possibly can. In the case of New Zion Missionary Baptist Church (link points to a 2010 review on the Full Custom Gospel BBQ blog), I have heard that the slow smoked brisket can sometimes resemble a religious experience.
3. May Day Occupy actions in New York – Tuesday marks the first of May and, so it seems, a day of rebirth for the Occupy Movement. A few friends will be attending the New York actions and I’ll try to remember to link to anything they write or photograph.
4. The Onyx Boox M92 – Perhaps as a result of the extra attention that went to Mako’s setup a couple of weeks ago, I’ve succumbed and ordered my own e-book reader. I chose the Onyx Boox M92 because it checked all the boxes that mattered to me (linux based, large E-ink screen,  file format agnostic, vendor agnostic, and not reinforcing the Amazon empire) and because it seems to compare well against similar devices.
5. Calibre – Mako and Alan Toner kindly introduced me to Calibre – a very widely adopted and popular piece of free software to manage e-reader libraries –  this afternoon, but I won’t really start playing with it until my reader arrives next week.