Crowdsourcing - Can it help create better events?

What is crowdsourcing and how can you use it to make your event better?

To get started on what crowdsourcing is in the first place and how it’s used in other industries, check out this infographic created by BizMedia.com :

Benefits and pitfalls of crowdsourcing

Now that you may have a better idea of what crowdsourcing is, think about whether it’s right for you - just because it’s trendy, it doesn’t mean it’s definitely relevant to you. On the other hand, when applying crowdsourcing to the events industry, you might ask yourself - Is crowdsourcing just a new name for event research we do anyways with our target audience before the event, when we contact past and potential participants, sponsors and speakers and investigate how the event could be made better next time? Let’s take a look.

We’ve come across several bits and pieces of advice on the pros and cons of crowdsourcing (Business spectator ), such as:

1. PRO - building a relationship with the crowd while getting to know the people who actually have something to say about your product or service.

2. CON - high risk of low quality or less credible products.

3. PRO - fairly inexpensive.

4. CON -  managing a large number of workers, which means wasting more time.

5. PRO - more heads are better than one.

6. CON - Possible copyright issues - suggest reading more about it here

According to Chris Bucchere, CEO of The Social Collective the best way to use crowdsourcing for event industry involves:

• Make the selection process easy

• Offer everyone that participates an incentive

• Promote the crowdsourcing platform heavily

• Reward the winners with something valuable

• Have a good event that participants want to support

So, how is crowdsourcing different to asking your audience in your events group on LinkedIn about the topics, formats and speakers they want to see at your next event?

Crowdsourcing in the events industry - anything new to add?

The difference we can see that crowdsourcing could potentially bring to the events industry is engaging your audience in event research on a new platform. For example, instead of calling up your potential attendee or emailing your last year’s attendees, you could approach them on social media and send them a link to contribute to your event’s research on a new platform. That way, you’d make your event appear more innovative - which may be useful and relevant if innovation is what your audience values or a relevant topic for your event.

So, we investigated the potential crowdsourcing platforms and here’s what we came up with:

DesignCrowd (as the name suggests, it is a crowdsourcing platform for design-related topics), Ideaken (services which enable crowdsourcing for ideas and solutions), even Quora  (platform for answers and questions on all subjects, similar to Yahoo Answers and FormSpring ).

The article “Misunderstanding crowdsourcing “ from 2010 argues that these sites should not be confused with online bidding sites such as Freelancer.com and competition sites like 99Designs which are purely outsourcing. However, these platforms (including oDesk , MinuteWorkers and other) are often included in most of the top crowdsourcing sites lists. Should they count as crowdsourcing or outsourcing? What do you think?

Crowdsourcing in the events industry - can we apply it to all stages of creating an event?

Now, let’s get a bit more creative. Could you ask a community of experts to find you speakers for your event in return for free tickets? Could you ask the same community to introduce you to potential sponsors? And certainly, you could ask a crowdsourcing design platform to help you design your event’s logo, brochure or website…. That’s just a few ideas, but this is where we see the most value from crowdsourcing.

All in all, crowdsourcing can be a great way to engage with your target audience and a powerful way of keeping them involved in your brand. In the events industry, we see potential value of crowdsourcing in innovative platforms for event research and in using crowdsourcing to help you complete parts of the event production process. If crowdsourcing could potentially greatly benefit your event because of a lack of time, contacts or other resources, go ahead and try it out!

Read more about crowdsourcing on CrowdsourcingWeek and TSNN blog.

Cover image credit: Sebastiaan ter Burg

Slider-image credit: Jim Larrison