Important issues to take into consideration when crowdsourcing/open sourcing a city

While defining the delimitation of the thesis, many issues have come into my mind that must be discussed, as they lay some considerations for the limitations of the study and project proposed.

Representation is a key one because, as we know, not everyone is actually online. Even though numbers are growing, most estimates put the figures of internet access in the world between a 1 and 1,5 billion, mostly concentrated in the “developed” world and, even here, more within young, middle-to-upper class males.

While this may be true, it is not indicative that which ever city decides to approach a project of this nature will get the response of only/mostly this demographic since interest truly serve as a magnetic force towards topics and sites in the Internet, like I doubt that this demographic is the dominant one in Knitty, an online magazine about knitting.

None the less, we should be aware of this, since the effort must be planned to reach out to a representative demographic so that the discussion is held by all who live in the city (or at the very least, very close to representative) and with a broad range of topics and tasks to draw in different interests groups.

Strategies for increasing education about internet use in demographics of the population where this may lack along with actions to increase physical internet access in areas of the city where this is weak, restricted or non-existent, must be undertaken to broaden the scope of population with the knowledge, skill and possibility to use and access a project of this nature.

Security issues as well must be addressed, as it is almost an impossible word to forget when discussing the Internet. Much of the distrust that lies in the online world is based upon the stories and threats of hacks, identity theft or misrepresentation/tilting of choice by groups for particular benefit using knowledge of technology as a leverage tool. While all of these are true dangers, it is the digital equivalent to any “real” world security threat brought upon by criminal acts.

A project put in place to crowdsource a city must approach security threats with much detail, like most business initiatives online, but more importantly, would benefit greatly were it to obtain true engagement by it’s citizen-participants. A combination between technological measures in addition to a committed-to-the-cause crowd has arguably (important word) been one of the security successes of Wikipedia (as exemplified here) and others.

Most importantly about these considerations, in my opinion, is to actually discuss them. Many of the thoughts behind the considerations I’ve discussed in this post have come from the comments and links that were the result of the participation that occurred in the post about the crowdsourcing the city question. Like the project itself tries to prove, things are done better when many are participating, including discussions.

Commentary about the answers to using crowdsourcing for a city.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer the question. It has been great for assessing some ideas and pointing in the direction of some considerations to have.

I believe everyone considered it a good idea in general, though most would agree that considerations need to be made. This I believe as well, in the sense that things that involve sensitive issues should be studied in order to be applied in a way that best serves the purpose it is designed to have.

Some said that the citizens of any given city (some even used their own cities as examples) are a good source of information and ideas to innovate the way some systems work in their locality.

Almost everyone agrees that the Internet is an important medium. That because of this, many people would get a voice in the discussion into what happens in the city, that the discussion would extend to a flexible time span (as opposed to a finite/scheduled town hall meeting) and that this way the discussion could be more thorough and productive.

Yet many of the respondents did make the case for a discussion to be made about the issues of representativity (who is actually involved), security (anonymity vs. exposing identity), capability and reach. These are, by no means, any smalls things to be obviated when desiging a project of this charachter. I plan to go into further lenght on these issues on a post tomorrow.

To end this intervention I would like to thank all who participated in helping me reaffirm the energy to continue ahead on the subject and align better the limitations that this could face. I’m looking forward to further participation, because it clearly makes everything better.

Question about crowdsourcing a city

What do you think about citizens, organized through the Internet, proposing and electing ideas that have direct impact in the way your city works? Could this be a good or a bad thing? Why?

A new introductory video and other announcements

Today I’ve added a short video that gives a brief overview on what the project is about. This was made with the help of my girlfriend, Melissa Nuñez, and it is with the hope that it gives an easier to understand explanation of the project. Hopefully it will help either get people interested in participating or to promote the project.

If you have any comments on the video, please feel free to leave it here.

On the other hand, I also have discontinued the box.net widget where I had uploaded the Microsoft Word document of the Topic Statement, since the widget is running a script that isn’t working correctly.

Habemus Wiki!

Today I signed up for a wiki on Intodit.com and made one for the thesis. I have uploaded the first chapter (background, problem statement, objectives and importance) and have made the space open for the next couple of chapters.

Anyone interested in taking a look can visit here http://openthesis.intodit.com/ and if anyone wants to contribute, please leave a comment or write me an email and we can get you up and running.

This is very exciting for me because I wanted many ways in which people could participate and I hope that this accomplishes that goal.

Starting out.

This is the initial post in this, for me, experimental method.

Obviously, pleasantries are required so:

Welcome! My name is Mario Ramirez Reyes and I am a 25-year-old Venezuelan student attending the Master Program on Imagineering (business innovation from the experience perspective) in the NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences (Breda, The Netherlands). You can learn more about me and my process in this project here.

Now, onto the matter at hand: how this will work.

The thesis’ working title is “ENGAGEMENT OF CITIZEN INNOVATION IN THE POSTINDUSTRIAL CITY THROUGH INTERNET-BASED CROWD COLLABORATION MODELS”. This is far from set in stone and this is one of the points that will be in discussion and I believe the end result will look not much like this initial proposition.

The idea behind the thesis is to research how crowd collaboration models work online and see how these models that have been used in many activities such as T-shirt designs, NASA projects and other applications can be translated to help transform the urban spaces we inhabit for the benefit of everyone.

I have been researching many topics on it such as “Creative Cities”, “Open Source Collaboration”, “Crowdsourcing”, “Citizen Sourcing”, “Social Capital” and, of course, “Imagineering”.

I will post along the intitial topic statement (both in document form as deconstructed as posts for each category) to disclose the information in various ways and so anyone can guide themselves to what interests them with out overwhelming (though, it is not that much at this moment).

Having done this, participation can begin on which ever way you see fit to contribute.

I have intially thought that one of my weakest areas is methodology, yet I am also aware that subject wise there needs to be a lot more done.

Through opinions, links, source recomendations or even writing direct for the thesis (with which my dream scenario would be fulfilled and I would have offcial co-authors on the thesis).

I look foward to hearing from anyone and everyone and that it will all turn out to be a wonderful and fulfilling experience that leaves us all with more knowledge on this subject.

Kind regards,

Mario Ramirez Reyes.

PS. You can continously keep tabs on me, personally, here.

Topic Statement – Problem statement, research objectives and importance and benefits of the proposed study

Title:

ENGAGEMENT OF CITIZEN INNOVATION IN THE POSTINDUSTRIAL CITY THROUGH INTERNET-BASED CROWD COLLABORATION MODELS

2    PROBLEM STATEMENT

The main purpose this research wishes to address is the evaluation of the utility of Internet-based crowd collaborations models on the process of urban innovation.

3    RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

•    Determine the need for a change in the urban policy and planning process.

•    Identify the needs of the stakeholders involved in the process.

•    Analyze the structure of Internet-based crowd collaboration models.

•    Establish the benefits that can be gained from the application of an Internet-based crowd collaboration models in the process of urban innovation.

4    IMPORTANCE AND BENEFITS OF THE PROPOSED STUDY

The analysis of Internet-based crowd collaboration models can benefit the understanding of the growing phenomena that is being experienced in several industries through out the business sector and help strengthen the possibility for a wider perspective on how cities can adapt to the increasing pace of innovation as well as offer citizens a platform for participation so the community can be involved in idea generation and problem solving for their urban space.

Topic Statement – Background

Title:

ENGAGEMENT OF CITIZEN INNOVATION IN THE POSTINDUSTRIAL CITY THROUGH INTERNET-BASED CROWD COLLABORATION MODELS

1    BACKGROUND

In a report entitled “World Urbanization Prospects – The 2007 Revision”, the (United Nations, 2008)) projected that by the end of 2008 the world’s population would have surpassed the 50% mark in concentration in urban settings as opposed to rural settings.

In the report, the UN gives detailed projections of population growth for the world in the upcoming years until 2050 that seem to follow an increasing trend in the world population to migrate to cities. This is a major and unprecedented shift in civilization.

The increasing population in cities, the economical shift away from industrial societies and the expanding network of business that allow most people to live in areas away from industrial or agricultural production have come with it’s own set of issues ranging from ecological, medical, economical, criminal and sociological that need to be resolved within the new context.

Studying how the development of the new interactions between citizens and the organizations they form (be they educational, commercial, cultural or governmental) inside the city space in the present is important for understanding the dynamics of the city and its future progress.

After understanding this phenomena, it is necessary to orient these interactions to the generation of ideas that can move civilization forward, by generating solutions to problems the population face and even go beyond focusing on problems and set in motion the production of ideas that can improve quality of life (economically, socially or culturally) through practices that challenge previous conventions.

Within this context we find a current wave of academic and other literature that delve on the subject such as Charles Landry offers a different perspective by focusing on the actual planning and structuring of the city to meet the demands of the changing population and offers to bring forth the toolkit necessary to make the change happen in his works The Creative City (2000) and The Art of City Making (2006). Richard Florida’s work in both The Rise of the Creative Class (2003) and Who’s Your City? (2008) also serves as reference, where Florida analyzes what he perceives as the changes going on in the city landscape that can attract an entire generation of young “creative” workers to cities in America.

But as Braun (2008) makes a case in for an integrated approach to city marketing, the new context present in our reality urges for a new approach of how cities innovate and adapt far beyond marketing, not to mention which sources they tap to achieve this innovation.

In this spirit, a necessity arises to study the possibilities for openness in the urban innovation process to help in the adaptation of a city to it’s new reality and take advantage of the collective local knowledge and diverse domains present in it’s inhabitants.