What is Crowdsourcing? And how does it apply to outreach?

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href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/visualization/" class="tag-cloud-link tag-link-199 tag-link-position-50" style="font-size: 21.044776119403px;" aria-label="visualization (6 items)">visualization</a> </div> </div> <div class="js-ajax-frame"> <section class="post-list"> <h3>Recent posts</h3> <article class="post"> <div class="article-footer"> <time datetime="2014">5 Mar 2014</time> <h4><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2014/03/05/gender-role-literacy-girls-in-science/">Gender role literacy: Girls in science?</a></h4> </div> <p>There are gender wars, and then there are casualties. It wasn’t until 2011 that the behemoth toymaker LEGO acknowledged girls’ desire to build with bricks, even though the company had long before made a seemingly effortless pivot to co-branding, video games, and major motion pictures. So it’s little wonder that girls face all-too-real obstacles when <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2014/03/05/gender-role-literacy-girls-in-science/">[…]</a></p> <a class="more" href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2014/03/05/gender-role-literacy-girls-in-science/">Read more</a> </article> <article class="post"> <div class="article-footer"> <time datetime="2013">9 Dec 2013</time> <h4><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">Challenges of crowdsourcing: Analysis of Historypin</a></h4> </div> <p>Crowdsourcing can build virtual community, engage the public, and build large knowledge databases about science and culture. But what does it take, and how fast can you grow? For some insight, we look at a crowdsourced history site: Historypin is an appealing database of historical photos, with dates, locations, captions, and other metadata. It’s called History <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">[…]</a></p> <a class="more" href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/12/09/challenges-of-crowdsourcing-analysis-of-historypin/">Read more</a> </article> <article class="post"> <div class="article-footer"> <time datetime="2013">18 Nov 2013</time> <h4><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/11/18/dinovember-creative-literacy-starts-young/">Dinovember: Creative literacy starts young</a></h4> </div> <p>“Uh-oh,” Refe Tuma heard his girls whisper. “Mom and Dad are not going to like this.” It’s Dinovember, and his family’s plastic dinosaurs have been getting into mischief all month. Every year, Tuma and his wife devote the month of November to “convincing our children that, while they sleep, their plastic dinosaur figures come to life. Related <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/11/18/dinovember-creative-literacy-starts-young/">[…]</a></p> <a class="more" href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2013/11/18/dinovember-creative-literacy-starts-young/">Read more</a> </article> </section> </div> </div> </div> </div> </header> <main role="main" id="main"><div id="twocolumns"> <div class="container"> <h1>What is Crowdsourcing? And how does it apply to outreach?</h1> <div class="twocolumns-holder"> <section id="content" class="about-holder img-posts"> <article class="post"> <p><img class="size-full wp-image-4143 alignright" alt="Crowdsourcing" src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.48.10-AM.png" width="103" height="102" />Crowdsourcing means involving a lot of people in small pieces of a project. In educational and nonprofit outreach, crowdsourcing is a form of engagement, such as participating in an online course, collecting photos of butterflies for a citizen-science project, uploading old photos for a community history project, deciphering sentences from old scanned manuscripts, playing protein folding games to help scientists discover new ways to fight diseases, or participating in online discussions.<span id="more-2855"></span></p> <p>Here’s an overview of several facets of crowdsourcing.</p> <h2>Motivations</h2> <p><strong>Competition vs. collaboration</strong> are two common frameworks for projects. A competition can draw dozens or or thousands of participants who seek a prize. Unlike grant solicitations, these competitions are based on objective results, not on resumes, prior work or personal history. A collaboration typically involves a participant working on a small piece of a larger project. <b> </b></p> <p>The Walker Art Center ran a crowdsourced video festival & awards competition (<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/08/internet_cat_video_film_festival_a_dispatch_from_the_walker_art_center_.html">First International Cat Video Festival</a>) attracting 10,000 entries and over 10,000 attendees.</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4132" alt="Crowdfunding " src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.00.46-AM-545x166.png" width="545" height="166" srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.00.46-AM-545x166.png 545w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.00.46-AM-150x45.png 150w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.00.46-AM-240x73.png 240w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.00.46-AM.png 696w" sizes="(max-width: 545px) 100vw, 545px" /></p> <h2>Fundraising</h2> <p><b>Crowd funding</b> is when educational projects are funded by individual, online contributors or investors. Most crowdfunding is done via web sites which list projects, and provide a means for donors to commit. Typically, project funding is all-or-nothing.</p> <p>One of the leading sites is <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/">Kickstarter</a>, which since their launch in spring 2009, has funded over $417 million, funding over 36,000 creative projects. The “<a href="http://allthingsd.com/20120929/tesla-museum-supporters-raise-1-3-million-and-put-indiegogo-in-the-spotlight/">Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum</a>” crowdfunding campaign on IndieGogo, another major crowdfunding site, enable a nonprofit group to buy Tesla’s old lab, which was threatened with development. The group raised over $1,370,511, reaching their original $800k goal in under a week.</p> <p>Crowd funding tends to work best for a hip projects, on average, a <a href="http://www.appsblogger.com/behind-kickstarter-crowdfunding-stats/">third of projects</a> are funded.</p> <p>Crowdfunding is distinct from traditional, online fundraising, in that it is focused on projects, not general operations. In the traditional realm, in Q2 2012, charities reported $204-million in total online gifts (10.9% growth over Q2 2011) and $180.9-million for Q3 2012 (8.9% over Q3 2011), with an average gift of $77, according to <a href="http://philanthropy.com/article/Online-Giving-Grew-Rapidly-in/135992/">data provided to The Chronicle of Philanthropy</a>. More people are giving online, albeit in smaller amounts, than in past years.</p> <p>See a prior blog post on <a title="Are public supported (crowdfunded) virtual exhibits possible?" href="http://www.idea.org/blog/2011/05/02/are-public-supported-crowdfunded-virtual-exhibits-possible/">crowdfunding virtual exhibits</a>.</p> <h2><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4134" alt="Cloud Labor" src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.02.10-AM-545x169.png" width="545" height="169" srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.02.10-AM-545x169.png 545w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.02.10-AM-150x46.png 150w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.02.10-AM-240x74.png 240w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.02.10-AM.png 664w" sizes="(max-width: 545px) 100vw, 545px" /></h2> <h2>Workers</h2> <p><strong>Cloud Labor </strong>is hiring a distributed virtual labor pool, available on-demand, to fulfull a range of tasks from simple to complex. With enticing projects, this can mean a ton of volunteers …</p> <ul> <li>The New York Public Library is developing a <a href="http://www.psfk.com/2011/02/citizen-cartography-collectively-generated-archives-of-data-from-historical-maps.html">citizen cartography tool</a> that lets the public take information archived on digitized historical maps and use the data to tag a searchable interface built with Open Street Map. The goal: a larger, more detailed database that will help future researchers.</li> <li>The National Library of Finland created the <a href="http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/crowdsourcing-unleashed-25000-join-effort-to-digitize-one-librarys-historical-collections/14370">digitalkoot</a> project to help digitize millions of pages of archival material. Visitors to the site transcribe old books one word at a time while playing a video game. Think CAPTCHA meets Angry Birds.</li> <li>The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (in partnership with the private company Ancestry.com) has recruited “citizen historians” to research historical documents from WWII. The <a href="http://futureofmuseums.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-crowdsourced-scholarship-citizen.html">Children of the Lodz Ghetto </a>project is designed to teach historical skills while “restor[ing] names and stories to those whose identities were nearly silenced by a force that nearly succeeded in making them disappear completely from history.”</li> <li>Many natural history museums coordinate “citizen science” projects that enlist public help to tackle large research challenges, like <a href="http://www.calacademy.org/science/citizen_science/">collecting and identifying</a> ants, <a href="http://volunteer.ala.org.au/project/index/6306">transcribing data</a> from the labels on century-old cicadas or <a href="http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/mw2011/papers/bringing_citizen_scientists_and_historians_tog">spotting celestial phenomena</a>.</li> <li>Many other citizen science projects have elements of crowdsourcing. See <a href="http://scistarter.com">SciStarter</a> for more citizen science projects.</li> </ul> <p>In addition, administrative work can sometimes be done. <em>Fansourcing</em> involves recruiting fans to do administrative tasks which are more interesting to enthusiastic fans (brand advocates) than low-level staff. It can connect volunteer fans with potential visitors via live chat, or moderating online discussions and answering customer service questions. The volunteers offer their genuine enthusiasm, not necessarily a deep professional expertise.</p> <p>Aside from volunteer engagement, the majority of cloud labor is paid. Simple tasks are often paid at hourly rates below $5/hour. See a prior blog post on <a title="Do more by outsourcing some outreach tasks to freelancers" href="http://www.idea.org/blog/2012/05/30/do-more-by-outsourcing-some-outreach-tasks-to-freelancers/">outsourcing some outreach tasks to freelancers</a>. It tends to drive towards the lowest common denominator, so it’s best for tasks that are suitable for non-professionals. Quality control is often maintained by double and triple-checking work through redundancy. For example, if the task was to write tags describing a painting, the same painting could be tagged by 5 workers, with software to detect spammy responses, and look for tags common to multiple workers.</p> <h2> <img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4135" alt="Civic Engagement" src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.02.57-AM.png" width="422" height="209" srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.02.57-AM.png 422w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.02.57-AM-150x74.png 150w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.02.57-AM-240x118.png 240w" sizes="(max-width: 422px) 100vw, 422px" /></h2> <h2>Politics</h2> <p><strong>Civic Engagement</strong> is collective actions that address issues of public concern. This works on both local and national levels. The White House could collect ideas on how to change the manufacturing industry from those who work in it. It asks people which technologies they think are the most important to the industry, as well as what sort of future regulation they believe would be beneficial. Soliciting responses via the internet, in public, eliminates barriers to participation.</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4136" alt="Collective knowledge" src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.05.16-AM.png" width="499" height="206" srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.05.16-AM.png 499w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.05.16-AM-150x61.png 150w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.05.16-AM-240x99.png 240w" sizes="(max-width: 499px) 100vw, 499px" /></p> <h2>Knowledge of the crowd</h2> <p><strong>Collective Knowledge </strong> is development of knowledge assets or information resources from a distributed pool of contributors. This type of mass collaboration is best showcased by the <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org">Wikipedia</a> and other <a href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects">Wikimedia projects</a>. Here are some smaller projects which collected votes from their community:</p> <ul> <li>The Smithsonian American Art Museum <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33022/Smithsonian_American_Art_Museum_Opens_Public_Vote_On_GameCentered_Exhibit.php#.USMb16WaTdM">invited the public</a> to vote via the Web on which examples of video games to include in its “Art of Video Games” exhibit.</li> <li>In 2010, the Walker had <a href="http://www.walkerart.org/calendar/2010/50-50-audience-and-experts-curate-the-paper-c">50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Paper Collection</a>, in which visitors cast over a quarter million votes about which of 183 paper artworks should go into an upcoming exhibition.</li> <li>In 2008, the Brooklyn Museum invited visitors to help <a href="http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click/">choose the best photos</a> for an exhibition.</li> </ul> <p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4137" alt="Collective creativity" src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.06.28-AM-545x160.png" width="545" height="160" srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.06.28-AM-545x160.png 545w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.06.28-AM-150x44.png 150w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.06.28-AM-240x70.png 240w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.06.28-AM.png 718w" sizes="(max-width: 545px) 100vw, 545px" /></p> <h2>Talent of the crowd</h2> <p><strong>Collective Creativity </strong> taps into creative talent pools to design and develop original art, media or content. This can mean new creative works by professionals, or non-professionals.</p> <ul> <li>Several museums, including the <a href="http://philanthropy.com/blogs/social-philanthropy/wikipedian-in-residence-helps-share-smithsonian-archives/28989">Smithsonian</a>, The <a href="http://www.childrensmuseum.org/wikipedia">Children’s Museum of Indianapolis</a> and the <a href="http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2010/07/22/video-british-museums-wikipedian-in-residence-liam-wyatt-feature-length-version/">British Museum</a>, have established positions for “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/how-wikipedians-in-residence-are-opening-up-cultural-institutions/240204/">Wikipedians in Residence</a>.” The Wikipedians push museum data and images into the Wikipedia universe, as well as soliciting and managing content from the wiki-editing crowd. (See my blog post on <a title="Reaching the public via Wikipedia" href="http://www.idea.org/blog/2011/08/09/reaching-the-public-via-wikipedia/">reaching the public using Wikipedia</a>.)</li> <li>RunCoCo is advice on how to run a community collection online (<a href="http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/runcoco/resources/RunCoCo_Report.pdf">see PDF</a>).</li> <li>New Zealand was looking to revitalize their tourism campaign, and hosted a contest for young filmmakers. Their reward was the opportunity to screen their work in front of famous filmmaker Peter Jackson, plus a trip to New Zealand to shoot and produce a 3-minute film.</li> <li>In 2007, <a href="http://worldwithoutoil.org/" target="_blank">World Without Oil</a>, was a crowdsourced public media narrative which invited players to participate in a collaborative simulation of a global oil shortage by playing an online mystery game, and later generating their own stories about the crisis and strategizing ways to manage it.</li> </ul> <p>Open Sourcing is a philosophy and approach that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and implementation details. It’s the opposite of keeping secrets or paid licensing. Key benefits are broader use and publicity. Some popular projects are also able to foster a community where people outside the organization also contribute. Typically, revenue comes from selling related services, or grants. For example, <a href="http://omeka.org">Omeka</a> is a web-publishing platform for library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions.</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4138" alt="Community building" src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.07.08-AM.png" width="508" height="201" srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.07.08-AM.png 508w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.07.08-AM-150x59.png 150w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.07.08-AM-240x94.png 240w" sizes="(max-width: 508px) 100vw, 508px" /></p> <h2>Communities</h2> <p><strong>Community Building </strong> is developing communities through active engagement of individuals who share common passions, beliefs or interests.</p> <p><a href="http://preservapedia.org/Main_Page">Preserapedia</a> is an open encyclopedia for heritage conservation with over 1 thousand articles.</p> <p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-4139" alt="Open Innovation" src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.07.38-AM-545x160.png" width="545" height="160" srcset="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.07.38-AM-545x160.png 545w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.07.38-AM-150x44.png 150w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.07.38-AM-240x70.png 240w, https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.07.38-AM.png 719w" sizes="(max-width: 545px) 100vw, 545px" /></p> <h2>In business</h2> <p>The term was popularized by journalist Jeff Howe in a 2006 Wired article “<a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html">The Rise of Crowdsourcing</a>,” about outsourcing labor to the “crowd,” but the concept rapidly broadened beyond labor. In business, crowdsourcing now means obtaining services, ideas, content, or money from a large group of people. “Crowdsourcing has become a very successful business model for many startups such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, Threadless and Kickstarter – to name only a few. But so far, its usage by big companies has been sporadic and experimental,” notes François Pétavy, CEO of eYeka, a crowdsourcing platform. Pétavye <a href="http://www.crowdsourcing.org/editorial/five-signs-that-crowdsourcing-will-cross-the-chasm-in-2013/23920">says</a> that use in the business world is growing, and that crowdsourcing now solves a variety of real world problems, have a demonstrable return on investment.</p> <p>It is related to other evolving concepts. For example,<strong> Open Innovation </strong>is using of sources outside of the entity of group to generate, develop and implement ideas.</p> <p><img alt="Tools" src="http://www.idea.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-19-at-1.01.43-AM.png" width="455" height="208" /></p> <p><strong>Tools </strong>are applications and platforms that support collaboration, communication, and sharing among distributed groups of people.</p> <hr /> <p><em>Source: The categories above, and the lede illustration, are adapted from Crowdsourcing.org. Several projects from AAM TrendsWatch 2012 (<a href="http://www.aam-us.org/docs/center-for-the-future-of-museums/2012_trends_watch_final.pdf?sfvrsn=0">PDF</a>).</em></p> <div class='yarpp-related'> <h3>Related posts:</h3><ol> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/05/02/are-public-supported-crowdfunded-virtual-exhibits-possible/" rel="bookmark" title="Are public supported (crowdfunded) virtual exhibits possible?">Are public supported (crowdfunded) virtual exhibits possible? </a> <small>Virtual exhibits on tablet devices (e.g., the Apple iPad) put exhibits at the fingertips of students and the...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/04/19/art-critic-rails-against-fun-spring-nighttime-party-at-hirshhorn/" rel="bookmark" title="Art critic rails against fun, Spring, nighttime party at Hirshhorn">Art critic rails against fun, Spring, nighttime party at Hirshhorn </a> <small>Is the art enough? Probably not. Art museum revenues are falling and museums need to experiment with new...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/08/09/reaching-the-public-via-wikipedia/" rel="bookmark" title="Reaching the public via Wikipedia">Reaching the public via Wikipedia </a> <small>Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia that “anyone can edit,” is a useful way to deliver scientific and cultural knowledge...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/10/24/approaches-to-usability/" rel="bookmark" title="Approaches to usability">Approaches to usability </a> <small>Make sure your investments on web sites, apps or new real-life programs don’t fail by conducting usability and...</small></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2012/05/30/do-more-by-outsourcing-some-outreach-tasks-to-freelancers/" rel="bookmark" title="Do more by outsourcing some outreach tasks to freelancers">Do more by outsourcing some outreach tasks to freelancers </a> <small>Expand your outreach capacity with multiple media, multiple languages, new sites and apps, and other features by hiring...</small></li> </ol> </div> </article> <section class="comment-respond"> <div id="respond" class="comment-respond"> <h3 id="reply-title" class="comment-reply-title">Leave a Reply <small><a rel="nofollow" id="cancel-comment-reply-link" href="/blog/2013/02/19/what-is-crowdsourcing-and-how-does-it-apply-to-outreach/#respond" style="display:none;">Cancel reply</a></small></h3> <form action="https://www.idea.org/blog/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform" class="comment-form"> <p class="comment-notes"><span id="email-notes">Your email address will not be published.</span> Required fields are marked <span class="required">*</span></p><p class="comment-form-author"><label for="author">Name <span class="required">*</span></label> <input id="author" name="author" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="245" required='required' /></p> <p class="comment-form-email"><label for="email">Email <span class="required">*</span></label> <input id="email" name="email" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="100" aria-describedby="email-notes" required='required' /></p> <p class="comment-form-url"><label for="url">Website</label> <input id="url" name="url" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="200" /></p> <p class="comment-form-comment"><label for="comment">Comment</label> <textarea id="comment" name="comment" cols="45" rows="8" maxlength="65525" required="required"></textarea></p><p class="form-submit"><input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" class="submit" value="Post Comment" /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_post_ID' value='2855' id='comment_post_ID' /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_parent' id='comment_parent' value='0' /> </p><p style="display: none;"><input type="hidden" id="akismet_comment_nonce" name="akismet_comment_nonce" value="8f39a2b634" /></p><p style="display: none;"><input type="hidden" id="ak_js" name="ak_js" value="199"/></p> </form> </div> </section> </section> <aside id="sidebar"> <section class="widget inner-text"> <h3>Related posts</h3> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/05/02/are-public-supported-crowdfunded-virtual-exhibits-possible/">Are public supported (crowdfunded) virtual exhibits possible?<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Virtual exhibits on tablet devices (e.g., the Apple iPad) put exhibits at the fingertips of students and the public. Visitors can browse science, art or culture from classrooms, during their commutes, or from their sofas. — But where does the money come from? As with physical museums, the problem with charging money for downloads is <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/05/02/are-public-supported-crowdfunded-virtual-exhibits-possible/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/04/19/art-critic-rails-against-fun-spring-nighttime-party-at-hirshhorn/">Art critic rails against fun, Spring, nighttime party at Hirshhorn<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Is the art enough? Probably not. Art museum revenues are falling and museums need to experiment with new business models and ways to build a buzz and relevance with young audiences. Yesterday, art critic Judith Dobrzynski wrote in her Real Clear Arts blog about how an upcoming nighttime event at the Hirshhorn is elitist, flaunted, <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/04/19/art-critic-rails-against-fun-spring-nighttime-party-at-hirshhorn/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/08/09/reaching-the-public-via-wikipedia/">Reaching the public via Wikipedia<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia that “anyone can edit,” is a useful way to deliver scientific and cultural knowledge to the public. Wikipedia is the 5th most visited web site, with 400–450 million unique visitors per month. It’s not “merely a larger audience, but a different audience,” says Sara Snyder, webmaster for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, who has recently started <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/08/09/reaching-the-public-via-wikipedia/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/10/24/approaches-to-usability/">Approaches to usability<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Make sure your investments on web sites, apps or new real-life programs don’t fail by conducting usability and user experience testing. “Usability testing differs from focus groups in that it involves the observation of participants as they actually use the product,” said Ian David Moss, a development consultant who works in the Arts. “They key feature of <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2011/10/24/approaches-to-usability/">[…]</a></p> </article> <article class="post"> <h2><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2012/05/30/do-more-by-outsourcing-some-outreach-tasks-to-freelancers/">Do more by outsourcing some outreach tasks to freelancers<i class="icon-arrow-right-alt1"></i></a></h2> <p>Expand your outreach capacity with multiple media, multiple languages, new sites and apps, and other features by hiring freelancers. Here’s an overview of marketplaces we’ve successfully used at IDEA. Translations In our global world, there’s no excuse for staying limited to English speakers, especially when there’s greater need for education in non-English places. Even if you <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/2012/05/30/do-more-by-outsourcing-some-outreach-tasks-to-freelancers/">[…]</a></p> </article> </section> </aside> </div> </div> </div> </main> <aside class="info-links"> <div class="container"> <div class="left-holder"> <p><time datetime="2013">19 Feb 2013</time> , post by <a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/author/idea/" title="Posts by IDEA" rel="author">IDEA</a></p> </div> <div class="right-holder"> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/crowdfunding/">crowdfunding</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/citizen-science/">Citizen science</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/indiegogo/">IndieGogo</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/kickstarter/">Kickstarter</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/innovation/">innovation</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/access/">access</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.idea.org/blog/tag/funding/">funding</a></li> <li><a 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What is Crowdsourcing? And how does it apply to outreach? – IDEA