This crowdsourcing game isn’t like it was three years ago when we started. We’ve long moved past the point of being able to count all of the crowdsourcing initiatives on our fingers. To this end, we put together a handy list for us to make sure we stay on top of all the cool things going on.

Turns out, it is a pretty good resource, so we thought we’d share it with everyone. It is so great to see so many different initiatives involving crowdsourcing!

Crowds for Hire – niche crowds ready to contribute

General Idea Generation & Solving

• AddictLab - creative think tank
• Brain Reactions - post questions and get ideas/feedback on them
• Fellowforce - innovation challenge board covering many disciplines
• iBridge Network - platform for university innovation
• IdeaConnection - idea marketplace and problem solving
• Idea Crossing - organize innovation quests
• IdeaMagnet - powering idea generation
• Ideawicket - open innovation portal
• Innovation Exchange - open innovation market place
• WhyNot - idea exchange

Science & Research

• Innocentive - crowdsourcing scientific solutions to corporate problems
• Science Commons - generic license agreements
• TekScout - crowdsourcing R&D solutions
• YourEncore - crowd of retired veteran scientists and engineers

Freelance work

• elance - freelance marketplace
• Guru - freelance community
• Ki Work - sourcing online work
• odesk - global marketplace for remote work

Micro-tasks

• Amazon Mechanical Turk - micro-task crowdsourcing
• HumanGrid - small online tasks solving

Technology

• Ninesigma - technology problem solving
• TopCoder - programming competitions
• Yet2 – crowdsourcing technology solutions to problems

Product Design

• CrowdSpirit - crowdsourcing the design of innovative products

Creative/Graphic Design

• 99 Designs – design crowdsource contests
• CrowdSpring – network of graphic designers
• Genius Rocket – crowdsourcing creative community
• Inkd - market for print design

Entrepreneurs & Inventors

• IdeaBlob - monthly contest for entrepreneurial ideas
• Incuby - online community for inventors

Consumer Ideas & Feedback

• CrowdSound – ideas from customers/users
• Idea Bounty - a social think tank

Health & Medical

• Eureke medical - medical open innovation platform

Enterprise Crowdsourcing/Open Innovation Sites

• Betavine - Vodafone’s mobile app community
• BT - British Telecom’s Innovation Initiative
• Dell IdeaStorm - external idea sourcing
• Fluevog - open shoe design
• GameChanger - Shell’s coporate crowdsourcing
• IBM InnovationJam - internally focused idea generation project
• IBM ThinkPlace - idea generation and collaboration
• Ideas4Unilever - corporate venturing
• Intel Cool Software - Intel’s sensing platform
• Jones Soda - crowdsources flavours and pictures for their labels
• Kraft - innovate with Kraft
• LEGO Factory - LEGO co-creation tool
• My Starbucks Idea - shaping the future of Starbucks
• Nesta - UK National Endowment of Science, Technology and the Arts
• P&G Open Innovation Challenge - external idea sourcing in Britain
• Vocalpoint - Pgamp;G’s network for women

Crowdsourcing Contests

• City of Austin - feedback on City of Austin’s website
• Electrolux Design Lab - annual design competition for students
• The Guardian - Crowdsourcing analysis of MPs expenses
• Muji - improving and suggesting new designs
• National Geographic - crowdsourced Earth-saving ideas
• Nespresso - design contest for coffee machines
• Peugeot - Peugeot’s design contest
• Picnic Green Challenge - ideas to save the planet
• Smith Chips - crowdsourced flavour selection
• Staples Invention Quest - idea contest
• Xprize - incentivized crowdsourcing competition

Crowdsourcing-at-their-core Companies

Consumer/Customer Input

• Get Satisfaction - crowdsourced customer service
• You Suggest - ideas from customers

Clothing, Gifts & Other Products

• Cafepress - shop, create or sell what’s on your mind
• JuJups - personalized gifts
• Naked&Angry - Threadless for ties and wallcoverings
• Polyvore - crowdsourced fashion
• Spreadshirt - shirt community
• Threadless - create and sell your tshirts

Funding

• Artistshare – fans funding new artists
• A Swarm of Angels - crowdfunding a film
• Kickstarter - fund ideas and endeavours
• Kiva – crowdfunded micro-loans to 3rd world entrepreneurs
• My Bandstock - fan funded investment in bands
• Sellaband – crowdfunded bands

Miscellaneous

• Better than the Van – crowdsourced community connecting bands to places to stay
• Crowd Flower – crowdsourcing for human-required tasks
• Elastic Lab - film production
• Groupon - crowdsourced group discounts
• Help me Investigate - a place to collaborate with others to investigate things
• Inkling Markets - use wisdom of the crowd for forecasting
• iStockPhoto - user-generated photos
• Healogica – crowdsourcing clinical trials
• Help me Investigate - a place to collaborate with others to investigate things
• Hollr - crowdsourcing cool stuff finding
• Mob4Hire - crowdsourced mobile app testing
• Quirky - production of crowdsourced ideas
• Stumble Upon - crowdsourced website discovery engine
• uTest - user experience testing
• Wikipedia - peer produced encyclopedia

If you’re on the list, we’d love to hear from you. If you think you SHOULD be on the list, we’re interested in what you’re up to as well.

Photo by: Jayz Internet Solutions

The great part about posting something on our blog is that we pop up in your RSS reader, then you stop by to say hello

An update on Cambrian House: We’ve just launched a new version of our Chaordix crowdsourcing platform for enterprises. We’ve added a bunch of new capabilities and services to our bag of tricks for Chaordix, making it even easier for companies to seek and interpret input from customers, employees and other partners. (And I should say thanks to all of you because it was your participation at Cambrian House that has helped us hone Chaordix into a very impressive product.)

So if you are in a company that is looking to tap crowds for the business intelligence to innovate, improve operations, and reduce the risks of competing in the marketplace, you should definitely check it out and get in touch.

I know, I know. Why did we pick another name that it is hard to type into a browser? Go to the site and check out the history behind the name.

Check out our official press release

The Cambrian House Team

We have two amazing projects underway: Chaordix and Gwabs (please don’t make us talk about Prezzle just now). And we have two amazing leaders: Shelley and MJ. Our experiments in both cloning and human fusion are running behind so we’re going old school – giving one person, one focus. Shelley is working hard at Chaordix, under the Cambrian House umbrella and MJ is working hard at Gwabs, under the SundayLABS umbrella.

Contrary to popular belief, the good times can’t go on forever, especially in these dire economic times. We think Gwabs is really cool, but it’s been on the “almost done” pile for far too long. The team on Gwabs is giving 110%, but on their last play of the game. After this Hail Mary Pass, we’d like to laser focus on Chaordix only.

For more information, please see our press release.

Team CH

If you have ever thought about demoing software at Calgary Demo Camp, first ask yourself this question… are you hoping you won’t get sued? If not, why not? You’re not going to hopefully not get sued by just thinking about it.

Mike Tighe

Leif Baradoy

MJ of CH

Attendees

Gluzman

The “hopefully we won’t get sued” demo at Calgary’s 12th Demo Camp was Mike Tighe presenting for TransIT.ca, due to its sheer bloody minded usefulness. As documented on Twitter days prior to the demo, Calgarians have some mixed feelings about Calgary Transit’s website.

Not to be outdone in the not-evil department, Leif Baradoy demonstrated Christmas Future, a philanthropic site specifically targeting the holiday season. By purchasing credits for your friends and family you then allow them to select from a wide range of charitable organizations which one will receive the donation.

This is especially handy if you have any racists in your family. A quick look at the Christmas Future diversity icon shows a green Martian lurking behind the blue and yellow fellows, just to the side of the orange woman. Some say it is in our long term interest to help pull the Martians out of poverty, as our growing income inequalities will only lead to turmoil in the future.

When I hear talk like that, I look ‘em straight in the eye and ask, “Just what planet are you from, pal?”

And of course Cambrian House demonstrated our beta of GWABS, where Gazzard pummeled Greg mercilessly in combat on a shared pseudo Windows 3.1 desktop. Greg claims this is because he was trying to follow MJ’s continued instructions pertaining to the demo itself. Gazzard claims it is also because he is far better than Greg at GWABS due to Greg’s high level of “suckage”.

To participate in the beta, give GWABS a shout and they’ll add you to the next test cycle.

The letter is dated Oct 8, 2008. It has been almost 5 months since we were added to the deadpool and haven’t yet, as claimed, had a fire-sale of assets. However, MJ is selling his 24 DVD Collection (seasons 2-5) if anyone is interested.

We’ve had so many questions regarding this awkward debacle, we’ve selected the most frequently asked to answer below.

Q: A lot of people have asked us why we haven’t posted about this sooner?

A: It just seemed like another distraction away from building the business and we’ve had too many of them. It has taken time for us to develop our business model. However, this isn’t uncommon or unexpected when you enter new waters (painful as it may be). If you think differently you may want to read F@W.

Furthermore, the odds are against startups winning. We felt that running around posting we’re not dead is like standing on an aircraft carrier with a ‘mission accomplished’ banner before the job is done.

Q: Why are you posting today?

A: Everyone is talking about the death spiraling economy and how startups better get *real*. Well, we’ll be cash flow positive this lovely fourth quarter, Gwabs goes to private beta on Halloween (sign up!) and FilmRiot submitted its first film to Sundance. We like these apples.

Q: Wait a minute! Wasn’t Michael *your CEO* quoted in the article saying the model failed?

A: Indeed he was. Yes, the *original* model failed. We expected to have many iterations on our model before we got it right. If this surprises you, it didn’t surprise us. For those counting: we’re on #4.

Q: Doesn’t it seem silly TechCrunch would predict any startup hits the deadpool? It seems about as insightful as standing at a lottery ticket counter and declaring each customer a loser - you’d only be wrong once for every 14 million people?

A: Yes it is silly - predicting who is going to hit the ‘deadpool’ is easy. Being able to predict who won’t is where analysis and talent would come into play.

Q: Isn’t deadpool a comic book character? You’d think ‘journalists’ from TC would put down their snacks and comic books to do some research?

A: Yes, Deadpool is a comic book character, considering Shelley, our President and Michael, our CEO have never spoken to anyone at TC we’re not sure how much/little comics they read.

Q: Why would TC want to post anything about you guys anyways?

A: They need stories to make money. Why are we interesting? I’m not sure, but we’re taking that as a compliment.

Q: Is TechCrunch owned/operated by the same people who publish Valleywag?

A: No comment. However, you may find this post interesting.

Q: Didn’t Jeff Howe also say in his crowdsourcing book that you guys sold off a majority of your assets?

A: Yes, he did. It is on page 278 and he uses this incorrect fact to kick off Chapter 11.

As you saw from the letter above he got it wrong. This hurt because we really like Jeff. Jeff - in case you forgot Michael’s phone number: it is 1.403.617.8836.

If you’re looking for a good book on crowdsourcing, we’d like to recommend: E-Preneur by Richard J. Goosen, Ph.D.

Q: WAIT: The original TechCrunch article also said ST walked away from you? So, this isn’t true either?

A: We don’t kiss and tell, but we can tell you this: it became obvious to everyone involved in this venture that we had the best crowdsourcing platform. We stand behind and promote those that we have partnered with.

Q: Isn’t the guy who posted the iReport that Steve Jobs has been rushed to the hospital with a heart attack under SEC investigation (you know, posting false news while shorting the stock to make money)? What regulatory body looks into journalists that make money by posting untruthful stories?

A: Good question. We don’t know. Anyone?

Q: We like Crowdsourcing, can Cambrian House help us?

A: Of course, drop Shelley or MJ an email @cambrianhouse.com.

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving,
Team CH

“Why does BarCamp happen in a lecture hall, but DemoCamp happen in a bar?”

Of course there is no good answer to this, but by restating the facts slower and louder your friend might think they’re missing something obvious. Pretend like you are talking to a dog. If you can indirectly communicate to them that they are an idiot even needing to ask the question… then you’ve won.

Why might you want to attend DemoCamp… and perhaps even demo?

• Learn what software is being developed in your home town. Tired of working on Calgary oil and gas applications? There’s always interesting project in need of code monkeys.
• Hone your presentation skills. Do you want to look like a frigging idiot in front of a of VCs? Stone cold sober VCs? Or a crowd which has consumed enough beer to forgive almost all your mistakes?
• Present to VCs! Yes there are investors there as well. If you’re going to make a mistake, best to do it in a casual environment where you can solicit feedback.
• Crowdsource potential pitfalls and improvements. Maybe there is a way to improve your app or market your app which simply hasn’t occurred to you. You’ve been working on that app for too long, so show it to some fresh eyes.

Hope to see you at DemoCampCalgary 11!

We’ve been building stuff. We Stealth-launched of our Chaordix Crowdsourcing software and we’re getting good traction on it.

• We built a crowdsourced venture capital site on Chaordix and we’re really proud of the work we’ve done.
• We’ve also started work on Make Good Technologies
• We’ve got some other great partners on board that we will be announcing shortly!

Why have we chosen another name that is difficult to spell (a thousand curses on the squatter that bought Cambrainhouse.com)? It is an ode to Dee Hock, the founder of Visa. He spoke about bringing Chaos and Order together to create Chaordic organizations. With Chaordix software, you can combine the power of crowds (chaos) with the power of your organization (order). We also think it would make an awesome word to throw down in a scrabble game.

2. Gord and Blue miss making videos, so they’ll be posting stuff on a more regular basis now that summer’s over and Gord is finished working on his tan.

3. We’ve had proud moments over the summer

• We placed 4th at the KPMG Pick20 awards, they said nice things about us.
• Greg got a new motorcycle.
• MJ and Blue spoke all over, including Stanford, San Francisco, Vancouver, Banff, and the Calgary International Film Festival.
• We’ve got some awesome new co-workers

Maybe you have questions that our websites don’t fully answer. Feel like there’s no one to turn to? I’m here for you. Drop me an email mj [at] cambrianhouse [dot] com and I’ll be happy to chat.

Its been 4 months since Cambrian House’s last blog post. 4 months since our community website was deprecated and for all public activities, Cambrian House went dark. Ah the peaceful crickets.

Of course CH has signed over a million dollars in Chaordix sales over that time and infused our coding team with some amazing new talent. (But that is incredibly boring and I only mention because still the meme in circulation is that we’re dead. Thank you TechCrunch… How your gift keeps on giving while we continue chugging away.)

I expect we lost our core audience for this blog. Hello out there? [”Hello… hello… echo…”] Well there’s nothing more freeing than a blog without an audience. You can pretty much post anything you want!

In the coming months, we’re going to be posting video on a regular basis. The subject matter will be quite different since we don’t have an IdeaWarz to cover… but we’ll worry about that when we relaunch the video blog. What I wanted to do with this video was experiment with a style I first saw used in Zero Punctuation.

F-Word Language Warning!

How much effort can it be to animate like that I wondered? Minus the cleverness and stick figures of course… I was curious about frantic pacing of the visuals. The angry-man phone call was a perfect excuse enough to find out, and I’m here to report its a bit time consuming but totally doable!

So when you’re watching a future Cambrian House video and your friend says, “Hey, they’re kinda stealing Zero Punctuation’s animation style!” you can just shake your head and correct your friend:

“They are totally stealing Zero Punctuation’s animation style.”

Very first investor pitch I ever did could be an all time worst investor presentation. Straight out of school. Didn’t have a subscription agreement. Didn’t know what pre-money was. Didn’t even answer all the basic questions. I just had enough confidence to do the pitch. -MJ

Couldn’t identify his target market. Showed up on the wrong day. Kept calling the investor daddy-o. Wasn’t wearing any shoes… the kind of performance that wouldn’t just deny you seed capital, but that could get you arrested in 16 states.

If you are a VC or angel, and have a weak heart, do not watch this video! However, if you are fresh out of school, and looking to launch a startup… proceed with caution.

Coming out of school is a perfect time to get a start up going

When your young, you have an inevitable feeling of immortality. From the first time you ride a wheelie on your bicycle, to jumping off the jungle gym, you inherently know that everything is going to be okay. It’s only natural for the thickness of this bubble of invulnerability to wane over time, until it is finally gone and you become scared of even the minor risks.

“Being Young is a Fault That Improves Daily.” - Swedish Proverb

In the world of entrepreneurship, one of the greatest time spans you will have to take a risk is during your youth. Your adult enough to make your own choices, yet young enough to have little to lose. Your smart enough to understand that great risk can lead to great reward, and stupid enough to push in all your chips instead of folding.

Most young entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking it’s an old professionals game. While this is true it some circles (especially investments and funding), for the most part you will never be more hard working or enthusiastic about your venture than at this stage in your life. Professionals can see this in you, and it is the best quality that you will never be able to put on a resume.

Simply put, being young and driven is better than being old and experienced. There are perks to being an expert as well. You may get better financing choices, and you certainly have more contacts, but being an entrepreneur is tough work that sometimes requires tough choices.

Show investors a great idea, enthusiasm, and Ramen Noodle receipts for the last four years - and they will see someone that can get an idea off the ground and knows how to live frugally.

Young entrepreneurs also are more likely to burn the midnight oil, travel relentlessly, and entertain prospective clients - then get up and do it again. Entrepreneurs don’t give up easily. When they are successful it’s called perseverance. Before they succeed, or if they fail, it’s called stubborn, bullheaded, arrogant, or foolish. Take advantage of this concept while your young. Arrogance is similar to confidence in your youth, but old stubborn people are a dime a dozen.

Investors know this. Which makes direct communication between investor and entrepreneur essential. They are investing in you as much as they are any idea or technology.

All of a sudden, as soon as you talk to an investor, there’s this massive disconnect. That massive disconnect is why its so hard. Its not really about being smart at finance. And they’re not really trying to be smart about technology. Everyone’s just trying to get comfortable to make the investment. -MJ

As much as a potential investor cares about the technology you’re pursuing, they want to know they can work together with you when unforeseen circumstances arise. Your business may unexpectedly change, but you won’t.