Today’s National Post had a feature article on crowdsourcing (unfortunately you need a subscription to read 
). Still it’s super cool to see the term coined by Jeff Howe in Wired catch with old school media. I have seen better researched articles (they don’t mention iStockPhoto and they seem to think crowdsourcing is only about getting feedback from customers) but at least they are talking about it.
Our very own MJ was interviewed by the CBC’s Maureen Taylor last week as part of The Current radio show. The interview covered crowdsourcing, included a great segment with Wired’s Jeff Howe, and also a description of the Cambrian House business model with MJ.
To hear the soothing sound of Jeff and MJ’s voices, check out the audio and video podcast links below.
People aren’t just noticing our unique business model, they also like our site design. The good folks at CSSRemix.com were kind enough to award CambrianHouse.Com with an Editor’s Choice for our look and feel. Seems that we’re not the only ones who enjoy making the Queen cross-eyed, playing shoot’em up in our Link Farm, or shooting arrows into the My Account banner (you have to sign up to check that one out).
Props to the web design team who spent many a sleepless night making our site fun to visit over and over again.
Check us out on CSSRemix.com and tell them what you think about our site design!
Perched here on my blue exercise ball, reading Spencer Reiss’s Wired article on Murdoch and MySpace, two words jump out at me:
Power Sofa.
What makes a sofa powerful, you ask? Apparently, being white. Reading on, two more catch my eye:
Cambrian Explosion.
Considering “Cambrian” is in our name, it’s probably no surprise.
The term Cambrian Explosion swiped from Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos when describing the initial internet boom, is recycled by Reiss:
“[M]idtown Manhattan’s valley of old media dinosaurs is besieged by a Cambrian explosion of digitally empowered life-forms: podcasters, bloggers, burners, P2P buccaneers, mashup artists, phonecam paparazzi. Viewers are vanishing, shareholders are in revolt, advertisers are Googling for the exit.”
It’s no secret. Seeing how the online participation phenomenon has skyrocketed, it should be self-evident. And no doubt Murdoch knows it.
He’s quoted in the article saying,
“Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control.”
Cambrian explosion, sure. Has the ‘net has proliferated? Duh. But it’s not just about proliferating anymore. Cambrian explosion, that’s yesterday’s news. Now it’s a Cambrian revolution. Digitally empowered life-forms first proliferating, now transforming the world. And that transforming world is now our home. Our house. Your house. See what’s behind our name.
Read the article and see how the power is shifting. I’m off to buy myself a white exercise ball.
Tip of my Hat goes to MJ.
It was awesome that Jeff blogged about us on his website.
For those of you new to the term crowdsourcing, Jeff is the contributing editor of Wired magazine who coined the phrase when he wrote this article. We are big fans of Jeff and enjoyed his article highlighting how companies like iStockPhoto radically changed the face of stock photography using crowds.
We highly recommend Jeff’s blog for keeping up-to-date on all the latest and greatest happenings in the crowdsource space.
4:33 pm – The Google chefs arrive. They are none too happy to see Googlers eating gourment pizza (from Amici’s) and thus ruining their appetite for that nights dinner of sloppy joes 
4:57 pm – Security rolls up. We had to make like trees and leave Video and more pic’s to follow… |
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| These are the headlines from yesterday’s operation.
12:01pm - Agents Smitty, Anna, and Gord gather with 49 pizza delivery troops at the Starbucks located five blocks from campus. 3:01 pm – The troops move out. The pizza convey leaves Starbucks and drives to the eastern parking lot of campus. There they disembark from the troop transports and proceed into the inner sanctum of Google – the courtyard. 3:25 pm – Agent Smitty, wielding a megaphone in one hand and free pizza in the other, welcomes all Googlers to enjoy a slice of Amici’s finest gourmet pizza. |
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If you have been following our previous blogs here, here, and here you will know today our agents dropped off some pizza at the Googleplex.
So much pizza, when we stacked the boxes on top of one another, they stretched into outer space.
Check out this killer video taken by NASA of what the pizzas looked like from the earth’s outer atmosphere.
Kudos to Christine for delivering the most annoying sound made ever by a human.
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James Bond made it clear that an agent is only as good as his car. Our agents are no exception. That’s why when we send our agents into the field on international assignments they get nothing but the best. Our very own National Viking Association (NVA) Troop Transport is state of the art minivan. 17 cup holders, power windows, power doors, power seat, DVD player in back for those long stakeouts. And ya, it can hold a lot of pizza. |
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June 26, 9:03am, somewhere in Mountain View California, on a grassy knoll Like every good agent, Smitty never enters a complex with out a known escape route. This is only a precaution and only used in emergencies if things get a little heavy. If only Smitty had some wheels … |
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