Wisdom of the Crowds
This year I made my first trip to SXSW interactive in Austin, TX. Although there was the normal mix of sessions (good, bad and everything between), the overall experience of the conference was among the best I’ve experienced. I think the mere concentration of clever folks who build stuff made it impossible to walk away without feeling a bit energized.
My favourite talk was Design for the Wisdom of Crowds presented by Derek Powazek. In his talk, Derek spoke about various (mis)adventures in trying to gather useful information from the semi-anonymous crowds who pass through our sites every day. This is a topic that we spent a good deal of time discussing when we designed terminus1525.ca. How can we help use the actions and input of the members to attract people’s attention to the more noteworthy content?
Derek’s talk didn’t prescribe set solutions, but instead was a very good overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the masses of info at hard (pageviews, ratings, comments, editorial/curatorial review). I especially appreciated his points about the value of combining user-generated content and feedback with professional editorial input to producing great content. He also managed to sneak in some very interesting observations on the influence design has on the material contributed by the users.
The talk was well thought out, cohesive and Derek did a great job presenting it. You’ll find the slides for the talk on slideshare.