I don't mean to zero in and expound on such a minor aspect of the related media that we were given as a class to give our thoughts on, but I apologize here and now because that is pretty much exactly what I'm going to end up doing in this blog. The reason for this is because the article "2 reasons why the term 'crowdsourcing' bugs me" really struck a cord with me with regards to our class' project and my mindset towards it.
The first thing about it that I think very much applies to all crowdsourcing projects, but particularly ours in general, is the level of passion coming from the community that ends up contributing to our project. As examples of crowdsourcing in action, we were pointed to things like the Johnny Cash Project or Star Wars Uncut or Life In A Day. But each of those projects have in spades something that I feel as though our project does not have nearly as much of at this stage: extreme devotion from its willing participants. The music of Johnny Cash resonated with millions of people and still does to this day. Johnny Cash is a musician with a fleet of passionate fans and enthusiasts who avidly enjoy his work. Similarly, these qualities apply to The Star Wars Saga far more so even, as the influence of those films practically knows no bounds, having created arguably the largest fanbase on earth. And even with "Life In a Day," a certain day was picked in which people from all over the world were encouraged to merely film parts of their day in order to have the chance of having their footage featured, even if only briefly, in a feature documentary. One need only acknowledge what Youtube has become in order to see how widespread the human sentiment of wanting to be seen is. What we're going to have to really put heavy focus on is getting people motivated to take part in the creation myth we're forging. Get them excited about creating this project as a way of making the mark of our existence for possible future species to look back on and learn from us, or something to that effect. Regardless of what it may be that is to get people involved, this is something that must be heavily brainstormed that I feel as though we have not acknowledged in class yet. With the smaller scale of our project in comparison to the few I've previously named, we are going to need increased passion from our participants to make up for it in order to end up with not only a quality project, but one that people will be able to understand when they see it and actually have resonate with them.
Yes, I agree Matt. It is super important, at this point to create a script or structure that has many of the ideas we've been talking about ingrained in it, but is also universal, approachable and appealing to people in such a way that they will, as you say, be motivated to participate.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely the type of thing that should be brought up in class discussion.