Crowdsourcing is a method of obtaining information, ideas, services, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, particularly from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. This approach leverages the collective intelligence and skills of a vast, diverse crowd to solve problems, generate ideas, and complete tasks.

Definition: Crowdsourcing combines the words “crowd” and “outsourcing.” It was first coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 Wired magazine article. The concept is based on the idea that a large group of people can collectively contribute more diverse and substantial input than an individual or small team.

Popcorn Hack #1

What is a public dataset?

A public dataset is like a treasure trove of information that’s open for anyone to explore and use. Think of it as a collection of data that’s made available to the public by organizations, researchers, or governments. These datasets cover a wide range of topics— from social and economic trends to scientific research and more. The idea is to encourage collaboration, innovation, and transparency by allowing people to analyze and derive insights from the data. It’s like sharing knowledge on a grand scale!

Examples of Data sets

Kaggle

  • Courses in visualization, tensorflow ai , and machine learning
  • Competitons - cash prizes, props
  • Notebooks- code, data, etc

Google public datasets

  • Free for the 1st terabyte

Data.gov

  • Uses government data to analyze markets, etc
  • Agriculture, energy, water, health

Widespread access to information and public data facilitates the identification of problems, development of solutions, and dissemination of results.

Popcorn Hack #2

What is distributed computing? Using computing to help power other app funcitons

Distributed computing

  • Donate spare computing power to help other apps function

Example:

Boinc - University of California Berkley

  • Mathematics
  • Astrophysics
  • Climate
  • Minecraft
    • If you’ve ever played minecraft you should know what a map seed is. The algorithm in minecraft uses the seed to develop the world that people play on. This is another example of distributed computing.

These projects uses excess computing power in order to run these operations and projects. It is where individuals or organizations obtain ideas, services, or content by using contributions from a large group of individuals typically from an online community.

Innovations made possible with Crowdsourcing

Spotify

  • Colaborative playlists
  • Algorithm
    • Trains its algorithm by collecting and analyzing what other people are listening to.
  • Metadata

Crowdfunding

  • Kickstarter
    • An app where you can pitch your idea for other people to invest in your idea
  • IndeGoGo

Blockchain

  • Cryptocurrency
    • Uses much computing power from external people in order to process transactions. This is called “mining”.
  • Concert Tickets