crowdsourcing | storytelling | citizenship | social data

Peoples Insights Volume 2, Issue 6

The City 2.0

Peoples Insights
100+ thinkers and planners within MSLGROUP share and discuss inspiring projects on social data, crowdsourcing, storytelling and citizenship on the MSLGROUP Insights Network. Every week, we pick up one project and curate the conversations around it on the MSLGROUP Insights Network itself but also on the broader social web into a weekly insights report. Every quarter, we compile these insights, along with original research and insights from the MSLGROUP global network, into the Peoples Insights Quarterly Magazine. We have synthesized the insights from our year-long endeavor throughout 2012 to provide foresights for business leaders and changemakers in the ten-part Peoples Insights Annual Report titled Now & Next: Ten Frontiers for the Future of Engagement. In 2013, we continue to track inspiring projects at the intersection of social data, crowdsourcing and storytelling, with a focus on projects that are shaping the Future of Citizenship. Do subscribe to receive our weekly insights reports, quarterly magazines, and annual reports, and do share your tips and comments with us at @PeoplesLab on Twitter.

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Volume 2, Issue 6, January - March, 2013

Future of Citizenship

The City 2.0

What is The City 2.0?

In 2012, TED announced a new platform, The City 2.0, to crowdsource ideas on how cities can be better equipped for the future, encourage collaboration and to inspire urban citizens take action. Ten of the best ideas would be awarded $10,000 each to kick start change.

Source: thecity2.org

As Nate Berg, staff writer at The Atlantic Cities said: TED unveiled a new website that aims to crowdsource ideas on city-focused projects and award mini-grants to enable the best ones. According to TED, the vision for the platform is to build an ever-expanding network of citizen-led, scalable experiments. Writer Anthony Flint describes The City 2.0 as: a kind of global Wikipedia connecting citizens, political leaders, urban experts, companies, and organizations, with the goal of improving the 21st century city using up-to-the-minute crowdsourcing techniques. The ambitious goal is to create a clearinghouse for tools and methodologies and best practices to reshape cities around the world.

Source: 2012 TED Prize Wish: The City 2.0

The City 2.0 platform was re-designed in January 2013.

Inspiring people to become changemakers

Source: theatlanticcities.com

The platform and the innovation competition are supported by a $100,000 TED Prize and funding from private foundations and corporations. Changemaker Conor WhiteSullivan noted: The platform is supported with $250,000 in funding from the Knight Foundation, and a number of large corporations are throwing their weight behind it as well, including IBM and Autodesk.

The City 2.0 mobilizes people to participate in the process of driving change. As Inhabitats Tafline Laylin commented: Its a novel idea, but it is also incredibly inspiring. Instead of placing the responsibility of our future in the hands of a few politicians, TED is encouraging all citizens to take it back into their own. People can participate online by sharing inspirations, stories and projects on The City 2.0 platform, submitting resources, competing for a grant and sharing feedback. Offline, people can organize or participate in TEDxCity2.0 events and TEDxLive viewing parties for the same.

Source: thecity2.org/tips

Volume 2, Issue 6, January - March, 2013

Future of Citizenship

The City 2.0

To learn more about city initiatives, The City 2.0 encourages people to browse through city-themed TED and TEDx talks and has created a book City 2.0: The Habitat of the Future and How to Get There.

leaders right in our backyard, but it will take all of us working together to become the City 2.0 To encourage sharing of stories, inspirations and projects, TEDxCity2.0 introduced a new initiative Action Pitch Sessions which invites five members to share their ideas onstage in a two minute pitch. After the pitches, event organizers encourage the audience to support one or more of these ideas and help bring them to life. Talks and Action Pitches from the TEDxCity2.0 events are available on YouTube here and here. A second TEDxCity2.0 day will be organized in 2013.

TEDxCity2.0 An amplification channel

The City 2.0 is further supported by the TEDx program, through which passionate individuals and changemakers organize independent TED-like events in their communities. In October 2012, 28 global TEDx communities hosted TEDxCity2.0 events, helping the initiative increase its reach, build a network of changemakers, crowdsource more ideas and inspire action at the grassroots level. AlexanderDSM commented: With TEDs City 2.0 [the focus is] not just big American cities, but cities around the world. TEDs core competency is not just in the curation of ideas, but its also worth noting the TEDx program. With over 3,000 TEDx events in three years, there is the chance for the TEDx communities in cities to embrace this years TED prize and enact it in their local communities.

The City 2.0 Challenge

The City 2.0 Challenge bootstrapped the crowdsourcing process and served as an incentive for participation. People submitted their ideas online, and winners were announced on a rolling basis first at TEDGlobal in June 2012, and then on the TED blog. The winners received $10,000 each to fund their project. ArchDailys Vanessa Quirk reported: The Award, which offers $10,000 to 10 innovative ideas in Urban Transformation, has been awarded so far to an eco-artist, a Wikipedia of house-building, a noise mapper, a couple of sign-post rebels, and a public-health activist and educator.

Source: ted.com/pages/tedx_tedxcity

Mark Dewey, who organized a TEDxCity2.0 event in San Diego, commented on the events contribution to creating a global community of changemakers: Being a part of this global event opened the exchange of ideas to include what has and has not worked in other cites (sic) and questions about we can adopt best practices from proven models. Far too often, these events only dive into local problems with local solutions. Sometimes we need to expand beyond our zip code to understand what our problems really are. We have an incredible pool of thought
Source: Playlist: 8 City 2.0 award-winner videos

Can crowdsourcing drive civic change?

While The City 2.0 benefits from the size and reach of the TED and TEDx communities, thinkers debate the potential of the crowdsourcing platform in creating the city of the future in real life. Jake Barton who runs a similar platform, Change By Us, commented: Creating a website is not terribly difficult. But creating a project that actually has an impact on communities? Thats really hard. From my experience, the website is a great way to gain attention and motivation and traction, but to actually make real change happen, its people. Diana Lind, director of Next City and one of the winners of The City 2.0 Challenge, believes the challenge model is more efficient than the open collaboration platform: While the Internet is great for ordering shoes or reading blogs, it might just not be the best holistic system to organize people or to create change in cities. We have realized that the public sector isnt going to solve every civic crisis alone, but in fact works best when partnering with the private and non-profit sector. It could be that the Internet, by itself, is also insufficient. While the competition portion of The City 2.0 is clearly oriented toward that kind of inperson collaboration that is required to create change in cities, the TED prize, with its wish list, suggests that the Internet is the magic wand thats going to jumpstart change in our communities. Blogger Kyle Rogler feels the ideas shared can inspire solutions: Crowd sourcing ideas from citizens may not provide exact solutions to the problems faced by a city, but it will help inform general opinions and generate a huge variety of unique ideas that designers can draw inspiration from to provide more precise solutions.

Models of innovation
Several changemakers and organizations have used crowdsourcing and collaborative social innovation to drive civic change. For instance, crowdsourcing initiatives like Open Ministry in Finland and programs that incorporate collaboration like Lets Move! Cities, Towns and Counties in the U.S. are seeing early signs of success in enabling citizens to propose new laws and mobilizing local leaders to take action.

Source: Open Ministry (avoinministeraio.fi) Source: Lets Move! Cities, Town and Counties (healthycommunitieshealthyfuture.org)

Volume 2, Issue 6, January - March, 2013

Future of Citizenship

The City 2.0

Peoples Lab: Crowdsourcing Innovation & Insights

Peoples Lab is MSLGROUPs proprietary crowdsourcing platform and approach that helps organizations tap into peoples insights for innovation, storytelling and change. The Peoples Lab crowdsourcing platform helps organizations build and nurture public or private, web or mobile, hosted or white label communities around four pre-configured application areas: Expertise Request Network, Innovation Challenge Network, Research & Insights Network and Contest & Activation Network. Our community and gaming features encourage people to share rich content, vote/ comment on other peoples content and collaborate to find innovative solutions. The Peoples Lab crowdsourcing platform and approach forms the core of our distinctive insights and foresight approach, which consists of four elements: organic conversation analysis, MSLGROUPs own insight communities, clientspecific insights communities, and ethnographic deep dives into these communities. The Peoples Insights Quarterly Magazines showcase our capability in crowdsourcing and analyzing insights from conversations and communities.

Learn more about us at: peopleslab.mslgroup.com | twitter.com/peopleslab

For Peoples Lab solutions, contact

pascal.beucler@mslgroup.com