Kineo Australia

Twitter, Ushahidi or iStockPhoto – Who’s changing the game?

iStockPhoto’s monthly e-newsletter hit my inbox this week.  Amongst the usual company news, free stock photos, stories, tips and offers, there was a little piece about their WeMedia Game Changers 2009 awards nomination.

http://gamechangers.wemedia.com

WeMedia’s Game Changers Awards recognises people, projects, ideas and organisations leading change and inspiring a better world through media, generally online. It’s a celebration of innovation and pioneering spirit.

Criteria include innovations in media for Storytelling, Design (particular novel methods of information design (I.D), Community & Social Impact and Sustainability.

The Community Choice awards are voted by the public. There are over 50 nominees this year, and we’ve been very impressed by all, and the following really stood out:

1. Genius Rocket: A crowd-sourcing online marketplace for the ad industry (TVCs & web videos, mostly). Independent agencies and production houses can pitch and bid on individual projects, and finished products are shown on the site (it *is* advertising, after all). The model isn’t new, crowdsourcing for creative and labour has been available on sites like eLance, GetAFreelancer.com etc for years, but we’re starting to see this appear in more and more industries.

Question: Is your agency’s job, or even just a project, in danger of being crowdsourced?  Or will clients always need someone close by to work with, share a vision and perhaps even blame?

2. Ushahidi: When something major happens, or an ongoing crisis slips through the cracks, it’s often left up to the people on the ground to raise awareness. Ushahidi is a movement, a website, a technical framework for crowdsourcing crisis information.  Ushahidi enables anyone to submit crisis/latest news information through SMS using a mobile phone, or via email or web form.

The original deployment of Ushahidi was born during the post-election violence in Kenya in early 2008, and it’s since crowdsourced reporting on the worsening situation in the DRC Congo.

The technology is open source and later this year will be downloadable for deployment to start aggregating citizin journalists’ reports about local civil conflicts or natural distasters.

Ushahadi is changing the game, by proving that information will always find a way to be free – free as in speech, and free as in beer.

3. Twitter, iStockPhoto and the rest … Check out the rest of the We Media Game Changer nominees (and vote for them!) here.