FLIRTing with the Crowds

I first set up this blog just to post ideas for and discuss the topics around my master’s thesis which ended up as the FLIRT model of crowdsourcing. Just today I learned about Jeglog (since they had blogrolled me), who are doing the same thing, albeit with even more enthusiasm towards blogging about it than I had at the time. They’ve already posted the framework online and are now doing empirical research. Seems like they’re focusing more on the motivation part of online collaboration with the customers (relates closely especially to the Language and Incentives parts of the FLIRT).

It is very cool to see this kind of activity getting done by students, and I pretty quickly found a number of thesis-related blogs (e.g. here, here, here and here). While writing about your ideas (as with work papers) is a good way of thinking about them, presenting your ideas to the public and letting everybody (and not just your instructor) in on the conversation is certainly an even better way, as you get a lot of opinion and viewpoint exchange started. I think that blogging about your thesis subject should definitely be encouraged more in modern thesis seminars.

In addition to scientific writing, we of course have many many blogs written by authors of e.g. professional books (Chris Anderson’s ongoing work with his upcoming book on the world of free in his long tail blog being one of the more popular ones) where they discuss their thoughts and ideas as they’re writing and let others join the conversation too and have their say. Some blogs on the other hand, like the freakonomics blog, concentrate on elaborating on a books ideas and giving it expanded exposure post-release, discussing about the ideas and how they manifest themselves in real life (of course, Anderson does this too for his book on the long tail). On yet other ones you can even download the books for free, as for most artists and authors the problem is not piracy, but obscurity.

The bottom line: blogging is free and it really helps you think and create, so if you’re writing or otherwise paid to think and create, get on with blogging already. You can’t lose.