There are some great crowd sourced projects in existence no more so than current.com launched in 2005 current.com is a collaboration with its audience.

Current connects young adults with what is going on in their world, from their perspective, in their own voices.

With tutorials, guides and more you can even make your own commercial and earn $1,000 if aired on Current TV. Or better still up to $60,000 if used else where.

It’s well documented that nicheideas loves this concept and I have been scratching the old wooden box above my shoulders trying to think how far this can go. I’ve pondered:

1. Does crowd sourcing have a threshold/ceiling? For example can Share Liverpool FC generate 500 million solely from crowd sourcing!
2. Can crowd sourcing redefine the web? For example Wikipedia!
3. Will crowd sourcing change the what we see in the media? Current TV and more recently Have I got the nerve TV.

It appears that crowd sourcing is more popular than I first thought and is gaining momentum, as I type. I will be sharing more examples in the coming weeks.

In the meantime if you need advice on how to make your own pod, commercial or TV programme head over to Current TV they have everything that you could possibly need and the best part it’s all free. I think I’ll be dusting off the ole digital and get making my first programme!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted and for good reason. I’ve been hauled (willingly) into a new project that is close to my heart. If your familiar with the ‘pink ribbon’ symbol then your already aware of breast cancer.

On the 2nd October 2007 a dear friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer. Since then I have been helping as best I could but not making the impact I would of liked until now.

Over our numerous discussions she agreed to keep a diary of her experience as something to look back on when her journey was finally over.

That diary is forming as ‘we speak’ and is currently a ‘work in progress’ (if you fancy a preview head over to pinkribbonandme) hence this has kept me away from nicheidea.

OK so enough of the history lesson, what has cancer got to do with crowd sourcing? Well in short everything!

Crowd sourcing can come in many guises, but once you break it down they have one common theme. The ‘crowd sourced’ collectively has one common goal to succeed. Susan Reynolds used twitter a community service to connect friends, family and colleagues using only 160 characters answering a simple question.

In Susan’s case ‘crowd sourcing’ came in the form of assistance with her journey with breast cancer, she has received referrals, research, cooking, encouragement, clothing, prayers, shared experiences, support and finally ‘crowd sourcing’ has started a fund raising campaign for the American Cancer Society in her name. Wow now that’s ‘crowd sourcing’ at its best. To read more click Susan Reynolds blog Boobs on Ice.

Remember Ebbsfleet United a small non league football club which used ‘crowd sourcing’ to galvanise members to dip into their pockets for the poultry sum of £35 each. This enabled the club to begin the process of changing ownership and gave the members a vote on picking the team amongst other club related matters.

At the time I commented you could be a member of a football club and have no say in the club at all. Well welcome to premiership ‘crowd sourcing’ aimed at Liverpool Football Club. It’s no secret the Liverpool faithful never wanted the club sold in the first place, let alone in American hands.

On 31st Jan 2008 at 5pm Share Liverpool FC began with a launch at The School of Management, University of Liverpool. This is ‘crowd sourcing’ with ‘bling’ or should I say ‘bling bling’ when you see how much you must pay for the privilege. What’s proposed is a member scheme model not dissimilar to the Barcelona Football Club scheme in Spain.

They perceive that 100,000 members paying £5,000 each is sufficient to raise the £500 million to buy out the present American owners and fund the beginnings of building a new stadium, if Liverpool Football Club are to keep pace with its rivals. The members can only buy 1 share each and each share carries a single voting right i.e. 1 share, 1 vote.

Protection from future buyouts are assured as the members cannot ‘normally’ sell the share and also with 1 share, 1 vote, means no other member will own more of the football club than you. Headed by Dr Rogan Talyor director of the Football Industry Group at Liverpool University who gave an inspired presentation that was greeted with warm applause.

The biggest challenge about this initiative is that no agreement currently exists between Tom Hicks and George Gillett to sell if the funds are raised. This reminds me of David and Goliath from my Sunday school teachings. Dr Talyor & co. are ‘David’ whilst Hicks/Gillett are ‘Goliath’ in what I can only describe as a modern day adaptation .

Will ‘David’ conquer ‘Goliath’ only time will tell as there is so much work to do. This first hurdle of the operation is to establish can the funds be raised. If they were over subscribed then the member share price would come down in price. If under subscribed then they would seek to buy shares instead. Shares in any PLC means voting rights and a say in the club. There are so many different possibilities that I cannot wait to see how this progresses.

As ever I love the fact that it is a ‘crowd sourced’ project and Liverpool Football Club is interesting to follow for a number of reasons:

1. Does ‘crowd sourced’ projects have a price ceiling? £5,000 each maybe too expensive for the masses.

2. Can any ‘crowd sourced’ project generate commitment from 100,000 participants or more?

3. Will the current owners want to sell, if the funds are raised?

4. What effect will this type of ‘crowd sourced’ project have in sport?

I could write 100 questions if I wanted, instead I’ll report back as this progresses. For more information direct click Share Liverpool FC

Seek and you shall find….Heard that before? Well I have loads! I’m keen to demonstrate there is already an active number of ‘crowd sourced’ projects in existence and that with a collective drive to succeed you can achieve anything. Ohmynews is an Korean online newspaper totally written by contributors in Korea.

There is talk in blogsphere that country specific conditions made this viable and that this could not be replicated say in the USA or the UK. Hmmm I dunno about that, but I do concede that in Korea there was a total distrust of the media, politicians and access to the internet was easy. To me at least, it does not sound too dissimilar to the western world.

However with that said Ohmynews secured funding of an $11 million dollar investment from a Japanese bank in Feb 2006, with plans to launch the same newspaper model in Japan. Latest reports state that the Japanese model has not taken off as in Korea and that profits have been declining. The established press attribute this to aggressive competitive advertising and country specific conditions that no longer apply today.

So with both sides of the equation you can make a balanced conclusion, but in the information age surely access to data is where the power base lies. Typically this is in the hands of a few media moguls and not the masses. Ohmynews has approximately 40,000 contributers come journalists. My understanding is, there are some 90 odd full-time editors who control the flow of copy coming into Ohmynews headquarters.

Many argue that this model will not and cannot work profitably, because since its launch in 2002 we would have seen a new and successful type of journalism by now. I believe the flaw in this thought process is that Ohmynews was born out of necessity and not for profits. For example if you set up a charity, your drive and goals are to serve your public and pay the bills. If you set up a public limited company, then your geared to increase revenue, drive down costs and raise the share price.

What interests me the most is why we cannot have both? A ‘crowd sourced’ online paper that aims to report the news and make a profit. The contributors can be rewarded for their journalistic skills whilst maintaining high standards off any conventional paper. The Ohmynews model needs tweaking not reinventing.

Ebbsfleet United Football Club takes on ‘crowd sourcing’ I nearly overlooked this, assuming everyone knows about it already. Then I got an email from a footballing friend who said, you haven’t included Ebbsfleet United on your blog, this shows exactly how crowd sourcing works in real life. So I better get to it….

…. duly noted so here goes. MyFootballClub has voted by 95.9% (some 17,000 votes out of nearly 18,000) in favour of going ahead with the deal. A bit of history here, I picked this one up watching the news months ago and within 5 mins I was reading all about it on MyFootballClub.co.uk so what is it and how does it work?

In summary the public are allowed to buy membership for £35, this will entitle you to vote on the team leaving the coach to do just that, coach. Yes you read right, the members pick the team not the manager.

Effectively there is no manager only a head coach, we the collective public are picking the team. When you consider you can be a member of a football club and the only voice you have is standing outside the gates, saying your unhappy with X, Y or Z this gives its members an added incentive. I’m loving this……

If you’ve ever been to a football game, you’ll know full well that everyone thinks they could do a better job than the manager and they voice their opinion in graphic terms. / So why not put your money where your mouth is and join in (thats a rhetorical question btw) however Ebbsfleet United members have done just that and a BIG round off applause is well deserved.

This is a radical and bold move, yet I like it lots! The coach is responsible for getting the best out of the players not picking the team. It seems someone is thinking out of the box at Ebbsfleet United and I just love that they are using ‘crowd sourcing’ to make it happen. You’ve got to take you hat of to them, these guys have vision. Today a football club, tomorrow a ?!?!?!? hmm you decide. Check out the full story, your voting rights etc at MyFootballClub

How does a struggling rock indie band get off the ground in 2008, there are thousands of bands trying to break into an ever decreasing space. Record companies are finding it harder to launch recording artists as the internet has taken hold on music file sharing and profits have plummeted.

Only recently EMI laid off some 2000 employees to help streamline their operation and to prop up profits. So what does that mean for bands starting out. In essence it means the space has just got smaller and its even harder now, than it was before. My knowledge of the record business started as an artist some 25 years ago performing at an open air venue in North West London.

At this time record companies moved away from developing artists, in favour of final cut deals. Many artists and bands lost their chance to be discovered and nurtured. Today you have to have all the attributes to be considered and if you haven’t got catalog then forget it.

So can record companies have their cake and eat it too? I think not as technology has changed the landscape and new talent is in abundance. The leap of faith, is change the way artists and bands come to market. A select few decide if an artist or band can be processed via the music machinery that exists today. Ultimately this type of manufactured processing stifles talent and inhibits creativity.

My musical taste leans towards Soul, Motown, RnB and Hip Hop but talent is talent no matter what genre. So when I was asked to get involved in a Rock Indie band I said, I’ll take a listen. What I heard made ears open wide and the old brain matter started working.

Q: How can I get this talent out there so the masses can hear what I just heard. In truth most bands follow the well worn path of loading their videos onto youtube, myspace and the like, trying to gain some exposure but in the haze of 2 million uploads how can you see the wood from the trees. The gig circuit in recent years has got better especially in the North of England however its still difficult to get your foothold as a unknown band.

Thinking out of the box, my thought process was to use existing contacts, so off to my laptop I go and bang out a few e-mails. One contact who works for a leading record company entertained the thought and I took it as far as I could go. I love working with talent, as its aspiring to nurture talent into something formidable. However knocking on these doors did not get us to the wholly grail.

As with all posts on this blog, I believe the power is with the exhaustive audience that makes up the buying public and not the corporations that dictate what we see, buy and read. I would like to turn this on it’s head and let everyday people decide what we bring to market, how we bring it to market and when we bring it to market.

Can ‘crowd sourcing’ bring a band to market? Can the exhaustive audience I speak off, help make this real? If it works for one band, can it work for others? Questions, questions so do I have the answers, answers!

A band needs a platform to perform, a venue scheduled in the concert calendar that has draw, audience appeal and some kudos amongst the band culture in the UK. However bands need funding to exist, to travel, to pay the everyday bills that we all have. I’m in discussions to progress this concept further but what about it ‘crowd sourcing’ in music?

Ideas! Sourced! and Community! are 3 words that are included in our strap line and for good reason. I am a ‘can do’ person and have surprised myself sometimes by achieving things I never thought possible because a) I didn’t know where to start and b) it was outside my comfort zone.

So what of it? Your so wonderful….big deal.

Well I’m discussing an idea with a friend, how to turn someone into a professional sports person using ‘crowd sourcing’ to achieve their goal. I have seen talent not realised in sport before and if there’s one thing that makes me go bananas its that.

A personal experience is a close family friend, who had the talent to achieve international status in cricket but never had the platform to succeed. To this day I know he could have had a wonderful career doing something he enjoyed, instead of the 9 to 5 grind.

There is so much undiscovered talent in the UK and around the world but all they need is the platform to perfect their art. Nurturing talent in any sporting field can be an expensive business and gaining recognition is difficult without the appropriate funding.

So can ‘crowd sourcing’ change this? Can sport combined with ‘crowd sourcing’ work? Can the collective, contribute, nurture and win the day? My thought process says why not…. they brought Apollo 13 back earth didn’t they!

Our discussions so far have led to concepts but not the mechanics of this sports model. However today is another day off moving the project forward so stay tuned.

Is people passion, haveyougotthenerveTV and are Mark Bowness/Mark James real or fake?

I’m a great advocate of making things happen starting with a blank piece of paper. Nothing pleases me more than to take a concept that is in my or someone else’s head, brain storming it, working out a plan, then executing the plan and making it happen. Wow it gives me a buzz every time I think about it. So when Kezza pinged me ‘haveyougotthenervetv’ I answered loudly yes…

Its all about attitudes to risk and how much your prepared to take. No-one has made it, in this big bad world of ours by playing safe. So I also advocate you need to take a risk to forfill your potential and I have been taking my fair share of risks along the way.

Have all concepts been successful? No. Have all failed? No. What failure and success gives you is experience to move on and try again. Most successful entrepreneurs will say they have had a failed business along the way, so its a balance of applying yourself, failure, applying yourself yet again and success. Bizarre concept but true enough!

The Jem Report on ‘tribes unwanted’ depicts a story off an habitual trier who has not forfilled their dreams, however this can be taken in more than one way. You may ask yourself is he trying to rip you off? Hmmm only Mark Bowness knows but probably not. So will it make you millions probably not either, but what a ride eh, if it only achieves a quarter of what is visioned.

I have read quite a bit on Mark’s journey so far and have drawn my own conclusion, you will need to do the same. I see the risk that someone takes with this latest venture as acceptable. It may not be for everyone and it may shout ’scam keep away’, however consider that its not the money thats important, its the opportunity that counts. The only way you know that it was a good idea was to take the chance in the first place.

Read all you can, investigate and delve further, this should give you a good premise on how to proceed. I will continue to monitor progress and will report back accordingly. Real or fake? Dunno, the choice is yours!

Have you heard about Mark Bowness, Tribes Wanted or Have You Got The Nerve TV, well these 3 things have one thing in common. An idea, ‘crowd sourcing’ and making it happen, this is right up my street! One of my fond friends contacted me on Facebook and put me in touch with my destiny, thanks kezza.

Mark Bowness is the creative mind behind Tribe Wanted now airing on BBC2 at 9pm on Monday nights. Catch it and I’m sure if your like me you’ll be hooked. This is a concept I favour very much, as it’s all about people making things happen outta nothing. Incidentally this motivated me to have an impromptu meeting with Dominic and Sergio, more about their vision in a later post.

Below is an extract taken directly from the PeoplePassionPlanet get over there and forfill your dreams!

‘It makes Facebooks poking and sheep throwing seem frivolous’.

To conclude if there’s a will, there’s always a way.

Today I begun down a road that will either define me or defy me! As I’m not one to be defied, I know that the former not the latter will win the day. On one of my other projects nichehomes.com I have been toying with how to expand the concept of our real estate blog to a wider audience. At times your well runs dry and you breathe a deep sigh and retire to a chair with a large brandy. Well today was not one of those…

I had a mini board meeting and roped in the client services manger and brain stormed ideas on the white board. What came out of the mix was to incorporate a number of interviews with other business owners obtaining an insight into their set up, how they started and their success. Bear in mind the only reason nichehomes.com works with them is because they are successful in the 1st place.

So from this mini post, learn the 1st rule of expanding an existing concept. Begin with who you know already, in this case who would not want to discuss the secret of their success. Not only does this give kudos to the already successful business owners, it also allows our readers the opportunity to benefit from their success, thus improving the readability of our corporate blog. Objective achieved!

So what happened? The invites went out and we received 2 immediate responses saying bring it on baby. Today I’m inspired!