'Weird Turn Pro' Derek Powazek at SXSWi 2008

Derek Powazek (of Fray, Pixish and formerly JPEG mag) spoke at SXSWi 2008 on crowdsourcing and community building.  He's one of my favorite bloggers and speakers, as he consistently has some pretty amazing *actionable* thoughts and ideas on community interaction, cool shiznit and the world in general. 

I dig laidback modest brilliance, I really do.

The 'Weird Turn Pro' panel was a discussion of Average Joes moving up the content creation and community food chain via online tools and virtual congregational / collaborative spaces. 

Also, if you read my Blog, which you obviously do because you are in fact reading the words I am implanting into your retinas right now mwahaha, you'll get the Hunter S. Thompson reference ('When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro') and see yet another reason why I heart Derek's brain. 

Beyond the snappy panel title, it made me rather gleeful hearing Derek loosely reference his own personal 3 motivations of people - quite reminiscent of Ed Schipul's ongoing labor of love:  The 3 Motivations of People:  Material, Social and Ideological.  Simple framework for a really powerful look into promoting community participation and engagement.

Read on for my complete notes (all in bulleted live-blogging crazy form) of Derek's great SXSW panel. 
Derek photo thanks to Flickr user Norby

• Frey gave Derek career of talking to people about community online
• We all know this is what the web is for - UGC powers individuals to use their voice to make things
• 'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" - Hunter S. Thompson
  • There has never been more opps for 'ordinary' people to get the kind of exposure that used to be held in reserve for 'adults', 'authorities', 'experts'
• 3 lies people tell themselves about online media (to make themselves feel better and make themselves think they'll keep the exact same job they have now even though they are still scared out of the wits):
  
  
  1. Everyone on the web is an idiot
     • We have Google - entire value based on how many people linked what pages (votes) - and these peoples' votes are important
       • Google listened to US - not smarter than us
     • Amazon book reviews - UGC amazing added value
     • Jim Pedersen's Backyard Monorail (www.monorail.org)- years of research, 5 years of research, $4000 construction
     • Wikipedia -
       
       • In any sucessful ecology of user participation, must be aware and pay attention to both
  2. Good stuff is too hard to find
     • We used to find 'the good stuff' through a pool of editors in traditional media - strong human element, these people are good at what they do
     • Computer - text search / Google's page rank
     • Hybrid - Flickr interestingness / community vote / best of both
       • Flickr interestingness - algorhytmically weight user participation of photos (who is commenting, tagging, etc.) to gauge what is 'interesting' -- nobody votes technically, they vote through their actions
         • Bad start - engineers gave number ranking on leader board and it became a contest (people trying to gerry rig the contest) which hurts the content itself
     • Wisdom of crowds -- must use groups to be smart, not to be bad (James S. book obviously the best) --> 'selfish behavior aggregated for the common good'
       • Like stock markets - people collectively move the market through their mindset and perceptions (ie:  Challenger explosion - O ring manufacturer tanked in market before NASA even talked about O rings being a potential issue)
     • Assignment Zero - break up big tasks to the public to allow
     • 'Using crowdsourcing as a cost-saving measure doesn't work Communities must be cultivated respected and managed if they are to create economic value' - Jeff Howe (coined 'crowdsourcing')
  3. You can't make any money
  • Threadless (www.threadless.com) - t-shirt company that is a trusted middle man for crowd sourced, contest-driven creation of a product (made $20 million last year)
    • What motivates Derek: Ego / money / fun
    • What happens when things go wrong?  Threadless contest winning design ripped off a Flickr photo of graffiti artist stencil
      • Printed shirts, didn't know, what to do?  They gave artists prize money, offered 'artist select' opp and all ended up well

Derek started Pixish (www.pixish.com) to allow publishers to post assignments and have the people participate and community vote.  Brings more opportunity to get artists' work out there and have fun.

Cautionary tales:

• Yahoo Games Wii site - pulled in Flickr photos (but never asked users permission or give them a way to opt out), so users fought back and tagged random photos like 'Yahoo sucks' with tags to get them on the page
  
  • Must go beyond the legal stuff, must be right with the people
  • Got the extra mile and provide copious opt ins and opt outs
• GM Tahoe Apprentice Campaign
  • Greedy with content ownership - you couldn't add to YouTube, put on your site or take your creations with you -- users rebelled
  • Got their audience wrong, instead of talking to GM owners, they talked to entire Internet
  • But in the end, it worked - the microsite attracted over 600,000 visitors in 3 weeks (with an average of 9 minutes visit on the site) -- more traffic funneled by videos than Google or Yahoo!
    • Were they being a little ironic?  It worked!
    • Later launched reducereuse.com -- what do you do with all that time you're not pumping gas?  Haha.  More YouTube-esque site, much more appropriate and better participation in the end

Community is grown, not built.  People are not bricks - you can't create a community b/c you want it, must create environment they want to be in and then they'll help you grow your community.

How to grow a community:

1. Give people tools they want
2. Trust them to do good
3. Reward good contributions
4. Punish bad contributions - bad guys will harm ability for others to add content
   1. 'Community boot' - if 50% of people in space thought you were crazy, you could boot them (only got one boot at a time) -- 'Commuity has decided you need to chill out.  Come back in an hour'.
      1. Effective b/c your peers are saying and acting, not some moderator
5. Expect the unexpected - people will use your tool for things you never would have expected (ie:  Flickr launched geo-tagging and Flickr users worked to post photos strategically to spell the word 'F*CK' in Iceland)

In short, online folks are messy, dirty, crazy, wonderful people.

Incentive program examples:
- CNet 'builder buzz' with 'builder bucks'
- Ego stroking is good - 'member of the week', mail shirts and schwag
- No amount of reward will work if people just aren't that interested or it won't actually help or solve anything

Comments

[imelda]

Well written Katie! Thanks for live-blogging this so well. I too have been following Derek for years and it was nice to read what he had to say this year.

[Christine]

I *heart* Derek, and his ideas are brilliant to say the least. Thanks for sharing!

[Derek Powazek]

Hey thanks for blogging my talk, Katie! Glad you enjoyed it.