Ideavibes presentation made in Calgary and Edmonton on the topics of citizen engagement, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.

1. Innovation through
Citizen engagement
Paul Dombowsky

2. Citizen Challenge
Traffic congestion is a
major challenge to the
environment, quality of
life, and economic growth
of Calgary. What ideas do
you have to encourage
your fellow citizens to
make alternative choices
for getting around the city
each day?
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3. Agenda / Highlights
• Social media and its impact on engagement
• Practical Crowdsourcing - what is it and how can you use it?
• How to tap into the conversations that are already going on to make better
decisions.
• Making crowdsourcing pay for itself - the business case.
• Best practices and how to implement.
• How to overcome some of the negatives.
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4. Citizen Engagement in Web 2.0 for Calgary 2.0
• There are many one way conversations happening:
• Blogs
• AvenueCalgary
• CalgaryPolitics Driven by Social
• CalgaryGrit Media Platforms
• Chrishapercalgary
• VibrantCakgary
• Podcasts
• PodCalgary
• ChrisHarper
• Make no mistake – your citizens want to be involved in transforming the City
of today to City 2.0.
• Where is the engagement? Where is the innovation happening?
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5. Engagement – Who Participates?
Millennials (born ’91 and after)
Gen Y (born ’81-’91)
Gen X (born ’65-’80)
Boomers (born ’46-’64)
Civics (born ’45 or earlier)
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6. Who is your crowd?
CITY
Explicit
Experts
Emergent Experts
(community leaders, front
Engagement line stakeholders)
Targets
General Audience
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7. Crowdsourcing
Defined
An engagement process whereby organizations seek input from either open
or closed communities of people, either homogenous or not, to contribute
ideas, solutions, or support in an open process whereby the elements of
creativity, competition and campaigning are reinforced through social media
to come up with more powerful ideas or solutions than could be obtained
through other means.
Why Bother?
Organizations have a difficult time engaging with their communities to
strengthen their relationship and be citizen/crowd focused. Internal or
external, the community has ideas that can be harnessed that come from
diverse backgrounds, experiences and education.
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8. Where Innovation / Crowdsourcing Fits
Open Space
How we gather
Open
Innovation Social Media
Crowdsourcing Community How we talk
Where ideas come from
Leadership
How we inspire &
enable
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9. Innovation: Crowdsourcing vs The Survey
Crowdsourcing Surveys
• Lends itself to diversity of participation • Great for solidifying preconceived
• Fewer barriers to participation ideas or directions
• Drives innovation – new ideas from left • Hidden
field that have merit • Requires interpretation which is open
• Easy to interpret – the crowd generally to biases by reviewers
makes things clear • Doesn’t encourage creativity
• Comments are focused
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10. The Appeal
• Crowdsourcing surfaces new perspectives
• Invites participation from nontraditional
sources
• Infuses real energy into the process of generating ideas
and content
• Empowers people when they feel their voice is being heard
• Technology can enable participation by disenfranchised
(ie. PCs in libraries/shelters with citizen engagement
campaigns)
• Builds engagement and relationships with new audiences
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11. Things to Watch For
• Excessive lobbying and promotion
• Narrow crowds product narrow results
• No follow-through causes creditability hit
• If you say you are generating solutions for X, communicate
what happened and why
• Broad ideation campaign descriptions will result in less focused
results BUT too narrow will restrict creativity
• Dismissing ideas that seem far fetched
• Ideation often requires refinement – understanding what your
crowd is saying by ‘x’
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12. Example 1: Citizen Engagement
NYC Citizen Engagement
Program
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13. Example 2: Citizen Engagement in SF
San Francisco Engage4change
Citizen Engagement Program
(2 weeks)
• No. of Engagements = 2252
• Referrals = 64% from Twitter
• Cost = 500 ice cream cones ($1,000)
• Humphry Slocombe’s Crowd
= 320,000 twitter followers and
Facebook Friends
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14. Example 3: Open Innovation with Citizens
City of Ottawa
Have a Say Sustainability
Campaign
• No. of Engagements = 5700
• Goal: 1500
• Drivers: Twitter, Facebook, Media
Event (related)
• Number of ideas: 200
• English and French
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15. Example 4: Product Development - Branded
IdeaStorm was created to give a direct
voice to Dell’s customers and an
avenue to have online “brainstorm”
sessions to allow them to share ideas
and collaborate with one another and
Dell. Their goal through IdeaStorm is to
hear what new products or services
you’d like to see Dell develop.
In almost three years, IdeaStorm has
crossed the 10,000 idea mark and
implemented nearly 400 ideas!
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16. Example 5: Product Development - Inventions
Quirky is an all in one
product development
shop for inventors.
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17. Example 6: Conference Agenda
Ignite uses crowdsourcing
for the source and crowd
directed agenda at an
upcoming event.
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18. It all starts with a Question or Problem
• Needs to be:
– Clear and compelling
– Not leading
– Allow for open innovation
– Encourage participation
– Allow for outliers to feel comfortable
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19. I have a challenge
• Land use determination – who drives the
agenda and the conversation?
• Two approaches
• Opportunity driven
• Innovation driven
• The difference lies in where the ideas come
from
• From the user or the customer
• From the supplier
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20. I have a challenge
Opportunity Driven (supplier) Innovation Driven (customer)
City releases
RFI
City Posts Challenge
Developers
Selection
Respond
Developers invited
Crowdsourcing used
to respond to
to generate ideas
specific RFP
Study Short list
Feasibility Review Crowd determines
takes place their preference
Consultation
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21. Government as a Platform
• Ideas and information produced by and on behalf of the
citizen or the crowd
• Crowd is empowered to spark the innovation that will result in
an improved approach to governance
• Move away from ‘Vending Machine Government’
Expect
Pay Taxes Repeat
Services
• Responsibility is shared between citizens and staff
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22. Ideavibes Citizen Engagement Platform
• Easy to set-up and deploy
• Able to run multiple campaigns at once
• Can run Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding Campaigns
• Build stickiness and community around those that engage
(sign-in and see past votes, comments, ideas)
• Hosted solution (in Canada)
• Able to be implemented on existing website or set-up in
new, destination site
• Social Media connected
• One of few sub $1000/month solutions
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23. How an Engagement Platform Works
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24. Implementation Process
City creates
website
landing
page
City develops Moderator
Citizens post Results
campaign in checks and
ideas
Platform releases ideas analyzed &
presented
City promotes
Initiative initiative
Citizens share Citizens
through social
launched – media /
ideas with vote/comment
site live their crowd on ideas
traditional
media
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25. Thank you
Paul Dombowsky | 613.878.1681 | paul@ideavibes.com | www.ideavibes.com
Lisa Fox | 403-912-2527 | lisafox@urbanresilience.ca | www.urbanresilience.ca