Thanks for the comment!

I agree there are a number of ways crowdsourcing might be applied during the public participation process.

I’m starting to think, though, that one of the following has to be true for it to be a valid approach: either the evaluation criteria for participant input are fairly objective, or it isn’t necessary to integrate the input across all stakeholders.

I can see how this probably warrants another blog post…

However, if people are asked to offer their thoughts on what they think are important considerations for transit station design, and those offerings are themed, and people are asked to take pictures that best represent those themes and why and how they think they are reflective of what that theme represents to them and maybe even asked for the pros and cons of their proposal, then people are even asked to rate their top theme with pictures…..then you’ve used the principles of crowdsourcing (and photo voice and deliberative framing) to engage people in a more deliberative and co-creative process. What do you think?
Steph

One from the journal Planning Theory: http://www.darenbrabham.com/files/brabhamplanning.pdf

And one from the journal Convergence:
http://www.darenbrabham.com/files/brabhamconvergence.pdf

My dissertation focuses on this topic, with an investigation of Next Stop Design (www.nextstopdesign.com), a crowdsourced bus stop design competition I headed up that was funded by a grant from the US Federal Transit Administration.

In fact, a Conservative Party official interviewed me about this topic a few months ago.

db

I think I was referring to what the original NYT article (‘Athens’ on the Net) called the “pros and cons of crowdsourcing policy-making”.

So that’s part of the confusion also. At most, the projects we’ve seen recently would only inform the decision making body. The actual policy making (the crafting) is only indirectly influenced.

I see there will be more posts on this. Maybe we can schedule a quick call this weekend as I had suggested a few weeks back.

You said:

“Most of the time the process [public participation] will be guided by consensus seeking of some kind and achieving a certain level of agreement across all participants is required in the end in order for things to be able to move forward politically.”

I agree with what you say, but only because you use the qualifier “Most of the time …”.

Sometimes, the public does participate in a decision-making process but is NOT involved in a consensus on the final decision.

For example, as part of the Open Government Dialogue, the public did collaborate on ideas for “open-government”, but we (the public) were not involved in consensus on the final document (i.e., the Open Government Directive). This is the typically the case in almost all government proposals.

So I would say that “public participation”, although BETTER when it does include collaboration and/or consensus, DOES still occur (albeit not as well) when those aspects are missing (e.g., a public hearing or “listening session”).

Therefore, as you describe it, “Crowdsourcing” is a type of participation that only involves collaboration.

“Public participation”, at its very least, allows the public to speak out about a specific proposal, even if only as collection of monologues (as at a public hearing).

Does that make sense?

I see this happen all over the place and I’d really like to work out the relationship between these terms in a little more detail. Same goes for “the widsom of crowds”, by the way, another often-misused term.

Maybe digging up a few good definitions might be a good start. Have anything handy?

For more info:
http://www.smartsheet.com/crowdwork

Attendees also receive a white paper on the future of crowdsourcing in business.

I can send you an advanced copy of the white paper if you are interested. Let me know.

Thanks!
Todd Jones