Earth Notes: Radbot Origin Myth 5 - Crowdsourcing (2016)

Updated 2020-08-05 20:10 GMT.
By Damon Hart-Davis.
"Crowdsourcing" - Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it is a radiator robot with AI! #webcomic
The Continuing Adventures of Radbot!
panel 1: so much to do
panel 2: these guys are like kids!
panel 3: surely the answer is to outsource
panel 4: Lagos is just full of people waiting for work
panel 5: reading too many bad CVs
panel 6: does that mean we're fired?
panel 7: think positive Cornelius

Radbot Origin Myth 5 "Crowdsourcing" (Copyright © 2016) , editor .

If you need to crowdfund then you don't have money burning a hole in your pocket. So how can you create materials for your campaign?

One way is people working remotely. People who don't have big-Western-city rents.

Another is to hire students and (paid) interns. Again, keep costs down. Then manage slightly harder.

Confused? You will be!

Tune in to find out about Radbot's setbacks...

Back Story

I mentioned cutting the bills in Power to the (outsourced) people – globalisation starts small:

One problem with outsourcing is the lack of the water-cooler effect, people a long way away may not understand the way you want things done that wasn't in any formal spec, or get your body language about urgency and which bits really matter and which bits don't. But that can happen in any Big Corp too. And given that international phone conferences have completely crap ergonomics (I lost a start-up during the course of a lot of oblivious shouting in one), I'm hugely pleased that (free) collaboration tools such as Google Docs and Skype and the like have eased some of those pains considerably.

So yes, our PCBs may emerge from the Scandies and our video may be out of Africa, but it all comes together to support a UK-designed product to sell into Europe.

I think that we do well over Skype. Sometimes with two or three countries in the call. We do better than some of my horrific politics-laden experiences at Lehman Brothers. Or turgid video calls in [OtherBanksPlc]. Or the start-up car-crash. Blech!

Open Sauce, Outsource

We're not just using vanilla outsourcing to save cash. Our open source contributions are genuinely free. That turns out to be a great way to get things done when creating a public good. Indeed, that 'free' work is often of a higher standard than we might be able to pay for. Why? Because someone is invested in it and cares to DoTheRightThing(TM). They may even want to use it as a calling card with future employers.

Scratching that itch is a wonderful thing!

~447 words.