I recently came across the Wikipedia entry of Ayrton Senna, the deceased Brazilian F1 driver. While I’m no F1 fan, I found what I read to be very interesting, yet very sad. I’ve never really been “touched” / fascinated by a person who I barely knew existed until recently, to the extent that I started searching for a book on his life story.

This blog post is not about the driver, but a comparison of what I found online. I just thought I’d share this info. The book isn’t available locally – well not physically at CNA or Exclusive Books but I found it on kalahari.net:

as well as Exclusive Books online:

I called Exclusive Books and they told me it will take 6 – 8 weeks, yet their site says 10-15 working days but that’s not the point. Take a look at the pricing! Where is the consistency? Why are we being ripped off? Okay, that’s a stupid question.

I’m glad kalahari.net is having a sale and I hope the book arrives by next week Friday.

Moral of the story, shop around. Don’t let yourself get ripped off.

PS Can you tell that I have too much free time on my hands lately?

Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design and distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data. – Wikipedia

In simple terms, it can be described as using Web 2.0 technologies to get results (for your business). An example I’d like to apply is me personally using Twitter to achieve this. I was asked if I could assist in finding a speaker for a sponsored workshop coming up at ITWeb’s Digital Life Expo.

I updated my status on Twitter to read as follows:

I got a reply from someone who was very keen and ‘in the know’. I’ve since passed this info on to our editorial director – who thought he was an excellent candidate as she had met him previously. *Update* It hasbeen confirmed that he will be speaking at the workshop.

If you want to know what Twitter is, check it out here. Basically you’re allowed up to a maximum of 140 character updates per status update. To use Twitter effectively and get the best results, you should have a very niche following. I follow people within the industry who I think I can learn from and exchange ideas with and in turn, they follow me (people follow back at their own discretion). Don’t just join Twitter because everyone is joining it. It’s not another Facebook. Nobody really wants to know that you are having a cappuccino for breakfast.

I would also like to add, that according to Wikipedia, crowdsourcing has attracted controversy and criticism. They list the following reasons:

1. Added costs to bring a project to an acceptable conclusion.
2. Increased likelihood that a crowdsourced project will fail due to lack of monetary motivation, too few participants, lower quality of work, lack of personal interest in the project, global language barriers, or difficulty managing a large-scale, crowdsourced project.
3. Below-market wages, or no wages at all. Barter agreements are often associated with crowdsourcing.
4. No written contracts, non-disclosure agreements, or employee agreements or agreeable terms with crowdsourced employees.
5. Difficulties maintaining a working relationship with crowdsourced workers throughout the duration of a project.
6. Susceptibility to faulty results caused by targeted, malicious work efforts.

I think that because I’m not a business owner, I don’t see it as being “harmful”. I’m just using my own resources to get results and I’m getting it.

For now, it works and I’m happy to use this medium.

See also – Mass Collaboration

I find that people are more forthcoming in an online environment than in real life. I attended last month’s 27dinner and Johannesburg’s Twestival (yesterday, 12 Feb) and I found that (at both events) people weren’t quick to introduce themselves (well except for Lionel du Plessis, Reuben Goldberg, Richard Mulholland and Don Packett last night).

An event like the Twestival attracts the geekier crowd (Twitter has not gone mainstream), and I think it’s safe to assume that a lot of geeks are shy. I’m all for networking online and admit I’m one of those who wont just go up to someone and say, “Hi, I’m Nafisa and you must be….”. Sounds a bit stalkerish. If you’ve built a ‘relationship’ with someone online for a while, then introducing yourself comes naturally.

While chatting to the SingleSyllable last night, we agreed that people on Twitter know what they want and know why they’re there. Twitter is a very powerful tool, if used properly. It’s also natural to network with like-minded individuals. However, I think it makes a difference if you not only follow a person on Twitter, but their personal blog too and after that, the idea of meeting irl is just the next step. Relationships like these tend to have a more solid foundation.

During my time as content & community manager at My Digital Life, I built a lot of relationships online with numerous bloggers and when we had a MOB (meeting of the bloggers), introducing ourselves came naturally; there were no uncomfortable or awkward moments. Conversation flowed.

Social networking has indeed changed the way people communicate. There’s no beating around the bush.

Just the way I like it.