Tom Sawyer famously talked his gang into paying him for the privilege of whitewashing  a fence while he sat by and supervised. In this talk by Dave Olson at SxSW Interactive on March 10th 2012, he shares how companies might inspire their community to crowd source projects by engaging passionate users with a mutually beneficial relationship.

This video – made from appropriately crowd-sourced photos, social posts, and other snippets + music – includes Mark Twain-period costuming, pipes, smoking jackets, board games, old-timey suitcase, mysterious envelopes, audience participation and plenty of laughs while focusing on practical tactics to rally communities with clear expectations, boundaries, rewards, and objectives and importantly – without manipulating.

3 very different project examples provide tangible advice for various campaign timelines, outcomes and audiences, and include:

* True North Media House: a long-planned (and fantastically successful), renegade self-accreditation citizen documentation project at Vancouver 2010 Olympics / Paralympics 

* Phones for Fearless: a rapidly planned and deployed initiative to gather dis-used mobile phone/cameras for use by marginalized communities to tell their stories

* Hootsuite Translation: activating global cultures to speedily and accurately translate and localize a social media dashboard using a web tool… with unexpected outcomes

Includes cameos of dozens of bright faces in Austin at the noteworthy event, plus more recent voice over to bring the projects up to date and share more resources to explore further including screenshots from various media appearances, reviews, tweets, and whatnot of the talk and aftermath for extra colour. Continue reading Crowd Sourcing Community Projects like Tom Sawyer at SxSWi 2012: video →