Acronym

If you're a bit mystified by the term crowdsourcing, don't worry, you're not alone. Ever since Jeff Howe coined the term in 2006, its meaning and value have been debated. And since his appearance at the 2009 Association Technology Conference & Expo, curiosity and experimentation with the model have spread within the association sector, as well.

But again, what exactly is crowdsourcing, and what isn't? I'd like to help settle some confusion by saying this: that question doesn't really matter.

Howe's definition goes like this:

Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

Of course, the vagueness of "job" and "undefined, generally large group" have led to a lot of debate, such as Dan Woods's column in September at Forbes.com. He wrote that "crowds don't innovate – individuals do":

There is no crowd in crowdsourcing. There are only virtuosos, usually uniquely talented, highly trained people who have worked for decades in a field. [...] The crowd has nothing to do with it. The crowd solves nothing, creates nothing.[...] [I]ndividuals motivated by obsession, competition, money or all three apply their individual talent to creating a solution.

Oddly, Woods both reveals a truth and misses the point at the same time. Yes, crowds don't innovate; there is no hive mind. Individuals each think and innovate on their own. But if those individual virtuosos aren't in your crowd, then they won't be of any help to you. So make your crowd bigger.

And that's the bottom line. Crowdsourcing isn't so much a model as it is just a thought experiment, much akin to the infinite monkey theorem, which says that if you have a million monkeys typing random letters on a million typewriters from now till eternity, eventually they'll happen to type the full text of a William Shakespeare play.

Of course, the actual monkey scenario is absurd (in fact, someone sort of tried it once, and it didn't go well), but the point is that, with greater numbers, basic math says the likelihood of great things happening increases.

And so it goes with crowdsourcing. It doesn't matter what is or isn't crowdsourcing. Is 50 people a crowd? Is 1,000 people a crowd? Is every single one of your members, whatever number that is, a crowd? Sure, just about anything could be deemed crowdsourcing, as long as it means involving more people than you did before.

More people means two things:

• Better potential quality: A greater volume and diversity of ideas contributed toward the development, evaluation, and execution of a task equals a greater likelihood or degree of success.
• Member engagement: A greater number of members who are involved in a task or project, even in small ways, equals a broader level of engagement and all the good things it leads to.

Crowdsourcing is a buzzword now because Web 2.0 tools, whichever you choose, have lowered the barriers to large-crowd involvement. Getting 200 members to share their opinions and ideas in 1989 meant either physically gathering them in one place or hours of telephone calls, reams of faxes, and immense file drawers of careful documentation. In 2009, it can be as easy as setting up a central online wiki or even a simple online discussion board.

Of course, there are still bounds to the degree of feasibility for any given crowd size, but it's up to you to determine what's manageable within your association's capabilities. But if you can involve more people, you might as well. And that's crowdsourcing.