We’ve been throwing around a term internally for the past month or so in regards to our CloudSpokes community. When the community was started, the focus was to steadily create and curate a stable platform for the community members. Now, as we approach the two-year anniversary of CloudSpokes’ launch, we’re seeing the effects of the community’s maturity in the market. We’ve lovingly nicknamed this phenomenon: Primetime.
Primetime is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, but we didn’t expect it to start this early. It signifies the shift from seeing crowdsourcing as an interesting pet-project, to a dynamic game-changer. It’s the light bulb that goes off shortly after running that first CloudSpokes challenge – the excitement of seeing the results, the empowerment of getting work done, and the eagerness to harness the power of the community to do even more. Primetime could be due to any number of reasons:
- During the “scoping” phase of the challenge, customers have noted that their requests have shifted from: “Here’s my problem, and here’s how we think it should be architected,” to, “Here’s my problem, show me the best way to architect this”.
- That the elastically-skilled community never has a staffing delay, can start immediately, and prefers weekends.
- During the review phase, it’s not comparing apples to apples when multiple experts approach a problem’s solution differently to create value.
- That from the outset, the entire conversation has shifted from a focus on effort, to a focus on outcomes. Costs are aligned around value, not hours. The platform delivers a paradigm shift from “let’s talk about it”, to “let’s build it”.
Together with CloudSpokes, JDRF is rebuilding their entire web-based support system for their Online Diabetes Support Team. The beauty of the process is that CloudSpokes requires an agile methodology (challenges = sprints) and code review at each step of the cycle in order for the process to work. Here are some examples of the challenges that JDRF is running to create a cutting-edge support network for people with Type 1 Diabetes:
- Web2Case for JDRF – The first challenge to help JDRF is move their Online Diabetes Support Team (ODST) to Salesforce Cases
- JDRF Online Diabetes Support Team Part 2 – The next sprint, to create a dialog infrastructure for rotating assigned support reps and incoming requests
- JDRF Online Diabetes Support Team Part 3 – Building off of “Sprint 2”, adding further modifications and enhancements to the support architecture
The Academy of Art University has hit crowdsourcing Primetime as well, but in a slightly different format. AAU is working with CloudSpokes to redesign their mobile experience app – a guide for students used for getting around campus and navigating daily life. Working with CloudSpokes has allowed AAU to crowdsource ideas and creativity while also sourcing talent from their own unique community – AAU students themselves.
