It’s been known for quite some time that the internet is the number one place to express creativity. As a medium for self-expression, users have options such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media sites that rely on user-generated content. What many people might not realize is the sheer volume of creativity that is available online.

You've probably thought about writing & how it could benefit from collaboration before. After all, group perspective can provide more material, more expertise, and more perspectives than any individual writer, right? But, what about one sentence at a time?

You want to raise money online, and, like most of us, you’re in a hurry. You get to a popular crowdfunding site and you’re excited to start. But then after creating an account, bam, you’re hit with a ton of questions and forms. Suddenly, you feel less like you’re asking your friends for cash to help you throw a retirement party for your aunt, and more like you’re filling out a form to rent a car. Trust me, I’ve been there. It’s ironic, but crowdfunding platforms don’t always make it easy for you to raise the money you need quickly.

Steven Shapiro has made a bold claim with his new book, and that is that best practices are just, well, plain stupid. Now, before you accuse him from being like a teenager complaining about his homework, you should know his real goal; Shapiro wants to help businesses stop wasting time, and to start accelerating their innovation processes by doing things differently.

By now you have probably heard the story of Karen Klein from Greece, New York. Karen is a bus monitor at the local middle school. On a recent trip, Karen was bullied by the children that she is hired to monitor. As happens so often in the age of Youtube, the entire episode was caught on a camera phone, uploaded to the Internet, and instantly went viral (8m views and 130k comments since June 19^th).

We love it when people comment on our posts. Of course, It's always fun seeing our views & shares going up and up on each post, but it's even better when we can hear the voice behind our readers. That's why we wanted to point out some of our favorites of late.

Enforcement agencies calling on the public for help in solving crimes has taken a new form thanks to the advent of social media and internet enabled technology. Twitter and Facebook are often used to call on public assistance, and there are even Apps for smartphone users to report crimes or respond to any calls for witnesses, information etc. 

It's only natural to want to know a little bit about your crowd, but this start-up's preoccupation is a little more on the un-natural side. With a firm belief that much insight is to be gained by a well-understood crowd, this yet to be named (yes, they're waiting on a crowdsourcing contest to name it) company is going to use every tool in the book to map and understand their labor pool (as well as create ways for you as a crowdsourcing company to understand yours).

Crowdsourcing is becoming increasingly popular, and it's spreading through the Internet like mold on an expired piece of bread: new platforms are emerging all around the world, success stories are told every day, and it's even starting to get some legislative support.

Keynote Session: Innovate the way you innovate: Thinking outside the box is a bad idea & best practices are stupid.
Speaker: Stephen Shapiro