Last month, I held a seminar at the 2^nd Annual Golden Door International Film Festival of Jersey City on my three Ps for a successful indie film campaign, that of a solid pitch, some cool perks, and plenty of promotion. As I got into that last section, I asked how many people in the audience have a Facebook and Twitter account?" A few people raised their hands. Then I asked how many of them are active on those networks, posting content relevant to indie film at least once a day. Some hands went down.

There are many benefits, we are learning, to being part of a crowd; in less time than ever, we can achieve more creative, higher quality ideas from crowdsourcing contests like the Pepsi Refresh Project, pay for work to be done inexpensively (or for free) with microtasks on sites like Mturk, and get our questions answered more accurately on social search engines like Quora… but what does it look like when you take these benefits a little bit further? Things start to look strange, quickly…Cue the Twilight Zone Music…

Since Hurricane Sandy destroyed her home in Staten Island two weeks ago, Phyllis Puglia has spent every day returning to the area where she used to live to look for pieces of her previous life.

Crowdsourcing can play the definitive role in a hunt for ideas, & tools like social-media make it easy to develop your own applications for this purpose, according to Simon Willison, software architect and web developer for The Guardian. 

Crowdfunding has become a popular vehicle for raising support after tragic global events. Frankenstorm has been no different. One of our partners, GoFundMe, setup a dedicated Hurricane Sandy Relief page to list all the projects that are related to raising money for this recent storm. In a matter of days, the category collected more than 130 projects that have raised over $350,000 combined.

Unless you've avoided newspapers like the plague over the last year or so, you know that some people in the United States aren't exactly happy with their healthcare. Insurance companies bog down the system, potentially fruitful developments get underfunded and lost in red tape, and the average citizen has very little say in terms of changing the care he or she receives, meaning that the concerns of niche communities can fall to the wayside.

Like most people on the East Coast, the folks behind crowdfunding platform Lucky Ant have been huddled up watching the news.

I'm happy to announce today the speakers and schedule for Crowdopolis Big Apple. Headlining speakers are from Walmart, GE, Microsoft, ebay, AT&T, and Kimberly-Clark. These speakers will cover best practices and specific aspects they've learned through experience, to ensure you integrate crowdsourcing into your enterprise work process successfully. Crowdopolis takes place in New York City February 27 - 28, 2013. Tickets are available now.

When I was in college I took a very interesting course on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of crowds. We studied crowd mentality both in psychology and politics. We looked at how crowds formed and what happened when they did.

When you're hit with the news that one of your daughters has leukemia, would you go through the typical stages of grief as laid out by Kübler-Ross, or setup a crowdfunding campaign to cover your medical bills? American folk singer-songwriter, Alastair Moock, went an unusual path and setup a GoFundMe page to raise $15,000 - to record an album.