On Being a Crowdsourcing Consultant: The Road to Change

As many of you may have noticed, my presence on this site lately has been a little sparse. Since my fun wrap up of 2009, a lot has happened and I took a small hiatus to soak it all in. In short, I’ve made the move from an employee to an independent consultant and entrepreneur . Why? To be honest, it was thrust upon me as so many others before me. And like many others before me, I took it as an opportunity to explore what I want to do, where I want to be and how I can make the greatest impact.

But before we look forward, we should take a look back…

The Past

I’ve been a professional web designer and user experience {insert title here} for almost 13 years. During the last several years, I’ve been working with one the earliest adapters of crowdsourcing as their Senior Interactive Designer and then Director of User Experience. This allowed me the opportunity to not only create some fantastic projects through competitive crowdsourcing and community, but to do it for some truly amazing clients (AOL, ING, GEICO, etc.). It also gave me extremely valuable insights into crowdsourcing as well as fostering a community and refining the collaborative process.

The Present

Right now, I’m in the unique (and exciting) position to not only explore crowdsourcing from an objective point of view, but to also apply my practical knowledge, perspective and professional experience – whether it be for a client, community members / participants, a crowdsourcing firm or the overall methodology. To put it another way, I’m standing at the crossroads of crowdsourcing, design, community and user experience. And it’s a great place to be.

The Future

Now that we know what I’m doing, where am I going? You never really know for sure, but the following is a good start.

• Deeper involvement in the crowdsourcing community, especially in the creative fields
• More frequent, consistent and relevant blog posts
• All the online social networking fun stuff – groups, pages, videos, etc.
• All the offline social networking fun stuff – conferences, unconferences, meetups and tweetups
• Many consulting gigs in the areas of crowdsourcing strategy & implementation as well as community / competition-based site design & ux
• A few entrepreneurial ventures that need to remain hush hush for the time being
• Conversation. Conversation. Conversation.

There it is folks. Now you know where I’ve been, where I am now and where I’m headed. 2010 is going to be a pivotal year for crowdsourcing and I’m going to either be driving or in the front seat enjoying the ride.

When I first started this blog, I asked you to join me in continuing the conversation. The question still stands. Let’s go and have some fun!