Jason Spector.com

I want to start this week (and this month) off with a dose of inspiration. Derek Silvers gave a brief but insightful talk on TED about challenging our assumptions and how the opposite may be equally true. I really like how his light demeanor and relevant examples easily demonstrates the far-reaching potential of this concept.

I certainly don’t want to make this out to be the one true event that challenges our world view and moves us into a new age of enlightenment. That would be silly. But I do think it’s message could open a few eyes in the fields many of us work in, such as design, marketing, innovation, sales and business.

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…

As we wind down 2009, the blogosphere is a buzz with end-of-year posts. Everyone wants to finish up on a high note and why not? We’ve all watched, learned and experienced many things and events that we never would’ve even considered this time last year.

Now it’s my turn. But what to write about? Hmmm….

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with fellow Pittsburgher, twitter pal and social media maven Michelle Chmielewski, otherwise known as the The Observing Participant.

We discussed many topics about crowdsourcing and social media, but the focus was primarily on how successful crowdsourcing coincides with a healthy respect for the “Three C’s” – the Client, the Crowd and the Competition.

One of the benefits of working from home is that I don’t always have to work from home. I can pack up my laptop, plug in my iHeadPhones and head off to the nearest wifi hotspot. In most cases, that takes me down the street to the local (non-Starbucks) coffee shop. I usually spend some of my “working” time observing the shop’s space, staff, customers and how they all interact.

On this particular day, I was wondering how the shop could bring in more customers. Specifically, how could crowdsourcing and social media help drive up their customer base. The following is one idea and the grand plan to achieve it.