Collaboration:Teamwork

All through time, working in groups, such as crowdsourcing, has had its great deal of benefits as well as drawbacks on us. Crowdsourcing may seem great, but is it really? For example, having a big project due with lots of work can be overwhelming for just one individual. By adding other individuals to help get the work done, it makes the job easier, faster and more efficient. The workload can be split up and lest time consuming. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Sometimes crowdsourcing can be a great issue. It can cause many problems within the group such as making more things difficult, more stressful and can even be a less efficient way of getting the job done. Quality could suffer significantly. This can also be easily said for online collaboration.

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/the-pros-and-cons-of-crowdsourcing-your-development-work-009327.php
http://www.burlingtonassociates.net/resources/archives/Collaboration%20Pros%20%26%20Cons.pdf

In the first article, “The Myth of Crowdsourcing”, really gave me an understanding of the term and its effects on us. The author, Dan Woods, supported his position with many examples and facts of the ‘issue’ of crowdsourcing. Woods explained that “crowdsourcing has created an illusion that there is a crowd that solves problems better than individuals.” This is one drawback of crowdsourcing. He also states that “the notion of crowds creating solutions appeals to our desire to believe that working together we can do anything, but in terms of innovation it is just ridiculous.” I am indifferent about his statement. I do agree that there are things that I believe that I do better at without the help of a group or crowd, but there is indeed times where working together has been more efficient and successful as opposed to just individual work.

Companies use crowdsourcing all the time in their work for the same reasons that we do. I believe that it can be helpful to emerge new forms of knowledge to emerge because it brings unique minds together to create something bigger. Diversity in collaboration can have huge effects for companies because in certain situations it will be able to reach the demands of people in all types of aspects and have a wider range in exploring new ideas to help better the companies and individuals as well. Crowdsourcing I believe is a good tool for collaboration, and is natural in our nature, but it can have serious side effects if we solely depend on it.
http://www.translationautomation.com/user-cases/crowdsourcing-at-adobe.html

Recently collaboration has had a significant effect in Egypt. In the article, “What has been remarkable about the recent events in Egypt is that ordinary people, without direct leadership or guidance from oppositional parties, have self-organized, acted, engaged and participated in a series of protests and demonstrations in order to bring about change… They have shown a remarkable degree of self-organization using the new technologies. They have also demanded their rights while also accepting their responsibilities. They have used Twitter and Facebook in ways that were unimaginable to their respective founders and shown these and other social networking tools in a light contrary to their portrayal as time-wasting sink holes for narcissistic teens and adults who should know better.” These acts in Egypt are great examples of how people, not even in organizations have used collaboration as a positive reinforcement.-- (give or take)