The incredible folks over at crowdsourcing.org recently reached out to me out of fascination for Spidvid, with regards to how we are applying crowdsourcing as a concept to collaborative video production. I was asked to write a guest blog article, which I graciously accepted, and the result is below.

When we set out to launch Spidvid, a decision had to be made–whether to form a small traditional entertainment studio which could develop original content, or do something original to challenge the status quo.

In late 2008 Seth Godin was writing about connecting people together, collaboration, openness, new media, going to the fringes, and other cutting edge concepts. Connecting the dots between wanting to do something different and what Seth was saying, it made sense to see if these elements were being applied to the video or film production model, and from our research the answer was no.

Video remixing and mashing was big around this time–where someone could upload a clip, and then others could download that clip with the purpose of adding value to the clip, and then sharing that improved clip with the hopes that yet someone else can add value to it too, and so on. While this was a cool phenomena to see the crowdsourcing power of video production on a large scale, the results were often mediocre because videos often didn’t have a compelling story, value wasn’t always added as it morphed along, and there was always someone who had to use a popular song for background music with no copyright clearances.

The goal for Spidvid was to always have an open video production ecosystem, but remixing was too open and chaotic. So the big idea was to crowdsource talent to create video entertainment where each individual on the team was responsible for something, and allow the members to set how the compensation split will work. For example, if a team has a video creator, 2 actors, 2 videographers, and an editor, the creator and team decide on each member getting 15% except for the creator getting 25%. If the video makes $1,000 in ad/sponsorship revenue then each member would get their pre-determined fair share.

So Spidvid fits into the crowdsourcing landscape as the site that aims to connect and empower individuals to create original video entertainment together, either locally, nationally, globally, or a combination of all three.

The concept came together over many months. “The back of the napkin” happened to be in the notes section on an iPod Touch leading to those concepts getting coded out as features over the next 8 months. On beta launch day in January 2010, 187 users signed up to get profiles thanks to our marketing efforts leading up to the launch day–including press releases, blog posts, getting small niche sites to write reviews, and most importantly–word of mouth and mouse.

Spidvid has grown up a ton–going from a concept with no users, to a public beta with 187, to now in late 2011 with 3,000 members, over 1,000 video projects launched, 250 projects completed, and over 1.2 million views.

Spidvid 2.0 is now being designed and developed to feature a simple and elegant user interface (UI), make video project work flow easier, add more social tools and location features. Spidvid 2.0 should launch in early 2012, and by 2015 full feature films will be produced by Spidvid’s collaborative community.

Here’s the lessons we’ve learned about crowdsourcing so far:

#1 — Projects need to be compelling, otherwise people won’t be inspired and motivated to jump in.

#2 — The collaborative objectives and goals must be clearly articulated before starting a project.

#3 — The benefits and value must be laid out so each individual understands what they are getting for their time and talent investment.

The most surprising thing to date is how fast the crowdsourcing model has taken shape over the years. It used to be that we had to educate people on our new media concept, but now the majority of users understand what’s going on as soon as they jump in to our community.

The majority of our users come from connections on Twitter, which makes scaling our community up fast challenging, but users coming in tend to be more active since they’ve had personal interaction with us before joining.

I wasn’t much of a video creator before starting Spidvid, but now I am since I have a platform to attract talent cost-effectively and quickly. I’ve been creating many entertaining “how to” cooking videos and really enjoy the connections and partnerships I’ve built up over the past couple years.

It’s exciting to think there have been many videos and films created that wouldn’t have otherwise existed without Spidvid’s crowdsourcing product to leverage. What keeps us going is knowing that the next big hit video or film may come from our community, making an impact on that production team, along with the thousands or millions of viewers that consume the content. There’s a lot to be excited about in the crowdsourcing space, especially for video production, and we hope you’ll be watching it all unfold with us.

Guest author: Jeremy Campbell is founder of Spidvid, which describes itself as “a social platform that empowers video creators/filmmakers and other like-minded individuals to connect, form production teams, collaborate on projects, create and distribute content, and automatically give credit and compensation back to each team member involved.”

Note: Here’s the original posting “Spidvid’s Lessons Learned About the Crowd and Video Production” on crowdsourcing’s remarkable site, which you should definately check out!

Jeremy Campbell Rant, Visionary article, crowd creativity, crowd labor, crowdsourcing, crowdsourcing article, crowdsourcing post, crowdsourcing.org, film, Jeremy Campbell, new media, seth godin, spidvid, video, video collaboration

Companies are entities which connect individuals together so that they can work on projects together, create products, market products, generate revenue and profits, and then repeat that process over and over again until it no longer works then they either change it or vanish from existence. The most important aspect of the corporate model are the employees, everything else involved are just commodities.

The point here is that by providing a framework so that individuals can connect to each other, collaborate together, and align themselves to accomplish similar goals will produce remarkable results that we’re not yet aware of. This can now be done without corporate involvement which is very exciting for some, and very scary for others because it’s a relatively new concept.

Spidvid provides a social framework so that video creators and professionals (like actors, writers, directors, story tellers, music artists, and others) can connect together and produce whatever video content they are passionate about creating regardless of team member location restrictions. The right combination of talent, ideas, passion, execution, and connection will yield video content that would have never existed without having brought individuals together in an open environment to achieve these results. That’s what motivates us to push Spidvid forward because we know what’s possible as members of the world get more connected, collaborative, intelligent, and come to understand what’s possible in this new media space in the years ahead.

We invite you to join our video production community so that you can create your own tribes, and join others which will help you produce quality content that you can’t do alone, or without a large budget.

Spidvid’s platform has been immensely influenced by the Tribes book, with the firm belief that connecting people together so that they can form their own creation entities is the wave of the future.

The video below is a presentation by Seth Godin at the TED conference in February of this year (2009) where he argues that leading and connecting is the key going forward so that we as a human race can further evolve, and challenge the status quo across all industries and marketplaces.

More info on the video

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big changes. He urges us to do so.

I hope this video inspires those who watch it to want to be part of something bigger than themselves. If it does then please join our community, and work with us to make the video production process more open, transparent, authentic, collaborative, connected, and fun.

Jeremy Campbell Visionary actors, amazon, collaboration, collaborative teams, connecting, new media, online video, open ecosystem, open model, production teams, seth godin, social movement, spidvid, TED, Tribes, video projects, writers