My Crowdsourcing / voting Experiment: The End

And so my experiment comes to an end... It have been an intense experience and I have learned lots in the process. I love 'crowdsourcing' as a concept but had no prior experience of participating or contributing within such projects.

I got through the whole experience with very little negative comments and was supported by my friends who supported, voted and encouraged others to vote. The final results have not been tallied officially but I made it into the top 50 out of over 500 entries which is not bad for a first attempt!

My Reflections

1. Establish a network first - it's difficult to establish support and pull in votes from scratch

2. The WOW Factor - don't play it safe, people need to remember your design and talk about it to others

3. Be Strategic - have a game plan, everyone else does

I continue to believe in crowdsourcing as a concept and I do think that it has the potential to produce good design. I previewed all entries and two of the strongest designs (in my opinion) made it into the top five. 

However, lots of fantastic entries failed to attract support and should have been rated much higher. A lot of the comments within the community profiled the platform as a popularity contest... and when you begin to pull in votes from family and friends of course it gets personal. Maybe designs should be submitted anonymously?

What I like about the talenthouse.com approach is that after the competition closes you still have all of your supporters backing your profile page. Within a week I have an established profile and have almost 200 supporters, which would have taken me a lot longer to achieve... They are star making and giving everyone an opportunity to compete for their 15 minutes!

I would like to say thank you to everyone who supported me throughout this experiment, especially Green my Style for promoting the call for participation and supporting, and also  Social Alterations for backing my entry.