MySpace, Wikipedia, YouTube… are all making money hand over fist for its owners based on the crowdsourcing model where thousands of its users contribute their time for free.  Well, now that more and more companies are using free time from consumers to determine their future products from potato chips to electronics, it was a matter of time before they were allowed to make key decisions and share in the profits as well.

Some examples (and I’ll add to the list over time):

Profit sharing and

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We all know people are organizing online to get what they want. However, because people are now doing it with such ease, speed and unprecedented influence, our friends at Trendwatching felt it deserved a unique distinction:

Crowd Clout: “Online co-buying consumers revealing their purchasing intentions to make the most of their investments. These efforts target a specific cause, be it political, civic or commercial, aimed at everything from bringing down politicians to forcing suppliers to

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The last two entries covered crowdsourcing 101.  Are you ready for crowdsourcing 201?  This is for when you’re ready to invest $ collectively as a future community of tenants to develop a common product, such as that affordable, green-built, downtown loft building with roof deck and indie ground-floor coffeehouse and restaurant - or even better, a whole block of them (pictured).

The term used to describe this team development methodology is angelic crowdsourcing* (combining angel investing

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This website mentions customer-driven and mass customization as key to economic growth and quality of life, essentially a trend towards authenticity and uniqueness.  The most relevant of this movement however, is crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing - “a business model akin to outsourcing. The difference is that instead of professional vendors, crowdsourcing relies upon mass volunteer participation and self-organization to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R&D”

Thus, crowdsourcing is

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If you want to look it where the next generation of real estate is going, keep tabs on what the next generation is doing, and 30 million of them are participating in a show that literally allows them to influence the music industry.

Now, if only we could harness that energy into shaping better communities.

The first sign of that is the charrette, which is in practice, an intensive planning session of planners, designers and community stakeholders meeting over a week or so, resulting in a

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