As a former consultant with IBM Global and CSC, I was always used to large outsourcing contracts for IT departments. I was in on 2 of the largest - DuPont and Hughes which were both over 10 billion (yes, wit a "b") and required armies of engineers, markerting pukes, MBA types and other bullshit artists to make go. But my buddy Jim has got himself involved in a new kind of business sector for the small to medium biz guys. The company he works for provides just "onesies" and "twosies" for companies here in the Bluegrass - companies that just need one guy to do one thing, usually on a contract basis. I am reading Alvin and Heidi Tofflers "Revolutionary Wealth" right now ( I LOVE the Tofflers)and he term "micro-sourcing" came to mind. A quick Google of the web drilled it down to this:
Micro-Sourcing
Definition: The practice of outsourcing a single discreet task that
would otherwise be added to the workload of someone who didn’t
necessarily specialize in that one specific discipline.
Use: Typically practiced by organizations that are technical,
virtual, flat, and obsessed with process.
Check this shit out -of course some one on the net had the same concept!
this guy sort of gets what i talked to you about. her are some weird
character cuz i got it of a german web site, but read it all please.
russell
Micro-sourcing and micro-ISVs
Posted by bobw under Ideas
By Bob Walsh
Every so often in the software industry a new idea that creates a whole
new kind of software. I think we're on the verge of just such a new
category: micro-sourcing. I define micro-sourcing as the ability to
quickly and effortlessly access skilled services for specific
micro-tasks from within a desktop or web application. Let me give you a
couple of potential examples of micro-sourcing
* You're working in your photo application like Adobe
Elements. There's a photo you really would like to fix and all the
auto this? an auto that? commands are too much
for you to deal with. So you click the micro-source button and up
pops a dialog where you offer to pay a dollar for someone, anyone,
to correct this photo. You click OK, and a day later you have your
corrected photo for approval and your account is debited a buck.
* You're working in your RSS reader, or least trying to, but there's
still too much information. You click your micro-source button and
offer five dollars a week for someone, somewhere, who will send
you an annotated e-mail of the RSS items that based on your
discussion with them you will find most useful and valuable. Think
micro Virtual Assistant.
* You're working at Microsoft Excel, and you're trying to get a
spreadsheet to work right. Something is wrong but you just don't
know what. So you click the micro-source button, enter your
account number, mark the spreadsheet to only go to a trusted and
bonded expert, and in a few hours they then tangled the mess
you've made.
* You're working in the Microsoft Excel, and your company has signed
up with an online micro-sourcing provider who provides Excel
expertise from trusted consultants five minutes at a time. All you
have to do while in Excel is click a button, voice note what
you're trying to do, click how much you think it's worth and click OK.
If you think these are fanciful, if you think that micro-sourcing isn't
going to happen, you might want to take a look at the following:
* Castingwords.com
transcription of a podcast for about one quarter of the
traditional cost for audio transcription. They are using Amazon's
mechanical Turk (AMT)
to slice up the work, distribute it, pay their workers
value-added product.
* âEURoeHow Amazon/AMT can change the internet economy.âEUR?
Over at bitporters.net
thinking about this subject) where the blogger sees AMT becoming
AMTSense?, and alternative to Google AdSense as a way of
supporting all the Web 2.0 sites out there by doing micro amounts
of work for each other.
* The growth/interest in microformats such as iCal and extending RSS
via SSE. (See this post
this post
info if SSE as Microsoft(TM)s Next Big Thing has not hit your
radar screen.)
Three things have prevented micro-sourcing from taking off up to now.
First the relative difficulty of dealing with micro-payments in a
trusted way. Amazon must have finally beat in the heads of the payment
processors because today you can buy for all of $.49 short original
stories and articles called Amazon Shorts. Ebay and a million other
ecommerce sites laid the groundwork as well.
The second thing that has been missing has been a general backend
market-creating service which allows people to sell their time, labor,
and judgment a few moments at a time. Amazon Mechanical Turk has filled
that gap: it is a Web service (REST/SOAP) that is being extended to work
as the back end of any Web 2.0 site. I don't think the day will be far
before Amazon offers a way to connect to AMT directly from a desktop
application. If that idea excites you, post a comment at AMTâEUR^(TM)s
blog here
*The third thing that's missing is you. *Micro-ISVs - because we are
small, nimble and hungry - can create, launch, support and market
micro-sourcing libraries, applications and Web 2.0 sites. Since a
micro-sourcing enabled application or website is so much more then a
traditional application website, micro-sourcing gives us a powerful
secret sauce? versus traditional ISVs when bringing our
products and services to market.
I think the market for this has existed for some time, as other industries (chemical for example) have done it for decades. I will be throwing in with him on this deal, and see what happens...
russell
