Crowdsourcing Week: The future of open business

Singapore, May 9, 2013 – Crowdsourcing Week (CSW) will host innovators, leaders and top management in Singapore from June 3-7, 2013 to improve the collective understanding of utilizing the internet and the power of the crowd for business efficiency and strengthening governance.

CSW is the first international conference focused on crowd innovation that will bring together an impressive line-up of global thought leaders and decision makers who will share best practices and future-oriented insights on crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and open innovation.

Epi Ludvik Nekaj, CEO and founder of Crowdsourcing Week said: “Everything you’re hearing about the sharing economy, collaborative consumption, co-creation, crowd-investing, crowdfunding and open innovation all fall under crowdsourcing. Therefore, for the first time we are seeing that social media as we know it is turning into social productivity.”

Crowdsourcing is the practice of harnessing collaboration for problem-solving, innovation and efficiency on many different levels and across various industries. It summarizes and incorporates many of the new initiatives and ideas happening across the internet today.

What you can expect at CSW

Pioneers, multinational companies and government agencies who understand the impact of the open internet and the fundamental shift towards the new digital economy will participate at Crowdsourcing Week.

More than 40 speakers at the conference will inspire and equip the audience of enterprise executives and business leaders with the tools and practices on how crowdsourcing can benefit their bottom line and effectiveness.

Technology leaders like Microsoft, Google, SAP will share fast moving trends, products and policies that are fueling these new disruptive changes. Consumer brands will demonstrate how the passions of many converge into new developments on the product level.

Government agencies like USAID will share how they successfully use “the crowd” to collect data and increase transparency and efficiency of their work.  In addition, government officials will contribute to the conversation by sharing about their transparency initiatives and citizen engagement programs at local and global levels.

Key speaker line-up at CSW

Among the 40 speakers are the following experts and pioneers in the space of technology and crowdsourcing: 

In his key note ‘Open Government Initiatives: Empowering the Citizens’, Michael Thatcher, Chief Technology Officer – Public Sector Asia at Microsoft, will give insights how shared data benefit transparency and participation, and at the same time support the emergence of new services.

Stephanie Grosser, Communications Specialist at USAID and another key speaker at the event said: “From the government perspective, I expect that crowdsourcing, once fully embraced, will change how the government interacts with its citizens. It will change the scope of what can be accomplished, and the speed by which things happen.”

Ricky Kapur, Managing Director Asia at Google Enterprise will present on ‘Consumerisation of IT in the Enterprise’, and John B. Rogers Jr., CEO and co-founder of Local Motors will explain how to successfully crowdsource the development and manufacturing of cars.

Maria Ressa, Executive Editor at Rappler, will present on ‘Media Disruption through Crowdsourcing and Social Network Theory.’

NASA will give insights on how everyone can be a rocket scientist, and how they use crowdsourcing and open innovation to complement their traditional problem solving approaches. Jennifer Gustetic, Open Innovation Program Executive at NASA, said: “I’m excited to see the world’s experts in open innovation and crowdsourcing come together to share across sectors, disciplines, and geographic boundaries. There is so much great work going on globally in open innovation and the entire practicing community can benefit from understanding the best practices.” 

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Information about CSW

Crowdsourcing Week kicks off with an official Opening Night on Monday, June 3, followed by three days of keynotes, presentations and panels. The week wraps up with a crowdfunding workshop for startups on Friday, June 7.

For more information on the program, please visit: http://crowdsourcingweek.com/agenda 

To register, please visit www.crowdsourcingweek.com/registration.  Rappler readers will get a special 30% discount.  Please use this code RapplerCSW30.