ISTE Educational Technology Conference: Crowdsourcing

If you were on Twitter on Monday, November 2, 2009 chances are high you saw many retweets of ISTEconnect’s blog post Crowdsourceing or Loudsourcing? written by Vicki Davis.

Despite the lengthiness of the post, it’s a must-read for anyone involved in educational technology and raises some interesting points. This year, ISTE is attempting to crowdsource the selection of the keynote speech for their 2010 conference (formerly known as NECC).

To start the post, Vicki got right to the point by saying:

“A few things about crowds have come to mind as well as some questions that I think we must grapple with about the whole process of “crowdsourcing” if indeed it can be called that.”

Does crowdsourcing, in a world of personal branding, truly make the best rise to the top? Or simply the most popular?

Today's EdTech Poll:
Do you think crowdsourcing is best way to select the Keynote Speech for the ISTE 2010 conference?

Within Vicki’s eight observations about crowdsourcing, she particularly mentions the efforts of two of her peers, Scott McLeod and Kevin Honeycutt, who used their personal brands to promote their ideas for the keynote: Effective School Leadership for the Global, Digital Era and Trends, Tools, and Tactics for 21st Century Learning, respectively.

Both Scott and Kevin are popular educational technology bloggers and tweeters with rather impressive followings. You can’t really blame them (and neither does Vicki) for promoting their ideas. In fact, isn’t that what social media is all about?

But a question remains, is crowdsourcing this the best way to select a keynote topic for such a large, national edtech conference?

Vicki’s eight observations about crowdsourceing are:

1. Sometimes it is about the loud in the crowd
2. Merit has a place
3. Do focused minorities rule?
4. The early proposal gets the vote
5. What if the crowd stays home?
6. Crowdsourcing isn’t crowdsourcing…yet
7. Crowdsourcing isn’t crowdsourcing with you
8. The lone leader
For details be sure to visit her post.

Now… it’s your turn to vote on the matter that’s really at hand.

Is crowdsourcing the best way to select the keynote topic for 2010 ISTE conference?

We don’t know…we’ll ask the crowd!