Denuo - denuology.com

(The following is courtesy of guest denuologist Len Kendall co-founder of the 3six5)

There are about 3% of you reading this post that have never heard of crowdsourcing before. For that small subset let me give you a quick, recently Google’d explanation of what the crowdsourcing concept is all about. (Why 3%? Because 3 is a crowd)

Crowdsourcing is a term attributed to Jeff Howe from his 2006 Wired article titled, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.” It’s most commonly referenced among marketing and design endeavors which leverage the willingness of many individuals to produce a final product based on the best contributions among those individuals.

What do I know about crowdsourcing?

Other than what Google taught me, not much. But if I may, I will suggest that I do have a bit of real world advice to offer based on two humble projects I’m a part of.

Chris Al-Aswad on July 23 at 4:49pm: There are no second acts in American Lives. –F. Scott Fitzgerald.

This is as much a story about alphabetical order as it is about hashtags.

Did you know yesterday was a national holiday? Yesterday, work was shunned and responsibilities shuttled to the backburners because of Blizzard’s release of Starcraft 2. The game’s release has been long-anticipated by gamers, but also by the industry in general. In the face of a downturn in retail game sales, as well as the shift toward social gaming and other, industry-shaping trends, Starcraft 2 embodies a lot of the changes the gaming industry is seeing. From digital distribution to pro gaming, Starcraft 2 may be the prime example of a shifting games industry.

Plus, it is so awesome.

This past week, my little sister and I headed West on a roadtrip; the final destination was one very familiar to us as we’ve been visiting cousins and uncles and aunts there since we were born but for most others, you’d have a hard time finding it on a map. And so apparently did Google via my iPhone.

FarmVille has long been the focal point for social gaming, what with its millions of users, socially-relevant gameplay, and showcasing the gaming potential in Facebook. However, its recent foray into branded experiences in and around the game have introduced a whole new level of possibilities on the virtual farm, something that General Mills‘ organic food brand, Cascadian Farm, saw as a perfect fit for promoting their products.

Denuo was brought on board to help Cascadian Farm extend the already awesome idea to put organic crops into the game outward into both the Farmville community and Cascadian Farm’s community. Since both communities were made up of dedicated, passionate, and extremely vocal folks, the challenge was bringing these two groups together without alienating either side.

We considered the changing gaming space and how folks are playing with each other these days and, using three key things we know about gaming culture, built a couple of ways to mix the groups together to equally enjoy this unique experience.