Announcing CrowdCrack.com

For some time now I have had a vision of people sharing their talents to solve important problems. It is a vision of an ecosystem that will allow the most important problems to rise to the top, and the best solutions to those problems to become a reality.

To that end, I’m launching CrowdCrack.com. The application is in its infancy as a beta application and needs a big face lift yet, but this launch will serve as the first step toward this vision.  As you might suspect, the CrowdCrack.com name is a combination of the crowd sourcing concept and the vision of “cracking” tough problems (think detectives, not plumbers).  From the site:

We at CrowdCrack believe that opportunities to improve our world are often covered over by the problems that have us stuck. By pooling our brilliance, we are capable of getting un-stuck and fully accessing these opportunities to evolve on a global scale. As a site where we in “the crowd” can work to articulate, offer solutions, and finally “crack” our problems, CrowdCrack uses the appropriate technology to create space for the sharing of brilliance and the development of change.

Although technology and space are important, we also recognize that people are the most crucial components in a movement for positive change. For this reason, the concept for CrowdCrack is rooted in a belief in the gift system. Indeed, this site grows out of a profound conviction that we build better communities—online and otherwise—when we give and receive freely. As a space for collaborative problem solving, CrowdCrack allows for giving to happen.

There are three levels of giving that occur at CrowdCrack. You can give by posting to our list of “problems,” offering suggestions as to how to resolve these “problems,” and/or actually developing solutions to “problems.” Also, as problems and possible solutions are posted, please take the opportunity to rate them so that the problems rated as most important or urgent and the solutions rated as most viable will rise to the top. Technologists who want to give more significantly of their time and talents can use this site to work proposed solutions as open source projects.

You might think that your problem is too big, too small, or just too specific to your life to post in CrowdCrack. On the contrary, your problem is exactly the kind that can be solved in this forum. We intend for CrowdCrack to serve as a site where people like you can bring the problems that affect you on a daily basis as well as the higher-level problems that you see affecting the world around you. On this site, you turn over these problems to “the crowd” to be “cracked.” In the process of sharing and solving problems, we will together access opportunities for positive change and growth.

So, take a look around! If you notice an opportunity in the form of a problem to solve, please submit it. If you are willing to give of your brilliance, then peruse the problems already posted, offer solutions, and start working them!

There are many features not yet complete but in the works for the site including buckets for categorization, a dashboard, Facebook and Twitter integration, integration to bitbucket/codeplex for developing solutions, file attachments, and some much needed graphic design.  If you have additional ideas or thoughts on these, please do post them.   As things are still rough and in beta, the promotion of the site will be pretty slow and metered.  I plan to try it out on a host of friends and colleagues first, then open it up to the innovation community, and then promote it in additional circles.  

You can also follow CrowdCrack on Facebook and Twitter.  Google+ is coming, but Google has requested holding off on created brand pages until they unveil their brand solution.