Good Morning Team – A little reading outside my norm…perhaps when I was 10 YO I wanted to be an astronaut?
Kevin Schawinski is an astrophysicist charged with the task of identifying elliptical galaxies, football-shaped transitional galaxies that are a sort of missing link in understanding galaxy formation.
It used to be that in astronomy a small team of people could look at photos of a few thousand galaxies and classify and catalog them relatively easily. But now, with a new generation of robotic telescopes scanning the skies constantly and producing millions of images, that’s become next to impossible.
“We hit on the idea of putting the images on a website and finding people, perhaps two or three amateur astronomers who’d be willing to help us”.
So he and his colleagues decided to go ahead. They assembled a website, and opened it to the public. Surprise: “Within hours of the site going live, we were classifying – every hour – more galaxies than I’d done in a whole week,”
Within 18 months their website had attracted 250,000 registered users and the project was completed. What’s more, the results were astonishing. The original goal was to have every one of the million galaxies looked at just once. It ended up that every galaxy had been classified over 70 times!!
“What you’re really tapping into is the wisdom of crowds,” … “You end up with 70 independent measures of each galaxy, and you can do real science with it.”
Bill’s Note: Who would have known that there were 250,000 stargazers out there? Please note that Kevin and his colleagues had a strategy – they asked for help…and they received more than they expected because those stargazers are like you and I – seeking to contribute, to make a difference and to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
That’s a key to understanding the appeal of crowdsourcing: we all want to feel that we contribute and that we make a difference.
Now shift your brain as to how many people might want to be part of your project – And notice how much is possible in short time periods.
Live With Intention,
Dr Bill
