You can add your photographs, to the online Flickr group. Goal lists for LACMA and other museums across the country are listed on the Flickr group page (as well as on Wikipedia, but the Flickr page is easier to read). And each participating museum or cultural institution is giving away cool prizes too!

Wikipedia has become such a trusted resource over the past few years, and the opportunities to contribute to it are endless.  Why not do it through something fun like a photographic scavenger hunt?

Here’s one of my photos that I took at the 2007 Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade that made it into Sarah Brightman’s Wikipedia entry (just simply by posting it on Flickr):

I REALLY wish I had the time to do the scavenger hunt!  What a great way to promote art while harnessing the power of crowd-sourcing and providing a cultured venue for a very personal, real-life collaboration.

Expand this post for more on rules and participating museums.

Wikipedia Loves Art is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest coordinated by the Brooklyn Museum with Carnegie Museum of Art, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Houston Museum of Natural Science, The Hunter Museum of American Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New-York Historical Society, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Taft Museum of Art, V&A aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles. The event is planned to run for the whole month of February 2009, and the name is a play off of Valentine’s Day. Although there are planned events at each location, you can go on your own at any time during the month.

Shoot on your own or create a small team (10 people, tops) and sign-up online. Use the scavenger hunt lists provided by Wikipedia (see “Goal Lists” section) to take shots and cross off as many subjects on the list as possible. Upload shots to this group with the correct Creative Commons license required by Wikipedia and we will tally the scores.

Images uploaded to this group will be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles and you’ll get full credit when an image is used. Teams with the most points at the end of the month will get cool prizes.

To cross items off your list, you can shoot at any participating institution as long as you do it and upload here during the month of February 2009. Each institution will be posting meet-ups in the discussion area of this group.

Goal Lists:

Brooklyn Museum
Carnegie Museum of Art
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Honolulu Academy of Arts
Houston Museum of Natural Science
Hunter Museum of American Art
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Jewish Museum
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum of Modern Art
New-York Historical Society
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Taft Museum of Art
V&A

General Qualification Notes:

1) Shots submitted must be licensed with the correct creative commons license required by Wikipedia. That’s got to be either “Attribution Creative Commons” or “Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons”. There is no resolution requirement.

2) You can only shoot works of art in the public domain, so as a general rule, only works of art created prior to 1923 will be able to qualify. However, copyright law will differ from country to country and there is no hard and fast rule. Further information will be on each scavenger hunt list and we recommend you contact us if you have questions (contact info for each institution is below). Please note, if you happen to capture something that is not in the public domain you may be asked to remove it.

3) Images can only be taken at participating institutions (following their guidelines posted below) and must uploaded and shot during February 2009.

4) In the caption, your images must include the object’s full identification and credit line from the object’s label; your team’s name; and the category this image defines so that we can assign points. Each institution may ask you to tackle getting this information in different ways, so best to see the each venue’s guidelines posted below for more information.

5) Images must be your own work, submitted by you.

6) Photographers must register online.

7) In order to properly score everyone’s entries will be adding machine tags [they:look="like this"] to your photographs. So, please don’t delete these tags, even if they look a little weird. Also, this means you need to have tagging turned ON in order to qualify. To do this, go to your account settings, the privacy & permissions tab, and make sure “Add notes and tags:” is set to “Any Flickr user”.

What is a hybrid economy?  I don’t think too many people have a grasp on this concept yet, even though we are living in the midst of it RIGHT NOW.

I did a Google search on hybrid economy and the results mostly revolve around the economical nature of hybrid cars.  One other search result – an article from 1993 – describes a hybrid economy as the convergence of the public-private sectors.

But the hybrid economy that I refer to is about the remix of real business and crowdsourcing, as Lawrence Lessig describes in short:

Commercial entities leverage value out of sharing economies, and vice versa.

Flickr is a service that depends on the content of its users and is highly successful.  Many third-party companies have spawned off the success of Flickr such as Moo, Imagekind, QOOP and Blurb.  Even Capital One is leveraging the power of the hybrid economy through Flickr by allowing users to create personalized credit cards.

Mass collaboration, crowd sourcing and social media has already proven to the market that people are willing to contribute for free or at little cost to organizers.  It’s also become evident over the last several years that the new generation of consumers are willing to put in labor and sweat equity for the reward of having simply participated, or being part of the design (ala Wikipedia).  Often times all anyone needs is due credit and publicity; sometimes to jump start their career or get their name on the map.  I’m one such individual.

New businesses here on out would be remiss if they ignore the potential of sourcing their customers.  @AdamAinbinder brought up a good example tonight with Friendster and their inability to reach the success that Facebook has.  First mover advantage has no advantage if you are unable to allow your community to feel that they are an integral part of the product or service.  Likewise, imagine where Apple might be today with the iPhone had they not opened up application development to the masses.

Whether it’s starting a very 1.0 business such as a recreational facility, or a 2.0 lifestyle business (i.e. MarthaStewart.com, Livestrong.com), the ability to interact with those most interested in your arena – the hobbyists and the connoisseurs – is what will feed the momentum, and thereby business awareness, growth and success.

More to come on this thought…