What began as a trickle soon became a flood of relief and rescue. And this was in spite of the fact that the national media had not covered the grim situation in Chennai for days after the continuous rains and subsequent flooding.
How the unbelievably large quantity of relief material was mobilised and who did it is an interesting lesson. Most organisations struggle with the mobilisation of resources and man power. Yet, these two elements came together, seemingly with ease, and made a material difference in the lives of people affected by the rains.
The simple answer to how this happened is crowd sourcing.
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines crowdsourcing as “a modern business term coined in 2005; the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.”
There are two important elements which are required for successful crowd sourcing – simplicity and teamwork.
Simplicity and teamwork
The resources required to tackle rescue and relief work were communicated in a simple and direct manner. People were needed at a place for help or to hand out products to the flood affected residents. Everyone involved started posting about this on Facebook and the message was also put out using other social media platforms. These posts received immediate response and were shared to help reach out to a larger audience.
The down side of this method was repetition of information; and while that did create some confusion, the benefit of reaching out to a large number of people and their participation far outweighed this shortcoming. The other aspect of simplicity was using an existing and easy platform such as Facebook. Although a few sites were quickly created to ensure better coordination, majority of the people involved in the relief work were still using social media.
This was for two reasons: first, it was accessible from a mobile. Since the communication was often sent and received by people on the move, mobile access became priority. Using social media was far easier and more effective as compared to accessing a site or online documents. Second, the significantly higher reach of social media posts as compared to the other options.
However, once the urgency of immediate rescue had gone down, moving the rescue and relief communication to a central website made more sense as it avoided the duplication of information and was also more efficient.
The second and more important aspect of crowd sourcing is team work. The fact is that everyone had a role to play; the front line warriors who were doing the actual relief and rescue work, as well as the people in the back room who were forwarding posts and messages so that information reached the right people at the earliest.
Crowd sourcing can be used in every facet of life. Apart from getting a varied set of inputs and contributions, it also helps in creating a joint ownership whichis the basis of any successful team.
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