A New Word: Crowdsourcing

We just completed our Spring 2013 fundraiser, and in the process I learned a new word: crowdsourcing.

“Gosh, Baron,” you say, “everybody knows that word! Where have you been?”

Well, truth be told, not much of anywhere. Mostly to the eye doctor and Food Lion. And Dymphna already knew the word, so it’s definitely part of the zeitgeist. I must be out of the loop.

But I like it — it’s a concise expression for what we often discuss here: groups of widely separated people engaging in distributed action with the aim of accomplishing mutually agreed-upon tasks. I don’t mind if it’s trendy, because it’s also useful.

Crowdsourcing came to my attention as part of an email written to me by a donor, who was responding to my thank-you note. She’s one of our transatlantic readers, and has a daughter over here in college. Here’s what she said:

Bill Whittle talked in one of his videos about parallel societies’ structures — things we can do and fund by ourselves, if we are unhappy with government-provided services.

I consider both education and media as failures. So I have to agree with one of your readers: you and Vlad do not beg, and we do not give you money purely out of the goodness of our hearts. You provide an invaluable service to all of us, and we want you to go on.

We crowdsource you because we prefer you to mainstream media. So I do not have cable; I pay directly to the blogs I consider trustworthy.

If only I could do the same with my daughter’s education… But luckily for me and for her she is in a private college in Texas, where PC opinions exist, but do not take over the subjects she studies. I am proud to say she was recognized as a best student in her first semester among 3,000 Americans. And she is going to finish the first year with the same results.

I heard her speaking English in a couple of videos, since she is on the tennis athletes’ team, and she has almost no accent, which is amazing to me. Your country had been very good for her; she’s matured and became self-confident.

She appreciates greatly the opportunity given to her but is concerned with the future — both of our country and the USA. She doesn’t want you to become like the rest of the world — she wants you to keep your spirit and values, as do I.

Get better, keep on doing what you’re doing and if you need help, let me know.

The mention of Vlad reminds me: we tithe to Vlad from the donations we receive, because the video work he does is absolutely crucial to our movement, and he’s too shy to fundraise for himself. So if you gave to us, you were also giving to Vlad.

He’s part of the crowdsource.

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A final roll-call of the locales for those who gave to Gates of Vienna during Fundraising Week:

Stateside: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Washington

Near Abroad: Canada

Far Abroad: Australia, Austria, British Virgin Islands, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the UK

A lot of our old friends showed up, but also quite a few new donors. I don’t think we’ve ever received a donation from Taiwan before.

Thank you all for your gifts. Your vigorous response was deeply gratifying to both of us.

One thought on “A New Word: Crowdsourcing

  1. The places everyone came from was quite amazing. And one fellow, whom I usually respond to, had a misleading address so the B wouldn’t have known we actually have a Brazilian donor too. An immigrant, though, not a native Brazilian…maybe someday?

    Well, that will be after the Counterjihad takes over the world, which of course our adversaries think we want to do. Fat chance: I can’t even get my closet organized.

    To all our beloved donors and subscribers, I add my own grazie. Y’all are a great bunch and we are so fortunate to have you in our court.

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