kluster

Kluster is a place to harness the power of community collaboration to get stuff done. 

The Kluster community is currently collaborating on a product in conjuncture with the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference to produce a product, market positioning, and packaging in 72hours. In a way, Kluster is a virtual problem solving / human factors / research / design / advertising / marketing company.

At its core its an idea center with a very interesting points system to monitor participation and discover areas of expertise. Solutions are shaped with phases (goals), sparks (inspiration/ideas) and amps (enhancements). Watts are the currency to keep things moving forward - that could be turned in to actual cash money!

Kluster has tremendous potential to shape or sharpen an idea. OR crowdsource (buzzword!) to solve for a problem.

http://kluster.com/
http://kluster.com/home/theater

Below, a little deeper explanation of the process from Kluster:

projects
Kluster uses projects to define goals. a project could be a new product, an event, a marketing campaign, or virtually any goal that is better served by engaging a group of people.

phases
we use phases to break down the project into small, manageable deliverables. throughout each phase the community participates by posting, enhancing, refining, and supporting proposed solutions to the phase’s goal. Phases can be public (allowing the entire world to influence the decision) or private (allowing a select group of your choosing to participate).

sparks
sparks are proposed solutions to a phase. They can be submitted in a variety of ways: text, photos, graphics, audio/video, CAD, animation, etc. users can express themselves in whatever way they are most comfortable.

amps
because a spark will rarely be perfect, amps allow participants to collaborate by proposing enhancements or refinements to a spark. amps help make sparks ready for prime time.

watts
Community members show their support for sparks by investing in the ideas they believe in using kluster’s currency: the watt. watts are earned through participation, and grow based upon sound investments, just like real money. watts encourage users to participate and stay on target, keeping the community productive.

decision making
Rather then just choosing the most popular item, kluster uses advanced algorithms to make decisions. All the activity and participation on kluster is stored and analyzed. The data is used in the decision-making process. Each user’s successes, failures, reputation, areas of expertise, and overall history are considered. This encourages users to earn respect, to act positively, and most importantly, enables extremely educated decisions to be made using real world logic.