The Social Web is not just about friending and blogging. This is a great example of how several organizations are leveraging the benefits of SaaS to save dollars in this difficult economic environment.
This is an example of "Crowdsourced Software Development" - 8 non-profits pooled their resources - (financial or time) to build a piece of web based software which can be used to generate different types of slide shows or scrollers.
The project was estimated to take approx. 120 to 150 hours worth of programming and project management time at an estimated $20k price tag. While this was too much for any single association to justify, when the price was split among the interested parties, the $3k or $4k price tag was much more reasonable.
Here is a small sample of what this new tool is capable of producing:
The following organizations wanted a tool to build graphically pleasing slide shows and scrollers which can be used on any page of any website by utilizing either widgets or .Net user controls. Since many of the images/files were uploaded to their respective Resource Library, it made sense to generate the slide shows or scrollers from the graphics previously uploaded (since many already have albums of photos uploaded). The images are dynamically converted to flash and turned into a variety of slide show or scroller designs based on user preferences.
Crowdsourced Participation
Rather than each association building the software themselves, they ended up crowdsourcing the software. They shared the cost, design and requirements specifications and built it in a collaborative manner to ensure all needs were met.
Thank you to the participating organizations:
If you are interested in being part of future crowdsourced projects, please contact us and give some ideas of what you have in mind.