This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119 of European Patent Application No. 14305908.7 filed Jun. 16, 2014.
The proposed process and system relates to processes and systems allowing collective creation by individual contributors.
Collaborative creation frameworks have been proposed in the domain of movie creation: 5th kind, Scenios, AFrame, etc. Collaborative creation frameworks allow multiple participants of a common project to share data together through a web-based platform. Some project participants upload data (e.g., ingesting rushes recorded from the camera, 3D model creation), others project participants modify some data (e.g., color correction) or combine different data to build new data (e.g., edition, visual effects (VFX)) and other project participants review the data available on the platform. Rushes are video sequences recorded by a camera. The best rushes are selected and assembled together during the editing phase to form the resulting movie.
Sub-version control: Versioning and revision control systems like Subversion (SVN), GIT, Clearcase are used in the domain of software development to handle multiple versions of files created or modified by possibly multiple participants. SVN is a free/open-source version control system. In software development, GIT is a distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) system with an emphasis on speed. These version control systems allow multiple services including maintaining the history of the files, merging contributions from multiple sources, comparing different versions, labeling a precise version, etc.
Workflow management systems have been proposed in different areas: business process management, enterprise content management and more generally project management. Such systems focus mainly on the organizational aspects of a project. Workflow management systems allow splitting subsequent work into a set of tasks and defining the constraints between tasks and sometimes assigning tasks to people.
Neither workflow management systems nor version control systems track the individual contributions of the participants. At most these systems are able to list the files that have been modified by a given user but these systems do not measure or evaluate each individual contribution.
US2012/0323625 tracks the contribution of participants into an IP system by flagging the people that contribute to one “project”. However, the contribution per project is only measured as a binary value: contribution or not. It is impossible to compare two contributions with this system since there is no associated value or measure of the contribution. For example, writing a complete book chapter or correcting a typo error will be measured at the same level.
In US 20130254298 A1, the tasks are taken independently of each other. It is not possible in US 20130254298 A1 to express the fact that the valuation of the task must respect the hierarchical organization of the task decomposition.
A problem addressed by the proposed process and system is to track the individual contributions of the participants to a collective creation project. A goal is to determine the overall contribution of each participant as well as to measure or assess the impact of these contributions in the final result.
All projects are different. Projects are composed of different stages of different importance, depending on the project. Moreover, the types of contributions are also different and, therefore, contribution measurement may require different techniques. Finally, a same contribution will have a different impact, depending on the stage of the creation to which it is related. For example, it may be interesting to emphasize importance of editing the dialog of the hero in the script at the writing stage (very early in the creation process), compared to translating the same dialog into a foreign language, much later in the process. Those two tasks are very similar: edition of a number of words in a text. However, the first one is about artistic creation and impacts the complete movies, whereas the second one is a more simple task with only a limited impact. Therefore, the proposed process should allow weightings of the individual contributions. Weightings could help to assign a different value for the creative tasks than for the more basic tasks.
Measuring the individual contributions can be used to rank the different contributors, from the most prolific contributor top down. This list can, for example, be used as credits list to be inserted at the end of the movie. Contribution valuation may also allow a completely new business for filmmaking where the contributors could be rewarded through receiving a fraction of the earnings in the case of commercial success. In such a case, it could be an option to negotiate some agreements lowering or reducing the fixed wages and compensating contributors through compensation based on the movie results (incentive compensation). The proposed process and system solves an issue critical to the growth of collective online creation projects and could lead to new businesses and even new business models for online content creation. Such business models could leverage gaming or contest mechanisms to involve contributors, avoiding the use of traditional monetization systems.
The proposed process and system applies to any creative project where users (participants) bring some contribution. Creative type projects include filmmaking, web documentaries, music creation, software programming, architectural design, web site design, etc. The proposed process and system can be “added on” to state of art business process management systems, task management systems and workflow management systems. The proposed process and system is particularly adapted to crowdsourcing activities.
A method for rewarding collaborative creation is described including hierarchically defining tasks of a collaborative project, defining a type of weight for each of the defined tasks, assigning weights to each of the defined tasks according to the type of weight defined for each task, measuring and recording contributions by collaborators as each task is performed and determining rewards for the collaborators. An apparatus for rewarding collaborative creation is also described including a task manager including a dispatcher for accepting hierarchical task definitions, a tasks data base for storing the hierarchically defined tasks, the dispatcher in communication with the tasks data base, a weighting measurer module for accepting weight types of the hierarchically defined tasks, the weighting measurer module in communication with the dispatcher, the dispatcher for dispatching the hierarchically defined tasks to collaborators, a production data base for storing results of the collaborators efforts to perform the hierarchically defined tasks, the dispatcher in communication with the production data base, the weighting measurer module for accepting assignments of weights for each of the hierarchically defined tasks according to the type of weight for each task, the weighting measurer module coordinating with the dispatcher to measure and record credits to be awarded to collaborators as each hierarchically defined task is completed, the credits awarded to each collaborator are stored in a credits data base and a generator module generates a personal rewards weighted list scoreboard for the collaborators to receive their rewards.
The present system is best understood from the following detailed description when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. The drawings include the following figures briefly described below:
The proposed process and system allows tracking the amount of contribution of each participant (hereafter denoted credits) to a collective creation project. At the end of the project, this tracking will allow (1) an automatic listing of the names of all participants (optionally ordered by the type of contribution) and (2) establishing the credits of each participants with some rating. Moreover, the proposed process allows a new business model for collaborative creation projects where the participants would be paid after completion of the project, when the project is monetized. Each participant would receive a reward proportional to the importance of his/her contribution.
A contribution rating mechanism based on weighted measurement system to be added to any task management platforms is proposed where:
Later, when rewards have to be distributed, contributors may receive financial rewards according to the credits measure accumulated (recorded) by the platform.
At any time in the project lifetime, the project owner is able to get a status of all participant's contributions with their weighting.
When inserting the credits automatically, a tag cloud may give hints about the measure of the contributions of each participant.
As described above, depending on the type of project, the different stages needed to complete the project may be varied. For example, a common decomposition for a film-making project includes four stages: writing, pre-production, production, post-production. Each of these stages may again be decomposed into sub-stages. For example, production can include lighting, shooting, dressing, make-up, acting, ingesting, etc. The movie itself is split in scenes and the sub-stages apply to each of these scenes. In other domains (music, architecture, software programming, etc.) the stages are different but the principle is still the same. The process is independent of the task management chosen by the owner. As a result, the decomposition into tasks is preferably done as a hierarchy of tasks and not a simple list. Different weighting can be applied to different levels of the hierarchy.
The whole process is split in four phases shown in
The process proposed includes the following non-exhaustive list of weighting systems:
Collective creation very often involves many different skills that have different impacts. Some tasks are highly creative and have huge impact on the result, typically the tasks at the beginning of the project where most creative decisions are made. Other tasks are secondary and less creative, their impact is lower and consequently the weighting of the less creative tasks can also be lower. The present system allows such a differentiation. The project owner can emphasize each contribution differently.
The proposed system could lead to an innovative business model for many projects but more particularly for any project dealing with the creation of a digital content and using online workers. As introduced above, a typical application would be the realization of movies, from shorts to full-feature films including animated movies, television and internet content such as series, news, documentaries, coverage of sport events, etc.
For the ease of understanding, the present process will be illustrated with an example: collective collaborative book writing. However, the same principles would apply to more complex creation environments.
In this example, multiple participants are collaborating to create a book on a technical subject. The project owner comes with the initial idea and proposes a table of content. The overall project is hierarchically decomposed into the following tasks: initial idea, chapters writing, proof-reading and typographical corrections, translation into a second language, proof-reading and typographical correction for the second language, design of the cover and back page, file preparation and conformance for publication. The project creator decided of the following weighting:
Each participant will be rewarded proportionally to his/her contribution. So for example, if the book makes $100 k in profits, the participant that made the design will receive $5 k. The creator of the initial idea gets $40 k.
In an alternative implementation of the previous example, the task related to the definition of the initial idea is done through a contest. In such case, multiple participants are competing on a given task, the contest participants propose their contributions and only one of them will be selected for the final release. Some specific policy may be defined to reward some of the best contributions and to encourage the “losing” participants to participate again.
In the contest scenario, the “initial idea” phase is open to a contest. It is decided to give 80% of the contest pool to the TOP three winners and 20% shared with the other participants. Within the TOP three winners, the first place contestant will receive 70%, the second place contestant will receive 20% and the third place contestant will receive 10%. Within the other contributors, each one gets one point. In this example, the contest had 53 participants. The top winners are Alice, Bob and Charlie, in this order. Dave participated also but is not one of the winners. The project made $100 k so $40 k are valuated to the initial idea phase. Alice gets $22.4 k (70% of 80% of $40 k), Bob gets $6.4 k, Charlie $3.2 k. Dave and the other contributors get $160 (1/50th of 20% of $40 k). Using the above book writing example and applying the present process to this project,
In the case where different weighting systems are used simultaneously, it is necessary to define a technique to aggregate their results. The following cases are differentiated.
It is to be understood that the present invention may be implemented in various forms of hardware, software, firmware, special purpose processors, or a combination thereof. Special purpose processors may include application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), reduced instruction set computers (RISCs) and/or field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Preferably, the present invention is implemented as a combination of hardware and software. Moreover, the software is preferably implemented as an application program tangibly embodied on a program storage device. The application program may be uploaded to, and executed by, a machine comprising any suitable architecture. Preferably, the machine is implemented on a computer platform having hardware such as one or more central processing units (CPU), a random access memory (RAM), and input/output (I/O) interface(s). The computer platform also includes an operating system and microinstruction code. The various processes and functions described herein may either be part of the microinstruction code or part of the application program (or a combination thereof), which is executed via the operating system. In addition, various other peripheral devices may be connected to the computer platform such as an additional data storage device and a printing device.
It is to be further understood that, because some of the constituent system components and method steps depicted in the accompanying figures are preferably implemented in software, the actual connections between the system components (or the process steps) may differ depending upon the manner in which the present invention is programmed. Given the teachings herein, one of ordinary skill in the related art will be able to contemplate these and similar implementations or configurations of the present invention.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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14305908.7 | Jun 2014 | EP | regional |