Crowd Sourcing tips from uTest

I went to a talk given by John Montgomery (VP of uTest) on community based testing yesterday. And picked up some interesting thoughts on crowd sourcing. I consider uTest to be a successful and promising crowd sourcing platform. And I'm really interested in how it has distinguished itself in this area. Here is what I have learned:

Grow a professional crowd
Unless it is a generic crowd sourcing platform like the mechanical turks, the average tasks are best achieved by people professionally trained and with years of experience. So it is important to make sure the workers are serious professionals rather than random people who just want to kill some time.

Get to know your super stars
Out of the thousands of workers there are going to be super stars. They are just so good at what they do. It's important to keep them interested and motivated and build a relationship with them. They are almost the whole point of using crowd sourcing for the top customers.

Assign project managers to triage issues
It's common to engage hundreds or thousands of workers for a crowd sourcing project. The noise of communication can be a killer. Dividing them into groups and having project managers to triage issues is a natural solution.

Keep the tasks both challenging and fit into small time slots
Crowd sourcing works best when the tasks are small and can fit in bits of spare time. But make sure it's still interesting and challenging.

Hand pick the super stars for important tasks
Remember the super stars. Assemble a team from them for the tasks that you can't afford to fail. Beginners are not welcome here.

Get new comers involved as soon as possible
The new comers get bored easily if they find it hard to get selected for a task. Make sure they feel welcome.