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The World Wide Web changed the world in the 90s, and now Web 2.0 is changing things again. Back in the early 90s, when I was first working on the Web, you would build a Web site, crank up a server, and anyone who came by your site could view the information you provided. It was a one-way deal. One party provided information; another party consumed it, alone but for their portal into the Web. Then came Web applications, software served up via web application servers with browser front ends. But it was still a one-way deal. The user would make a request to the server, the server would provide results. With the emergence of Web 2.0, instead of one entity providing information and another single entity consuming it, now lots of different people can be contributors AND consumers on a single site ... and it doesn't have to be just information either. It can be almost any form of data. Not only can the data be shared; it can also be processed. When users submit data to a web site for processing, it's called cloud computing, or Software as a Service (SaaS). When lots of people compete to contribute solutions to a problem the Web site is dedicated to solving, it's called crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the hottest new software development technique and currently is at the forefront of the next wave of commercial software development. And cloud computing may be the solution to providing user assistance in a crowdsourcing world.
With crowdsourcing, people who need services and people who can offer services get a chance to match up and meet each others' needs through an interactive web site. The twist, though, is that often in order to get a chance to provide their services, potential contributors must enter a contest, where contestants perform the work according to the requirements specification and the contestant with the best software wins a prize, often a few hundred dollars. Like open sourcing, readers are encouraged to become writers. Those with the knowledge of the various software features they build are asked to contribute user assistance to the site. Unlike open sourcing, where user assistance is scarce at best and inaccurate or misleading at worst, user assistance for a commercial crowdsourcing project would at least have to be certified accurate, easily accessible, and updated regularly. Those three important factors are managed much more efficiently and effectively using cloud computing. Using cloud computing for user assistance in a commercial crowdsourcing environment means that each software component in the contest would need at least a minimal set of documentation for an associated user assistance component. The documentation would then be verified as accurate and readable, generically formatted, and processed through a single-sourcing system. After which, the output is posted on a help server and accessed through links in the software user interface, as well as any other output format that is required. Updating the content as new information is received through interaction with users then becomes the priority for user assistance professionals. It sounds like a lot to do, but much of it can be automated to ensure quick turnaround of updated files. I don't think all software is going to be developed using crowdsoursing, and not all user assistance can be provided in the cloud, but in organizations for which crowdsourcing is a part of the business model, it may be time to rethink the user assistance strategy as well. For user assistance professionals, it means becoming a project manager, while continuing to refine those core skills of language, organization, presentation, and subject expertise. Like most endeavors these days, it's all about how quickly we can learn and change .... Rate this article ...
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