As a bit of self-hype is not bad from time to time, I’m glad to share with you that on July 26, last friday, I finally made my Ph.D. dissertation about the relationship between crowdsourcing and collective intelligence. The mark (in Spain there is a mark for the Ph.D. dissertation): a 10. If it’s CUM LAUDE or not, I will know it by ordinary mail (strange policy).
The Ph.D. dissertation focuses on whether there is a relationship between crowdsourcing and collective intelligence, and if it exists, of what kind it is, as anticipated in a previous post of this blog. What happens is that this time, the conclusion is supported by a case study.
This conclusion and this case study is carried out in a paper which is currently under review in the Computer Supported Cooperative Work journal.
About the realization and development of the Ph.D. dissertation, as I have said on several occasions to different people, the key is to find a theme you like (the more the better) and a director with whom you can understand each other and with whom you can work comfortably.
After tumbling for 2-3 years, I ended up finding my thesis director at the Technic University of Valencia: Fernando González Ladrón de Guevara, co-author of all the articles I’ve written (obviously) and highly recomedable as a Ph.D. director. With Fernando I realized that what matters is not if the director of the Ph.D. dissertation has a prestigious position in college or if he is a well-known researcher. The important thing is if he will be able to go down to your level and help you to grow.
About the subject, thanks to Fernando, and thanks to the vision of Santiago Bonet, I ended up with crowdsourcing. Personally, it was a wise choice follow this line of research to the detriment of others: a quite new subject, with many aspects to research about (if I had time to research all the things I wanted…) besides being an issue that cuts across many areas: computer science (crowdsourcing platforms), psychology and sociology (crowd behavior, motivation), company (crowdsourcing applications), and so on.
Here you have the prezi I used in the public defense. I thought that maybe the examiners were going to say something bad about it, because it was not the classic powerpoint, but they like it.
Felicitaciones Enrique, creo que debes tener muy avanzados esos conceptos ahora. Yo te escribí comentando el post sobre micro tareas y me gustaría saber si ahora después de la disertación encontraste un lugar (crowd? IC?) en el que pueda insertarse el microtrabajo. Saludos!
Great blog.