Is World Wide Dead a great example of Wikinomics in action?

Bryony set out to make a full length zombie film by using the internet as her only resource. She intended to get multiple people to volunteer to write, act in or help contribute to the movie in any way by appealing to them over forums and YouTube. This went quite well and she soon found a lot of people willing to help her, so many that she had to cut a lot of people out while auditioning for actors, although they were told they could still be involved in any of the other aspects of the making of the film each area of the film was a Mass collaboration of ideas and it was not long before there were so many contradicting ideas that a single idea did not stand out with so many writers, just being given instruction to write and no real direction gave a lot of strong ideas without any structure.

This was almost inevitable considering the film was being created through participatory culture, and although Bryony was the one who was supposedly in charge in reality this project quickly became wikinomics in action and Bryony didn’t have or take enough control over the project to make it work. She decided to go away on holiday and stay away due to stress, during this time she did no work towards the zombie film project, assuming the established Mass collaboration of people would be able to organise itself. However Bryony had failed had give the project enough direction from the start, and when she was away these minor issues which could have been perhaps managed one by one as they came up had Bryony, or at least someone had been appointed enough control to keep order (for example being able to say no to ideas, or simply reply to e-mails from the cast and creators so that they wouldn’t get so frustrated with the whole project.

While she was away the script went out of control, people kept adding new ideas and no single person was saying yes or no or keeping track of it, everyone had parts and put some time in, but overall without some structure or organisation things fell apart when original ideas started to get cut from the script replaced by new ideas or changed by people. This frustrated the writers who complained that their ideas weren’t being used and it seemed as if none of the original strong ideas had been kept in. All the while the only voice of reason was away, so people control went over to the more involved people, however this then changed a lot as each person was pushing for particular things in the film, and none of them had any power to give a final yes or no. Bryony had also set a strict deadline for the project- this deadline was getting close while Bryony stayed on holiday the project soon became obviously unrealistic to all the participants so more people complained, this fed the continuing flame war over the film’s online forum and the project got out of control with lots of people hating it, getting very frustrated and dropping out.

Although the original concept was very strong Bryony’s assumption that people could almost entirely organise themselves was wrong ironically due to the popularity of the idea and the sheer amount of people participating made there far too much creative input for a group of people whom had no formal organisation between them.

When Bryony came back she found out that the project was out of control and became more frustrated. However by compromising (to quite a large extent) she regained control and order and manage to arrange a film shoot to get the first few minutes made to serve as a trailer for her original deadline. The intention was to continue after this had sparked even more interest and for the idea to continue to grow and develop from more and more people getting involved.

However that never happened, there was another uproar amongst the participants over what was made, too many different opinions and the decision as to where to go next became too problematic and Bryony gave up on the idea. Although she had failed to meet her deadline and keep the project under control most of the time, she had managed a great feat in organising so many people working together all over the internet however failed to organise it properly, with too much free sharing of ideas and not enough organisation over the project as a whole, for example communications fell apart when Bryony went away, and when people couldn’t keep in touch and explain what was going on and what needed doing and what needed sorting out and in what order. I also believe most people involved in this project were quite young and a lot of people simply lost interest or lost their temper or didn’t really know everything that needed doing.

I however would still count this as a great example of Wikinomics, for several reasons. Firstly a lot was achieve a lot of people got together and some filming was done, although it wasn’t much it was a start and there is no real reason why an entire film couldn’t be done were it to be slightly more planned out and over more time. I also believe it’s a good example as it shows a lot of potential dangers of wikinomics, a lot of people working with each other over the internet is always going to cause conflict from different ideas, these conflicts would not happen in a traditional work place as people are much more concerned about the people around them, the informal Media that is the internet makes it very easy to criticise other people as it is easy an anonymous, yet still effective at relieving stress among a lot of people and outright illogical abuse is very common over the internet. Having said that however there is no reason in theory why someone else involved in the project could pick it up and continue it, provided people are willing to accept some reorganisation, and the people involved are willing to work on even when the they are criticised for their work bearing in mind you simply cannot make something everyone likes.