It’s not often that I’ll just run another story in full. But then again, it’s not often that I’m interviewed and quoted too.

Today Wired ran a story: Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back and Lessons Learned.

Howe, who I am also helping with his book on Crowdsourcing did a good job with the article. (He also wrote a follow up piece on his blog which is perhaps the most public flattery I’ve ever received from a professional colleague).

When people ask me, I have to admit — Assignment Zero was not a complete success. It was a hard six months. I worked my tushie off, not everything got accomplished that we wanted and during the thick of it all, my life was very hectic. It was an uphill climb — but man, what a view.

And when I look back on it now, the project seems like an amazing success despite all the obstacles. Things did work when we really needed it to. As Jeff quotes me “the crowdsourcing gears kicked in.”

More importantly, I know it’s cheesy to say, but I made some friends. I am still in contact with many of the AZ contributors (and if you are an AZ Alumni — never hesitate to contact me), and I’m happy to think that through this project I’ve met scientists, programmers, artists, teachers, etc etc, and have worked with all of them.

I also believe that the final package of Assignment Zero (80 interviews and nine feature stories) is the largest collection of work on crowdsourcing to date. (hooray for us!).

And finally: While not everything worked at Assignment Zero, the beauty of the project was what we learned through the experiment (some of my lessons). I often said “AZ was like throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. The great part about the project — there were no noodles just hanging by a thread. All the ideas either fell to the ground or stuck perfectly. In my mind — if another project like AZ were to start from the ground, with the right organization, promotion and topic, I’m convinced it could work.

I will add this before I cut and paste the story. In one quote I sound overly harsh of the volunteer editors.

“What we really needed were people who understood online organizing,” says David Cohn, an Assignment Zero editor. “But many of the editors just didn’t have much experience with the internet.”

I won’t deny that I said this. But I also think it deserves a bit of explanation. That comment was for a few individuals, explaining that just having a warm body and calling them an editor doesn’t solve a problem.

The vast majority of editors that stuck with us were absolutely amazing. They volunteered their time and efforts to work with a crowd — and I can’t thank them enough.

There were a few (not a majority) who required me to teach them how to actually join and log into a community site. And you can imagine — if I had to teach them that, they weren’t exactly the most useful online community organizers.

But again, the vast majority of editors that we had were awesome. Some of them were absolutely clutch. Without a doubt, without the help of some of those editors, Assignment Zero would have been completely stagnant.

But anyways: Back to the story. (also see Tish Grier’s take on AZ)

Ambitions ran high when Wired joined forces in January with new media incubator NewAssignment.net to try a novel experiment in pro-am journalism.

Our goal: Have a crowd of volunteers write the definitive report on how crowds of volunteers are upending established businesses, from software to encyclopedias and beyond.

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