Next Tuesday, I have the pleasure of speaking on a panel titled, The Power of Crowdsourcing, at WebGuild's Web 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara. Not only am I excited about the topic but I'm thrilled at the prospect of co-presenting with some pretty smart people including:

• Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research (moderator)
• Michael Sikorsky of Cambrian House
• Anil Rathi of Idea Crossing

Jeremiah's already taken the bull by the horns and spelled out our agenda:

1. Identify crowd sourcing, what is it?
2. What are the benefits?
3. What are the risks, dangers, and how to mitigate these risks
4. Specific case studies with measurable results. (emphasis on measurable results)
5. Q&A

One company in particular that I'd like to discuss during our panel is a a "clothing company that’s 'managed by the people who wear it." The company is called nvohk (pronounced en-voke) and I found out about thanks to futurethinktank. I haven't read much about nvohk yet but it sounds like their business model is not dissimilar to that of another crowdsourcing clothing company, Threadless. According to nvohk's site, their intention is to truly allow their customers to run the company (you have to invest $50 up front to get in on the action.)

In prepration for this panel, I've also done a little crowdsourcing myself. So far, I've gotten some great recommendations from a new follower on Twitter (@mindjet), a friend on Facebook (Kare Anderson) and several colleagues. I'm also going back to an online crowdsourcing round table I did a few months ago with Anil, Jasmine Antonick (she works for Mike at Cambrian House) and Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine because we covered a number of similar topics and received a lot of great questions and comments from the listeners.

Will you be attending this event? If so, please reach out to me in the comments of this blog or on Twitter (I'm @astrout.) If you can't attend, I'm hoping one of my colleagues will be live blogging so that we can share back best practices from the panel with this community. Also, if you have any crowdsourcing best practices that you'd like to share, please add in the comments.

 UPDATED ON FEBRUARY 6: Independant blogger, Nitin Karandikar, did a really nice write up of the panel.