Today, CrowdEngineering announced the appointment of Wesley O'Brien as their new CEO. O'Brien replaces their interim CEO, Ron Guerriero, who has served since September 2012.

Peter LaMotte, CEO of GeniusRocket and Crowd Leader, announced that he has stepped down from his role at the video crowdsourcing agency. GeniusRocket was one of the first creative crowdsourcing companies, launching in 2007, and remains a fixture in the video crowdsourcing world.

I do more than just write about crowdsourcing; I happen to think a lot about it as well.  And, specifically, I think a lot about the future of crowdsourcing. Here are my top 3 bets on where crowdsourcing will take us and where we will take it in the next 5-7 years.

It seems like new crowdsourcing platforms pop up daily nowadays, so it's not surprising that many of them fall to the wayside when compared to previously-established systems.

Today NASA launched a new open innovation challenge to find a solution to maximize the amount of solar energy the International Space Station can harvest. This is the latest in a string of crowdsourcing projects from NASA. The project is being facilitated by TopCoder's open innovation community with a total prize pool of $30,000. The challenge is open to anyone.

Much the way you shouldn't go about crowdfunding any project by yourself, you really shouldn't expect to reach a substantial goal of, say, $30,000 or more without doing the proper preliminary work, and one of the most important, yet highly overlooked aspects of this homework is building your audience first.

It's important to have a skillful and dedicated crowd, and it's just as important to keep them happy. A happy crowd strives to produce a higher quality and quantity of work for you and your clients. Chances are if they've chosen to work in a crowd, they already like what they do; make sure they love where they're working.

We're thankful for our crowd & we're thankful that now we're able to give back to the very crowd that's helped us lead this field. If you have a site geared towards business professionals or your community contains business leaders that would benefit from learning about crowdsourcing, then we've got a new affiliate program that's perfect for you: For every ticket to Crowdopolis you sell, you'll earn a $200 commission.

At Crowdopolis 12 LA, Senior Marketing Director, Stephen Paljieg, discussed how Kimberly-Clark uses crowdsourcing to let their community of Mom's develop new products. By letting the front-line of product users suggest products, Kimberly-Clark is building a diverse innovation team, R&D team, and a sales team.

When it comes to utilizing the crowd, it's not always for just typing up documents or asking for design ideas. Significant strides have been made towards improving medical science and making the process more efficient and transparent, all thanks to a concerned and connected global community.