Intersection of ISIS120 & My Work at TechCrunch

Hello HASTAC folks! My name is Lacey, and I'm in Prof Cathy Davidson's "ISIS 120 - Your Brain on the Internet" class this semester. I wanted to lend my two cents here, on how what we have been discussing in class connects to my work with TechCrunch.

TechCrunch.com is a technology blog started by Michael Arrington in 2005, and publishes everything from startup stories, tech products and related funding announcements, etc. You want to find out when the iPAD is coming out and why it's priced the way it is? It's on TechCrunch. You're curious how many Twitter clients are out there? TechCrunch's got it covered. TechCrunch also has a huge network of information (TechCrunch Japan, France, CrunchBoard...etc.) - and I help manage the information behind CrunchBase.com, their database of companies, people, and products that's set up like a wiki.

CrunchBase is basically a Wikipedia that's catering to the tech crowd. For example, check out Foursquare's page- http://www.crunchbase.com/company/foursquare. Anyone can add/edit information, but the edits have to be approved as appropriate content -- and that's my job. Approving and creating content. Now why do I want to sit around all day doing this for free? (it's an unpaid internship)

1. Working on CrunchBase forces me to stay updated on what's new in tech
2. The TechCrunch team's awesome (and there's only like... 30 of them)
3. I get to staff awesome events like TechCrunch 50 and The Crunchies (expensive conferences that I could not pay for) and meet the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, and huzzah

Now I've got that intro out of the way- there's been a few topics that we've been discussing in class that directly relates to my experience on CrunchBase.

1. Evaluation: in class we have been discussing to great extent why we evaluate students the way we do (SATs, A/B grades, "gifted" tracks) and does it work? How should it be changed if so?... In a sense, everyday I'm EVALUATING all these edits and company profiles that others have taken the time to submit to CrunchBase and then.. accepting or rejecting them. Who gave me the right? (my supervisor) How do I decide? (it's a pass/fail basis... as long as the post makes sense and has legitimate sources... I accept) BUT what I start wondering is the extra amount of attention and INAPPROPRIATE content that gets thrown at the more popular posts (i.e. the company profiles on Facebook, Google, and the like) + the extra attention we pay attention as database managers on the backend. Is this extra attention fair? Isn't this what we do to gifted kids in school?

2. Narrative: in class we have discovered that yes, though grading exists, there is also a "narrative" that forms around a student as she goes through schooling (Lacey got all A's for her math classes in high school, then C's in math at Duke... is she not good at math? is the math coursework at Duke undoable? does she suddenly not care about school?) ; I've noticed to a huge extent how such narrative forms around these company profiles that I view daily. Is their logo professional ? Who are their investors (are they noteworthy people, newcomers)? What has been their milestones so far and at what timeline? I've worked for a VC arm for a large company who used CrunchBase to look for startup companies they wanted to invest in. And the amount of attention they pay to these tiny details is, well, downright surprising (and to know that I've been moderating that content, a meager 21-yo college kid!)... With my "power" to alter company narratives, did I prevent a $5million investment from being made?

Of course, no companies make such decisions easily and do not base their decisions solely on CrunchBase. But working on an open source database surely gets you thinking about how dynamic things are on the web space, and though the internet is enabling a richer context of data... you may need to do some extra digging.