Say hi to Troy.

Born the oldest of 5 outrageous brothers, and 1 great sister, Troy started admiring music at an early age. People would come over to his house and play guitar and sing, and they were having fun, fully living life and experiencing the moment through music. It’s been his motto his whole life … fun, fun, fun. Troy followed acts from Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention to Willie Nelson and Family, as he worked as a full time sound man in Baltimore under the watchful eye of ‘Billy Kemp and his band’ until the early 80’s. Then Troy headed west at 23 & ended up working for a tour catering company. The first band Troy officially worked directly for was ‘Willie, Waylon and Jessi Colter’ starting on Willie’s birthday April 30, 1984.

So he was a cook for Willie. Plays music with some pretty amazing guys including Billy Kemp and a bunch of guys from Willie Nelson’s band. You can buy Troy’s new CD here. (hint, hint.)

Okay…that is the end of this commercial message. I was not paid nor enticed to post this, by the way. I just like the guy. And the fact that he’s the project manager on our construction/renovation is not – I repeat – not why I’m hawking his CD. He’s already the most attentive, detail-oriented guy. I’m trying not to drive him crazy. At the very least, I’m trying not to become the subject of a song. In a bad way, that is.

According to wikipedia, Crowdsourcing is:

“A neologistic compound of Crowd and Outsourcing for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community, through an “open call” to a large group of people (a crowd) asking for contributions.

For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design[1] and distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm (see Human-based computation), or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data (see also citizen science).”

I know plenty of people crowdsourcing their design work at site like 99designs or Crowdspring. GeniusRocket has even more services including writing and ideation (I truly hate that word). We’re seeing conference topics being decided by groups, apps being designed by groups. Seriously, this is nothing to ignore. In fact, check out the Crowdsourcing Blog where Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired magazine, has been blogging about the topic since he wrote The Rise of Crowdsourcing in June 2006. He’s currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Not too shabby. I wonder if he’s single. I know a really nice, smart girl in the right age bracket… But I digress.

This is about my life.

Well, that may be overly dramatic.

This is about my house. And while that feels like my life (can you say obsession?), it’s not really my life. I know that.

So I picked some colors for the walls of the house the day we decided to put a contract on it. I liked the colors. They were warm and familiar.

I mulled them around and around. I imagined them in the light and in the shadows.

And then the contract was accepted. Now, I really had to get serious.

I asked my Aunt Phyl – a fabulous designer and artist – to come see the space. My mom, also has a great eye (and was a painter for some time…), came to lend a hand. After some time, my mom and Phyl made their recommendations. I loved it.

And then, we went back to the house, before settlement, and I looked some more. A friend made some lovely suggestions.

Then, I dragged some colors and my butt to a generous friend’s house (whose taste I adore) and she had some great ideas. Great, I say! And another friend (also with impeccable taste) came over and she, too, had great but slightly different suggestions. I loved them all. But you know what? It’s hard in different light.

And then we settled. It was our house!

I walked in and all the colors and all the ideas swirled around. I needed to be the project manager. To take control. Of all the ideas.

The colors swirled around and around me. It was dizzying.

I took it all in. All the sage advice that my advisers were kind enough to share. I put all the exhibits in one place -the color chips, the cabinets, the tiles, the countertop, the floors, the light… it was all there.

I closed my eyes and trusted.

Together, my aunt, my mom, my friends, my husband, my kids… we chose the colors for the new home.

Talk about crowdsourcing.

I’m going to love it.