ANDYs Randy for Crowdsourcing Jury

So, I'm reading tonight about the decision by ANDY Award co-chairs Ty Montague and Michael Lebowitz (JWT and Big Spaceship, respectively) to crowdsource the jury, actually a kind of obvious step when you think of where things are headed -- to one big crowdsourcing of everything, from advertising ideas to what to have for lunch. So what the hell, go to electthejury.com and cast your votes.

Among other things, what the duo is hoping for is: "a more accurate, fair snapshot of what has been done in the past year," according to Montague. I'm not sure about that. I stuffed my ballot box with AKQA's Rei Inamoto, because he has such a cool name; John Jay to fill the Wieden + Kennedy requirement; Simon Waterfall, because he just left his agency and doesn't have much to do; Ogilvy's Lars Bastholm because he's Lars Bastholm; and Jimmy Wales because if he ever sat for an advertising awards show I'd plotz.

The story about all this in Adweek of course led some advertising types to speculate about creative directors at big agencies getting their minions to vote early and often, thus skewing the jury, and ultimately, of course, the awards. Ah the cynicism.C'mon, I checked the site out and you can only vote once ... per day.

It occurred to me that what Montague and Lebowitz really ought to do is eliminate the jury entirely and just crowdsource the entire show. You know, cut out the middleman.