Having reached its fever pitch, the crowdsourcing movement has inspired a seemingly infinite assortment of collaborative concepts, impacting everything from design to journalistic content. Now, artists, too, are putting the trend to use by organizing projects that solicit the public for creative contributions, and, in doing so, help foster community.

INSIDE OUT: With French photographer JR at the helm, this participatory project transforms digital self-portraits into large-scale street art. As the 2011 recipient of the TED Prize, JR received a $100,000 grant to realize his “project wish” of giving a literal face (or faces) to global communities. Participants can upload their self-portraits to the site for free large-scale printing, then are tasked with displaying the blown-up photo in a high-traffic location. An online gallery features pictures of the portraits in “action” on building facades, office walls, even in home windows. After just seven months, more than 50,000 people have uploaded photos and participants have logged activity in countries spanning the globe.

The Bay Area hasn’t featured prominently on the music map since 1967, when Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead serenaded the counterculture masses at the Monterey Pop Festival. But with influential record labels (Slumberland), audience-drawing festivals (PopFest, Outside Lands, and Treasure Island), and blogs pushing local buzz bands (The Bay Bridged), the NoCal music scene may be back.

Ty Segall: San Francisco is known for its eclecticism, but the current strain of garage rock powering through the city’s amps owes much to the genre’s local progenitors. Besides Thee Oh Sees, a shambolic, yet prolific, four-piece outfit, Ty Segall is leading the scene. Segall, an Orange County native, could have ended up as a character on The Hills (he actually did have a cameo on Laguna Beach). Instead, he moved to San Francisco and started churning out Nuggets-informed fuzz-pop gems. Although he’s refined his sound on his latest album, Goodbye Bread, his references (John Lennon, Neil Young) prove that he has no intention of straying from his primal rock roots.

The Sandwitches: It’s hard to describe The Sandwitches. Like their genre-bending San Francisco contemporaries Girls and the Dodos, this trio hopscotches from eccentric folk to minimalist post-punk to campfire pop. The band—Grace Cooper, Heidi Alexander, and Roxy Brodeur—features former members of The Fresh and Onlys and shows up regularly on the lineups of local benefits and in the track lists of San Francisco compilations. Their look is just as enigmatic—when the Sandwitches aren’t covered in clown face paint, they’re wearing fashionable vintage dresses. Despite their variant style, one thing remains clear: This band likes to have fun.

Weekend: After peeling back their layers of distortion and feedback, Weekend is, at heart, a post-punk band with a penchant for pop hooks. That explains why they’re on the roster of Slumberland Records, the Berkeley-based label best known for upbeat indie acts like Black Tambourines and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Since forming in 2009, the San Francisco trio has released two EPs and one full-length album, Sports, which solidified their standing as underground rock darlings. Following up a handful of recent remixes and a single released in May, the band is touring Europe this summer—and no doubt, gaining many ardent new fans in the process.

If 2009 was the year of the haute dog and 2010 was the year of the burger, then 2011 is shaping up to be the year of the grilled cheese sandwich. No longer a sad vehicle for Kraft Singles, the coffee shop staple has gone gourmet, as a number of eateries that serve inventive iterations of the sandwich are opening across the US.

The Melt: After Flip cam creator Jonathan Kaplan’s invention was axed by Cisco, he opted to change career paths, veering into the food industry by founding a nationwide chain of quick service grilled cheese sandwich restaurants. While the transition from tech executive to dining entrepreneur may seem like a dubious professional move, the business model for the soon-to-launch Melt franchise will rely heavily on new media. After ordering online or from their phones, patrons will be sent a QR barcode to be scanned upon arriving at The Melt. Back-end software and state-of-the art appliances from Electrolux ensure that a gooey, yet crisp, sandwich is ready within one minute of checking in.

Since Memorial Day has passed and the mercury is rising, that familiar jingle ringing from the streets can mean only one thing: ice cream season is here. But it’s been a while since Mister Softee was the reigning frozen dessert option. In fact, this summer, ice cream aficionados can indulge in scoops shaped by any one of several emerging trends.

Made-to-Order: As anyone who’s tasted ice cream from a freezer-burnt pint can attest, freshness matters. Several parlors are taking that to heart. San Francisco’s just opened Smitten has a liquid nitrogen machine that mixes ice cream on the spot. A mere 60 seconds after choosing between flavors like ‘Maple Brown Sugar Butternut Squash and Candied Yams’ and ‘Strawberry and White Balsamic,’ customers can dig in to a new batch. Meanwhile, Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights recently welcomed Ample Hills Creamery, which pasteurizes its ice cream on the premises. As such, it’s the only parlor in New York City that has been verified by the Department of Agriculture as a true dairy plant.

As we’ve reported, tracking systems have become integrated into the lives of many consumers. Typically, the goal of them has been personal betterment, but a slew of new initiatives demonstrate that tracking technology has earned public service appeal, affecting areas as diverse as public health, urban planning and natural resource conservation.

NextDrop: The lack of reliable water supply is one of the most enduring problems for developing nations. For many communities, water intended for delivery at a specific time often does not arrive on schedule, causing confusion and hardship. Enter NextDrop, founded by a group of Stanford and Berkeley graduate students with financial support from the Gates Foundation. It’s a tracking system that seeks to better manage the distribution of water by alerting residents as to when it will be available. Valvemen simply call an interactive voice response system upon opening their neighborhood valves. NextDrop then sends SMS alerts to the inhabitants of the area 30–60 minutes before the water arrives.