Are You a Curator? (Curate This Book 1)
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Curate This! The Hands-On, How-To Guide to Content Curation Book 1 - Are You A Curator? www.CurateThisBook.com By Steven Rosenbaum Copyright © Magnify Media, LLC, 2014 All rights reserved. About the Author “Curation comes up when search stops working. Curation solves the problem of filter failure.” Clay Shirky Steven Rosenbaum is both a creator and a curator. He is widely known as one of the leading thinkers and writers on the topic of curation. He is the curator of the nationally known CameraPlanet Archive, the world’s largest archive of 9/11 video, now housed at the National 9/11 Memorial Museum. In 2010, Rosenbaum wrote the groundbreaking book Curation Nation: How to Win In a World Where Consumers are Creators for McGraw Hill Business. At a time when the word ‘curation’ was still mostly used by museum PhDs, Rosenbaum coined a new definition for the phrase and explored the foundation of this new kind of man/machine interface. Now, two years later, curation has gone from a theory to a powerful practice. In Curate This!, Rosenbaum turns ideas into action… providing a blueprint for the future and a solution to the overwhelming information overload in which the rush of information and ideas inundates us all. Rosenbaum is the CEO of Waywire Networks and the curator In Chief of Waywire.com, based in New York City. Early Praise for Curate This! Curation will be one of the drivers in the next chapter of the Internet, as we continue to shift from a world of scarcity to one of abundance. Curate This! is a valuable guide book for publishers, marketers and merchants as they seek to leverage the growing importance of curation. Steve Case fmr Chairman & CEO AOL, Chairman and CEO Revolution LLC Urgent, erudite and entertaining, this is a book from a pioneer who cares (a lot) about what’s going to happen next. Seth Godin, Author, The Icarus Deception Rosenbaum, the king and coiner of curation, finally shares the method behind the seeming madness of finding, collecting, and contextualizing the infinity of the net. Douglas Rushkoff Author, “Program or Be Programmed” Back in the day, there were, like, 20 magazines. The biggest was Reader’s Digest, which just cherry-picked from the other 19 - because who had the time to sift through everything? Now there are a squidrillion media sources, Glut is the disease, and - paging Dr. Rosenbaum - curation is the cure. Bob Garfield Author and Host of NPR’s On The Media We’re all dealing with a world that’s feeding us Too Much Information. “Curate This!” helps us understand curation, why it’s important, and how we can provide clarity for ourselves and others. - Craig Newmark, Founder, Craigslist Few people make better sense of the complicated world of content and commerce than Rosenbaum. His utterly current take on curation reminds us that without committed curators like Rosenbaum the web would merely overwhelm most of us. - Merrill Brown, Director - The School of Communication at Montclair State University, fmr Editor-In-Chief, MSNBC Even in this age of automation where software is everywhere, Steve understands the importance of context, taste and point of view. Human curation is a must have navigational layer in a sea of infinite ideas. Curate This! is a great resource to understand how it’s evolving. - Jason Hirschhorn, CEO – REDEF, The Interest Remix Company The world is “simply throbbing with rich treasures,” as author Henry Miller once wrote. As the information landscape multiplies, you might as well be contemplating a junk heap. Curate This! gives you the tools to find, amplify and enjoy the treasures again. - Laurel Touby, Founder, Mediabistro.com Are You A Curator? Should You Be One? You’ve purchased this book or it’s been given to you, so it would be easy to assume that you’ve already made the jump and decided that you want to be a curator. However, not so fast. Let’s walk you through a simple checklist of curator attributes and see if you fit the bill. Are you a maker? Do you create content of some sort – either in short or long form? Are you a writer, poet, painter, songwriter, composer, sculptor, journalist, blogger or author? If the answer is yes, then bravo – you’ve got one of the critical things that all curators need. A voice. A passion to create. To find unusual linkage and eye-opening connections. Curation is the art of creating something new, coherent and meaningful out of an abundance of related information and ideas. The reason why there’s no such thing as ‘machine curation’ or ‘algorithmic curation’ is that curation, at its core – is an artistic and a human endeavor. So, if you see curation as an extension or expansion of your creative voice, then you’re in the right place. Are you a leader? Curation is the art of standing in the front of the room and telling an audience to follow you. You need to be bold, charismatic, fearless and willing to take risks and make mistakes. Great curators will see around corners, embrace and expose unusual and unexpected themes and sources, and make bold predictions about their passions and beliefs. There’s little room for timid, cautious, slow moving curators. The Web operates in real time and curators need to promise their fans and followers that they’ll burn the midnight oil to find what’s new and notable and get it validated, curated, contextualized and published first. Do you thrive and explore across media boundaries? The ideal curator is multi- disciplinary, willing to forage for ideas and wisdom in tweets, Tumblr posts, LinkedIn pages, Flickr images, Slideshare accounts, Facebook posts, G+ Groups and the legion of emerging voices and sources. The tools are ever changing. The nature of the ideas and the shape of their containers is morphing daily. Vine and Instagram videos have empowered a whole new class of creators. Pinterest boards are now part of the curatorial mix. YouTube, Vimeo and Metacafe are the tip of the video iceberg. Your fans and friends don’t have the time or tools to go spelunking for content in the dark and unexplored corners of the Internet. If they’ve chosen you as their curator of choice, then they’ve deputized you to go exploring for them. That means always being hungry for what’s next and what’s new, wherever it may reside. Are you a list maker? curators are more than hunter/gatherers. They are organizers. They bring order to chaos by creating a framework and then presenting their curated output in a coherent and logical frame. If you’ve found a thousand potential Editorial elements for a curated page on a sporting event, breaking news story or complex medical or social subject, then the art of honing it down to a digestible, coherent arrangement of Editorial elements is often painfully difficult. In many ways, the old world of physical limitations, such as the pages in The New York Times or the 3o minutes of The Evening News, made the need to edit and make brutal cuts a requirement. The limits of that world demanded a firm Editorial hand, but, in the new digital world, it’s easy to say “why not let the audience have all of it?” That’s a weak excuse and the mark of a curator who is simply a collector of digital bits. The art is in the edit, cutting the avalanche of information into a focused, meaty, revealing curated collection. Your place or mine? In the olden days, by which I mean five years ago, Web publishers were all about luring their audiences back to their home (pages). That was where they could grow traffic, monetize visitors and keep return visit numbers growing. That model is gone. Whamo. Now, audiences have settled in to their own consumption patterns, so, for a curator worth his salt, the answer to the question, “Your place or mine?” needs to be a resounding BOTH. Is your curated content ready to be seen and shared on Facebook? It needs to be. Can visitors tweet it, post it, link to it, email it and share it in any and all ways? Good. What if they want to come and explore the content within your walls – your site? They should be welcome there as well. Content curators are distributors and presenters. They take their collections and their voice out into the world, sharable and mobile, and are happy when audience members consume and share, in any way, what they’ve created. Do you have a voice? Ok, this question is a tricky one. What if you’re a curator in a modest field? What if you curate fine art, early childhood parenting or a cancer survivors’ group. It’s easy to ask curators to have a bold, spunky voice in an Editorial space about video games or adventure sports, but your voice needs to match both your audience’s expectations and your own personal brand. You must have a voice that is distinct and memorable. You must break through the clutter and noise and give your readers something to hang their hat on. This statement doesn’t mean that you need to blog or even comment on what you curate. Maybe it’s the headlines, maybe it’s your Twitter voice. However, if your fans and followers think that you’re just a collection of links, then someone whose voice connects with them is going to romance your audience away. Let’s be clear about one thing: having a voice will mean that some people will find it not to their liking.