Content and Curation for Nonprofits

Curated by Beth Kanter

http://www.bethkanter.org

I have been exploring Pinterest as a curation tool.  

I did a search on "curator" and found this visual, but wondered whether it really encapsulates the definition today?    The visual is inspired by Rohit's thoughts on curation from 2011:

The Five Models of Content Curation

http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2011/03/the-5-models-of-content-curation.html   

Here is how Rohit's thinking has evolved on content curation - a post from 2010 for Robin Good, plus a link back to his 2009 post.

http://www.masternewmedia.org/content-curation-why-is-the-content-curator-the-key-emerging-online-editorial-role-of-the-future/

One thing I discovered (by subjective observation) is that many users are not really curating. They are aggregating lots of images.

There is a "repin" button - like the Twitter RT button. There seems to be a lot of user behavior that people just repin the visuals into collections but do not provide context or conversation. The interface design does automatically document where the original image/visual was found.

I did find one collection that was from educator that was looking at curation tools and even here I noticed some entries not well citied or contextualized.

http://pinterest.com/web20education/curation-web20education-by-http-xeeme-com-ecurator/
 

This has made me feel strongly that my focus of my talk for the socialmedia for nonprofits conference in NYC in two weeks should be on the practice of curation.

Got this from Jan Gordon.  I like the visual showing goals.  Good to use when doing a workshop with beginners to help them think through content curation - to what end?

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This great piece was written by Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute 

There is no curation without original content. However, curators can expand the readership and help their niche find meaning and insight in the material as it relates to them. 

He says:

"So many organizations are getting caught up in content curation, but the real power of content marketing lies in original content creation."

Curation is more than a tactic, it is coming to forefront because

**people are overwhelmed with too much information.

If you're going to create content, I say mixing that with curated content might be a better way to go, again this depends on many factors,  but that's only my opinion.

Here are a few things that caught my attention:

Y0ur 2012 Checklist -

He says, yes, you can and should use content curation techniques, but this should be secondary.

I say, Curation is more than a technique and will go beyond a buzz word in 2012 as people learn new techniques.

He says:

"Focus on the true pain points of your customers and start planning content series around answering those pain points".

**I definitely agree but this can be accomplished by curation as well. It's not an either or, a curator can add more vital information, another perspective. provide resources or any number of things beyond the original article.

He says:

"Find the content curators in your industry and form relationships with them. They’ll help you spread the word about your great content".

I say:

I believe content creators will want to seek out good content curators  to curate their work.  I watched a six minute video yesterday, the title was "Is Your Content Good Enough To Be Curated"? Now that's a shift in thinking and a very interesting question to ponder, I say, stay tuned........

I think both are necessary in different proportions for different types of businesses.

What do you think?

Commentary by Jan Gordon "Covering Content Curation, Social Media and Beyond"

Read full article here: [http://bit.ly/w104L6]

Note From Beth:  Jan Gordon picked this one up from Robin Good's curated list.  If I was teaching a workshop on content curation,  I might pick from the skill sets list and use for a self-assessment.    These skills are higher order thinking skills.

There are other practical/tactical skills involved and I think Robin has a good list as well.  I'd definitely combined those into some instructional tool

Beth Kanter, Beth's Blog
http://www.bethkanter.org 

Robin Good: The Institute for the Future and the University of Phoenix have teamed up to produce, this past spring, an interesting report entitled Future Work Skills 2020.

By looking at the set of emerging skills that this research identifies as vital for future workers, I can't avoid but recognize the very skillset needed by any professional curator or newsmaster.

It should only come as a limited surprise to realize that in an information economy, the most valuable skills are those that can harness that primary resource, "information", in new, and immediately useful ways.

And being the nature of information like water, which can adapt and flow depending on context, the task of the curator is one of seeing beyond the water,

to the unique rare fish swimming through it.

The curator's key talent being the one of recognizing that depending on who you are fishing for, the kind of fish you and other curators could see within the same water pool, may be very different. 

Here the skills that information-fishermen of the future will need the most:

1) Sense-making:

ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed

2) Social intelligence:

ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions

3) Novel and adaptive thinking:

proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based

4) Cross-cultural competency:

ability to operate in different cultural settings

5) Computational thinking:

ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning

6) New media literacy:

ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication

7) Transdisciplinarity:

literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines

8) Design mindset:

ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes

9) Cognitive load management:

ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques

10) Virtual collaboration:

ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team

Critical to understand the future ahead. 9/10

Curated by Robin Good

Executive Summary of the Report: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapolloresearchinstitute.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Ffuture-work-skills-executive-summary.pdf 

Download a PDF copy of Future Work Skills 2020: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapolloresearchinstitute.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Ffuture-skills-2020-research-report.pdf  

Another great find from Robin Good

I dug deeper into the report that the video summarized:

http://www.pwc.com/en_US/us/technology-forecast/2011/issue3/assets/transforming-collaboration-with-social-tools.pdf

The report is dense and it is written for coporations looking at selecting vendors for internal social collaboration platforms.   So, alot of isn't relevant for nonprofits.    The video, however, as Robin notes, is useful for the big picture.

But, on page 12, I found an interesting conceptual idea about the importance of social context creation that help overcome information overload.    It talks about the social graph.  It resonated with some early work of Rashmi Simha about social software design in the early days (see deck slides 22-30) http://www.slideshare.net/rashmi/designing-for-social-sharing-3569

In the early stages of social (think 200 3-2006),  we socialized around object collection.   We found other people through our interests.  For me this happened by using delicious - I connected with people by looking at their collections and following them when there a common interest.    I also used this strategy with Flickr.

Next phase was the "Social Graph" - that connected to idea/info through our friends. This phase happened when Facebook opened the gates. We discovered stuff through our friends -- or the "social graph"  - a term that started being used around 2007. (http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/09/how-to-avoid-so.html)  - and discussion about open social graphs (http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/opensocial/)

In the report, on page 12, here is how the social graph is explained in the context of an Enteprise collaobration model

Divergent Phase:  Social information appears but it is siloed

Convergent Phase:  Information is more accessible but difficult to search

Navigational Phase:  Information in graph form becomes integrated and navigable.

Key idea:  Context creates relevance.   Refers to this post in TechCrunch - http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/03/the-age-of-relevance  

Several of the newest social platforms create "interest graphs" a map for navigating to subjects and people of interest.   The Interest graph is a superset of the social graph, a people map.  The interest graph includes people, things, and their linkages and it helps users navigate the information thicket.

How:  Interest graph will consists of relationships between people and between business issues/workflow and people.  Self-managed by these to find what's relevant.   The addition of social layer and the ability to strucutre that information along other information a "graph form" are what provide the additiona context.  With this additional context, organizations can confront and reduce information overload.

Insight:  This has been my approach to curating for years -- creating collections based on:

(1)  What is the best way to understand the topic

(2)  Who are the leading thinkers

(3)  What are the best blog posts, web sites, articles and books

To this, I'm adding visuals .....

How do you change the organization's behavior so that people are becoming curators of interest graphs?

Robin's Notes:

In issue 3 of PwC’s Tech Forecast there is a great video illustrating what is going to change in the near future when it comes to finding the right information.

"The Navigational phase of online information is just now emerging.

Within three to five years, finding more of the information we need--not to mention opportunities for more effective collaboration--will become possible. Social tools will help."

The animated video explains how making network and interest-based connections more visible will allow easier and more effective filtering and navigation of information spaces in the near future. 

Insightful. 8/10

Watch the video here:  http://www.pwc.com/us/en/technology-forecast/2011/issue3/index.jhtml 

The echo chamber and curation.

Robin Good's Notes:

Rob Diana writes: "The core of my concern is that curators need tools to find those stories that may not be as popular as others.

Otherwise, all news comes from a few select sites that are read by the masses. Obviously, this is not what we want to have happen."

He couldn't be more right. 

The rest of his article, dating back to November, offers good insight into what the 1% of former Google Reader was really doing and what they are looking for now that it is gone.

Insightful. 8/10

Read the full article: http://regulargeek.com/2011/11/12/google-reader-is-not-about-reading-news-it-is-about-curation/