A definition for innovation found in my notebook.
Doing something different that has an ongoing positive effect.
What’s yours…?
Category: opinion
Curation As An Emerging Skillset | A 5 Step Guide
How to become a curation king / queen.
Traditionally, a curator researches and puts together a collection which speaks to a narrative and / or serves a larger idea in art galleries and / or museums.
In the current digital habitat, all can participate in this activity, so the challenge is honing the skills and leveraging the tools. Why?
Because for you and the organisation / company you serve, curation will be at the forefront of:
- developing new ideas;
- broadening discussions;
- navigating and sifting through information to concentrate it into action;
- celebrating those in specific industries; plus
- uncovering / creating / deepening relationships to those that matter.
How?
Here we go:
1. Find : Track other digital curators to emulate / learn from.
Follow / learn from Tina or Jason or Maria or Shaun or the Open Culture peeps etc—rather just serving individual tastes, these guys are also aiming to inspire, educate, challenge, explode wonder, intrigue, curiosity, in their audience.
2. Find : Deliberately forage content from many sources.
Online is a noisy place and it’s not simple to find the signal. For many of us with the tools such as advanced search techniques plus RSS it’s a simple case of making the web work for you. RSS allows for a filtering on a delicious scale which when mashed up with things like IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes can become the perfect recipe for making yourself look double awesome.
3. Follow : Click those inspirational digital breadcrumbs.
Be careful not to get stuck in the filter bubble—sites like Tumblr and Pinterest exemplify curating platforms plus once you start clicking you will discover how deep the rabbit hole goes. Don’t worry too much and just click away, flow around areas of interest, follow those links and see where those web-roads take you. You’ll be astonished with the gems you’ll find.
4. Focus : Sharpen the sights and cull the chaff to find the good stuff.
Now you’ve been using the above tools / techniques for a while it’s time to sort and strain. It might be you’ll decide to stop following certain feeds and replace them with ones who serve more specific content. It should always be a trial and error process in pursuit of revelatory inspiration.
5. Frame : Context is king so reposition & tell stories with the new found ideas.
The best curators (some listed above) contextualise the treasures found by weaving a narrative around. This adds the much needed context for the audience and yourself when you return years later plus demonstrates your ability to join ideas into salient points. It’s time to shape the reason and link the work to creative action (whether that be an infographic, white space in an established industry, applying divergent technologies into traditional approaches, learning from obscure voices from other sectors to influence innovative strategies etc). Wrap those finds up in beautiful potential.
So examples of where this can be applied:
- students can be taught the above as a research methodology for their studies;
- product designers can utilise these steps to gain a deeper picture of the problem / industry their serving;
- teachers can employ these techniques as a way to collate content related to their subject focus;
- start-ups can use these tools to aggregate ideas around the market they are entering;
- leaders can illustrate brand stories in which they would like to emulate.
…you get the idea!
Follow the plan and basically suck the juicy wisdom out of the web then humanise it for good.
How relevant is curation in your role / organisation? And who else is talking about this as a skillset (am keen to learn / connect)? Riff in the comments!
Related / inspired / remixed from original post 2013 | Create / Curate plus all images from Graphics Fuel
Big Sky Montana Thinking | Hatch 2013
Hatch is about connecting a group of madly curious people and trusting in their ability to generate creative value.
Split over two locations (one in the Montana hills at the Rainbow Ranch Lodge, Big Sky and the other in the heart of Bozeman via an innovation lab / space), no other event has ever challenged me as much to be present and in the moment (hence the lack of notes):
This was due to the loosely structured agenda and being surrounded by film-makers, musicians, technologists, artists, entrepreneurs, marketeers, architects, trouble-makers, designers, writers, inventors, specialists, generalists (full attendee list here), all of whom ignited the brain with conversations that dripped in inspiration and possibility!
And oh those delicious Rugrats moments:
Deep waist bows to all attendees, partners, sponsors and obviously the organisers—humbled to have been invited and definitely learned (again) that giving is living!
Read other HATCH posts.
Imagine If… | Social Media Was Not Just Used As A Marketing Tool
Thanks for the inspiration Charles Darwin, Nikola Tesla, Anne Frank, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Ghandi, Jimi Hendrix, Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Erhart.
Remixed from this previous post as I continue my crusade to wrestle back the idea that social media is just for marketing.
Big thanks to Setuniman for the sound
The Audience Has An Audience | Adapt, Adopt
Watch. Learn. Apply.
Back in 2006 I spoke at my first television-industry conference (there were many many more).
Even then the discourse and examples focussed on how the the web was shifting the watching experience. Martini media had arrived along with mobile phones plus social networks.
Fast forward over 7 years and most people will read / watch the above, nod and continue on their merry way. What a shame!
The social connected layer influences and continues to impact vast swathes of our considered and structured lives. This stuff doesn’t just apply to TV. It’s also about how we work. Our health. How we interact with our family / friends. Our security. How we bank. How we vote. Where we go for dinner etc
The idea that we have networks which we influence is what the clever people get. It doesn’t matter if it’s 10 or 10,000… we have the collective / connective power to influence and create on a level unknown like any other time.
Then again, we could just Instagram the sandwich we’re eating!
How does the idea of your audience having an audience affect / influence what you do?
ᔥ Motherboard Vice blog
Puncture The Equilibrium | The Social Perimeter
Keep pushing!
Discussions about the space I’ve been operating in for eight years is stilted at ‘social media’ (and usually the false assumption that most folks think it just means social media marketing).
For me, the semantic and focus has shifted to just “social”, which includes:
- social media
- social technologies
- social platforms
- social workflows
- social currencies
- social literacies
- social interactions
- social expectations
- social sharing
- social business
- social metrics
- social culture (to name but a few)
These new associations seem peripheral to the main social media discourse, and if you think that way, good, because there’s not much space on the edge.
The courageous, audacious, curious margins with their better questions.
The fringes where development occurs as a gradual push outwards, extending the status quo.
Whether it be a university asking for applications for one of it’s courses via 200 characters; Lego making it’s executives to take courses in social; crowdfunded films winning oscars etc
The edges are far more fun, confusing, impactful and wondrous than the center.
Join me if you dare.
Image remixed from The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.
Hat-tip Brian Sweeney for ‘punctuated equilibrium’ term.
Jeff Bezos Buys The Washington Post | Opportunity Follows
I really hope Bezos watches The Newsroom.
The Washington Post has a great legacy although has been losing readers and reach for years. Jeff Bezos just bought them and with it an opportunity to give journalists the permission to be the informed and critical medium it has long forgot it needs to be (even though the general populace has become more interested in shallow celebrity stuff than real life):
There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there.
Re: The Newsroom clip—isn’t it sad that fiction says more about the truth than real life.
Unplugging | Kicking It Old School
After over a decade of being immersed in online social spaces and digital technologies it’s time to take a break.
To go deep (not just wide).
To consolidate memory.
Regain focus.
Reflect.
Create.
Play.
That means no more blogging / Twitter / Tumlbr / Pinterest / Facebook / RSS feeds…
Don’t know how long—definitely for a good few weeks / months (during my west coast trip), maybe longer.
“The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
In the past couple of years the whole social media space has become noisy with advertisers / marketeers and diluted with experts.
That being said, recently I’ve discovered the next set of questions—just have to work out if I have the energy to start another business around them and if I’m in the right place for folks who are ready buy.
Still available for hire regarding consulting and speaking gigs (no more training services though unless it’s c-suite level).
Social Media Is Dead | The Marketeers / Advertisers Are Taking Over
The dominant purpose of the social media industry is to sell or serve ads—that sucks big time!
Jeff Hammerbacher ladies and gentlemen.
Image credit
Social Media Is Not Social Media Marketing | A Growing Issue
Knowing the difference illustrates social media literacy (or lack of).
A few years ago I created the above graphic for a client to explain why social media is not social networking (full blog post). Three years later and the new frustration is the growing use of the term social media when in fact folk mean social media marketing.
A few months ago I met the social media manager for a high-profile telecommunications brand here in NZ who literally couldn’t tell me what else they were utilising social media for other than marketing:
They weren’t exploring saving time and money through collaboration platforms…
They weren’t using it to monitor and track latest news and developments in the industry…
They weren’t using it to cut print and other associated costs in their operations…
They weren’t using it to augment their professional development of the staff…
They weren’t using it to celebrate and reward their customers / clients / audience…
Marketing through social media is not bad / evil / wrong, it’s just a part of the social media pie and should be described appropriately—this also goes for the increasing growth in social media events who only talk about marketing (call them social media marketing events!).
For everyone who has ‘social media’ in your title please consider if you have that right. And the next time you hear someone talking about this subject, ask them if they actually mean social media marketing (or send them this graphic):
Grrrr!