It must be the synergy effect in effect... thoughts on curation and creation

”Curation will be prized a lot more over creation in the future”

Alison Mooney - psfk.com Conference NYC

I spent part of my lunch hour debating this sentence with Innes Johnston today. Innes is a dear friend who, in part, runs eat-a-cd with his wife and brother. I see what they do on their site as being curation... and used the quote to demonstrate the point.

It did get us thinking if curation is actually more important than creation... will it be really more prized?

For me, the action of curation is to bring together... to use some form of judgement to filter through various options and present this selection... for consideration by others.

To this end... art galleries are curated... so too blogs and magazines... anywhere there is thought applied to the content on show.

Curation is important... but then so is creation. It's a symbiotic relationship - the curator needs the creation to filter and promote... and the creator needs to be promoted and to feature in an independent curation is important praise.

I think if the phrase used was "trusted curation" then I would have an easier time agreeing with the statement. Over time, certain curators demonstrate their taste and ability to appeal to your aesthetic sensibilities... and become trusted. I am more likely to buy an iOS app featured in Swiss-Miss or Notcot... because the blogs and the curators behind them have proven themselves worthy of my trust due to their taste.

But the thing is... I can't get over the fact that the bringing together of things is more important than the things themselves. It must be the synergy effect in operation?

Is the output I produce as a result of my filtering process more important than the content itself?

I think there is a need for humility in the presentation of the filters... in acknowledgement that whilst the curation is very important, it is the icing on the cake... or should I say, the icing on someone else's cake.

There is too much "stuff" out there. I failed in my Lenten fast partly because of this fact. We need effective filters to reduce this noise... and this is where curation comes into it's own as something to be truly prized.

However, I believe the best outcome would be for us all to seriously consider the "act of filtering" and seek to develop our own abilities.

I guess this is where discernment comes into play. We need to keep thinking for ourselves. We need to curate our curators... and even become curators for others. This blog, for example, or my mixcasts are my attempt at this.

Just as we are becoming our own publishers & creators... we too will become our own curators.

And that's where the real prize is, imho.

Tx