Tagged: curation

WHY WE’RE HERE

Without giving the impression that I know the answer to the BIG questions, I came across something today that put into greater context why we’re here in Networked Media.

The always-up-to-date birds over at Nieman Lab put me in touch with a great article, ‘The Art and Science of Hiring For Media Startups’ at Idea Lab. One of the highest values sought after when hiring people for media startups is the adaptive, inspired, varied skill and knowledge set to mix content types:

Curation thinking: This is another critical hiring and company culture parameter. No media startup can survive doing just original content, it has to be a mix, of original, of curated or aggregated, of licensed if that is an option. It means hiring people who have the ability to mix content types, and not be moral about it. You’ll be surprised at how many journalists look down upon curation. In a small team, curation thinking also means learning to do a lot more with a lot less…

We are the engineering students of the 20’s! Adaptivity, ideas, innovation, vision, creativity, care, curation – this is the attempt of Networked Media. I say attempt, because  I’m still not totally convinced of the unlecture format (Brian Morris: where are you?). It’s week three and the open forum lecture format is still being ‘worked out’. Also, Jasmine The Tutor felt she had to qualify her very valid opinions with “I’m not sure if that’s right”. Command authority girl! This disclaimer was a whole lot more contradictory to Adrian’s rant than Elliot’s commercial / structuralist breakdown of education exchange. Thank God I don’t have a student tutor.

We are not empty vessels to be filled.

The lecture today also addressed the theme of being, after a student challenged Adrian as to the point of attending lectures if they aren’t relevant.

Without directly answering the question but ‘speaking to it’, Adrain mused that university is not a place of commodity consumption or of a service provider/customer dynamic. Ultimately there is a transact-ory exchange at play, I do have to pay for my degree eventually and would hope I have been elevated by the experience in terms of knowledge acquirement and career prospects. How one chooses to approach their university education is an entirely subjective attitude, which I’m sure favours those who actively engage with content. I care and try really hard at university. Knowledge and awareness are perhaps my greatest values. I am a voracious autodidact. Know, universe and teachers, that I care.

Adrian is gunning for a new communication strategy that involves producing students who are independant thinkers – I can’t not appreciate that. I am therefore grateful to have stumbled across Adrian’s methods in Networked Media (even if the subject is a bit wonky) to wisen me to the importance of speculative media practice. I suspect it is possibly the only safeguard against a complex, diversified, ever-evolving industry (and which warrants a learning curriculum to match).

On ‘The Network’

The unique recipe combinations of ifttt.com from today’s tutorial are testament to the intertwined, evolving nature of content sharing on The Network – it’s boundaryless. Weaving information together, like in curation, is seamlessly managed by clean interfaces optimised for only essential viewing (RSS). In the same way I might find myself speculating a solution on the job, Adrian asked us to think of our ideal ‘What if…’ if I could do anything on my blog imaginable. Then he systematically demonstrated how each speculative request could for the most part, be achieved (such as, automatically post my Instagram pictures to my blog when I share them on Instragram). The exercise demonstrated Model II behaviour by changing the question being asked instead of the method used to solve the problem: why begin at the start? Why not begin with a speculative ‘What if?’ no matter how far away in the future-y future its likelihood may appear? To use an example from the lecture, these processes are rewiring our brains from planning exceedingly logical essays to learning through practice in the most non-linear of ways.