Overwhelmed? Ya think?

I blogged earlier about attending the National eXtension Virtual Conference.  It was an amazing conference, and I took away a lot from it.  It meant I haven't had time to concentrate on readings for Change11, but I'll get back to that next week.  I think the NeVC will have recordings up, check here. Two other speakers at the conference connected to what we are doing for Change11.  Clay Shirky and Stephen Rosenbaum  both had some really good observations on curation. (I'll talk about Rosenbaum later; missed Robin Good's talk).

Curation, after all, is what I am doing here.  Picking out the best of what I've found this week, and passing it on to a group of people I hope will be interested.  How else are we going to handle all this noise?

The important part about curation, I think, is to create dense nuggets of information that users can connect to what they've found, or file away for later.  The basics, for me includes tags ("Shirky" "curation"), a short but intensive summary, and a picture.  Here's mine, just a sketch for a start.  Perhaps I will hone it down or develop it as I learn more.

Clay Shirky speaks at the
National eXtension Virtual State Fair,
19 October 2011 

 I cropped this photo to be sure only the essential information is seen.  I'm adding a paragraph that's cropped in the same way:

 Clay Shirky speaks. (books: Here Comes Everybody = organizing without organizations and Cognitive Surplus = creativity, generosity in a connected age).  Takeaway: communications technology is allowing our society to self organize.  The natural result is a gift culture based on reputation that encourages creativity and democracy.

This need to curate and share information is something seen quite often virtual worlds.  People love to pass on what they have learned.  We're all teachers, I guess.  Blogged on this a while ago.