The need for great content curators has never been more urgent. And if you’re like most of us, you have tons of important content, such as documents, videos, spreadsheets, family photos…
But what happens when you can’t find the right content when you need it? It’s time you turn to eXie.
eXie was designed specifically to help you easily collect, organize, curate and share all your important information. And since it runs entirely online, everything is accessible from anywhere, anytime. eXie is a highly scalable cloud-based platform for planning, curating and publishing content collections without the cost, complexity or learning curve normally associated with applications of comparable purpose
The problem of personally organizing content certainly reminds us of the challenge of organizing data.
In the data management world, the original disruptive innovation was the personal calculator-with-a-memory. But even more influential, many would argue, was the spreadsheet.
If you leave out storytelling, building spreadsheets is one of the few ways that most people have ever stepped beyond lists and outlines when they wanted to represent a logical grouping of subject matters. The “natural” appeal of spreadsheets is easy to describe: I have several things that I care about (columns) and I care about each of them in several ways (rows). It is not very difficult to navigate the collection of data.
The simplicity of that approach is why it is so easy to stretch beyond organizing “facts” (the typical spreadsheet ingredient) into organizing “ideas” (the stuff that content collections are made of). I have several ideas that I care about (columns) and I think about each of them in several ways (rows).
A typical frame of reference (or framework) tackles the task of organizing ideas about a given subject area. Usually, the first challenge is to decide what is important to understand about the subject “this time”. We “model” the subject area — literally, we represent it — with those decisions.
If there are three main things to know this time, the framework considers them to be three “dimensions”. The most familiar example of this is with objects, where we can pay attention to the height, width and depth — 3 dimensions. We might add a fourth dimension — time — and even a fifth dimension such as cost. You can probably imagine that fewer dimensions are easier to manage and think about than are more dimensions…
Finding Content Value
One of the biggest challenges we have now is from having so much unrestricted access to information. Whether we see information as data or as ideas, nearly everyone experiences an overload of it. The problem is not something that just happens to us; much of the time it is because we are actively looking for information, using fairly powerful tools; and in the process we’re simply getting more than we needed or knew what to do with.
When we get around to taking the resulting collection of information seriously, one issue is to separate the valuable stuff from the rest. But we are easily reminded that, like clothing, particular information has varying importance according to how and when it might be used. We might keep a wide range of things just in case”…
Often we find that if someone else goes through our collection of information they come away thinking of different dimensions than we do. The difference is usually attributable to their point of view and their need. That is, we may not always be aware of how the information can have value until someone or something shows us. Punchline: there is not only one “right” way to understand something. There can be multiple ways. The dimensions that you choose make up your model of the subject area at that time. You can also make or get other models for other occasions.
One of our colleagues from the “data science” world, Joseph Pusztai at the company Cubewise, talks about this same flexibility. He writes:
“…accurately representing the dimensionality of your model is where “modeling art” meets “modeling science”. Many data mining (e.g. classification and clustering) algorithms purport to identify the naturally occurring dimensionality and hierarchies in your data, but often human intuition can do a better job, as well as enable you to introduce new dimensions into your model that did not historically exist (e.g. a car company launching their first electric vehicle will have no historical sales or production data for it). Humans are also very good at understanding that there is rarely one giant monolithic model behind a set of data, rather, we are usually dealing with dozens or even hundreds of smaller independent models, holistically interacting with each other along common dimensions. “
In that statement, we can substitute a few words (switch “data” to “content”) to recognize how the statement applies to ideas (concepts) as well as to facts.
An algorithm is like a filter; the way the filter is constructed will allow some things to be kept on top or forward, while other things fall through or away. We might literally discover a range of different things that have something in common keeping them caught, as one group, by the filter. As an alternative to algorithms, human intuition, usually reflecting experience or belief, can also provide a filter and a “commonality” that groups things. That one thing found in common is like a dimension.
Human understanding, especially including different flavors and levels of subject expertise, easily accounts for why one framework can satisfy an audience while other frameworks are also valid for the same content. With eXie, one collection of content can be seen in various ways, for example by several of the different personas that are found among eXie users. A historian, a teacher, and a designer may have different respective frameworks for the same collection of content.
Do It Yourself
For your own purposes: when you pick a subject area, decide what level of expertise you want to use, and choose your “dimensions” (called themes in eXie), you are then well on your way to cataloging your curated (selected) content items for an audience. (Remember that your primary audience may be yourself in some future moment!)
By using themes to point out what you care about in the subject, your framework columns get named. Then you can point out the main ways that you usually care about those themes, which become names for your framework rows (called topics).
In data modeling, there is a lot of excitement about the powerful new tools that analyze facts and discover ways to organize them in models. With content collections, subject matter experience is held in an extremely fast and powerful tool — the mind — and modeling the collection of concepts takes place with both some new discoveries and as reinforcement of what is already familiar.
Imagine going into a warehouse where anything could be interesting but nothing is organized.
The first thing you’d want to do is get somebody to bring you things specifically for the reason you wanted them. Whatever your reason is, it represents how you want to use the items, and your next consideration is whether they are in a form that makes them useful the way you desire. Will you have to modify, arrange, or assemble them further, before you can use them the way you want?
Similarly, you might go into a store where there is a large supply of food ingredients. But they may still be a long way off from being a meal, especially the meal that you want at the time. It’s clear that having someone choose, prepare and organize the ingredients as a served dish would make you a lot happier.
Content is all about ways to experience ideas.
Most of us collect content for reasons that make sense to us; but when it comes time for others or ourselves to use it again, there’s a big difference made by how much processing has taken place to have it meet our need.
We can see a wide variety of things that can be done to match the content in our collection to the preference of a content user.
In the illustration here, activities on the left name many of the most typical ways that people expect to use content. On the right, we see many of the most typical places that someone expects to find content that has been cared for and prepared for ongoing or recurring use.
As content collectors or contributors, we are usually vary familiar with what these activities are like and what these results are like, mostly through the form that they usually take. What makes it all better is knowing how to make the form work best.
Shaping the content for use is where eXie lets you be the source of its final value, picking up from the level where content is just good quality ingredients, and finishing with where it is a good quality experience.
The beginning of that is curating — going into the collection with an audience’s point of view in mind and using that point of view as the selection criteria for what content will get forwarded to the audience. This will result in a more specialized collection that is a subset of the original one.
The specialized collection then gets organized internally to make it apparent why the content within it can be useful in a given way.
The ultimate use of the content is also a part of the audience’s initial expectations that help define how the focused content collection should be arranged for and recognized by users. Sophisticated or “rich” content usually consists of multiple items brought together — composed or coordinated for presentation in the same place.
At that point, the experience offered by the content can make all the difference between your content being merely adequate and being preferred.
Using eXie, you can easily present your content collection — in a view that always immediately shows:
how the audience refers to ideas — each frame labels what kind of thing is under consideration and why
where to get the content that relates to those references — each frame cell holds links to any chosen content from any online location
what most interesting other ideas are associated with the ones initially in mind — the “big picture” of eXie’s content frames confirms that selected content is distinctive yet not isolated from broader interests and choices
And because of eXie’s layout, the same view is equally useful to both you as the content provider and your audience as the content user.
The discovery that will occur is how the eXie presentation serves easily as any one of the typical forms used to deliver curated collections of content.
The great thing about having a fully mature Read/Write web is the number of different ways that we can share the content we have crafted. But this can also be too much of a good thing.
Where Stuff Is, and Why
It’s not unusual for some item of interest to show up in various guises, at any of the following locations. We took a shot at lining them up, noting what key difference one place might offer versus another. No apologies for obvious omissions, here… We’re just making a point: there are reasons why people do things so many ways. (Feel free to change the chart…)
Even more to the point, all of these options are so easy to use that a LOT of them get used, especially by anyone who has a frequent desire to get an audience for the content they have.
As a result, even though each event of content placement may be well-justified at the time, it is fairly easy to wind up with content scattered widely, outside of any overall plan.
What about your own files?
Do most people have that problem? No. The majority of the time, what we see above turns into someone collectingother people’s content, while people who are distributing it are fairly unconcerned about where it is.
But if you are a producer of crafted content, you care. You put effort into protecting the quality, relevance and best use of it.
And if you’re saving content, then you’re collecting it. Your collection is, essentially, the full set of locations you actually used to store the full set of items that you decided to save.
The problem occurs as those items wind up in locations that do not help us to keep track of them.
We “lose track” in several ways:
Forgetting whether we have a piece of content appropriate for current use
Revising and Re-purposing content at risk to earlier suitable uses
Duplicating content under different names at different places
These issues all make it more difficult to know that the right content item can be easily found whenever it is next needed.
What makes matters worse, folders also tend to go through these same risky changes.
Whether most of your content is on a cloud drive or is spread about across the web, you may recognize the challenge we all have in common when it comes to the usefulness of our collections.
The way out of the vicious cycle is to tackle disorganization up front. And the best time to do that is when using the content will be rewarding.
Our idea is that we should make organization easy enough to make content usage rewarding.
Recently we looked at a case where the work of one author was spread across numerous subjects and content sites over a long period of time.
While it was easy to rely on search engines to try to find currently accessible copies of this work without date or place restrictions, there was the common problem of how frequently the items had begun to lose or change their connection to a currently relevant interest of the author’s audience.
We decided that the diversity and distribution of the content was actually hiding the author’s steady commitment to certain subjects. We started to find and group the items, link them visibly to a focus on the subjects, and publish a selective catalog of the available materials as curated portfolios for each subject.
Using eXie, we built the frame shown here, making it easy to see each major subject addressed in the overall collection of works. We dedicated a column to each subject. Then, to make it clear where the works were being sent and found, we specified those locations generically, in separate rows.
eXie Portfolio Template
The result was a master “frame of reference” to the distributed content, able to “map” both the online access points and the overall breadth of the collection.
Content gets solicited and presented in different locations for different reasons. With the frame, we regrouped the content based on its ideas instead of on those occasions. Then we assigned the online locations to the appropriate groups.
Capturing the locations of the content within the groups of ideas made it possible to see how it contributes conceptually to the strength of the author’s ideas. Additionally, it became easier to see whether the quality or style of the content is holding up well for broader or longer use when working with the idea..
In effect, the frame also reveals where new or improved content would be appropriate. This triggers a curatorial perspective that also transforms the collection into a source for selective portfolios.
Another of the possible follow-ups will be that content found in one location can, through comparisons, influence the content found in another location, to improve either of them or inspire additional new content. The frame shown here tracks seven potential portfolios (columns). Over time, targeting content to different locations becomes a more refined decision; meanwhile the consistency and sharpness of the ideas can develop selectively in the context of the portfolio.
A final observation to make is that the frame’s groupings, and a portfolio, can include multiple types of content media, which will demonstrate the content maker’s ability to address diverse presentation circumstances while retaining consistency in the ideas communicated.
