Curating Collections (How I use SpokenWord)

[Vince Veselosky]

I'll have some deeper feedback for this discussion in a day or two. Too many ideas going through my head at once. But to start with, I wanted to answer Doug's questions about how I use the tool. I'm still just experimenting with it now, so this is just a "where I am today".

My intention is to take the "curator" role seriously, and use Collections as topic-oriented channels that can be subscribed to directly or fed into another interface, such as a section of one of my web sites. As such, most of my collections don't subscribe to many feeds directly, but rather tend to be built up from individual programs that have been screened for content and quality.

My primary collection ("My Queue") is my screener. Pretty much everything would go through the screener collection first, and then if it passes muster, get collected into one of the topic-oriented collections. The screener collection isn't really meant for public consumption, but it could be followed too. I might collect lots of feeds (or other collections) into my screener as well as many individual programs. (In practice, I'm still doing most of this through iTunes where I already have subscriptions, but I'm experimenting with migrating them to SpokenWord.)

The programs that find their way into my queue are usually found elsewhere on the web, via my feeds or Twitter. When I find something interesting out in the world, I come to SpokenWord to find it, and add it if I can't find it, just so I can collect it. I hardly ever just tool around the SpokenWord site looking for content (but that may change).

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Vince Veselosky
Web: http://www.webquills.net
Twitter: @veselosky (http://twitter.com/veselosky)

[Ken Kennedy]

I like that concept of using the primary collection as a "screener", Vince. I do a similar thing, but with a slightly different workflow. I may incorporate some of this! Thanks for sharing.

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Ken Kennedy
Contact info: http://kenzoid.com/me/contact