Curation Station is seeking a multi-talented Technical Architect who builds front end just as effectively as they build the back end. Your time will be spent working with our team to create feature enhancement while finding solutions for our clients.
Who are you?
- You are passionate for the digital space and want to do something cool.
- You are fearless with a server build.
- You meet deadlines consistently.
- You are hungry and educated.
- You enjoy the start up environment.
- You understand the power of collaboration.
- You are honest with what you can and can’t do (yet want to learn how.)
- You read 3-5 tech blogs every day.
- You are a team leader.
- A little managed chaos makes you feel right at home.
Your Skills:
- Open source advocate & superstar.
- Well-rounded in various technologies, at least 5-8 years experience.
- Good understanding of various design patterns.
- User Experience knowledge.
- Understanding of analytics.
- Can create technical specifications.
- Broad comfort level with development in PHP, Python, SQL, C+, OBJ-C, ASP.net, Javascript, Jquery, AJAX, HTML5, Flash, Content Management Solutions, Web Accessibility Guidelines, Section 508, GIT/Assembla source control, good understanding of software development methodologies, object oriented programming, database design and development, templates, style sheets, master pages, and cross browser customization.
- Very comfortable with the entire LAMP stack
- Extensive experience working on web sites and web based applications. You should have a few success stories under your belt, along with lessons learned.
- Experience with web content management systems a must.
- Exposure to database design and development on MySQL and other database technologies.
- Technical Certifications are a strong desire, however not a must.
- Bachelors degree in computer science desired, but not required.
- Demonstrates the ability to multi-task and contribute across different projects in a lead capacity as well as the ability to mentor and manage Development team resources.
- Problem solver & cool cucumber in stressful situations.
- There’s something missing from this list. You possess it. We need it.
Curation Station is seeking a multi-talented developer who builds front end just as effectively as back end. We believe in the power of collaboration: A developers voice should be heard at every step of the project, not just the end.
Who are you?
- You are passionate for the digital space and want to do something cool.
- You realize analytics drives websites.
- You thrive in a start up situation.
- You’ll understand the power of collaboration.
- You are honest with what you can and can’t do (yet want to learn how.)
- You read 3-5 tech blogs every day.
- A little managed chaos makes you feel right at home.
Your Skills:
- Open Source advocate & superstar.
- Hands on development with PHP, Python, Javascript, Jquery, AJAX, HTML5, Flash, Content Management Solutions, Web Accessibility Guidelines, Section 508, GIT/Assembla source control, good understanding of software development methodologies, object oriented programming, database design and development, templates, style sheets, master pages, and cross browser customization. These aren’t musts, but extra credit to those that have solid experience in at least 75% of these.
- Very comfortable with the entire LAMP stack
- Experience working on web sites and web based applications, mobile sites and applications.
- Experience with web content management systems a must.
- Exposure to database design and development on MySQL and other database technologies.
- Technical Certifications a big plus, but not required.
- Bachelors degree in computer science desired, but not required.
- Problem solver & cool cucumber in stressful situations.
- There’s something missing from this list. You possess it. We need it.
Please send your resume and details to: info@curationstation.com
Hello.
Today we experienced an outage due to higher-than-expected traffic and usage, which caused a server load balancing issue. Some clients may not have been able to access their administration dashboards. However, public-facing content has remained live during this outage. All client Curation Station data is stable and secure, and always has been.
The issue has been addressed, and is currently stable. All clients should be able to access their admin dashboards as of 4:15 p.m. CST.
Thanks to our clients for your continued interest and loyalty in our software. If you have further questions about this issue, please contact your CS sales representative.
One of the first questions our clients ask when we present Curation Station is, “how did this come about?” I sometimes stutter to answer wondering if they want to know how we as a society are publishing mass amounts of content to the web or where we had our “aha” moment. Inevitably, I answer the aha moment knowing that we’ll get to the mass quantity of content topic later.
Curation Station was born out of the frustration that many of us feel with regards to the time consuming effort it takes to do something with the great content we find on the web. For instance, let’s say you love tomatoes and you want to tell all your friends about tomatoes. But really, vine ripened Roma tomatoes are your passion and you can’t stand Cherry tomatoes. How can you gather all the content about Roma tomatoes, filter out Cherry tomatoes and decide on a binary choice which items are the most important to share?
Our team cobbled together all types of technology mash-ups to create a solution to this. Nothing working terribly well. One day, we were sitting in a clients office in the Guggenheim building (no kidding) and the idea to build our own solution was sparked.
Since then, we’ve worked with our clients to help us build the most robust curatorial tool available. We’ve spent hours defining with them the best features, uses and UX. (And we thank all of you who where in our Alpha and Beta testing groups.) We’ve made the process simpler, faster, more efficient. We are saving clients money and increasing conversions.
On Monday, Curation Station was selected to be one of 10 tech semi-finalists for the Minnesota Cup. We owe that to a lot of great people. We’re looking forward to the continued participation in the event as well as our continued collaboration to make Curation Station a useful and relevant product.
Aha.
Guest post by Jake Achterhoff
I start my day checking out NPR’s news headlines, quickly move over to Twitter to see what the people and brands I care about are buzzing about this morning, poke through Digg and Gizmodo to soak up a few bits of knowledge to try and impress my more tech-savvy coworkers, then hit up Metacritic to help me shape today’s playlist. 15 minutes have gone by and I’ve already had a good start to my day.
Each of these brands consistently deliver fresh, relevant content meeting the daily needs of millions. Those in the digital landscape who are taking action, developing a content strategy that introduces their brand to new users and keeps existing users coming back, are embracing the idea that (quality) content is king. Offering content that is connected, grouped and arranged, provides the reader with the most useful, informative experience possible. This is not a new concept, readers have always relied on newspapers to horizontally aggregate information and RSS feeds have made vertical aggregation a part of most Internet users’ lives, but surely a concept that must be reshaped by brands trying to stay relevant in a noisy, crowded, sometimes low-quality landscape. Curating this avalanche of information highlights and contextualizes the data in a way that adds value to your website’s content. As Steve Rosenbaum said, “Curation is the new role of media professionals.”
If curation is the new role, what happened to the old one? Aggregation, while extremely useful before the onslaught of social media status updates and tweets, is dated. Where before there were few publishers putting out high-quality content to a huge audience (see: mass media), the model has been turned on its head with the number of “publishers” exploding and their audiences becoming relatively limited. The new problem has become deciding how to synthesize and utilize this information. Content is being produced too quickly and by too many to efficiently hone in on the ever-elusive “good stuff” and having huge quantities of information does not help the user or the brand. Curating content which already exists to support your brand message is as important as creating new information. It builds focused, high quality, useful material around an identifiable theme and directs it toward a specific audience. Doing this consistently validates a brand and is the first step toward forging relationships with users who can truly drive it forward.
Curation helps brands and individuals take control of the conversation going on around them and intelligently lead it; utilizing the existing content and putting it to work. This takes dynamic effort which contrasts the relative passivity of aggregation. The conversation is fluid, ongoing, therefore a curator must be similarly involved tailoring the content to tell a story which reflects the brand, individual or audience’s image and taste. Yes, curation requires strategy, consistency and time on the behalf of the curator, but in the process builds an identity and helps shape the path of a brand.
There’s a lot of discussion going on about content marketing and curation but there seems to be some confusion about what a curator is in the context of digital media. Last week Christy Barksdale posted a good explanation of curation and the importance of content strategy over at the PR 20/20 blog. In this post she pulls together a number of definitions, source posts and ideas about content curation. Christy also points out one of the key benefits of curation for businesses:
“…by sharing the most relevant, thought-provoking online content, curation can establish individuals and companies as authorities and thought leaders.”
Although this post did not get into the difference between editors, librarians and curators, it did get me thinking about these things. In the context of journalism, the editor is the filter who acts as the “curator” for news. A librarian knows how to tag things so they can be found and where to go find things. But a curator finds the best content about their area of expertise for the purpose of telling a story. That’s the difference between an editor, librarian and curator.
Photo by CRGPIX via Flickr
Brands have a business strategy. They have a product, they have a system of distribution for both their product and the messages about their product. There is an opportunity that exists for brands to become what we call, “trusted content houses.” This is very different than the previous — maybe dominant — view that brands were just trying to shove their perspective down everybody who would listen’s throat. A trusted content house has all the best information about a vertical so they become a trusted source with consumers.
Publishing was built on the behavior of curation where an editor would pick and choose content to craft the most interesting package of information for their audience. Not all of this content was authored by the publisher but selected — or curated — from the best sources available to them from around the world.
If you think about it, brands now have direct access to what they used to pay publishers for: a distribution channel for their messaging. In the past, publishers controlled the distribution system for messaging large groups of consumers in a cost effective way. Today most everyone has an internet connection and access to their own new media channels like blogs, social networks and other social media services. Through these new channels both brands and consumers are becoming their own publisher. These new “publications” should be kept fresh with new and curated content just like newspapers and magazines have been for a long time.
Good publishers are great editors and curators. We see brands increasingly becoming trusted content houses enabled through curation.
#SXSW or South by Southwest is awake in Austin, TX this week. It’s such a great time of year. People are conversing about the future and posts pop up about those conversations.
We’re convinced curation is a behavior many of us will hopefully become quite good at in the near future. There is so much value to be created, so much benefit to be had. We’re convinced to the degree that we’re building a service to help aid the process. In that line then it’s great to see posts, like this one by Josh Rose, indicate that among the top thinkers and doers on the internet there is a desire for curation.
Onward!
I read Kristina Halverson’s new book, Content Strategy for the Web, recently and I was struck by how much is involved in creating quality content. I think this image of all the steps I took a quick picture of from my Kindle makes the visual representation of the point that there is a lot that goes into making good content.
Look at all those steps! They look like they take more TIME than might initially be estimated and cost more MONEY while also being more interdependent and complex than most budgets for time and money allow. Kristina attests to and argues for those points quite specifically. She also offers a perspective on moving forward and making valuable content.
I was particularly interested in reading the book because a significant chunk of information managed by Curation Station fits within various content strategy structures. Content is good.
While reading there were a couple quotes that stuck out specifically for the topic of curation. I thought I’d share them with you.
Quote 1: “In a world of information overload, content curation is a valuable service that can be offered by any organization with a point of view, be it a product focused, service-oriented, or other.”
Quote 2: “[curation] means a select person or team of people is actively searching for content that meets unique standards identified by the content strategist.”
That’s do able. Let’s do it. Curation is about selection with a purpose. Easy. We all have points of view. Let’s just apply that to content.
Now that everyone and every organization has a media channel the question is how good are we at being publishers.
Publishing was built on the disposition and behavior of curation (as were museums, etc). Done well publishing makes fresh, relevant and renewing content easy to access. That then instigates people to return. It also builds trust in the organization responsible for the tuned selection of things and the publishing of it. Moreover, it builds value over time for those paying attention to a given source.
As content explodes around us the curation of it is proving to be a valuable service. It’s good for users because it saves time and is even better when coming from a trusted source. It’s good for brands and organizations and people because it’s a behavior that offers an extension of point of view done in a way that can provide a result similar to but better than customer-service. The value is delivered before it’s requested!
We’re in a gold rush on information. We’re all looking for the good, the best, the ultimate and/or “right” point of view. This is getting exciting. We can all or do have media channels and therefore we’re all publishers. The question is, how good are we at it?
It’s not accepted for pushing to take place in lunch lines or in the hallways of world headquarters. It is accepted on the football field and wrestling ring.
The past brand messaging assumption was a whole lot like pushing. It was like being a participant in a contact sport. The context allowed for it. The stronger you were the more people you could block on an offensive line, the faster you could mitigate double coverage and score. Money and scale were fast at work. Where communicating used to be like football it now has much less shoving. The context has changed dramatically. It’s now much more about expressing point of view, being helpful and personal. It’s less brawn, more considered action and care.
The current context has changed the common assumptions of the yester-paradigm. We know this. Now, what do we do about it? It seems communication is now about finding ways to express ideas in non-pushy ways. It’s about sharing with, making space to hear from and connecting with would be and current buyers and people of opinion.
One of the ways to express point of view is to curate content in public view that aligns with that point of view. Curators have the opportunity to tell story, to follow what intrigues them and shape the result of their work. We think this is a way forward for brands. We think this is a way forward so much so that we’ve built Curation Station for people and brands to curate content, what ever and where ever it is, to craft perspectives, act on their points of view and share stories where they want to.
It’s now expected that in world headquarters as well as where the decisions made in those buildings are carried out that there be no shoving. We’re excited to be a part of people and brands expressing their points of view.
Now that virtually everyone and every organization has a media channel the question is how good are we at being publishers.
Publishing was built on the disposition and behavior of curation (as were museums, etc). Done well it makes fresh and renewing content which instigates people to return, trust, value and share content from that entity.
As content explodes around us the curation of it is proving to be a valuable service. It’s good for users because it saves time and is even better when coming from a trusted source. It’s good for brands and organizations and people because it’s a behavior that offers an extension of point of view, customer-service or product/service information.
It’s a gold rush on information. We’re all looking for the good, the best, the ultimate and “right” point of view. This is getting exciting.
Onward! Curation!
Our friend Lee Odden offered some cold reality last summer, when he observed, “Many businesses are hard pressed to come up with original articles, blog posts, videos, images, presentations, etc on a regular basis.” Is this you?
Creating and distributing original content isn’t easy. It requires quite a bit of funding—to define business objectives and target audience, develop strategic insights, inspire compelling creative and ultimately produce work people actually notice. It also takes a lot of time.
Curation offers a distinct alternative in this paradigm.
Curating the world’s content—to uncover and celebrate ideas and insights in tune with your brand—can serve as a welcome balance to the costs involved in developing original content.
The strategic work still matters. In other words, you still need insights and direction to guide brand leadership, to guide curation. But the time and funding required to curate content can be significantly less than that spent creating original content. Of course, the balance depends on the subject matter your brand lives within—and the volume of existing content those topics generate.
We’re interested to see how brands evolve the ratio of their content in the age of empowered consumers, and suspect curation will supply an increasing share of that output.
Control.
Ownership.
Finite expression.
The history of brand-building was built on premises like these. You hired creative firms, tested and formulated ideas then tightly directed how your brand stepped forth into the world.
Today empowered consumers can and will define your brand in their own terms, on their own schedules, as often as they want. The issue isn’t how to stop or legislate these new expressions, but how to leverage their energy.
Curation embraces the crowd.
Curation provides brands with a different kind of control—one that acknowledges, differentiates and celebrates outside perspectives.
Curation extends the ownership of a brand’s voice to those that ultimately purchase or utilize the brand.
Curation allows brands to continue speaking after corporate budgets are spent, by harnessing expression created by brand enthusiasts.
[Image via Flickr by TokyoGoGo at SpringLeap.com. All rights reserved.]
Truth be told, brands were never in control. But they had lots of money and media channels were exclusive; the public had little power, except with their wallets.
That reality shattered in the mid 1990s, and continues to mutate. Today, brands are most definitely not in control, media outlets are a dime a dozen and consumers are radically empowered. Tell me something I don’t know, right? Perhaps the better question might be: Tell me what to do in this new reality?
I suggest brands adopt the role of Curator, and embrace the practice of Curation.
In other words, brands ought to embrace the unending flow of content created by people outside their corporate walls and the corporate walls of the firms they hire to create ads, brochures, videos, etc. Brands should get curious, comfortable and excited about the idea of empowered consumers telling stories, about and related to their brand, industry and its subject matter.
Brands should be tastemakers—like radio DJs and newspaper editors.
When a brand curates, it’s saying and demonstrating several key attributes of modern (e.g. influenced by social media) marketing:
“We’re listening.” Curation demonstrates your brand is taking the time to see what our audiences are saying, what interests them and gets them excited, or angry.
“We have opinions and perspectives, just like you.” Curation helps guide your advocates and enthusiasts by showing them how your brand sees the world.
“We like what you have to say.” Curation is a pat on the back, a thumbs-up, that tells advocates and enthusiasts you appreciate the content they’ve created. Essentially, this action says, “Do more like that!”
In the past, there was comfort in control. But that control was limited by budget. Today, there ought to be greater comfort in community–in the realization your brand does not have to be the only creator and disseminator of ideas and opinion that might persuade others. And who wouldn’t prefer to diversify the expense of producing branded-content?
The solution to today’s marketing challenge lies in curating content that’s right, from your brand’s perspective, to help guide and influence the never-ending conversation in today’s marketplace.
[Image via Flickr by Tommy Kupo. All rights reserved.]
Near the end of last year many leading voices in the blogosphere called for the “curation” of social content. With the rise of Twitter as a communications channel arguably as powerful as blogs themselves, the need to filter out noise and find “the good stuff” as never been more necessary and many times illusive in the torrent of content there. Add YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Friendfeed and blogs to the mix and you have a real challenge just to keep up.
The challenge today for brands is to find and surface the conversation around their products and services in order to participate and extend their brand onto the social web. Many brands have started by listening to the conversation on social channels and some have engaged directly with their customers to extend their customer service or in some cases sell products. We think the next evolution of social marketing is not just taking part in the conversation but to act as curators. We call this, “social curation.”
There are several different ways social curation can be done. The most basic is human powered where people vet social content and tag the most relevant bits. Another method is using algorithms, such as how Google News works, but the technology is not yet smart enough to filter and rank all the social content reliably. So we think the best approach is a combination of these two approaches.
Once the social content has been selected, the next challenge is to put it to work. Many times this is a manual process that takes coordination between the communications department and IT. If automated, the result is often ugly RSS aggregators that don’t blend with the design of your existing website and are not updated in realtime.
To solve this problem we’ve developed a tool called, “Curation Station,” that puts social content to work for brands and marketers. We’ll be blogging more about this service here soon along with other thoughts about social curation. We hope you will join us.
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