CHAPTER 1

CURATION: WHAT IS IT?

When I was 13 years old, I was a magician. I don't mean card tricks and parlortricks. I was into the big stuff. Harry Houdini, The Great Thurston,illusionists, escape artists, and mind readers. And back then, there was noshortage of gizmos and books and apparatuses that a young boy could buy. Therewere catalogs and magazines that featured page after page of gleaming boxes,swords, silk scarves, and grandly adorned illusions. If you had an allowance,there was always some great new magic trick ready to help you amaze youraudience. In magic tricks, there was an endless abundance. What was a boy to do?

Well, there was a solution: a special place where magicians in the know went tosee the latest gear up close, watch demonstrations by great prestidigitatorsbehind the counter, and end up spending their hard-earned allowance money on theright new gizmo. It was called Tannen's Magic Store, on 44th Street inTimes Square. And although it was a four story walk-up, anyone who found theplace could be assured of a few hours of deft salesmanship and some insiderknowledge as to which magical flourishes were popular, which of the latest shinyillusions didn't work, and which patter would keep your audience mesmerized.Tannen's was nirvana for a young magician. Sure, the store had a catalog, butthat was for suckers. The smart money knew that if you trekked to the store,you'd get a better deal and buy the right stuff. I didn't know it then, but thefolks at Tannen's exposed me to my first truly curated experience. Theyseparated the good gear from the cheap knockoffs, they added a special aura ofknowledge and experience—and they turned a deck of cards with amimeographed set of instructions into a treasure. They added context, meaning,and knowledge. I loved that place, and I still do. Even as magic has fallen outof favor for this generation of boys and girls, Tannen's remains a curatedexperience that has kept it solvent, and special, since its founding in 1925.Buying a magic set at Toys "R" Us just can't compete. The difference between acurated retail experience and a generic one isn't limited to magic shops. Aswe'll soon discover, brands and retailers who are standing out in this noisyworld are increasingly replacing abundance with smaller selections of carefullychosen offerings.

CURATION COMES IN MANY SHAPES AND SIZES

There are some words that arrive in our world meaning one thing and over timemorph into a new idea.

Tweeting was a thing birds did, before Twitter. Now the word has new meaning. Itused to be that you could learn about people you were interested in byresearching them in print or by asking their friends. Now you Google them. Theremarkable pace of change is having an impact on more than our lives and ourinteractions, it's changing the very words we use to describe what we do.

Today, the word that describes much of what's changing is curation. It'sboth a new word and an old one.

In the past we lived in a world of disciplines. The senior editorial leadershipat magazines were known as editors. The folks who chose which TV shows played ona TV network were programmers. The people who picked which things would be onthe shelves of your local stores were retailers. Each of these professionsinvolved choosing the right items, putting them in the proper order, andcreating a collection that was appealing to an audience or consumer. Oh, andthere was that rarified individual who selected objects of art to present in amuseum or gallery: they were called curators.

Today, curation is the coin of the realm. Film Festivals curate their program.Web sites curate their editorial. The team at the shopping site Gilt Groupcurates the items it offer for sale. Curation was once a word thatseemed to mean highbrow, expensive, out of reach of mere mortals. But todaymuseum curators must compete with media curation at Newser, collections ofhandmade crafts at Etsy, or the curated collection of the best roll-on luggageat Squidoo. Certainly curation means quality, but now quality is in the eye ofthe beholder.

Curation, as we'll come to explore it in the pages that follow, comes in manyshapes and sizes. It is critically important to understand two things. First,curation is about adding value from humans who add their qualitative judgment towhatever is being gathered and organized. And second, there is both amateur andprofessional curation, and the emergence of amateur or pro-sumer curators isn'tin any way a threat to professionals.

Curation is very much the core shift in commerce, editorial, and communitiesthat require highly qualified humans. Humans aren't extra, or special, orenhancements; humans are curators. They do what no computer can possiblyachieve. There's far too much nuance in human tribes and the taste of groups andindividuals. Curation is about selection, organization, presentation, andevolution. While computers can aggregate content, information, or any shape orsize of data, aggregation without curation is just a big pile of stuff thatseems related but lacks a qualitative organization.

There are places where we're going to see curation happen first, mostlyeditorial enterprises such as Web sites, magazines, and other media. Andalthough it may seem like curation, as a trend, is declaring war on oldinstitutions we've known and trusted, the simple fact is that curation is goingto save these organizations, not destroy them. Not long down the road, curationis going to change the way we buy and sell things, the way we recommend andreview things, and the way we're able to mobilize groups of like-mindedindividuals to share, gather, and purchase as groups. Curated experiences are bytheir very nature better than one-off decisions about what to buy or whom totrust.

But the real power of the trend toward a Curation Nation is that, for the firsttime, we can see a future in which individuals can galvanize and publish theirpassions and knowledge in a way that will create value from personal passionsand niche expertise. Imagine a time when your love of travel, fine wines, andcollectable lunch boxes each provides a revenue stream. Okay, maybe not afull-blown...