✪ My Curation Lineage: A Personal Knowledge Map You Can Borrow From - #74
From Rohit Bhargava to Ivan Illich: The 29 people (most of them you have never heard of) behind my curation approach.
Introduction
In life, whether online or in the physical world, one of the smartest ways to build visibility, authority, credibility, and trust online is not to talk more about yourself. It is to help others understand the territory in which you operate.
Most people publish opinions, updates, promotions, and recycled advice. That can generate noise, but rarely lasting trust. A stronger move is to become the person who maps the landscape. Show the key players. Surface the best tools. Clarify the trends.
Explain the hidden opportunities. Connect the dots others miss. Help people navigate complexity. Curation, in simple words.
For this issue, I chose one specific slice of my own territory: the people who most influenced my interest, curiosity and passion for curation, knowledge management, sense-making, and organizing information assets.
Who changed how I think? Who sharpened my judgment? Who expanded my curiosity? Who helped bring me to where I am today? Here is the answer. Some are famous. Many are not. Some build tools. Some write. Some research. Some simply see earlier and more clearly than others.
What unites them is simple: they reduce noise, reveal signal, connect ideas, challenge lazy assumptions, and make complexity easier to navigate. It is from them that I learned that curation is not simply sharing good links to interesting resources. It is a lot more: Taste. Ability to choose with reason. Editorial judgment. Pattern recognition. Service to others. Knowledge infrastructure. It is a way to show how much you care and be trusted. It is your competence, experience and sensitivity made visible.
These curation influencers of mine are not all strictly curators or teachers of similar disciplines. They are more lighthouses who have inspired, channeled and moulded my interest for curation in a very unique, personal direction. They have taught me that the most valuable contribution one can make is often not in creating more, but rather in helping others find what matters, understand it faster, and act with more clarity.
So this is not a traditional article. It is what I’d call a piece of knowledge infrastructure. A map of influence. A personal lineage of thinkers, builders, scouts, editors, philosophers, and practical explorers who helped me understand what real value creation looks like in an age of overload.
Index
☞ Theoreticians - Practioners
☞ Startuppers
☞ Academicians
☞ Researchers - Explorers
☞ Emergent Practitioners
☞ Theoreticians - Practitioners
1. Robert Scoble
Why he matters
Robert Scoble matters because he was one of the earliest people to prove that discovering and surfacing what is new can be a real public service. Through Scobleizer, Fast Company, and Building 43, he turned relentless signal-hunting into a visible media role: tracking fast-moving tech, interviewing founders, testing products early, and helping people understand where the next wave might be coming from. More recently he created AlignedNews, a strong example of a human-guided newsradar combining personal source selection, trust criteria, taste, and AI executive action.
What I learned from him
Curation can be done at high speed without becoming random if you stay close to sources, builders, demos, and emerging edges.
Being early, curious, and public in your exploration creates value before consensus forms.
Sending people outward to useful resources is not a weakness. It is a powerful communication, marketing, and trust-building strategy.
Bundling relevant discoveries into one reliable stream can become a serious service.
Why you may want to follow him
Useful if you care about emerging technology, startups, AI, spatial computing, and early signals. Especially valuable for people who prefer first-hand access, demos, founder conversations, and fast-moving discovery over polished after-the-fact commentary.
2. Maria Popova
Why she matters
Maria Popova is one of the clearest living examples of literary curation as authorship. Through The Marginalian (originally Brain Pickings, launched in 2006), she built a body of work connecting books, poetry, philosophy, science, art, biography, and history. She demonstrated that curation is not simply collecting excerpts or resharing links, but a deep meaning-making practice based on selection, synthesis, context, and long-term devotion. She has also consistently defended proper crediting and attribution to original creators and to the intermediaries who help ideas travel.
What I learned from her
Crediting and attribution are essential for discovery, learning, and knowledge transfer.
Ideas become more alive when connected across time, disciplines, and human experience.
Reading is not passive intake but active recombination.
Originality often comes from how deeply absorbed ideas are reassembled.
Serious curation can become a lifelong intellectual path.
Imagery and visual identity can become part of a curator’s signature.
Why you may want to follow her
Ideal for readers tired of disposable content and hungry for work that rewards slowness, curiosity, memory, reflection, and beauty. Studying her editorial method remains deeply instructive for anyone interested in curation
3. Stephen Downes
Why he matters
Stephen Downes understood early that learning was no longer mainly about mastering a fixed body of content, but about building and navigating networks of people, ideas, and sources. That shift moved value away from institutions and toward the learner’s ability to find, connect, filter, and make sense. His long-running OLDaily is one of the strongest examples of curation as a serious intellectual discipline. He once described his work as using the network to collect, organize, and redistribute information, like an airport hub where many strands meet, are reorganized, and sent onward.
What I learned from him
Real value comes from selecting, reworking, and redistributing information with added meaning.
A natural “network second layer” emerges online that filters, clusters, interprets, and specializes information flows.
Knowledge is distributed, and know-where can matter as much as know-how.
Good filtering systems can become public learning infrastructure.
His work inspired my ideas around newsmastering and newsradars.
Why you may want to follow him
Highly valuable if you care about learning, education, AI, personal knowledge networks, and self-directed alternatives to rigid institutional models. His daily and weekly flows remain useful for serious learners.
OLDaily newsradar
Wikipedia page
“The Network Second Layer” - the initial spark Stephen gave me.
4. Rohit Bhargava
Why he matters
Rohit Bhargava was the first to introduce the term content curators around 2008 and helped start a visible trail that - albeit slowly and gradually - gave legitimacy to a practice (curation) that was still poorly understood. Through his books, keynote work, and the long-running Non-Obvious series, he built a repeatable method for finding weak signals, grouping them, naming them, and making them understandable to normal people. His work sits at the intersection of curation, trend analysis, innovation, and practical foresight.
What I learned from him
Curation is pattern recognition plus framing for a specific audience.
If you collect enough signals across categories, hidden trends start to emerge.
Seeing more than what meets the eye is a discipline built through practice, structure, and curiosity.
Non-obvious opportunities often sit quitely beyond what is already popular and easily accessible.
Curation can be a highly respected professional skill, not just an informal hobby.
Why you may want to follow him
Rohit can be very useful if you care about trends, innovation, future shifts, and making complex change understandable. Especially valuable for consultants, strategists, marketers, and experts who want to become better at noticing what others miss.
5. Harold Jarche
Why he matters
Harold Jarche matters because he turned personal knowledge management into something practical, social, and accessible to everyone. Through his well-known Seek, Sense, Share framework, he showed that knowledge work is not mainly about storing information, but about finding what matters, making sense of it, and sharing it in ways that help others. His work consistently connects learning, networks, reflection, and useful contribution.
What I learned from him
Curation requires filters, reflection, and added value.
Learning improves when ideas are tested inside trusted communities.
Private notes alone are not enough. Sense-making grows through sharing and exchange.
The same habits that help you learn deeply can help you create value for others.
Sustainable knowledge work depends on ongoing practice, not on one-time hacks.
Why you may want to follow him
Excellent for people overwhelmed by information who want a simple but serious operating model for learning, thinking, and sharing. Especially useful for experts, educators, researchers, and consultants.
6. Edward Tufte
Why he matters
Prof. Tufte shaped much of how I understand information design, a field highly relevant to curation. Through books, seminars, and decades of analytical work, he showed that the way information is presented can clarify truth or hide it. Charts, tables, maps, reports, and documents are not decorative objects but thinking tools. His critique of clutter and ornamental design remains foundational for me.
What I learned from him
Design is not beauty first. It is helping people see evidence clearly.
Curation is also arrangement: what you include, compare, label, sequence, and emphasize changes understanding.
Ink and pixels should serve function, not decoration.
In complex information spaces, muted presentation helps what matters stand out.
Good presentation of information / data increases the perception of truthfulness and credibility.
Why you may want to follow him
Essential if you work with reports, dashboards, research, teaching, publishing, or evidence-based communication. His books themselves are masterclasses in expert curation through examples and critical analysis.
7. Ted Nelson
Why he matters
Ted Nelson is one of the earliest systems thinkers to imagine a connected information world long before the web came to be. He coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 and through Project Xanadu proposed features the modern web still handles poorly: two-way links, version history, visible attribution, reusable fragments, and durable connections to original sources. His 1974 book Computer Lib / Dream Machines was a visionary curated cultural artifact anticipating the personal computer revolution.
What I learned from him
Curation is about building infrastructures for understanding.
Knowledge systems should preserve context and source relationships.
Attribution should remain visible and alive.
Non-linear navigation can reflect how real thinking works.
Bold imagination matters when existing systems are limited.
Why you may want to follow him
Highly relevant if you care about publishing, archives, authorship, knowledge architecture, and how digital documents could work far better than they do today.
8. Ivan Illich
Why he matters
Ivan Illich wrote one of the most inspiring descriptions of what the web could become before the web existed. In Deschooling Society (1971) he argued that learning should not be forced through centralized systems but supported through open access to resources, peer exchange, voluntary guides, and freely chosen paths. His concept of learning webs remains strikingly close to the internet at its best. He was a fierce critic of the progressive institutionalization of learning, medicine, and many areas of life.
What I learned from him
Institutions can quietly weaken human autonomy when they monopolize basic needs.
Authority by badge alone deserves skepticism.
Trusted filters and open webs can outperform rigid funnels.
Real learning grows through curiosity, seeking, experimentation, and self-direction.
Good curation nurtures curious learners not passive recipients.
Why you may want to follow him
Essential if you question rigid educational systems, centralized authority, or packaged expertise. His ideas remain deeply relevant for anyone interested in critical, independent thinking, self-directed learning and human freedom.
☞ Startuppers
9. Sari Azout
Why she matters
Sari Azout matters because she is not only writing about curation, she is building tools for it. Through Sublime, she has championed the idea that knowledge should be networked rather than trapped inside private note apps. Her essays often argue that in the AI age, productivity alone loses value while taste, sensitivity, originality, and the ability to notice what truly matters become gradually more important.
What I learned from her
Strong curation projects are often born from interests beyond pure profit.
Curation is creating environments where ideas collide.
AI should expand imagination, not only accelerate output.
When machines summarize everything, human taste becomes more valuable.
Slowing down and looking deeper can be a strategic advantage.
Why you may want to follow her
Excellent for people interested in discovery, search, taste, learning, creativity, and where curation may be heading next. Her articles and essays, albeit infrequent, are often revelatory of important emerging trends. Curation and the effort to slow down and look deeper into things is the hill where she will stand.
10. Kei Watanabe
Why he matters
Kei Watanabe, co-founder of Glasp, beyond product building, the branding, editorial tone, and steady execution, has created a communication and positioning strategy that builds visibility, authority and credibility through curation.
What I learned from him
Public appreciation of others can become valuable content.
Curation can begin with highlights, notes, and annotations.
Visible reading trails build credibility.
Generosity can be a growth strategy.
Why you may want to follow him
Useful for readers, researchers, educators, and experts who want to build presence through substance rather than performance. Especially relevant if you want to learn publicly, share discoveries, and turn everyday reading into visible value.
11. Kazuki Nakayashiki
Why he matters
Kazuki Nakayashiki, CEO and co-founder of Glasp, is building build a great ecosystem of curation and learning tools, one step at a time. He is the one who in practice, more than anyone else, has helped transform highlighting from a private reading habit into a public form of curation. Through visible highlights, notes, and reading trails, he showed that what we save and annotate reveals judgment, interests, and learning paths.
What I learned from him
Big things are often built brick by brick.
You do not need perfect communication skills to start publishing.
Improvement comes through repetition and questioning.
Genuine relationship marketing works when the product is useful.
Why you may want to follow him
Worth following if you care about purpose-driven product building, learning tools, curation, and steady long-game execution. Useful for founders and independents who prefer patience, usefulness, and consistency over hype.
12. Marshall Kirkpatrick
Why he matters
Marshall Kirkpatrick understood early that the web rewarded those who could find signal in noise. Through TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, the Little Bird app, and more recently WUWT, he treated discovery, network intelligence, and source monitoring as serious strategic work. Across multiple projects he has consistently focused on helping people see what is emerging before it becomes obvious.
What I learned from him
The web rewards systems that detect emerging signals early.
Curation is also network intelligence and source discovery.
Good tools amplify human sense-making.
Pattern recognition across ecosystems is highly valuable.
Why you may want to follow him
Strong reference for scouts, analysts, researchers, and anyone wanting better ways to understand complex topics and track what matters early. Especially useful if you work in fast-moving sectors where timing and awareness matter.
13. Gabe Rivera
Why he matters
Gabe Rivera matters because with Techmeme he proved that smart aggregation is not secondary work but editorial infrastructure. He built a fast, trusted map of the tech news cycle by combining software-assisted discovery with human judgment, surfacing not only stories but the conversations around them. Instead of forcing readers to scan dozens of sources, he created a reliable command center where the most relevant signals could be seen in minutes.
What I learned from him
Curation can scale when paired with automation.
A small independent operator can outperform larger media structures with a better model.
One-page interfaces can become indispensable if signal quality is high.
Newsradars can be replicated across niches and regions.
Why you may want to follow him
Essential study material if you want to understand aggregation, editorial systems, and how curated interfaces become daily habits for professionals. Especially useful for founders, journalists, analysts, and niche publishers who want to see how trusted filters are built.
☞ Academicians
14. Luciano Floridi
Why he matters
Luciano Floridi is a leading philosopher of information who helped explain why information itself has become central to modern life. His work offers language and frameworks for AI, ethics, trust, identity, and the deeper structural changes created by digital systems. His concept of “distant writing” is absolutely central to the future evolution of any digital curatorial work. He is valuable because he translates abstract technological change into concepts serious people can reason with.
What I learned from him
The infosphere is an environment we inhabit, not just tools we use.
Ethics should be designed into systems from the start.
AI can be seen as interface and thinking partner, not only as co-author.
Technology changes roles, responsibilities, and human identity.
Why you may want to follow him
Excellent for thoughtful professionals who want to understand AI and digital change beneath the hype cycle. Especially useful if you want depth, not headlines, when thinking about technology.
15. Tiago Vieira Rodrigues
Why he matters
Tiago Vieira Rodrigues matters because he gave philosophical legitimacy to a belief I strongly share: in the AI age, value shifts from generating text to exercising judgment over text. His Apt Curation Model reframes the human author as evaluator, architect, integrator, and responsible agent. This is important because it gives rigorous language to what many practitioners feel intuitively.
What I learned from him
Authorship is increasingly about choosing, verifying, refining, and structuring outputs.
Curation is a serious knowledge act, not secondary labor.
Accountability remains human even when AI assists.
Judgment becomes a premium scarce skill.
Why you may want to follow him
Highly relevant if you care about AI, authorship, trust, philosophy, and how expertise survives automation. Especially useful for consultants and experts building authority through discernment rather than volume.
PhilPeople profile
☞ Researchers - Explorers
16. Andrej Karpathy
Why he matters
Andrej Karpathy matters because he deeply understands AI and can explain it clearly to normal humans. Through research leadership, public talks, and practical teaching, he has helped many people understand what modern AI can and cannot do. That combination of depth plus clarity is rare and makes him one of the most useful interpreters of the field.
What I learned from him
Look under the hood instead of treating AI as magic.
Clear explanation is itself a form of curation.
Simplicity without distortion is rare and valuable.
Understanding limits matters as much as understanding strengths.
Why you may want to follow him
Excellent for creators, strategists, builders, and curious professionals who want substance over hype in AI. Ideal if you want technical reality explained without jargon or theatre.
17. Tiago Forte
Why he matters
Tiago Forte helped make personal knowledge management practical and actionable through the Second Brain concept and the PARA method. He showed that notes, resources, and unfinished ideas can be organized into reusable assets for better work. He made an abstract topic usable for everyday professionals.
What I learned from him
Collecting information is useless unless it can be retrieved and reused.
Good systems help connect scattered ideas.
Personal archives can become creative fuel.
Curation includes making knowledge newly alive when needed.
Why you may want to follow him
Highly useful for experts, consultants, and lifelong learners who want better systems to think, remember, and create from accumulated knowledge. Especially relevant if you feel overwhelmed by too many saved notes and fragmented ideas.
☞ Emergent Practitioners
18. Mapu
Why she matters
Mapu is one of the youngest voices in my permanent discovery stack and one of the clearest signs that human filters are the future. Through her publication Instead of Doomscrolling, she does more than share links. She builds thoughtful roundups explaining why specific essays, podcasts, videos, and sources deserve attention. In a noisy environment, that kind of calm, intelligent filtering is rare and valuable.
What I learned from her
Curation can protect attention, not only inform it.
Selected nourishment beats random consumption.
Being a broad generalist can improve pattern recognition.
Cross-domain curiosity helps navigate unfamiliar fields.
Why you may want to follow her
Excellent if you feel overwhelmed by too much media and want a trusted guide to sources actually worth your time. Especially useful for polymaths, curious readers, and people seeking quality recommendations across many fields.
19. Thomas Klaffke
Why he matters
Thomas Klaffke matters because he curates to help people think differently. Through his newsletter Creative Destruction, he explores reframing, regenerative futures, narrative shifts, and new lenses for interpreting the world. He uses curation as a tool to reopen imagination where stale mental models dominate.
What I learned from him
Curation can break rigid paradigms.
Sequencing ideas can dissolve old assumptions.
The right lens can matter more than more information.
Good curation can expand imagination.
Why you may want to follow him
Highly valuable if you are open to see and re-interpret many of the systems we give for granted today. He’s an untiring resource for thought-provoking rabbit holes. He is valuable to those interested in trends, the future and where things may be heading tomorrow. Essential for experts, thought-leaders and influencers who want not just more signals, but better frameworks through which to interpret them.
20. Adriana Lakatosova
Why she matters
ADRIANA L. Lakatosova, through Scenius Mag, curates the intersection of technology, culture, work, and systems without falling into hype or doom narratives. She is a culturally literate filter for slow structural change, paying attention to how technology quietly reshapes work, creativity, and daily life.
What I learned from her
The best curation often follows recurring tensions across domains.
Environments we build end up shaping us back.
Curation can track systems, not only events.
Consistency and coherence can beat volume.
Why you may want to follow her
Very useful if you care about cultural shifts, AI, work, future society, and subtle patterns beneath headlines. A strong model for quality over quantity publishing.
21. Ron Kersic
Why he matters
Ron Kersic matters because as a natural contrarian - through his Substack pub Futuring Architectures - he challenges a very common bad habit in strategy and tech: pretending we know exactly where we are going. Instead of talking about fixed horizons and goals, he talks about a “cone of possibilities”, meaning the future is not one destination but a range of possible paths. His work encourages exploration over false certainty.
What I learned from him
The future is not fixed. It is something to explore, question, and keep reinterpreting.
Through good curation one can expand other people’s imagination, while revealing alternative new paths.
AI should not only be seen as an “oracle” that gives answers, but also as a “muse” that helps us explore ideas.
Why you may want to follow him
Highly useful if you care about systems thinking, AI, futures, ecosystems, and how to think beyond rigid planning models. Especially so for curious people who want better questions, broader lenses, and a way to navigate complexity that is more human-friendly.
22. Matteo Azzolini
Why he matters
Matteo Azzolini matters because he studies brands, luxury, fashion, and culture as systems of meaning rather than as simple marketing exercises. He helps decode how relevance, timing, archives, signalling, and authenticity shape value. His lens is useful because it goes beneath surfaces and explains why certain symbols, products, and moves gain cultural weight.
What I learned from him
Context creates value as much as product quality.
Archives can be strategic assets, not nostalgia.
People trust visible craft more than polished surfaces.
Strong brands carry cultural meaning, not just promotion.
Why you may want to follow him
Useful if you care about branding, fashion, luxury, culture, and seeing the difference between empty aesthetics and real strategic moves. He helps sharpen your ability to read value signals with more intelligence.
23. Niall Doherty
Why he matters
Niall Doherty, through eBiz Facts, brought skepticism, transparency, and actual testing into a space full of fake gurus and recycled online business myths. He basically reviews indie ways of making money online by examining indie success stories critically, with sources, reasoning, and visible review criteria.
What I learned from him
Curation becomes powerful when it protects people from bad decisions.
Stories carry special weight when teaching ideas.
Synthesis separates trusted guides from mere reporters.
Transparency builds unusual credibility.
Why you may want to follow him
Excellent if you want realistic online business examples, indie case studies, and honest analysis without hype. He basically builds his authority by critically showing alternatives, not on telling readers which is the right way. Especially useful for beginners suspicious of guru culture.
24. Michael Simmons
Why he matters
Michael Simmons matters because through projects like Blockbuster Blueprint he showed that strong content often comes from obsessive research, careful source selection, synthesis, and smart packaging. He serves readers who value depth, logic, and well-assembled insight over superficial opinion.
What I learned from him
Curation is disciplined source selection plus synthesis.
Better inputs create better outputs.
Deep learning improves creation quality.
Packaging matters when sharing insight.
Why you may want to follow him
Excellent for experts, writers, consultants, and educators who want to create fewer but much stronger pieces built on serious research. Also good if you want to learn how advanced use of AI can turn ordinary writing into high-impact transformative work.
25. Morten Tabor
Why he matters
Morten Nyboe Tabor studies how the future often fails to behave like the past. By curating and analyzing relevant research papers and through his work on Knightian uncertainty argues that real change is often unforeseeable, not just hard to predict. That matters a lot in a world obsessed with forecasts, models, certainty, and control. His publication “Modeling an Unforeseeable Future” is a must-see example of high-value curation at work.
What I learned from him
Our future prediction models, the ones heralded by many universities and mainstream media as near-infallible and often as decisive proof to take key world-impacting decisions, sometimes miserably fail because reality changes in ways that cannot be fully anticipated.
Good thinking is not about pretending to know the future better, but about building ideas, strategies, and tools that remain useful over time.
Honest thinking accepts uncertainty.
Curated research can challenge mainstream confidence.
Why you may want to follow him
You may want to follow Morten if you are suspicious of experts who sell confidence through neat predictions, smooth charts, and fake precision. He is worth following if you care about economics, uncertainty, systems, forecasting, and how to think more honestly in a world where structural change keeps breaking yesterday’s assumptions.
☞ Entrepreneurs
26. Greg Isenberg
Why he matters
Greg Isenberg matters because he has a sharp eye for early signals. He is consistently good at spotting new products, startup opportunities, community dynamics, and internet behavior before they become obvious. He acts as a practical scout for what is emerging online.
What I learned from him
Curation can be market intelligence.
Watching niche communities reveals demand early.
Product experiments contain hidden signals.
Opportunity often appears first in weird corners of the internet.
Why you may want to follow him
Highly useful for founders, builders, marketers, and curious independents who want a smart fast-moving filter for what is gaining traction on the internet.
27. John Rush
Why he matters
John Rush matters because he saw early that directories are not junk side projects or cheap SEO tricks. Done well, they are useful curation-based products that save time, solve discovery problems, and can generate real revenue. He openly built and shared such projects.
What I learned from him
Directories are practical curation.
Curated collections reduce noise and speed decisions.
Useful resources can monetize through many simple models.
Infrastructure products can begin small.
Why you may want to follow him
Very useful if you want to build independent products, niche databases, directories, or monetized resource hubs. Especially useful if you want to understand how curated collections can become real businesses instead of just “content”.
28. Tim Stoddart
Why he matters
Tim Stoddart matters because he sees curation as business infrastructure, not filler content. He is very clear that a brand newsletter should do the heavy lifting for readers by distilling and organizing useful information, and he has used that idea in practice through projects like The Census and through directory-based lead generation. He helped show that useful curation can drive authority, search traffic, leads, sponsors, and clients.
What I learned from him
Curated newsletters are powerful authority builders.
Directories can be serious business assets.
Useful content compounds over time.
Curation can drive real commercial outcomes.
Why you may want to follow him
Excellent for creators, consultants, and operators who want a grounded view of newsletters, SEO, audience growth, and digital assets.
29. Pieter Levels
Why he matters
Pieter Levels matters because he turned curation skills into products people willingly pay for. Through Nomad List and Remote OK, he organized scattered data into highly useful decision tools for where to live, work, and find opportunities. He built knowledge infrastructure, not commentary.
What I learned from him
Good curation can become premium paid value.
Useful products often begin from personal pain points.
Constant filtering and iteration improve relevance.
Rankings, databases, and maps can become strong businesses.
Why you may want to follow him
Essential for indie founders and builders who want to understand how small teams can turn scattered information into profitable global products.
Closing Reflection
Looking back at these influences, one pattern stands out clearly. The people who created the most value were rarely the loudest voices, the most polished personalities, or the ones producing endless streams of content. They were the ones who helped others see better.
They organized confusion. They surfaced overlooked opportunities. They connected scattered dots. They built tools that saved time. They made complexity easier to navigate. They gave language to things others could sense but could not yet explain.
That is why I believe curation matters more now than ever.
When content becomes cheap, discernment becomes expensive. When everyone can publish, trusted filters become essential. When AI can generate endlessly, human judgment becomes premium.
This collection is also meant as an invitation: Map your own territory.
Identify the people, tools, ideas, communities, and turning points that shaped how you think and work. Show the lineage behind your expertise. Reveal the sources of your standards. Make visible the influences that helped build your judgment and taste.
Very few people do this. Which is exactly why it builds trust.
Paradata
Intent:
The goal in creating this resource was to start putting into practice, in public, some of the content strategies I recommend to experts and consultants: map your territory. Show that you know it. Map the tools, suppliers, experts, organizations, news sources, and so on. Publish these maps and keep updating them year after year.
Why?
Because they demonstrate your competence without you claiming it, build credibility, and can be very useful to those following your advice, both as practical sources of valuable pointers and as artefact models to use as references.
Process:
1) I spent time considering different topics I wanted to cover, and after deciding to move in the direction of territory mapping, I took the time to look back at my past work and archives to gradually identify all of my curation sources since the year 2000, when I started curating content online.
2) Over a few hours spread across two days, I came up with 29 names that I mapped visually on a mindmap. I wanted to see them all at a glance to stimulate my visual memory. These are the people I consider my official curation influencers, people who in one way or another have shaped my appreciation, understanding, and practical skills in curation. I then grouped them into six categories based on the professional role they had in relation to curation.
3) I decided to extract and synthesize three key information elements for each person:
a) why this person matters in this context
b) what I specifically learned from him/her
c) why you may want to follow or read more about him/her
4) I manually wrote each information card based on my personal memories and impressions, with little or no use of AI or external sources. I wrote without worrying too much about form or style. I visited official websites and social profiles only to verify facts I was unsure of and to check whether I was missing anything relevant. This process helped me deepen my knowledge of many of these people beyond what I knew before.
5) I asked AI to take all of my information cards and normalize them into a consistent format and length, while removing duplicate statements and decorative or redundant text.
6) I added multiple reference links for each person, manually re-verified and edited the full text, and added a fitting introduction and conclusion.
Tools:
Pen and paper initially to identify the topic.
WiseMapping.com (100% free) to create the mindmap and visually identify all my curation sources.
ChatGPT for info-card cleanup and normalization.
AI use:
Limited. Used for content verification, grammar, and normalization into a standard format and length.
Time:
Conception time: 3 hours
Influencer identification: 3 hours
Info-card compilation: 10-12 hours
Verification and editing: 3 hours
Extra writing (intro, outro, paradata): 1.5 hours
Formatting: 2 hours
Approximately 20-25 hours total work.
What I Can Do For You
If you are an expert, a consultant or professional coach, striving to become a recognized trusted guide in your field of work - without resorting to marketing tactics or persuasion techniques - I can be of help.
Check out the Curation-Based Authority System, a mini-video workshop (55 min) that takes you through the most basic curation formats to build authority and credibility online, while showing you the requisites, the examples, the key steps to follow and the easy-to-make mistakes you need to avoid.
N.B.: You can access it 100% free by simply placing a zero in the price field.
Follow a path with a heart.
From Koh Samui (TH)
Robin Good
Thank you, Robin! We're honored to be included in your curation lineage. Your work on curation has been a big inspiration for what we're building at Glasp.
Thank you for mentioning me, Robin!
It’s our honor to curate things together with you.