The term "Curating" makes most people think of museums, but it may be valuable to think of curation in the terms of different metaphors.
One way to look at curation, is to think of your curation platform as a scrapbook. The scissors on the Curator Badge represent the "clipping" of digital stories to your scrapbook. Stories can be news items, links to web pages, images, or any kind of content.
Another way to look at Content Curation is to think of quilting. Alison Jean Cole said she thought of curation as a process like sewing. It is the Curator's task to "sew" together different stories, ideas, and images to make a new work.
What does a Curator need to do? Curators don't just collect links on their platform. Curators also Add Value to the stories they collect, and, most importantly, the give credit to the original content producers.
International Quilt Museum (CC BY-SA Maureen Ose)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMn-cJHzF8A
Robert Scoble suggests that a new curator should focus on a niche, something very specific that no one else is doing like curating content about the pets that live at the White House. However, if you want more of the Cabinet of Curiosities feel, you can curate content from a broader theme. An example of a niche Hot Topic would be The Loch Ness Monster, a broader theme would be something like Unexplained Phenomenon (which would include Nessie as well as Bigfoot, Crop Circles, and Alien Abductions).
For further information, you can check out Robin Good's Organizing and Curating Content on a Subject May Actually Be The Best Way To Learn It
What Topic or Theme would you like to curate? share in a comment below.
