Personal and Professional Data Curation

I'm a data hoarder. I love collecting digital tidbits. From bookmarks to pictures to essays to emails to notes to heart rate data to gps data. There's a ton of data in my life and I'm always looking to collect more.

The way I treat my personal data is similar to the way a museum curator treats art. They store a lot, display a little. They fiddle with storage technologies that don't break down the ink/pigment. They craft a vision of their collection and constantly cull pieces to enrich the whole.

So I'm really a data curator. In fact, we all are. More an more we're all tasked with managing our personal and professional data. Often the person who can find that email or recipe or photo more quickly has an advantage. I'm not claiming it's the deciding factor in job performance, or even a big piece, but it's an element of what we all do.

I have data in many places. Here are the primary ones:

• blog (datablogging) - essays, pictures, workout data, my life online, ~6942 posts, ~17733 images


• mythredz - microblogging/status updates, ~3182 updates


• gmail - email, communications, ~sh*t tons


• google tasks - my high level todo list, ~20 at any time


• livescribe - digital pen/notebook w/computer sync and audio, ~300 pages


• jungledisk - backup of 10+ home, work computers, ~100Gb


• jungledisk sync - shared work folder for i.d., shared personal folder across computers


• google calendar - appointments


• google sites (wiki) - work-related stuff for i.d.


• confluence (wiki) - work related stuff for pingfit, dneero, datablogging


• evernote - quick notes, things to remember, ~250 notes


• windows home server - 6Tb of movies, music, files, backups, etc


• vimeo - personal video, ~233 videos


• jira - software bug/defect tracking software, ~2,000 issues

And those are just the primary places. Whenever a new technology comes out I usually give it a go. I love experiencing another person's or company's vision on data storage. Some focus on bits and bytes. Some focus on user experience. Some focus on integration.

My process is something like this:

• Sign up, install, hello world use


• Dabble for a while, see if I like it


• Try to integrate it deeply into my data life


• Fully adopt/embrace

Usually I only make it to the first or second step. I have to really like something (or have a strong need for it) to try to integrate it into my life. Integrating it into my life means that I add it to my browser start page, add links on my desktop or whatever else it takes.

Synchronization is key. I have a lot of computers. I'm always reinstalling operating systems. About a year ago I switched from Outlook to gMail and that triggered a complete focus on synchronization. From Jungledisk synchronizing folders across my computers to emails accessible anywhere. I need to be able to pick up any computer with an internet connection and start working. Google Tasks, for example, is available on my phone and any web-connected computer. Same with Evernote. One of the reasons I chose an Android phone was the developer community which will write all the data sync tools.

Backup is critical too. Losing data in unacceptable. All of my data storage tools must give me a way to back them up quickly and easily. Hopefully in some automated fashion.

Organization helps me find stuff. Most tools have tagging, categorizing, searching, etc. This is all well and good. But for me the key is to agree on a strategy of organization. That's the hard part. Training myself to always tag expense notes with the "Expense" tag. If I don't train myself then the tool's organization features are useless.

I have a personal data workflow. I add tools like skydivers add gear... only one piece at a time. Changing my workflow and habits is the hardest part.

Removing data is a critical piece of the puzzle. I do this in two ways. Hopefully I'm smart enough to remove dead/useless data as I go. But more often than not I get busy/lazy. So every now and then (whatever that means) I need to do a sweeping review of each tool. For example, last week I reviewed my Evernote notes and deleted maybe 200 out of 500 notes. They weren't needed any more.

Personal and professional data curation is something we all do in the background but something that can help our lives enormously if we do it right.