In a world with more information than ever, figuring out how to use the brain to its fullest potential, as well as filling it with as much knowledge as possible, is the main focus of a vast amount of people in this world.

I’ve made it clear on many occasions that I believe in the importance of being a perpetual learner. One of the key activities associated with learning is exploring and understanding the way the human brain functions, and using the results of this to properly hack the critical thinking process. For example, did you know that something called a cognitive bias exists? This term refers to the tendency to think in certain ways.

Have you ever noticed that, when we’re younger, school and learning seem like a chore, and yet when we’re older, we wish we could just spend all of our time consuming information and advancing our knowledge?

Perhaps this is because our minds have matured with age, or simply because we always want to do things once we don’t have to. Or, maybe it’s because once we’ve been through certain experiences, we’re more capable of identifying our true passions.

Communication between people is 55% body language, 38% tone of voice, and only 7% the words you actually say. Quickly consider the impact of stripping away 93% of the meaning someone understands from an idea you are trying to communicate — something we do every single day when we create or interact online. The efficacy of that remaining 7% becomes incredibly important, especially if you have business or personal brand investments on the line.

Elynn Fish started her career in the corporate business world. Before the dominance of social media, she was part of a think tank building internal digital communications platforms. Fish was a pioneer in the social movement, helping companies increase their performance and ROI via content marketing and optimization of both internal and external digital communications.

Not even two years ago, Elynn realized that she had the knowledge and experience to start her own firm helping small businesses with their digital communications. With that, she started the Fish Firm, a consulting company that helps said businesses with strategic elements including content management, ROI measurement and analysis, and sales.

Elynn came across Scoop.it and content curation while following and experimenting with the latest trends in social media. Always on the brink of new digital strategies, Elynn was one of the first Beta testers of Scoop.it, using it with her very first clients.

Glenn Street isn’t your average guy. His claim to fame is being the very first mascot in  the National Hockey League, as well as one of the first mascots in professional sports.  After his debut, Glenn began receiving calls from the opposing teams asking where  they could get one of those costumes! He and his small team startedsimply sewing and  building the costumes for the random customers who were calling.

After a while, the calls started flooding in, and it became too much. That’s when Street Characters was founded. Today, Street Characters is best known for creating sports characters (mascots). Their clients over the years have included about half of the teams in the National Hockey League, National Football League, and Major League Baseball.

This might not sound like a company who needs much social media or content marketing, but we all know that a company like that hardly exists anymore these days.

Lauren Moss curates topics that tend to be a reflection of her interests and areas of research/study. As an architect and LEED AP with experience in green building and urbanism, ‘Sustainable Architecture’ and ‘Green Streets’ are topics that relate directly to her professional and personal interests, and they both highlight case studies, current events, and related news articles.

An interest in design, particularly information design and visualization, stems from her experience with the technical process of architecture and how drawings convey data in an effective and meaningful manner. That said, she finds it intriguing to explore how these concepts extend beyond the architectural realm into other areas, including education and communication, and so the topics ‘Visual Data’ and ‘Green Infographics’ reflect those interests.

“When executed thoughtfully and with intention, content curation will help to establish oneself as aknowledgeable resource who adds value to a topic or community, which will extend one’s reach beyond asingle website or platform, and for the best reasons- because others want to read what you share and will, as a result, share your finds and expertise with their own communities.”

This week, we put Ileane Smith in the Scoop.it Spotlight. Ileane has found many ways to benefit from curation and find success on Scoop.it. If you missed her story, here’s a recap:

“I’m always reaching out to the Scoop.it community, doing some searches, looking at people who scoop my stuff and discovering their topics. That has led me to educational topics, led me to discover new users, and more. I like sharing things from other people. The power of Scoop.it for me is having all the different ways that I can share that content and keep track of it and put it out there for other people.”

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Boutiika is a location-based tool for the boutiques of New York and San Francisco, providing its customers with the most stylish products and where to find them. Boutiika is primarily a search engine for young female shoppers, but the team wanted to add to this. Looking for a way to post more detailed information on products and boutiques, as well as to increase engagement within their community, Boutiika turned to Scoop.it, which allows them to provide news and information on the boutiques featured on their site while still maintaining the focus on their own product – Boutiika.com. On Scoop.it, Boutiika’s team also found many ways to integrate this great new content with their website, making it somewhat of their own content management tool. Here is a look further into Boutiika’s Scoop.it strategy:

Pierre-François Thaler, Managing Director at EcoVadis, an innovative platform allowing big companies to rate their suppliers on social and environmental performance, wanted to educate his audience about Sustainable Procurement & Green Purchasing and create top of mind awareness regarding EcoVadis. He was persuaded that evangelization was the key to do this. To take the place as a reference in this niche sector, Pierre-François decided to provide high-value content to his audience. He started to publish high-quality resources like analysis, research projects that appeared quickly very time-consuming to produce. As he needed to bring a constant attention on his sphere to evangelize, Pierre-François found the solution with content curation thanks to Scoop.it Business.

My name is Dimitri. I was born in the South West of France, and still living here for 37 years now. I’m a Web ProjectManager in a software publisher company. I assume being a geek, and I’m the father of 2 lovely girls, 8 years and 8 months old. I’ve always wanted to enter an Art or Design School, but I stopped studying just after high school (with no diploma) in order to work. For 18 years now, I’ve tested almost each job in the computing field as a self-taught person : IT Technician, software developer, Project Manager …Since about 10 years, I’ve been going on the same way concerning Web jobs, being successively Web developer, Webdesigner and Webmaster… Now thinking about it, I guess I’m ready for consulting…

Ninja Nordbo graduated with a masters in Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art in 2007. Since then she hasreturned back to her roots and to Norway, where she is currently working and living with her husband and 2 dogs. Her spare time is spent curating and blogging.

Willy De Backer is a European (Belgian) journalist, sustainability opinion-leader and professionalconferencemoderator with more than 25 years experiences in European Union politics. After having worked in politics (European Parliament) for 10 years, he co-founded Internet news portal EurActiv.com in 1999 and served for 8 years as chief editor expanding the service from a start-up to a successful online media company. From 1 June 2007, Willy went freelance focussing his research and writing on issues related to climate change, energy security, green economy and sustainability in general. He was one of the first professional journalists who started using social media (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other) to share his opinions on how to rethink our economic, social and political values and institutions in an age of “peak everything”.

Scoop.it provides us with a new and unique way to reach out to our target customers. Publishing value-added content in an attractive layout is a great way to keep them connected with our brand and to generate leads.

Tony Rath is a professional photographer based along the shore of the Caribbean Seain the picturesque town of Dangriga, Belize.

He is a trained marine biologist and has worked as a diver and underwater photographer for the Smithsonian Institution; diving on oil rigs off California; and captaining a sailboat across the Atlantic Ocean and through the Mediterranean and North Seas. Tony first visited Belize in 1979, and moved there permanently in 1988. Since then he has explored and photographed most of Belize by land, sea and air. He has also photographed the neighboring countries of Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.

He founded, along with his wife Therese, Naturalight Productions, Belize’s premiere Internet marketing company. He now leads the special projects division of the company. The company created and manages numerous award winning websites.

Jérôme Rastoldo: Born in France / Lives in San Francisco / Enjoying the Bay Area/ Passionate about music and technology / French Electro advocate / Social media geek / Working as a consultant for L’Atelier / Looking for crazy start-ups

Karen du Toit is an Information Specialist, who has worked as librarian and archivist.

At the moment  she is an archivist at the South African Broadcasting Corporation in South Africa where she works at the SABC Radio Archives. We catalogue radio and audio material for preservation, historical and rebroadcasting purposes. She has a keen interest in social media to connect, share and broaden her own knowledge base, in which curation plays a big role.