We enjoyed a talk this week by bright as a button Shelley Bernstein who is the Brooklyn Museum's Chief of Technology. Shelley seemed to be one of those rare COT's who use their knowledge (and in her case passion) to enable great things, rather than (scratch of a furrowed brow, breathe in through the teeth, followed by thumb and forefinger rub of the chin) put a dampener on a great idea with a long list of risks and acronyms that so many technology chiefs seem capable of.

The Brooklyn Museum seem to be embracing social networking, but in a genuine way. Instead of a faceless organisation participating in these networks the people behind the twitter feeds and facebook page put their own face and name to the posts and respond and engage on a personal (social) level. Fairly obvious but in my view a LOT of organisations make disastrous attempts in the social networking field and end up looking try-hard and very UNcool.

One exhibition Shelley talked about was The Black List Project. The exhibition included beautiful photographs by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and explores being black in America. To get the audience more involved in the exhibition they wanted to record people's reactions, and their own feelings on race. With ZERO budget, they rustled up some laptops with webcams, set them up to record straight to a You Tube Video channel, and Tah-Dah you have video gathering at the exhibition. Simple, and apparently effective.

In America there are way more extroverts per busload than in NZ. Kiwis might need a little more enticing to share themselves on video. I suspect you would really need to have a playback, where the audience can see the stories others have left, in order to inspire them to contribute. A simple addition, that I believe would increase effectiveness. What do you think? Would you record a message?

Thanks Shelley, for reminding us not to overbrain solutions, and to use the tools that already exist (and are now familiar to our audiences).