For me, Shelley Bernstein from the Brooklyn Museum was a highlight speaker in this early session.

Shelley spoke about the agile and creative online projects that the small team at the Brooklyn Museum are creating to attract new audiences.

Cutting through some of the user research demographics, she simply stated that the Brooklyn Museum treats their online audience as a “single, credible group that has value in it’s own right”.

This was supported by the quality of projects they were producing such as the Facebook app Artshare: a new way for users to share their collection and display their favourite art works in their Facebook profile.

She went on to present the results from their youtube competition launched in October last year. The quality of the content was superb, fresh and low-fi. Shelley noted a good point about the importance of clear rules for their online competitions and the importance of letting the user know what the brief is and what they are being asked to do.

The Brooklyn Museum seems to be a small, confident leader in this field, where larger museums find it harder to be reactive and agile in such a high octane web 2 environment, Shelley and her team seem happy with the model of “begging for forgiveness when the project has launched” rather than “pleading for permission to go ahead”…

A refreshing and confident attitude that is attracting a credible, sustainable and engaged fanbase.

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click/

photo by thornj

I’ve just returned from MIPTV the AV and digital content market held each year in Cannes. It’s a vast event – over 13,000 delegates attend – and the buzz of trade inside the Palais des Festivals is matched, if not outstripped, by that of the deals being struck and contacts made in the many coffee shops, bars and hotels along the Croisette.

While there to build on Cogapp’s links with TV indies and broadcasters - and to explore the creative opportunities of convergence and multi-platform - I made sure I found the time to attend a number of conferences. The MIPTV programme gives a useful insight into what are currently felt by the industry to be some of its most pressing challenges and opportunities – and so I’d thought I’d pick up on and summarise a few themes that kept cropping up: the growth of online video, monetisation and how to measure engagement. Or, media, money and metrics…
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