Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum

Photo by Donna Aceto, who saved the day when my camera battery died. Thanks, Donna.

I couldn’t help but laugh last Saturday night. Click! was packed—clearly, there was an information cascade happening on the second floor of the Brooklyn Museum. Now that we are open, we are happy to have a cascade like that. Thanks for turning out for such a fun night. It was wonderful for me to get the chance to meet so many of the Click! photographers and evaluators and a lot of folks who were finding Click! for the first time.

In other Click! news, I wanted to note that we’ve just posted a podcast from the panel discussion. I couldn’t have been happier spending a morning with this group and hope you find it worth a listen.

Lastly, I was poking around Flickr this past weekend and this photo by mercurialn (a.k.a. Nate Dorr) brought a big smile to my face, so I had to share. BTW, Nathan Kensinger (pictured bottom right) has a exhibition up at Brooklyn Public Library. Be sure to catch it before it closes August 30.

There’s been overwhelming positive feedback about the idea of a Click! meetup during the upcoming Target First Saturday, so let’s do it! I’ll be giving a Click! gallery talk at 8 p.m., so I’m planning to be around from roughly 7-9 or maybe even a little later. If you participated in this process, come on by this Saturday, July 5th. It would be nice to say hello in real space This is also the last Target First Saturday to catch the ©MURAKAMI show before it closes on July 13. Should be a fun night! Full schedule here.

As silly as this seems, it’s just not real until the signs go up and here they are. I will admit, I was more than a little giddy seeing these unwrapped and going into the lobby case and Mary Jane (pictured above) was humoring me a bit by letting me take pics.

Jook Leung (above) from 360vr came in yesterday to shoot a virtual tour of the gallery. For all those who helped curate from lands far away, you can tour from your computer if you can’t make it to the Museum. But, if you can come…do it! Christine and Sarah from our Digital Lab made a wonderful set of prints (the photographers will be very happy) and Lance and Tomoko designed and installed a rockin’ gallery.

Enough already, right? Click! opens today and the panel discussion is at Figment tomorrow

…it is a study in crowds. It should come as no surprise that this title made it into one of my blog posts (there are many colleagues of mine chuckling about this right about now). That said, we are releasing the Click! website today and you’ll find it is designed much like the gallery. Images are displayed by size relative to each other given the query you are looking at—lists and scores (not something we equate with subjective subjects) are avoided. Some images fared better than others, but it’s all relative depending on what you are looking at and what questions you are asking.

All 389 images are on the website. In addition, the 78 images that will be in the gallery can now be viewed—see “In the Gallery” on the Click! menu. Keep in mind, the sizes on the website are more variable than the sizes in the gallery, so if you see your image in that 78, the sizing in the gallery will be slightly different.

Coming up we’ve got more guests writing for the blog, including two of our consultants, James Surowiecki and Derek Powazek. Our own Chief Curator, Kevin Stayton, will be posting in the coming weeks and we may have a few more surprises along the way. For now, check out the website. The results button on the right side of the page will take you there. Bear with us if you find it slow, we are expecting a bit of traffic today. Need a little introduction? Check out the lo-fi screencast. Click! will be on view beginning this Friday (June 27) and we are making good progress installing the show (see below)!

And now, one quick note of thanks about this website. I count myself lucky that I work with an incredibly dedicated and talented team who loved this project as much as I did and made sure Click! was awesome via the web. Mike, Paul, Jen - I can’t say this enough: you are awesome, you rock my world and this site is rockin’ because of your dedication. Jessica, Joe - you make life around here fun, easy, and accurate to boot. It’s a pleasure to come to work every day—thank you.

Lance and Tomoko hanging the show. We are about half way through.

As with many things for Click!, we’ve made life a little difficult, but for good reason. This Saturday (June 28) we’ve organized a great panel discussion that will be held on Governors Island. Yup, you read that right: Governors Island. A little while back, I was contacted by the peeps running Figment 2008 and asked to present something there. Figment is billed as a “celebration of participatory art and creative culture” and I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate than a panel discussing the participatory nature of Click!. If you want to know a little more about Figment, check out this article from the NYT about the event last year—I just love the “Burning Man East” reference.

This part is seriously awesome: Panelists include James Surowiecki, New Yorker financial columnist and author of The Wisdom of Crowds; Jeff Howe, contributing editor of Wired magazine, who coined the term “crowdsourcing”; Eugenie Tsai, Brooklyn Museum’s John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art; and me. The panel will be moderated by Nicole Caruth, Brooklyn Museum’s Manager of Interpretive Materials and a freelance writer and curator based in Brooklyn.

Now for the hard part: June 28 on Governors Island and the panel starts at 11 a.m. In order to make the panel on time you must take the 10 or 10:30 a.m. ferry. Ferries are free and depart from South Ferry, but seating is very limited. When you get to the island, start looking for Perkins Hall.

OK, ouch, we know that’s early on a Saturday, but Figment should be *fun* and I’m couldn’t be more excited about sharing a table with Jim, Jeff, Eugenie, and Nicole. Have an extra cup of coffee, come take a boat ride and join us!