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A real traditional Christmas present for the inquiring kiddie (or adult) is the Guinness Book of Records — I spent many an hour looking up the tallest and widest things in the World in years gone by — so it was great to see ‘my’ record in the new edition. For a huge portion of 2008 I ran the web side of ‘The Big Picture‘ an Audiences Central project, where we collected photographs from the people of the West Midlands. 12,896 were then turned in to the World’s Largest Photo Mosaic by artist, Helen Marshall on a huge platform at Millennium Point in Birmingham. You can see Lucy Moore (who submitted the photo chosen to be mosaic’d) standing on the finished article above (and see a lovely video of her reaction here).

While getting the World Record was the culmination of the project, the real point was to get people involved in artistic activities in some way — and it was hard work, but rewarding. The nature of the project, engaging with those who weren’t always confident online, meant a huge amount of community management and support, but the feeling of ownership that the participants came to have over the site and the project was worth every bit of the effort.

No doubt the largest social media project (in terms of engaged audience) that I’ve worked on, and it’s nice to be reminded of it.

Thanks to Jaki Booth for the photo and the spot. You can explore the mosaic online here.

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