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And the award for biggest theatrical troublemaker of the year goes to... the amateur critic. Over the past 12 months, blogging and tweeting audience members managed to get under the skin of the world's top theatre-makers in a way professional critics haven't for years.

The Resurrection of the Amateur Expert Of all the conversations instigated by CFM so far, the one arousing the greatest passion is about the changing role of authority.

ne of the core questions behind Web 2.0 and user participation (especially in the museum context) is this: what is the proper role and relationship of experts and amateur enthusiasts?

Bob Meade has been one of our most prolific 'friends' on Flickr. He has done an enormous amount of tagging, added a great deal of additional research to our images, and was the man behind the discovery of the Mosman Bay Falls. Paula Bray (the Museum's Image Services Manager) and I conducted a long face to face interview with Bob who very generously agreed to speak to us about his background and motivations. It was an incredibly revealing interview that demonstrates the power of museums and cultural institutions opening up their collections to 'amateur' researchers and enthusiasts.