Good local examples of how organizations should blog and use other online media
The Wren's Nest
www.wrensnestonline.com/blog
The Wren's Nest is the historic home of Joel Chandler Harris, the Atlanta Journal editor who published the Uncle Remus stories near the end of the 19th century. It's now the oldest house museum in the state, featuring tours and storytelling among other things. We recently interviewed Lain in a podcast about The Wren's Nest if you're interested in hearing more.
Lain Shakespeare, executive director, and other employees/interns/volunteers share blogging responsibilities so that no one spends too much time with it.
The great thing about how that blog is written is everyone clearly has a lot of enthusiasm for their work and what it means. They find ways to make it interesting and relevant to a modern audience. But it's written like an actual human is talking, and not like a press release. They're not afraid to make fun of themselves or to own up if something isn't going as well as they'd like.
They also podcast readings and offer Google videos of some of their story tellers.
Sopo Bikes Cooperative
http://www.sopobikes.org/blog
Sopo is a non-profit where a bunch of Atlanta bike enthusiasts share a space and tools to work on their bikes. Rachael, the executive director of Sopo, periodically will share interesting stories from some of the folks who come through the shop.
The site features a Google video on its homepage that gives people a sense of what the co-op is about.
Probably later today, I'll post a podcast interview I did with Rachael last week. I'll update this post later with a link. [Update: here's the link to that interview]
Center for Civil & Human Rights Partnership
www.cchrpartnership.org
This blog just started a few days ago, but looks like it's off to a good start.
The Center for Civil & Human Rights, if you haven't heard of it yet, "will commemorate the groundbreaking contributions of Atlantans and Georgians to the historic struggle for African-American freedom and equality, and also serve as a space for ongoing dialogue, study, and contributions to the resolution of current and future freedom struggles of all people at the local, national and international level." (that's from the site's about page). It's supported by a wide variety of sources, including the Atlanta Development Authority and Central Atlanta Progress, among others. Coca Cola has offered a potential site for the center in Centennial Olympic Park.
The Partnership is responsible for organizing construction, the surrounding logistics, and everything else that will go into getting the project off the ground. Doug Shipman, the executive director, plans to blog about all of that, which I think could turn out to be fascinating.
If you want to learn more about it, Wilson interviewed Doug in October.