Using Wordpress.com, Flickr, Youtube and Twitter to keep the information flowing

My experience with NFP organisations, particularly the larger ones is that they are conservative in their approach to almost everything including new technology. So I was very surprised when I got pointed to the American Red Cross MidWest Flooding Online Newsroom thanks to Rex Hammock.

Somebody inside the American Red Cross has got it right, using of Wordpress.com, Youtube, Flickr and even Twitter to create a quick, low cost and effective way to get across information to the world about the impact of the recent flooding in the Mid West US and the American Red Cross’s role in providing relief.

A lesson for anybody who needs to create an effective communication tool, quickly and on a tiny budget.

A wiki that covers a over a dozen different agency, with over 35,000 articles, 200,000 pages, 37,000 users, 100 new articles and 4,000 edits a day is pretty impressive. Especially when you find out the agencies involved are intelligence agencies who had reputation for being less than willing to share their information. It has to be said this is a very successful wiki implementation.

As access is restricted, due to the nature of the wiki you need to search from information about Intellipedia, from CIA press release and off course the Intellipedia Wikipedia entry. I would recommend reading both and looking for more information of the web on how Intellipedia became so successful. Because if you every need a good example of a cross agency wiki working, Intellipedia is it.

7th Circuit Practitioners Guide Wiki

Hat tip to Anthony D. Williams for this one. Do not know the original source of quotes on Anthony’s post, but they are good.

Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook

As a group, the attorneys practicing before our court know more about appellate practice than any single person. With our wiki, we’re drawing on that wisdom.

I would consider legal arms of government and particularly the court system to be one the most risk adverse sections of government. Yet the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has used a wiki for their Practitioner’s Guide. From the looks of it, the wiki has been success, a great way of sharing the accumulated knowledge of number of a professional group people.

Quotes came from an article in The Third Branch the newsletter of the federal court.