Congrats to Hugh Acheson

Hugh Acheson, the shining star of the Athens culinary scene, is a finalist for the James Beard Foundation's Best Chef Award (southeastern region). The Beard Award is one of the food industry's most prestigious awards.

Locally, you can sample Acheson's cuisine at Five & 10 and The National. The food is always good, and unlike many Athens establishments, the service is consistently top notch as well.

The Classic Twitty

As a recent Facebook convert, I've extended the boundaries of my social media sphere by starting a Twitter account. If you're not familiar with Twitter, it's also been called microblogging and gives users 140 characters to answer the question "What are you doing?" Inboxer Brian blogged about the growing popularity of the application back in January.

Among those I follow on Twitter are friends, co-workers, PR gurus and media outlets. Being relatively new to Twitter, I sometimes find the conversations hard to follow and never know whether anyone could actually be interested in the fact that I'm writing a press release at the moment. But there are those who've gotten the hang of it. In fact, Twitter Grader has a list of the Twitter Elite in Athens. Among them are UGA professor and social media maven Karen Russell and former Jackson Spalding interns Katherine Strate and Lizzie Azzolino. If you want to be tweeting with the who's who in Athens, check out the list and follow their lead.

Getting Creative

I love it when an uber-traditional brand gets outside the box. While consumer brands have gotten somewhat comfortable with this, real estate and resort destinations have been less inclined to take marketing risks.

That could be changing. One of the most hallowed destinations of the South, the Grove Park Inn, has apparently decided to step beyond classical music, slow panning video, old-couples-smiling-at-each-other-in-pool-pictures and obligatory sunset shots. I say good for Grove Park. While I'm not sure this approach totally fits with their brand (try reconciling the corporate site here with the microsite listed below, for example), it is sure to get attention and drive page views in an era of stodgy resort advertising. Throw in the neat story and microsite, and it is sure to get a little new- and old-media attention as well.