Here's a note just received from Marlon Solano..which we offered to post for the REALNEO community to build connectivity and new opportunities for art in NEO. I've suggested they link to NEO online communities and other communities such as SmallerIndiana.com to leverage resources and capabilities focused around mutual interests...

Hope you can join us online for this week's workshop on new practices and tools for Open Source Economic Development. The retreat is lead by Ed Morrison, I-Open, Director, and Policy Analyst and Director of the WIRED initiative in North Central Indiana, Purdue Center for Regional Development, Purdue University. 

Join us Thursday, May 1, for the next Midtown Brews with Meet The Bloggers for an open conversation with guest Ben Cipiti, native Clevelander, and author of The Energy Construct. Ben will be joining us via web stream from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Feb 7th Midtown Brews forum "Ohio's Energy Portfolio" is posted to the Midtown Brews welcome page.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

U.S. coal power boom suddenly wanes

Worries about global warming and rising construction costs give the edge to natural-gas and renewable-energy plants.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer

from the March 4, 2008 The Christian Science Monitor

"What you're seeing is a de facto moratorium on coal power right now," says Robert Linden, a senior oil and gas analyst at Pace Global in New York. "You turn off the money spigot, you've turned off those plants."

Creative Capital can transform regions. This story talks about the value of open conversations, building networks, collaborating, and sharing experiences to accelerate innovation in communities and regions...

Coming up this week...

Creative Capital for a 21st Century Digital Media Marketplace @ Insivia

Learn how Creative Capital transforms regions. Get started now by listening to this conversation with guests Geof Pelaia, Virginia Marti College; Eric Purcell & Laura Wright, Insivia; and Experience Artist, Melissa Daubert.

The Mad Potter covers my home town
Written by: George Nemeth
Got this email from a friend who was at last night’s Midtown Brews free-for-all:

Ralph Solonitz Commentary: Save the Earth

Here's an email from our partner in Smaller Indiana,  Bruce LaDuke. Bruce participated in the Midtown Brews Open Conversation. Be sure to click through to the website to learn more about how other leaders are innovating to illuminate solutions through open forms of conversation.

Commentary from Ralph Solonitz: Clean Coal

Near-Time, Purdue Center for Regional Development Partner to Launch First Nationwide Community of Regions Focused on Workforce Innovations

Today Near-Time announced a partnership with the Purdue Center for Regional Development to launch the first nationwide community of regions focused on innovation and economic development. This partnership is a spinoff of the U.S. Labor Department's WIRED Initiative. The new nationwide community is accessible at www.wired-nation.net.

Technology and Organization Opportunities to Accelerate Innovations in Open Source Economic Development

The February 7, 2008 Midtown Brews forum, Our Ohio Energy Portfolio: Economic Development in Your Backyard, brought together perspectives of Cleveland government, foundation and citizen decision makers. Elisa Young, traveled from Meigs County, Southern Ohio, to share her perspective as a seventh generation land owner, report on current local costs to human life, and natural resource devastation in proportion to the affect of current concentration of, and construction of future power production facilities. The Open Conversation was generated by about 100 participants and joined by 30 members of the Smaller Indiana social network contributing questions and observations via broadcast video and chat. Government leaders City of Cleveland Councilman Matt Zone, City of Cleveland, Ward 17; Nolan Moser, Law Fellow, Ohio Environmental Council ;  Andrew Flock, Painesville Councilman; Andrew Watterson, Cleveland Sustainability Programs Manager, City of Cleveland Department of Utilities; and Foundation leader, Richard Stuebi, BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at The Cleveland Foundation, NextWave Energy, Inc., Founder and President.

The Open Discussion focused on issues and revealed the magnitude of the topic, the enormity of consequences, and our failure to innovate.

Was this conversation really just a result of a lack of technology and organization innovations, a long-term lack of citizenry participation and business leadership? ...

How did we get to this point?

Our situation has changed. We're required to make decisions at a level of comprehension beyond our capability, exaggerated by unforeseen forces and at a new speed. Tomorrow, the forces will be more complex, the speed will have increased and window of time, shrunk.

Why should we be surprised?

Consider what's involved. Of all animals on earth, humans score the lowest in cognitive capability to plan for the future, and our brain capacity based on size is miniscule in proportion to the scale of the new kinds of decisions we are responsible to make.

Leaders are experiencing previously unexperienced - 

• Forms of change
• Quantum levels of change
• Leaders are required to interact with new economic systems
• Required to respond to unforeseen future forces
• Navigate a landscape comprised of a few resource rich decision making entities verses a pool of burden bearing constituents (you can flip ownership of burden with the same disastrous unbalanced outcomes, the point is responsibilities are not shared)

We are all in this together, and ultimately, we are all affected equally. Regions and their communities are experiencing a whiplash of issues, topped with a new misunderstanding of speed, lack of planning, strategy, and metrics to guide regional decision-making in this new landscape. What will be required for people to halt uniformed guesswork, lavish and desperate spending of resources on quick stop solutions? Because of a confluence of perfect storm factors, every decision made will affect our survival sooner than our experience tells us.

This is not about finger pointing, back slapping, or deal making between a few individuals or corporations, it is about the power of collaborative leadership, employing critical thinking skills to scale brainpower, engaging high end technology innovation, and designing new models of organization.

Moving forward.

Here is what I learned in my conversations with others at Thursday’s Midtown Brews:

• There is a need to dramatically increase alternative energy innovations
• Dramatically increase funding for research
• Ensure open access to results
• Regular apolitical theoretical and practical summation of research
• Identify future forces affecting energy
• Build open networks to engage the public, private business leadership, government
• Design technology tools for a new rate of speed and visualization

Navigating these new landscapes requires new learning. Adopt the practices and tools of Open Source Economic Development (158.5 KB) deployed by I-Open. I-Open is creating the open spaces to build the open networks for new conversations focused on regional transformation. With our technology partner Near-Time.net, we are building online collaborative communities to sustain the conversations between face to face meetings, share information, and accelerate enterprise development for regional transformation.

 
Some next steps to learn about new practices and tools:

Here is an e-mail from Ed Morrison inviting/summarizing the WIRED Nation, a result of the collaboration between the Dept of Labor, I-Open, and Near-Time.net.

What can we learn, replicate, and continue to apply from this model to accelerate our economic development work here in NEO?

Smaller Indiana and REALNEO please meet each other!

I would like to introduce the REALNEO  network to Smaller Indiana, an online community based in Indianapolis with a state wide reach. Smaller Indiana connects creative indeas and was recently begun by Pat Coyle, and is growing to 600 members!

Midtown Brews connects you face to face once a month with Northeast Ohio leaders in the technology, energy and creative industries. Host partners: EarthWatch Ohio/Insivia/I-Open/Meet The Bloggers/Webtego

 

Join us and the Smaller Indiana network February 7th to learn more about... Our Ohio Energy Portfolio: Economic Development in Your Backyard

 

A Two-Day Workshop at

Strap on your goggles...It's a whole new game!

Presented with the generous support of Cleveland State University Nance College of Business Administration

Date: Wednesday, May 17

Time: 5:00 P.M. - 6:45 P.M.

Place: Myers University, Chester Campus

3921 Chester Avenue, Cleveland, OH

Map Link

Date: Wednesday, May 10

Time: 5:00 P.M. - 6:45 P.M.

Place: Myers University, Chester Campus

3921 Chester Avenue, Cleveland, OH

Map Link

Date: Today, Wednesday, May 3

Time: 5:00 P.M. - 6:45 P.M.

Place:

Myers University, Chester Campus

3921 Chester Avenue, Cleveland, OH

Valdis Krebs, June Holley and Jack Ricchiuto have come together to create the Network Weaving Blog. This is a great knowledge resource for learning about other communities applying new techniques to their activity, network building, and social network mapping. Read their white paper on Networking here.

How do we reinvent the Midtown economy? What are our opportunities to expedite services in government, commercial, and education? What are our opportunities to design new approaches to visualization, conceptual learning and virtual experiences? (If you haven't had a chance to read the article "Digital Natives" yet, go here.)

Press Release: Cleveland.-- April 24, 2006 -- The Center for Regional Development at Purdue University has appointed Ed Morrison to the position of Economic Policy Advisor. In the role, Morrison will assist the Center and the governor's office in the implementation of new regional models of economic development and workforce development.

Date: Wednesday, April 26

Time: 5:00 P.M. - 6:45 P.M.

Place: Myers University, Chester Campus

3921 Chester Avenue, Cleveland, OH

Map Link.

In a flat, networked economy regions that build collaborations quickly will move ahead. How Northeast Ohio collaborates to share resources and respond to change will determine the future of the region.

OneCleveland offers a regional next-generation broadband network connecting education, government, and business partners.

Seize your opportunity by designing new ways to access high-speed broadband capabilities for Internet communications, content development and distribution to transform our region.

Build innovative collaborations to accelerate service delivery to communites, influence how institutions collaborate, and leverage community assets to drive economic development. Join us for next steps!

Leader: Mark Ansboury, Chief Operating Officer, OneCleveland

Visit the Midtown Wednesdays Blog for information and new opportunities.

Join us for Midtown Mornings. Share coffee and bagels, make new connections and explore business opportunities. Join us to network with entrepreneurs building the Midtown Innovation Zone. Download the PDF here.

Date: Friday, April 28