Thanks to all those who helped propel Cleveland into visibility on the 43 things and 43 places websites, our new version of the 43 places site is now online! It has a local emphasis on neighborhoods, venues, restaurants, and other places to go and things to do. Cleveland was second to get a local site, after only Seattle (which is the hometown of the Robot Coop, a small group of programmers who have developed the interconnected sites called 43places, 43things, 43people, allconsuming, and listofbests). 

I wanted to share what I wrote about the Global Night Commute which will take place tonight in downtown Cleveland and in cities around the world with all the readers of RealNEO.

I'm going to try one more time, since my previous call for help only yielded two responses (thanks, you two!), and since there is some recently posted information on what is coming down the pipeline out of Seattle in terms of developing local sites based on 43places.
Here's what to do:  create a free account on 43things, add this goal to your list of 43 things to do, and make an entry under that goal with "Cleveland" in the title. That will get us on the list of the first 15 cities to receive local sites in the next iteration of 43places.

Do you know this famous Cleveland-area company? When was the last time you saw someone using some of their lip gloss?

We are enjoying the early signs of spring, and looking forward to this year's Easter Egg hunt in Cleveland Heights... coming up on April 15, I believe. Above is a photo from the hunt last year.

Hannah Fritzman writes  http://www.cleveland.com/weblogs/theview/index.ssf?/mtlogs/cleve_theview/archives/2006_03.html that Mayor Eric Brewer of East Cleveland is in conversation with the Civic Innovation Lab. I have also heard that leadership at the Intergenerational School is in conversation about the possibility of expanding into the city of East Cleveland. If the city can reverse perceptions about its safety and the quality of its schools, perhaps it can become home to young professionals who will launch independent small businesses and generate a second heydey for the home of John D. Rockefeller...

The third of my students this semester who has taken on a topically-focused blogging assignment is Jennifer Mack. She is a double major in music and management, and she still finds time to track down really interesting references to music in business contexts, and to the business of the music industry.

Last fall, Lori Vanelli was an enthusiastic early adopter of the livejournal assignment for MGMT 250. This spring for MGMT 251, she found coming up with a topical focus for her blog writing a bit of a challenge, and I'm pleased that her tone of slightly irreverent reflection on herself and others has been retained as she has come to focus on the young of the working world. Over the course of February and March she has written about twixters, boomerang kids, quarterlife crises, and how she and her peers perceive themselves and the challenges that face them. Lori's livejournal is a great introduction to the NEO blogging scene from the point of view of a 20something, and I'm sure she'll stick with it even after the semester ends.

Would you please take a look at Ryan Arlia's class project for MGMT 251? Ryan has chosen to focus on real estate management issues, and would like to get feedback on the posts he made in February and in March. His post about online marketing strategies is particularly interesting. Your comments on any of the posts would be most welcome... part of what Ryan needs to do for his project assignment is to so some experiments with how to build traffic to his blog, so if you have any suggestions for him, I'm sure he would appreciate hearing from you.

It's about more than the nightlife... how can we encourage social entrepreneurs like Joe Akka to make Cleveland one of their hometowns? Joe has a lot in common with Jurgen Faust, I think, with an appreciation for design that is evident at his Panacea, and yet he's not an art school graduate (he's a 29-year-old MD who is running an independent restaurant company based in the UK).

Robert Paterson has shared a draft of a book chapter at his blog which offers a vision of how the generous spirit of the blogosphere might revolutionize our thinking about work and how it fits into our lives.

Check out this site: Vision Downtown -- it sounds like it is reporting on grassroots activism going on to redesign downtown Cleveland into a quality, connected place.

Norm,

you may want to get to know Hilary Bradbury, who runs the Weatherhead Institute for Sustainable Enterprise... http://weatherhead.cwru.edu/wise/

she is a teleworker now based in LA, but s

If you are interested in developing the brainpower of our next generation of northeast Ohio residents and workers, please come read about the Northeast Ohio Breastfeeding Education and Advocacy Network!

I attended the panel yesterday at the Natural History museum, and I commend Ed Morrison and Roberta Waxman-Lentz for recruiting such a wonderful variety of speakers. I was impressed with the work that has already been done in Northeast Ohio to begin connecting child development work and economic development work, though there is still much work to be done.

I found REALNEO last night via George Nemeth's BrewedFreshDaily blog, and it looks like an incredible platform for connecting entrepreneurs and regional residents with interests in nano, art, energy, the film industry, and job creation generally; I hope that I'll be able to build interest in REALNEO among my entrepreneurial students...