The Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce has the right idea. In a white paper that the chamber published this week, the business leadership calls for a major increase in research funding at the state's research universities.

Topic: "Regional Economic Development in Indiana: An Update on Best Practices"

Location

Each Tuesday from 2:00 - 4:00 PM REI is holding REALNEO planning and orientation sessions for open dialogue and inclusion supportig the Open Source Economic Development framework for North East Ohio. These sessions are open to everyone - feel free to come anytime between 2 and 4, and stick around after for the weekly Tuesday@REI meetings, from 4:00 - 5:45 PM.

Location

Here's an organic interpretation on the interconnections of TOPSOIL - Technology Optimization Platform for Social Organization, Innovation and Learning - REALNEO - Regional Economic Action Links (North East Ohio) - OSED - Open Source Economic Development - and IP - Intellectual Property - being the ecosystem enabling and nurturing Entrepreneurship and unique value creation and growth.

OSED consists of (B)rainpower, (I)nnovation and (Q)uality atoms, held interconnected with the magnetism of REALink Dialogue and Inclusion. These atoms combine in infinite combinations of Intellectual property molecules, which combine in organic structures forming more complex elements like schools, universities, companies and governments within a community ecosystem, in North East Ohio called NEO. The more supportive the ecosystem, the stronger the elements, and more elements to thrive. At the foundation of the ecosystem is TOPSOIL - the healthier and more nutritious the better. Branding and Marketing promote elements and ecosystems versus others, completing the OSED framework.

It's too bad that Northeast Ohio hasn't recognized what Paul Silas has . . . that "team" effort wins games. Looking at our economic initiatives, Northeast Ohio seeks individual winners. Those seeking individual glory. Not the team's.

From Ed Morrison's always insightful and expert ED Pro website are his predictions for 2005 - feel free to add yours as comments to this posting.

Predictions for 2005 Predictions are always a tricky business, but they're fun to think about. Here's what I expect to see in economic development in the coming year.

Ed Iannone's excellent Economic Development Futures blog (RSS fed to REALNEO) has an insightful write up and link to an excellent site featuring understanding of metrics/measures indicative of sustainability.

This web site is about indicators of sustainable community: ways to measure how well a community is meeting the needs and expectations of its present and future members. One of the primary goals of our site is to explain what indicators are, how indicators relate to sustainability, how to identify good indicators of sustainability, and how indicators can be used to measure progress toward building a sustainable community. Starting up an indicators project can be a bewildering task. From our experience in working with communities, we have found that everyone has the same set of basic questions. To help you develop and use indicators of sustainability, we have prepared clear, practical answers to these questions:

Pages on Dialogue and Inclusion in OSED - posting in progress

Pages related to Branding and Marketing in OSED - posting in progress

Pages related to Quality, Connected Places in OSED - posting in progress

Pages and material related to Innovation Networks in the OSED framework - posting in progress

Pages and material related to Brainpower, within the OSED - posting in progress

Pages of content, presentations and illustratives realted to Open Source Economic Development - posting in progress

This book coordinates deployment the Open Source Economic Development framework within REALNEO. The framework provides a structure for categorizing and managing the many Community Of Interest Links -COILs - of REALNEO. Ed Morrison at the Case Center for Regional Economic Issues developed the framework, and it is distributed under a Creative Commons license.

This book organizes all REALNEO content related to the development of virtual communities, serving as the best practices and planning lab for REALNEO and other social organizations optimizing technology for innovation.

Here's another idea for our region to consider: A pilot program to promote immigrant entrepreneurs. A recent article from Inc magazine outlines SmartStart in Maine. The initiative targets the development of micro-enterprises.

A recent report by the Pew The Pew Internet & American Life Project explores the attitude of artists to the Internet. The surprising finding: Artists and musicians are enthusiatic Internet users and they believe the Internet helps them make and sell their work.

<>Celebrate Holiday Jingle Bells at REI! - Join us Tuesday for a Network Celebration!

We would like to show our appreciation for the wonderful
work that everyone has devoted to REI. Stay and join us for a REALNEO orientation around 3 and an important Tuesdays@REI
following at 4:00PM.

Location

Location

· 12.21.04 "Eliminating Impoverishment: Innovative Models to
Improving Job Placement and Retention" with Walter Ginn, Executive
Director, Towards Employment and its new national model ACHIEVE; Yvonne Tufts
Jeans, Workforce Manager, ShoreBank Cleveland/Jobs Partnership in Cleveland, an
innovative faith-based model first developed in North Carolina with Moderator,
James Harris, HL/Communications

Location

TransTech originator Herb Crowther assembled a powerful group of panelists to address a fascinating, opportune set of transportation related topics of interest to this region - developing ferry service for vehicles and people between Port of Cleveland and Canada, expanding other water-based freight service in Ohio, developing high speed rail service in Ohio, and future concepts in rail transportation. The theme was sustainable transportation.

Thanks to REI for hosting this session, and Peter Holmes for leading the discussion. Our focus was to "collaborate on unique services provided in connection with application for service mark registration". In attendance was a range of community leaders with varied interests - entrepreneurship, consulting, change management and technology, so the discssion was lively, rich and diverse. And, it seems one of the greatest areas of unique value of REALNEO is the bottom-up, diverse interaction it enables, as represented by this physical community today.

Ted Takacs will post his detailed notes from the orientation, and we'll link in Peter Holmes' discussion documents and notes as soon as they are available - I'll limit my comments today to saying thank you to the scores of people in NEO who have embraced this environment as an enabler for change, and who are now contributing content and value in ways not possible before - to me, that is a greatest realization of the unique value of REALNEO, being empowering the unique value of great individuals here.

Providing childcare and pre-K advantages to more children cannot be considered only an issue of increasing the quantity of centers. Quality matters. The National Association of School Boards of Educations (NASBE) recently issued a policy update addressing this issue and the need to focus on the manner in which we assess young children. The Association states that “there is actually a fairly broad consensus today about many issues related to early childhood testing. For example, there is general acknowledgement that issues of technical adequacy are more difficult to address with young children, who have shorter attention spans and go through periods of fluctuating development. Experts also agree that…no single assessment should be used to rank, label children, or exclude youngsters from educational experiences.�