City of Phoenix offers support for local artists via ICE - Information Community Effectiveness. The following eNews from City Hall highlights "a new pilot grants program designed to assist individual artists living in Phoenix and working in all artistic disciplines." The focus is quite basic and low-level and low-cost - one could say negligible, in the big picture... $10,000 total... yet for individual artists this is a sign the city cares about their development and success. As NEO's Community Partnership for the Arts is now planning how to allocate $100,000s of dollars to artists, it is worth thinking so small with some of that money, to spread the wealth like in Phoenix...

If you for some reason like Microsoft you will not like this news, or the fact the world's progressive governments are mandating or expressing preferences for eGov development with open source applications and technologies - mandates include in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil,
Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy and Peru - preferences include in Bahrain, Belgium, China and Hong Kong, Costa Rica, France, Germany,
Iceland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Philippines and South
Africa - noteworthy is that "The Venezuelan government has founded an Open Source academy in the city of Merida in an effort to provide a supply of capable staff." Hello America, Ohio, and regional governments... are you serious about participating in the global economy? Better get open about using IT, and developing our workforce...

How do cities encourage and empower residents to be great civil servants - to develop an appreciation for social responsibility? Perhaps through appreciation for jobs well done. The mayor of Baltimore used his "Taking Care of Business" eNewsletter to thank local businesses and 1,000s of citizen volunteers for making their schools better, and below is an eNewsletter from Mayor Rybak of the indisputably effective city of Minneapolis thanking "civic leaers" for their contribution to the quality of life of others in that community - from community gardens and a food co-op to developing a social contract for families to have dinner together at least 4 times a week - it seems the least good citizens deserve from their elected officials is an occassional "thanks for the help".

No big surprise NYNY Major Bloomberg is a master of ICE -
Information Community Effectiveness - as that has made him untold $ millions.
But I am always surprised how well he and NYC.gov use the WWW to serve the
diverse needs of citizens - through his virtual outreach he makes clear he is
an ingenious and caring statesman very deserving to lead one of the world's
most remarkable and complex cities. For example, today I received the following
"Health and Mental Hygiene News" on "How to Find a Doctor",
which "tells
you how to find the doctor you want regardless if you have insurance or not,
lists many free or low-cost health insurance programs, and explains how having
a regular doctor can greatly improve your health." How many 100,000s of
people in NEO need this knowledge, from an eGov taking care of citizen needs?

<>From Good Morning Silicon Valley today:

You kids ... why, back in my day they had to put content on physical
media! Anyone with an interest in the economies of digital distribution,
particularly those working in the entertainment industry, would do well to spend
a cup of coffee or two reading Wired's interview with Bram Cohen, whose Bit
Torrent technology is turning the world of traditional media on its head. During
the last century, content companies had to be massive to afford distribution.
But in this new Bit Torrent world, economies of scale aren't needed anymore.
"The content people have no clue," Cohen
told Wired. "I mean, no clue. The cost of bandwidth is going down to
nothing. And the size of hard drives is getting so big, and they're so cheap,
that pretty soon you'll have every song you own on one hard drive. The content
distribution industry is going to evaporate."Â

The city of Milwaukee is taking a lead leveraging virtual community to make their physical community safer. Their city website based Compass interface “provides additional ears and eyes to watch out for crime and it will help promote neighborhood security� and "marks a significant collaboration between city government and the community, in order to provide more timely and accurate information.� Through Dialogue and Inclusion, Milwaukee is becoming a higher Quality, Connected Place, just like we want to be here. Read more about Compass and see it in action, linked below:

-----Original
Message-----
From: MilwaukeeE-Notify [at] milwaukee [dot] gov
[mailto:MilwaukeeE-Notify [at] milwaukee [dot] gov]
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 2:09 PM
Subject: Incident Level Data Now Available on the City

I receive lots of great e-knowledge from the city of Indianapolis, which has great ICE - Internet Community Effectiveness - and they (and other high-ICE cities) use the WWW for more than just political grandstanding. Below is a nice example, where Indy Gov is leveraging their eGov excellence in collaboration with their Colts football team to collect money for Tsunami victoms - Colts C.A.R.E. - (Communities Assisting Relief
Efforts). So, a city is leveraging relationships with citizens and an event attracting 10,000s of people to raise money to help 100,000s - that's a smart community and administration - read on about champions working together:

The first mayor who really stood out to me as a master of ICE - Information Community Effectiveness - who understands TQI, and performance management, and WWW effectiveness and other aspects of organizational and IT excellence, was Martin O'Malley, Mayor of Baltimore (other first choices, Beecham. Palo Alto, and Bloomberg, New York). I'll share more about them and their ICE in the future - for now, consider O'Malley's words below about their innovative program to involve businesses and volunteers in saving their schools:

This book provides content and links related to optimizing eGovernment - critical to making NEO a Quality, Connected Place

I monitor economic development ICE - Information Community Effectiveness - of the 50 largest cities in America and see many exceptional practices I'll begin sharing here. Today, I received an outreach from the city of Phoenix sent to their "Neighborhood Legislative Updates Mailing List", to which I subscribe. It points out "The State Legislature will convene next Monday, January 10! Through this e-mail alert system, we will provide information on the state legislative session and will continue to share information on neighborhood-related bills that the city of Phoenix is tracking." This is a city governance best practice, both in using IT to communicate with community stakeholders (and they provide many categories of such electronic outreach) and by involving the city community with legislative matters impacting their city and neighborhoods. Consider how important it is for our state to work effectively as a community, yet how often NEOs complain that Columbus doesn't understand our needs - and how little we do about becoming empowered as a voice in state-wide issues? Phoenix uses the internet to empower the people of that community - in more ways than this.

December 31, 2004, Dan Gillmor ended a ten year gig writing about technology at the San Jose Mercury News and siliconvalley.com to focus on other efforts, including a blog called Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism - A conversation about the future of journalism "by the people, for the people" There, he share fresh insight on a field he knows well, demonstrated in his 2004 book We the Media, and the insight on his blog ranges from developments in open source journalism to the underlying technologies. Why go from the mainstream media to a blog? Read on (and I agree with Dan - stop using PDF for your documents, it is a closed, ineffective publishing medium):

A Medium Coming Into Its Own

The graph, from a new study (summary) by the Pew Internet
& American Life Project, tells us something vital about the expanding
authority of blogs. While the number of new blogs is rising, readership is
growing even faster.

Note: I wish these studies were available in plain HTML, not
just PDF format. You can find the PDF here.

Marc Canter participated in Steve Gillmor's December 31, 2004 Webcast on Identity Management and posted his observations on SXIP to his blog - this is an exciting evolution REALNEO supports... you'll soon see SXIP enabled and explained further here... for now, here are Marc's opinions:

Information Communications Effectiveness (ICE) is now the key to governmental and political success. The benefit to citizens of effective government technology (IT) and telecommunications - from process improvements and knowledge management to ecommerce, communications, collaboration, individual empowerment and optimal economic development - is so powerful and transformational, it is inconceivable a less tech-savvy up-start could upstage an effective ICE-savvy incumbent. We have never seen an ICE-savvy politician surface in NEO, so all communities here are just waiting for information revolution.

Over the past year everyone in the interconnected world started waking up to the value of Information Technology for individuals to transform every day life on Earth, for good and bad - a point largely demonstrated by the role the Internet and blogs/wikis now play in social organizations. 2004 saw a new dawning of enlightenment. And, overnight, a tsunami taught us that individual IT empowerment is transforming life on Earth for all, evolving us from isolated people and communities to an interwoven fabric of interconnected humanity sharing one planet with personal familiarity with the quality of life of all others.

Few people outside the Supply Chain and Logistics Economy (SCALE) realize how huge this industry is in NEO and the world. A hot SCALE technology transforming the industry is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and many NEO economy and technology leaders are exploring how important this "cluster" is to our region's future.

The Fund For Our Economic Future recently publicized insight from their first Minority Forum, which features a link to an interesting presentation from the keynote speaker, Dr. John Powell from Ohio State, on issues related to diversity and regionalization. Also included is a presentation from Ray Leach, CEO of NEO entrepreneurship supporters JumpStart, which expresses a commitment to be diverse and an interest to support minority entrepreneurs and help place minority business people in companies Jump Start supports. Page 3 of the presentation also says one thing that is "Different about Jump Start" is "We believe we can serve as a convener for all interested parties to build a social network". As this is a purpose of REALNEO, and this social network is committed to all parties in the region interested in entrepreneurship, it is clear we should all work together - we're all working with Case and dedicated to bettering this region. Time to start co-convening! Later in January, Jump Start is hosting an "Exchange", which should be a nice opportunity for local entrepreneurs to form physical connections... in the mean time, REALNEO will continue developing virtual connections and explore collaboration with Jump Start.

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.

This just came through the RSS feed from Channel 5 - and is covered more thoroughly on the Medina Gazette site - Medina Judge Kimbler is using the Internet in unique ways, in his courtroom - allowing attorneys and the public to sign up and "Join Judge Kimbler's Court and receive e-mail updates on jury trials, decisions,
sentencings, and much more" - on the site you can see jury instructions, court documents, verdicts, and now it seems view edited, taped recordings of sentencings - really fascinating effort by a clearly tech-savvy and progressive judge.

NEOSA NeTT Cast - “Your Personal Computer: Proactive
Maintenance for the 21st Century�

Wednesday, January 12, 2005, 11:00am to 11:45am

Location

NEOSA Sales & Marketing SIG - “Creating A Compelling
Value Proposition�

Thursday, January 20, 2005, 7:30am to 9:00am

Location

NEOSA Monthly Meeting - “Blogs and RSS Boot Camp: Profiting
From the New Personal Publishing Tools�

Wednesday, January 19, 2005, 7:30am to 9:00am

Location

Information Technology Virtual Communities and articles.

REI Director Ed Morrison sent me a link to an excellent
case study that well demonstrates the value of ECHO - East Cleveland Homes
Online... this article highlights a Philadelphia program that is helping bridge
the digital divide isolating some of the most troubled households in that
region, and we need to do exactly the same types of things to gain exactly the
same types of benefits here - read this story and case study!

This issue is about to become explosive in this state as,
like in Pennsylvania, Ohio politicians are trying to legislate
protections for special telco interests that will take many options away from
communities trying to bridge their digital divides. Ohio is about to become the
battle ground (and joke) for the national digital divide war because a State Representative from Mount Vernon (near Columbus), Thom Collier, has
introduced a bill in the Ohio state legislature that amends existing Ohio cable
competition law by restricting political subdivisions from providing
"telecommunications service using telecommunications equipment".

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.