April 26th, at 2
PM, at Burke Lakefront Airport, will be the first formal meeting of "Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council" (GCLAC) - this
meeting will be working sessions... action
oriented - time for talking and planning has passed.

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The Scenario: An Internet design professional, new to NEO, you hear about the Web Association and want to join. So starts a revealing look into usability testing and user thought process hosted by Progressive Insurance's Jeff Janis.

On 3/29 there was a town hall style meeting held in the Levin College at CSU. 3 or 4 TV stations covered the event. The topic was American Jobs; the sponsors of this open meeting of local and Ohio leaders and the public were the Council for Excellence in Government and Goldman Sachs along with GS’s Global Marketing Institute. Similar meetings are being held in other cities across the US. The panel included, Ohio’s lieutenant governor, John Ryan of the AFL-CIO, Stephanie Mc Henry, president of Shore Bank, A J Hyland, president of Hyland Software, Myron Robinson president of the Urban League, and Mayor Jane Campbell. The meeting space was full to overflowing (say 400) ; the moderator was lively and the audience kept the questions/comments coming.

 Jurgen Faust has developed a vision for a "Future Center"
- an innovative collaborative strategy to address NEO's "Design Crisis" 

Q. What is design?

A. Design is a different way to think. At the beginning it is relatively
opposed to scientific thinking - image based thinking and method to solve
problems - thus has largely surfaced from art schools.

With Barbara Byrd Bennett's recent "State of the Schools" presentation at the Cleveland City Club it became clear NEO is ramping up for a community-wide activation of all leaders to support Cleveland public schools, now showing significant success rising from the ashes, while facing daunting financial prospects resulting from diminishing state funding and city property tax revenues. Between now and the voting of the public on a levy to increase city taxes for schools, likely in November, 2005, we will be inundated with efforts to raise citizen awareness of the importance of education to the future wherewithal of the regional economy - and it is absolutely essential area schools are successful. As the levy will likely coincide with the Cleveland mayoral election, expect passionate debate on this issue.

CLEVELAND

Panel looks for jobs ideas

The Council for Excellence in Government will hold a town hall meeting on jobs at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Cleveland State University's Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs. The nonprofit, nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C., will ask residents for suggestions on job creation and the roles that government and the private sector should have in economic development. The session is also sponsored by the Global Markets Institute at Goldman Sachs. Panelists include Mayor Jane Campbell, Ohio Lt. Gov. Bruce Johnson and the head of the Cleveland AFL-CIO Federation of Labor John Ryan. The meeting is free, but seating is limited. Call 202-728-0418

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Michael C. DeAloia

- Senior Executive for Technology Development

- City of Cleveland - “Technology Development in the City�

Monday, April 11, 2005

- 11:30 Networking/12:00 Lunch Served/1:30 Adjourn

The Union Club - 1211 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland Ohio

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Clearly there is great interest in education in Cleveland, as the Cleveland City Club 03.22.05 State of the Schools presentation by Cleveland Municipal School District CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett was an overflow event with attendance as diverse and inspired as any in memory. In his introduction of Barbara Byrd Bennett, City Club President Kevin J. Donahue praised her renowned career in education and uncanny ability to work collaboratively with all school stakeholders, all in the interest of improving area education. When Barbara Byrd Bennett was named the Cleveland Municipal School District’s first CEO, six years ago, she challenged the community to rally around the schools and our children. Since then, student performance, attendance, graduation, Internet access, immunizations, and bond funding have all increased significantly. Now, the question is, can these successes be sustained as state funding and property taxes have been dramatically reduced.

The 03.16.05 Community of Minds get-together featured Jurgen Faust, Chair of TIME (The Integrated Multimedia Environment) at the world-class Cleveland Institute of Art. Community of Minds is the longest-standing and most innovative entrepreneurial networking initiatives in NEO, providing attendees highly valuable, free, bi-monthly insight sharing meet-ups at the Case University Dively Center, held with support from the Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI) and Thompson Hine law firm. At this March meeting, Jurgen Faust offered important insight on developing NEO as a "Future Center" of design excellence.

The 03.14.05
Ohio Venture
Association entrepreneurship networking lunch at the Union
Club assembled a remarkable mix of entrepreneurs, venture funders and
entrepreneurship champions to build relationships and gain perspectives on the
state of opportunity and momentum of collaboration increasingly defining the
Northeast Ohio business community. That theme was well expressed by the
presence and focus of keynote presenter Mike Stubler, Managing Director of seed
and early stage venture capital firm Draper Triangle Ventures,
which just established an office in downtown Cleveland at 737 Bolivar Road -
also home of Jump Start. The topic of Mike's talk was “Why NEO is attractive to
Early Stage Investors�. Everyone in the club was engaged.

The Cleveland Institute of Art's vision for strengthening NEO Design is an encouraging development. In the tradition of Hugh Greenlee and Victor Schreckenghost - honored seatholders in the Pantheon of Cleveland designers - the region's design center credentials are getting burnished.

Seasoned Entrepreneurial Panel Discussion

The CAAO Minority Access to
Capital Program. The mission of this
program is the thoroughly educate minority entrepreneurs on all their funding
options and to aid in building relationships between the funders and minority
entrepreneurs of Northeast Ohio.

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The inventor of Moore's law and a co-founder of Intel spoke recently of the loss of competitive advantage in Silicon Valley that offers either a warning or opportunity for NEO, highlighted with "Other areas have picked up on the technology - it's spread around to a lot of other places", "We have very formidable competition in the world. I think the
impact of China is just beginning to be felt," and "Chief among the challenges ahead for Silicon Valley is the
relative weakness of the U.S. public education system, which Moore
characterized as a problem for the entire country."

I attended an outstanding meeting of facilitators on Friday, led by Jack Ricciuto, founder and CEO of Smart Meeting Design.  A group of 35 people met to discuss the value of facilitation and ways that it can be marketed and developed.  During the discussion, we surveyed the collective years of facilitation represented in the group to find that it was just over 400 years.  The discussion began with the idea that communities grow out of conversations.  We start with words that build conversations that develop relationships.  The question is often asked in northeast Ohio as to how to construct a regional plan, how to engage a community that values all this region has to offer.  Certainly part of the answer must lie in the possibilities created by Jack's planting the seeds for a Northern Ohio Facilitator Community of Practice. Check out his website at: http://designinglife.com/index.php/NorthernOhioFacilitation/CommunityofPractice.   

The
Economics of Early Childhood Development: Support Workshop

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Inside
Business is pleased to honor the top-performing companies in Northeast Ohio.

Keynote
Speaker
Dr. Toby Cosgrove
The Cleveland Clinic

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March 29: “CIA
Design & Technology Transfer Center: A Showcase for Sustainable Business
Development in NEO"

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March 22:
"Creating Arts Districts as Economic Development Engines"

Jim Harris, HL

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Power Breakfast Panel - “Finding, Keeping
and Motivating Talented People�

Wednesday, March 16, 2005, 7:45am to 9:30am
Download
this event to your Personal Information Manager

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Daniel Cuffaro, Chair of Industrial Design at the Cleveland Institute of Art needs to take his message to a wider audience. Though he drew a small and loyal group of CIA students who had not yet left for spring break at 10 a.m. Saturday morning, he seemed to be preaching to the converted. His upbeat presentation titled "Innovations in Art and Design" outlined his strategies for how industrial designers could be more successful in Cleveland and how Cleveland could find success through design - currently an under utilized resource here. Cuffaro believes we need not look outside our city for solutions to economic decline, that we have what we need right here.

Joe Stanley a 5th year interior design major at the Cleveland Institute of Art gave a presentation on his senior project to an enthusiastic crowd at the Peter B. Lewis building at 2 p.m. today as part of REALNEO. Joe's senior project is an ambitious vision for CIA, University and the City of Cleveland. It was exhibited at 1300 Gallery this past fall along with the work of several of his classmates. Joe's project and those of his classmates were destined to be forgotten after the exhibition (which only lasted one night), but Joe's project has been given new life through REALNEO. Joe has his own COIL at REALNEO called neomainstreet. neomainstreet contains images of Joe's models and drawings, a discussion of his design philosophy and its context within contemporary and historical trends in architecture and civic planning. Its a fascinating site of local, national and international interest!

For this REALNEO@REI orientation we will present a transformative demonstration of local urbanist Joe Stanley taking his senior project in Interior Design off the walls of the Cleveland Institute of Art, beyond 2&3D, and into cyberspace - see http://neomainstreet-com.bryght.net. Joe shares his vision for reinventing the CIA and redeveloping their two University Circle sites - exceeding old paradigms of project development, urban planning, and entrepreneurial communications - realized using REALinks social computing capabilities. Please join Joe and see his view of our future, at its best.

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