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Four Generations in the workforce……… How are we getting along????????

Article by Bonnie N. Dick, CGI, Inc., and Employment Consultant

August 27, 2008: Updates in Open Source Economic Development

Plea to all

I saw this sadly honest bumper-sticker in Cleveland Heights the other day - the same day an article in the New York Times pointed out a horrific circumstance of our attacks on the Middle East - 100,000s of concussions among our forces alone... imagine how many of the people of the countries we have brought to war are suffering the same injuries - far more than our soldiers, who are suffering as follows:

I've used the Cleveland Heights library on Lee Road since the 1970s, and can say with confidence the recent Studio Techne reinvention of this facility transformed the space, site, and surrounding neighborhood for the better. Featuring a dramatic, high-art bridge over Lee Road, and two reused buildings - one signficantly modernized - with crisp, fitting site improvements, this is one of the best library facilities and urban redevelopments in Northeast Ohio.

Huge props to the many artists, MCs, DJs, bboys-and-girls, organizers and 100s of real NEOans who turned out for the 7th annual City Xpressions Street Art Festival, August 23, 2008, at West 25th and Lorain, Cleveland. A perfect summer day - great happy crowd - creative vibe and entertainment - and some spectacular urban art. While there weren't as many artists as the last year I attended, what showed was diverse and often pure genius.

Midtown Brews with Meet The Bloggers

Following up...

August 23, 2008, was the City Xpressions 2008 arts and culture festival, at W. 25th Street and Lorain... one of my favorite annual events in the region... more photos to come!

Have the news media dropped the “Cone of Silence” story too quickly? Was candidate John McCain cheating?

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Join us for the next Women’s Enterprise Network (WENetwork) Interactive TV show...

For those of you who have been with us since our first brainstorming conversation you know that WEN engages, empowers and unites women and girls in Northeast Ohio.

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Yet another reason to push for 'more green' - it can lead to 'more clean' air. Something that both urban areas and their schools need to address. (Not that suburbia is immune to pollution. Dirty air is everywhere)

Take a moment to explore and participate in a new collaborative online space, Economic Gardening Economies, just formed over last weekend during a curriculum retreat at the beautiful 2,600 acre Edward Lowe Foundation Property, Big Rock Valley, in Michigan.

Economic Gardening is a process begun almost 20 years ago by Chris Gibbons in the City of Littleton, Colorado to identify and connect knowledge, local assets and companies to strengthen prosperity. Read CI for Small Business: The City of Littleton's Economic Gardening Program.

Here is more information taken from the side bar of the Economic Gardening Economies Web space:

This web site provides background on where the strategy of Economic Gardening is taking hold. 

You can become a member of this site here. Members of the site can freely contribute content and help us build an even more vibrant economic gardening network. 

Two white papers on Open Source Economic Development definitely worth downloading to your desktop and reading, studying.

Harry Bell is a powerful urban artist, well appreciated in Cleveland and beyond. His most famous work I know is the Wall of Sorrows, recently dismantled, under controversy, and now in storage... scheduled for future re-installation. You may know his current work from cruising through Cedar and E.55th, where he is commissioned by a gas station and car dealership to create urban art on their walls, now including the work-in-progress shown above... a memorial tribute to "Houghs Angel", Fannie Lewis, rest in peace.

Boy, the “Cleveland – a Dying City” rating by Forbes Magazine really cranked up the city’s cheerleaders last Sunday, as seen in the editorial page of the Plain Dealer (which years ago for some reason dropped the name Cleveland from its name).

What was most amusing was that it was written by a trio – two of them – Joe Roman of Greater Cleveland Partnership and Dennis Roche, president of Positively Cleveland – draw salaries totaling $703,627 a year (2006 IRS figures). Roman gets $426,271 and Roche gets $303,627, both including benefits. The salary of the third, Thomas Waltermire, CEO of TeamNEO, wasn’t available.

Thanks to Sudhir, I had the opportunity to check out the Flobots at Peabody's, Sunday night. If I'd browsed the Cleveland Scene Magazine concert preview, beforehand, I probably wouldn't have bothered going. The 100s of fans who enjoyed the show agreed that would have been a mistake.

Lawrence Lessig, Founder, Creative Commons Founder, Stanford Center for Internet and Society Professor,  at the Stanford Law School talks with Timothy O'Brien, from O'Reilly News, at this year's Personal Democracy Forum in New York City.

Here's an excellent discussion on the economic gardening google group regarding Scott Shane's comment in the BusinessWeek article, The Entrepreneurship Myth, in conjunction to his 2007 publication, The Illusions of Entrepreneurship.

(Note: Scott acted as academic advisor and was co-director with Ed Morrison while our team - now know as The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) - was at the Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI) at Case from 2003-2005.)

Chris Gibbons, Economic Gardening, leads off the conversation with this comment:

"This jumps to the "400 level" course in entrepreneurship...a lot of subtleties in the business as this level.

I would agree that just entrepreneurship across the board has little payout and you might well be better off getting a job at a corporation. The slight flaw in that argument though, is that a growth company also had to start up somewhere...they don't just appear full grown.

The Coit Road Farmers Market is one of the most endearing places in real NEO. Hidden away in a near-dead industrial graveyard of East Cleveland, with the curb-appeal of a brownfield, it is not a place one goes without intent. So it amazes me that just about every time I go there I see someone I know. I guess I know some pretty smart people.

 The city of Akron deserves a Green Light Award for moving us into the future. They (and note this is a city, not even a park system) are eliminating ODOT's roadside mowing by using low growing, low maintenance plantings. It's no surprise that Cleveland is being left in the dust and the rust when our neighbor, from the same struggling area, is actively finding and implementing new solutions.

I am passing along this note from Susan Altshuler about the upcoming I-Open Leadership Retreat:

Hi Everyone:

I wanted to make sure you knew about the next I-Open training session coming up...