One minor question involving subprime vacant houses which I haven't seen asked much is: Where did the occupants go?  And the answer I can tell you  is: UNDERGROUND.

When a foreclosure takes place, and a lender gets a judgment against a homeowner/borrower, that judgment is good in the courts for decades – in some states for 21 years. 

The Mad Potter covers my home town
Written by: George Nemeth
Got this email from a friend who was at last night’s Midtown Brews free-for-all:

Here's an email from our partner in Smaller Indiana,  Bruce LaDuke. Bruce participated in the Midtown Brews Open Conversation. Be sure to click through to the website to learn more about how other leaders are innovating to illuminate solutions through open forms of conversation.

Near-Time, Purdue Center for Regional Development Partner to Launch First Nationwide Community of Regions Focused on Workforce Innovations

Today Near-Time announced a partnership with the Purdue Center for Regional Development to launch the first nationwide community of regions focused on innovation and economic development. This partnership is a spinoff of the U.S. Labor Department's WIRED Initiative. The new nationwide community is accessible at www.wired-nation.net.

Technology and Organization Opportunities to Accelerate Innovations in Open Source Economic Development

The February 7, 2008 Midtown Brews forum, Our Ohio Energy Portfolio: Economic Development in Your Backyard, brought together perspectives of Cleveland government, foundation and citizen decision makers. Elisa Young, traveled from Meigs County, Southern Ohio, to share her perspective as a seventh generation land owner, report on current local costs to human life, and natural resource devastation in proportion to the affect of current concentration of, and construction of future power production facilities. The Open Conversation was generated by about 100 participants and joined by 30 members of the Smaller Indiana social network contributing questions and observations via broadcast video and chat. Government leaders City of Cleveland Councilman Matt Zone, City of Cleveland, Ward 17; Nolan Moser, Law Fellow, Ohio Environmental Council ;  Andrew Flock, Painesville Councilman; Andrew Watterson, Cleveland Sustainability Programs Manager, City of Cleveland Department of Utilities; and Foundation leader, Richard Stuebi, BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at The Cleveland Foundation, NextWave Energy, Inc., Founder and President.

The Open Discussion focused on issues and revealed the magnitude of the topic, the enormity of consequences, and our failure to innovate.

Was this conversation really just a result of a lack of technology and organization innovations, a long-term lack of citizenry participation and business leadership? ...

How did we get to this point?

Our situation has changed. We're required to make decisions at a level of comprehension beyond our capability, exaggerated by unforeseen forces and at a new speed. Tomorrow, the forces will be more complex, the speed will have increased and window of time, shrunk.

Why should we be surprised?

Consider what's involved. Of all animals on earth, humans score the lowest in cognitive capability to plan for the future, and our brain capacity based on size is miniscule in proportion to the scale of the new kinds of decisions we are responsible to make.

Leaders are experiencing previously unexperienced - 

• Forms of change
• Quantum levels of change
• Leaders are required to interact with new economic systems
• Required to respond to unforeseen future forces
• Navigate a landscape comprised of a few resource rich decision making entities verses a pool of burden bearing constituents (you can flip ownership of burden with the same disastrous unbalanced outcomes, the point is responsibilities are not shared)

We are all in this together, and ultimately, we are all affected equally. Regions and their communities are experiencing a whiplash of issues, topped with a new misunderstanding of speed, lack of planning, strategy, and metrics to guide regional decision-making in this new landscape. What will be required for people to halt uniformed guesswork, lavish and desperate spending of resources on quick stop solutions? Because of a confluence of perfect storm factors, every decision made will affect our survival sooner than our experience tells us.

This is not about finger pointing, back slapping, or deal making between a few individuals or corporations, it is about the power of collaborative leadership, employing critical thinking skills to scale brainpower, engaging high end technology innovation, and designing new models of organization.

Moving forward.

• There is a need to dramatically increase alternative energy innovations
• Dramatically increase funding for research
• Ensure open access to results
• Regular apolitical theoretical and practical summation of research
• Identify future forces affecting energy
• Build open networks to engage the public, private business leadership, government
• Design technology tools for a new rate of speed and visualization

Navigating these new landscapes requires new learning. Adopt the practices and tools of Open Source Economic Development (158.5 KB) deployed by I-Open. I-Open is creating the open spaces to build the open networks for new conversations focused on regional transformation. With our technology partner Near-Time.net, we are building online collaborative communities to sustain the conversations between face to face meetings, share information, and accelerate enterprise development for regional transformation.

 
Some next steps to learn about new practices and tools:

And break.

Then when it warms up like it did over the past two days, the pipes thaw out.

And water floods everything.  

And when the building is filled up, the water pours out under the doors and into the street - just like it is doing at Sweet Daddy's.

To help "Cleveland School" Neon Artist Extraordinair Dana Paterson celebrate, show-off and profit from his cover story feature in the Free Times newspaper, this week, the Inner Circle will feature an exhibit of Dana's recent and past work, with installation beginning this Friday, February 8, 2008, when you may meet the artist, from 4-7 PM... the exhibition will have a formal opening next Friday, Fenruary 15th, from 6-9 PM, and will remain on display through the end of the month.

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Covered on Realneo in the past here, and here, today Dana Paterson is front page on the Cleveland Free Times

Speakers Joseph Cimperman, Barbara Anne Ferris, Dennis Kucinich, Thomas O'Grady, and Rosemary Palmer

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Looks like my Pittsburgh sister chocks up another winning mark for choosing the right liveable city-

Cleveland365.com (what persons/names/$ are behind this anyway?) is sponsoring what they call a 10,000 little ideas convo. 

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On Wednesday, January 16,  Stephanie Spears testified at the Cleveland City Council Public Utilities Committee's PURPA Hearing.

More than 16 people testified asking Cleveland City Council Public Utilities Committee to cancel, or at the very least, delay their vote on whether or not to allow Cleveland Public Power (CPP) to sign a 50 year contract to buy power from the American Municipal Power of Ohio's (AMP-OH) proposed 1,000-megawatt conventional pulverized coal powered plant to be located in Letart Falls in Meigs County Ohio.

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Midtown Brews connects you face to face once a month with Northeast Ohio leaders in the technology, energy and creative industries. Host partners: EarthWatch Ohio/Insivia/I-Open/Meet The Bloggers/Webtego

Join us and the Smaller Indiana network February 7th to learn more about... Our Ohio Energy Portfolio: Economic Development in Your Backyard

Whether you are visiting the West Side Market in Cleveland, Ohio, or the St. Lawrence Market Place in Toronto, Canada,  what makes your visit memorable and unique are the individual vendors.  

Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from its death throes? Her e is an excerpt from his new book.

"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course"

I was just thinking about the fact that the steel industry here in Cleveland has been declining (okay dying) for decades, well, we do call ourselves a "rust-belt city, don't we....

.....and I was thinking about our possible future in terms of wind tower, turbine, blade, turbine housings, etc. manufacturing.

Sunday, February 17th
at 2:00 PM

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The Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District will host a 2008 poster contest for students in kindergarten through grade 12. The theme is "Water is Life." Submissions are due at the district's headquarters in Valley View by April 1.

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A Two-Day Workshop at

Everywhere we go, everyone we meet, we look at faces to form an opinion about the feelings behind everyone’s phrenology.