A lot of conversation has come from a few of us that attended the REI Regional Meeting: University Collaborative on sustainability. What were your opinions and what do you feel next steps should be?

The 05.26.05 REI
& University Collaborative forum on “Moving Forward: Creating a Sustainable
Northeast Ohio� brought together at the Cleveland Ritz-Carlton Hotel a diverse
group of probably 100 representatives of businesses, non-profits, academe and government
to discuss the economic opportunity of sustainable development – to restore NEO
as a “green city by a blue lake�.

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About the NEO Excellence Roundtable: an ad hoc group of people who care about Northeast Ohio are collaborating to make
NEO the world leader in social computing and openly
strategizing on how NEO as a region may achieve world-class status -
we are establishing benchmarks for success and taking action in pursuit
of measurable outcomes. Current pursuits include bridging the
digital divide in East Cleveland, deploying the optimal social
network for Northeast Ohio, and expanding understanding of the issues surrounding Whiskey Island.

In the interest of supporting open collaboration, we've established a virtual Community Of Interest Link (COIL) called NEO Excellence - please visit at http://neoexcellence.realinks.us. To access the community, you must
create an account using the link found at the home page - or, if you
have an account at another REALinks site... like here at REALNEO... you may log-in with your
username from that site, followed by @ that site's URL (e.g. your username [at] realneo [dot] us), and then enter your password from that site.

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An insightful opinion editorial in the 04.15.05 New York Times declares "Bush Disarms, Unilaterally", claiming over the past few years the US has abandoned the new economy war. The author states what he "can't figure out about the Bush team is why an administration that is so focused on projecting U.S. military strength abroad has taken such little interest in America's economic competitiveness at home - the underlying engine of our strength" - ultimately the question posed is why Americans are allowing ourselves to fall behind the rest of the world in deploying information technology research and access to our masses. The same reasoning can be applied to our homeland economy for Northeast Ohio - why do we allow 100,000s of area residents to stagnate in the old economy, divided apart from the digital economy?

Tuesday@REI: April 12: "The Gehry designed Peter B. Lewis portal to Industrial Innovation in NEO"

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Starting in San Francisco and spanning to Cleveland...

03.29.2005 Cleveland-Marshall College of Law,
Today at 6:00PM sponsored by the Democratic Law Organization, Mr. Jerry Springer
discussed the national political arena as well as the regional economic development issues.

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.

Trio tires of watching observatory fall apart - East Cleveland - It
was built as a premier research and teaching facility, a monument to
early American innovation, dedicated to unveiling mysteries of the
universe and to charting stars in the far reaches of space.

For decades, world-renowned astronomers pondered, probed and calculated inside these brick walls. Read about the current condition of this landmark property, and vision for the future, at the City of East Cleveland portal, now in early development here.

What Lakefront Access Means to NEO

Chris Ronayne, former Cleveland Planning Director and current Chief of Staff at City Hall will address Cleveland's competitiveness as a 21st Century City. From an accessible waterfront to a growing downtown, an emergent R&D Center at University Circle and a diversified local economy. Ronayne will build the case that Cleveland is poised for growth and has a unique pportunity to become the next development frontier of our region.

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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 03.14.05
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.

Notacon is the second iteration of a yearly technology, arts and music event held at the Cleveland Holiday Inn.

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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.   

Jack Ricchiuto sent out 12 emails to convene a meeting to explore the
state of "facilitation" in NEO and 40 or so people showed up - 20
more said they can't come but want to come to a future event... all here are
interested to know each other. He convened this group to determine who are
facilitators in region, how may they work together as a "practice
area" and how can we help our community and clients understand what we do
and the value to the community. So he asks four questions:

Developing dialogue and inclusion: Building the Facilitation Community
in NEO

Appreciative
inquiry, deliberative discussion and other techniques of large group
facilitation are critical to our economic future. Northeast Ohio has has one of
the largest concentrations of trained facilitators in the country. David
Cooperrider at Case designed Appreciative Inquiry, and it is widely taught at
Case and Cleveland State. Kim Sebaly of Kent State University is one of the
nation's leading experts on deliberative discussion. The Gestalt Institute of
Cleveland is a global leader in providing training in personal growth and group
dynamics.

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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.

WOW - WOW - WOW – Draft Notes - I stepped in late to Natural History
Director Bruce Latimer's talk on sustainability of sustainability with sobering
insight from a biologist on evolution of man, that we are on a run away train
headed toward the abyss, that termites are more important to the Earth than
humans, that we are all Africans, that man is hard wired to compete, and that
odds are 60/40% against the survival of humanity. He is not hopeful mankind -
man unkind - will survive more than the next few generations. He sees the only
hope of human survival is that we hijack our hard wiring to compete with
economic reward for doing the right things - getting together like we are today
and talk about the problems and find the right solutions - and we must do that
at a global level. China will not decide they want less than Americans and we
already need 4 planets Earth to support what we already consume.

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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The City Club of Cleveland's innovative Youth Forum Series featured a fantastic event on 03.07.08 for participants in the Student Group on Race Relations (SGORR), where probably around 200 high school students and educators and youth care professionals participated in discussions on issues of social consciousness.Â