I was surprised to see a letter to the editor printed and on-line in the Sunday, March 22, 2009, Cleveland Plain Dealer - "A flag of peace is found out of order at the St. Patrick's Day parade", by Lou Pumphrey. It starts: "Being half-Irish (on me mudder's side), off work on St. Patrick's Day and knowing the day would be sunny and warm, I vaguely considered donning my 41-year-old U.S. Army dress uniform and joining the St. Paddy's Day parade downtown, carrying my flag." But there was no accompanying picture of Lou or the Flag of Peace.

In the print edition, there was a file photo of a parade, but it was hardly relevant.

I was there. I saw and was struck by Lou - I took lots of photos of him and posted some on REALNEO.

The Plain Dealer should have just contracted me for one of my dozen pictures of Lou carrying his Flag of Peace on St. Patrick's Day, just as he described in his letter... like the photo above, and those at the end of this posting... the last one has a nice tie-in with the whole church closing thing, also featured in the same section of the paper.

The Plain Dealer is welcome to publish any of the 300+ photos I took on St. Patrick's Day, some highlights from the parade here, and from the St. Baldrick's Head Shaving here... they are excellent. The PD just needs to know they exist (or commission them), request my authorization, and pay REAL COOP, which will pay me, if I choose.

In this economic model, Lou would have been paid for his letter, as well.

With Citizen Dashboard, that is how citizen journalism and intellectual property may work for you, going forward.

It is how it works for me. I have several requests to publish my photos from REALNEO pending right now, and it seems I'm asked for permission to use my photos at least monthly... I know Jeff Buster has been asked as well. And work by each of us has been used by people without asking us... more bothering Jeff than me. To me, it all depends on context.

But right is right, and rights are rights - in the new economy era of digitial media captured and presented everywhere, old economy media rules do not apply. New Economy rules must be developed. That is one of my primary objectives behind my role in developing Citizen Dashboard - protecting individual's Intellectual Property.

The flip side of that is once you are able to protect an individual's intellectual property, that property may be fairy shared and commercialized, if it has value. It has value if anyone will compensate for it. That should be determined in a free market. REAL COOP intends to protect individual's intellectual property and help individuals commercialize their intellectual property, if it has value. That is called "Infomediation".

One first hand example of REAL COOP infomediation in action is Cleveland Magazine contacting me because they wanted to publish my photos of Convivium 33, and my photo of Gallery U-Haul, all featured on Realneo, and they arranging rights to publish them in Cleveland Magazine. Later, they arranged for me to shoot photos to compliment one of their other stories. I've been a professional photographer since I was 15 so I don't mind the challenge - and the compensation offered was sufficient... which I still need to bill for. That payment will go to REAL COOP, and I'll donate my share to the co-op... my share would be the majority of the payments, as I did the work of creating the intellectual property, and it is my property, and all REALNEO did was promote my work, and all REAL COOP must do is the billing and administration... the co-op should get perhaps 10-20%, in this case. If the co-op had played a larger "agent" role, the share may be larger - 20-50%.

The same model would apply to any member who managed their content in REAL COOP and used the co-op as infomediator. Such infomediation may apply to photos, video, music, digital art, poetry... any original intellectual property you create. In this way, REAL COOP serves as a media bureau for other media outlets, like the Plain Dealer.

I would not be surprised to see a song or video posted here become a major hit, which could earn the creator and the co-op considerable compensation.

Of course, the owner of the co-op is all the members, so when one member does well, all members do well.

Already, when the Plain Dealer has a story they are running and they need a photo, or an expert to do research, they could create greater richness and a better story in collaboration with members of REALNEO. That will be even more the case through REAL COOP, and Citizen Dashboard, when the optimal virtual community enables all citizens to participate in the journalism process in a revolutionary, optimal way.

Enabling that should be one of the primary Killer Applications of the Citizen Dashboard, and it should pay for itself through income generated through the infomediation enabled.

In that world - a world of optimal journalism of all types, revolutionized in Northeast Ohio - all people will hear and see the complete story from all who choose to speak freely, like Lou Pumphrey.

I salute you Lou - please read his words of peace and enlightenment at Cleveland.com.

PD - if you need a photo in the future, give REALNEO a try... contact Jeff Buster to arrange infomediation.