As you can tell by the post below, something is amiss here at BFD. A few days ago, the server this blog is hosted on took a dump. While they’re working diligently to restore service, please head over to NortheastOhioBlogs.com, where’ you’ll find a stream of tweets and the latest blog posts from your neighbors, as [...]

Cleveland Diary doesn’t generally get a lot of comments, unless you count the hundreds of ringtone ads and other machine-generated crap I clear out of the spam filter every day. But two just showed up that you should check out: In a comment on this post, State Representative Mike Foley reports that a Senate version of [...]

Next Tuesday at Trinity… At the close of business yesterday the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court had 7,985 “active” civil foreclosure cases on its docket. 5,769 of those cases were filed in the last six months. Really… isn’t it time to call a time-out?

The Hagan/Husted plan:  Instead of ten elected County officials dividing up control of the patronage, let’s reduce it to four.  Bill Mason gets to keep his jobs, and the County Commissioners take charge of all the rest. What problem is this supposed to solve, again?

Youngstown’s role not only in the economic revitalization of Northeast Ohio but also in the establishment of the “Cleveburgh” Corridor continues to grow.  From Jim Cossler: We are extremely pleased to announce that Humility of Mary Health Partners (HMHP) has agreed to serve as the Beta site for erisRx, a .NET suite of charge capture tools developed by YBI portfolio company Eris Medical Technologies. HMHP is a region of Catholic Healthcare Partners, the largest health system in Ohio and the seventh largest not-for-profit health system in the United States. The software provides healthcare revenue management teams, clinical staff, and hospital administration with an automated tool to review patient charges both prospectively and retrospectively, prioritize and trend charge capture opportunities, and more effectively manage the hospital patient charge capture process. To learn more about this exciting new technology that allows hospitals and practices to pin point missing revenue opportunities, visit Eris Medical Technologies at www.erismed.com Jim Jim Cossler Chief Evangelist Youngstown Business Incubator 330.884.6262 www.ybi.org

The number of sheriff’s deeds filed with the Cuyahoga County Recorder’s Office returned to a “normal” 143 last week (May 5 through May 9) after dipping to 97 for the second week in a row (April 28 through May 2). Here’s who filed five or more last week: US Bank (21) Bank of New York (14) Federal National Mortgage [...]

I went to take a look at some of Econohomes’ seventy-eight local properties yesterday. Here are six out of the eight I visited before my old digital camera ran out of memory: Click through for the full size photos with addresses and some other information. How did I pick these places to check out?  By going to [...]

Coming out of a stimulating discussion these past two days in the first convening by the Brookings Institution on Bi-national Freshwater Technology and Policy Leadership comes this article from the International Herald Tribune: “A boat loaded with drinking water docked in Barcelona on Tuesday, the first in a series of shipments designed to stave off shortages in the drought-stricken port city. The first vessel, from the nearby city of Tarragona, will be followed in the next few days by another from Marseille. “The drastic move to supplement Barcelona’s drinking-water supply is part of a controversial plan to alleviate the impact of the worst drought to hit the northeastern region of Catalonia in decades.” A frightening enough indicator on its own, but paired with what was for me (as a recovering venture capitalist) one of the highlights of the Brookings session in Cleveland was the presentation made by David Henderson, a VC who is investing heavily in water technologies.  You can click here for the rest of the Herald Tribune story, then hop over to XPV Capital to see what the future of water looks like to the venture investment community…

Last week's gathering here at Case Western Reserve University on Collaboration Technology and Community Engagement engendered plenty of conversation on extending the 'networked collaboration tools' to engage students, faculty, staff, and the broader community around us. Anthony Williams, co-author of Wikinomics and keynoter at the Summit shared the impact of collaboration tools across an amazing breadth of social, economic, and learning environments (to the many who have asked, yes, Anthony's keynote will be available as a video stream --soon). One of my favorite TED Prize winners is architect and community activist and maverick open source humanitarian Cameron Sinclair. Cameron has leveraged collaborative tools for engaging both hundreds of architects (Architecture for Humanity) around the world but also engaging those architects in dozens and dozens of community projects both near and far. For folks in Cleveland, you have an opportunity to join us in dialog with Cameron Sinclair at MOCA Cleveland's Talalay Lecture being held on Wednesday, May 21, at 6 pm at the Idea Center in Playhouse Square here in Cleveland. The devastation in Mynamar and China over the past 10 days provides a graphic backdrop for some of the conversation on socially-engaged architecture. Please join us, if you're in the neighborhood. For a backgrounder on Cameron see his TED talk below Lev Gonick Case Western Reserve University May 13, 2008

If you’ve ever visited The Bookstore on West 25th, you know what a wealth of knowledge, information and hard to find literature this depot really is. And you know they’re one of the original “Green Reads” places in Cleveland, before such a tagline existed. If you’ve never been there, you owe it to yourself to [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Bookstore on West 25th URGENT Rent Party", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/14/the-bookstore-on-west-25th-urgent-rent-party/" });

even*cleveland: do you have a date for prom? “The Beachland Ballroom’s Prom is this Saturday night, so order some carnations and ask your steady.” SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "links for 2008-05-14", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/14/links-for-2008-05-14/" });

Legislature gets $1.57 billion stimulus package SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Investments in Ohio’s economy", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/14/boosting-the-economy/" });

In a move to upgrade county networking services, Cuyahoga County announced today that it has awarded OneCommunity, a local nonprofit dedicated to fostering economic development by leveraging information technology, a five-year contract designed to enhance, expand and maintain the County’s existing network services. According to estimates, the Cuyahoga County taxpayers should realize a savings exceeding [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Next NEO: Creating connectivity", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/14/the-next-neo-creating-connectivity/" });

Quietly, and without a lot of fanfare, we began a project 30 days ago to create a "Group" for Case Western Reserve University using the social networking tool known as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional networking platform technology that enables subscribers to create professional profiles. The value of the platform technology is its ability to allow you to sort your online Rolodex of contacts and, more importantly, the 3 or 4 degrees of association/separation, that is professional contacts of those people that you know and trust. Today, the 400th LinkedIn subscriber joined the Case Western Reserve University Group. If you haven't created a profile, here is a link to the one I created 3 years ago. Back in October during an online exchange with Dan Nye, CEO of LinkedIn facilitated by the New York Times, I asked him whether LinkedIn was re-opening up the service to alumni and other-related University activities. Dan's response suggested that the service was ready to open up to groups, in a big way. I hope readers of the Bytes from Lev blog will make suggestions on the ways in which we can use the affinity group to advance the value of the social network. If you haven't already read Guy Kawasaki's top 10 ways to use Linked in, it's a terrific a starting point. Here are some other ideas that I've been thinking about and I hope you'll offer feedback. As some of our alumni know, I'm interested in an alumni 'visiting group' to help with specific suggestions and enagement on the ways in which we can use technology to create value for our students and our alumni. My first thought was to use the Case LinkedIn Group to ask for input and feedback. We'll probably use a structured wiki to convene the visiting group and structure dialog and suggestions on initiatives to explore. Second, I've been amazed at the geographic diversity of the Case LinkedIn Group. While the university has alumni chapters in various large metropolitan areas, I thought the LinkedIn Group might be an interesting data source for inviting alumni to virtual meetings related to continuing professional development, updates, and opportunities for professional networking. We've held a number of these kinds of sessions in SecondLife and using Adobe Connect. Let me know if that is of interest to you, especially if you're not in a major city where we have a critical mass of other alum. Third, there are a number of other organizational units within the University who are interested in structured feedback from diverse constituencies. Perhaps there is a way to use LinkedIn to facilitate regular feedback on everything from planning, to mentoring, to helping contact a prospective students in your area who has expressed interest in Case Western Reserve University. Finally, let us know how you think using the network of 400 and soon 1000 alumni, faculty, and staff can advance your professional networking interests. Lev Gonick Case Western Reserve University May 11, 2008

Earlier this week in Kansas City, an OECD working group and the Kauffman Foundation held a meeting on innovation. The participants issued a press release that summarized the results of the meeting. After a three-day international workshop on innovation and the global impact of high-growth small and medium-sized firms (SMEs), an economic development organization representing [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Next NEO: Developing an innovation economy", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/13/the-next-neo-developing-an-innovation-economy/" });

Nice post from Eliza: Dennis just asked me why I was writing such a long post and I explained that I was writing about what a disaster the stew was. He looked confused. “Disaster?” That’s the thing. It wasn’t. It was really, really good. And no one knew about all the agony or at least fuss [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "A cooking metaphor", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/13/a-cooking-metaphor/" });

Young Workers Flee Midwestern States SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "NPR: Young Workers Flee Midwestern States", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/13/npr-young-workers-flee-midwestern-states/" });

What do you do when you’re in a situation like Jeff’s? Well I was sitting there reading & listening to my iTunes (with my earbuds) when a young man (16-20) got on at the E. 79th station. With a mini-radio about the size of a footlong sub. And no headphones. So, I could hear his music [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "When the community does nothing", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/13/when-the-community-does-nothing/" });

Innovation Philadelphia, a non-profit economic development organization that is working to establish the Greater Philadelphia Region as a national leader and world-class destination for Creative Economy industries, will host Creative Movement: Creative Economy in Action: Business Development in Motion. The conference is part of Innovation Philadelphia’s mission to support economic growth in the Philadelphia Region [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "BFD Learning Moment: Philadelphia’s Creative Economy Conference", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/13/bfd-learning-moment-philadelphias-creative-economy-conference/" });

The Lakewood Art Walk is this Saturday from 4-9pm! More info is in this week’s Lakewood Observer (PDF). SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Lakewood Art Walk This Saturday", url: "http://www.brewedfreshdaily.com/2008/05/13/lakewood-art-walk-this-saturday/" });