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.

REALNEO team meeting and fun and games at Eakin/Buster HQ, in Shaker Heights, July 11, 2008...other than insane mosquito infestations this year, it's been a great Summer for backyard planning...

When people wonder what is the value of a local daily newspaper, I must point to the story of Shaw High School Band, which was invited to China to perform but could not afford to do that. The Plain Dealer article "Bang a Drum, Proudly", by Connie Schulz, raised enough attention and funding to get them there, from where they just returned in triumph (nicely covered in the PD here, today)... a $500,000 whirlwind phenomenon all occurring in less than 6 months!

 One of the few organizations in   Cleveland that seems to have truly meritorious objectives is The Cleveland Council on World Affairs.     

I voted absentee – to give me time with my ballot to consider each candidate – and I found that many candidates have no internet record whatsoever.   That’s a bad sign for NEO.

During the very cool Meet the Bloggers spin segment I saw televised after the Obama/Clinton Cleveland debate, one of the bloggers said the response in the blogsphere was split on who won - 50% Obama and 50% McCain. Today, a different window into NEOs cyberspace opened for Obama (and McCain), with endorsements on CoolCleveland. If you visit REALNEO often, you know where I stand... I am one REALNEO member strongly supporting Obama. But I am only one small voice in REALNEO, and I'm curious how other "bloggers" and cybercats in NEO stand on the primary... no matter what, this is an historic election, so why not speak up with your vote, voice and support for whomever you like, while you can really make a difference.

So, please, use this posting to add a comment of support for your candidate. If you have a blog or place in cyberspace where you voice your feelings about this, feel free to link that in. Note, to leave a comment you must be a REALNEO member... use the create account link to request an account and we will confirm that for you as quickly as possible.

 

The day Ohioans and others around America failed the world and allowed Bush and his clan 4 more years was the saddest of my life, and I was depressed by life after that until I posted the following...

The Mayor of 10-5 is now in the office, as Snag now hosts the Inner Circle. I help make coffee and keep the WiFi live. We're going to feature Gypsy Beans baked goods and items from Hot Sauce, and surprises from all around the REALNEO... feel free to stop by any time from 10 AM to 10 PM and say hi.

YOU ARE THE BEST REPORTER IN NEO -  YOU HAVE informative and educational NEWS!

 

 

Carl Pope is in Cleveland and on December 4, 2007 I heard him present his  (second to last of ten public presentations)   “mind of Cleveland” “bill board public art”  project at Cleveland State University’s (CSU) Levin College forum.

I can understand why Jeff put up the sunny, happy sunflower header, on such a glum day, as I'm sure we'd all love a lift... but the reason we are feeling glum is not the weather or lack of flowers but the injustices we see all around us. My replacement header is not intended to cheer people up but to cheer on injustice-buster Buster in his pursuit of liberty and freedom to take pictures in public places and justice for all.

Ken Blackwell is out of office but his legacy is still in charge in Ohio.

I consistently attempt to have a “positive” outlook about North East Ohio and Cleveland.  I consider the substance of my posts on Realneo and affirmatively select material which I believe is conducive to improving the region.  However, there can be a problem with this self steered Polly Anna  editorial policy .   Always looking at the bright side might be just perpetuating a lie – maybe always having a positive outlook is actually misleading people and leading others into the false belief that the region is doing ok, that the region is improving.  Maybe it would be more helpful if I used my blog to accelerate failure – get to the bottom of it, get it over with and start new…

Thought I'd think out loud some more as I start to design outreach, configuration, and training plans along the lines of our East Cleveland Digital Divide efforts. Transparency, Authenticity, and Accountability are such key principles - let's see if we can demonstrate these as I reason through recent strategic planning efforts...

 

.

To the County Auditor of the
County of Cuyahoga, Ohio:

Here's a worthwhile event notice from one of the Founders of Meet The Bloggers, George Nemeth, for their BLOGGAPALOOZA. Now at the Beachland Tavern, mixing with Arts Collinwood, this should be an amazing gathering - need to check this out for sure:

7GEN is pleased to provide a Drupal virtual community for the historic Cleveland Club of Washington, D. C., and they have used the technology very well - visit their clean, effective site here. If you frequent D.C., or have friends or family there with a "keen interest in Cleveland", connect with club President Brooke Stoddard at their online presence here. Their next event is this private tour of the U.S. Capitol, July 11, 2007, which will be exceptional.

Located in the heart of the historic Hough Bakeries Complex is the Inner Circle, a weekend club and reception facility operated for the past 7 years by the Hot Sauce Williams family. Starting shortly, operation of the Inner Circle will expand to extended hours every day, featuring a cybercafe, meeting space, computer terminals, free wifi, independent film, the Linux Cafe, art, culture, and great food, coffee, and even wine tastings, via a broader partnership of friends. This pan is from the deck and patio area, and features Guyanese chef and reggae performer and DJ Edwin, who will help operate the Inner Circle, shown with Hot Sauce Williams founder LeMaud Williams, as well.

I recently received an email from ClevelandSGS giving props to realneo, with a link to the ClevelandSGS space on Flickr. I hadn't heard of ClevelandSGS so I checked it out and was awed - it is an amazing assemblage of scanned historic documents and current photos of signage and scenes in Cleveland - a significant community asset in those respects - and a powerful gallery of "Mash-ups" not to be missed. But I still don't know what is ClevelandSGS. Do you? It is the Art of the Day, so read on

 

Bill Callahan and I are pleased to offer a last moment opportunity to join an important conversation just beginning on making NEO a global leader in the use of Free Open Source Software, with the man who wrote the Open Source Definition, Bruce Perens. Bruce is Vice President of Developer Relations and Policy for FOSS-related SourceLabs, of Seattle. NEO is fortunate to have a local connection with Bruce, as the Director of Marketing for SourceLabs, Athena Diamantis, lives in this region. Digital Vision Director Bill Callahan and East Cleveland CIO Abu Alli met with Bruce and Athena last week to discuss how to make NEO a world FOSS leader, and we decided that is a topic deserving much broader and more open attention. So tomorrow we continue growing the dialog.

 

Join us, if you may... 8 AM breakfast tomorrow at the Juniper Grill.

It is always exciting to see powerful uses of the technology we use for realneo - Drupal. Derek recently pointed out that the New York Observer uses Drupal for their web presence and I just found a posting on the website of the originator and keeper of the Drupal flame, Dries Buytaert, that Ozzy uses Drupal - his label Sony uses Drupal. I'd heard that about Sony, but hadn't connected it with any of their sites before... this...

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Martin Varsavsky, founder of FON, and author of his "Blog of an Entrepreneur", posted there an interesting letter he sent to all his employees: "FON is Dropping Microsoft, Adopting Ubuntu". I had seen, on some of his earlier blog entries, that Martin had a major Windows crash and lost his whole hard drive (been there) and so after 20 years with Microsoft he switched to Ubuntu (done that) and also Apple - after a month he settled on Ubuntu. It has been fascinating reading Martin's celebration of discovering FOSS - I remember having the same awakening. It is very exciting to now see Martin move his company FOSS, and to highlight how he is doing this and why - read his personal account here... and think about how this could be happening all over NEO...

A Case student has created a new front-end for RTA's Scheduling interface.  I, for one, think it is a vast improvement over RTA's site.  While I am most impressed by this user-friendly application of technology, I am also intrigued by the Django technology used to create this web app.

$millions spent - outside advertising firm brought in - focus groups of kneeling cheerleaders and deer in headlights conducted - press conference in airplane - check, check, check and check. "NEO" leadership did it again. Another Case of mistaken identities, being those who hired those using outdated formulas to decide how to market our city to us and the world. Every identity mistaken, as plusers ask us to believe in them, and Case re-begets CWRU.

 It is very nice to see my favorite real urban planner Joe Stanley featured on Lee Batdorff's very informative University Circle Blog - and thanks to Joe for mentioning us here at realneo! We set up and host his http://neomainstreet.com site, which is one of the best uses of Drupal in this region, and presents excellent work by a talented planner and designer. Joe is working on all the community development projects I'm involved with, including overall East Cleveland planning and the Star Intergenerational Neighborhood planning and The Intergenerational School, along with other work Joe does independently.

While not currently a powerhouse in Free Open Source Software (FOSS), Northeast Ohio is positioned to begin excelling with FOSS in some very strategic ways that may add great value to the regional economy. 

Because of FOSS, we may now bridge the digital divide more quickly and completely here than has any other large urban center in America, we may soon have the highest percentage of workforce properly educated for the new economy, and we may lead the world in some fields of application development and technology innovation with global, open standards, all if the region now embraces FOSS..

 

About two years ago, the REALNEO team took on the challenge of helping to bridge the digital divide in NEO, in many ways, including recycling "obsolete" corporate computers, wiping the hard drives, and loading them with free versions of Linux and other Free Open Source Software (FOSS). One group of computers, provided by Progressive Insurance and Benesh Friedlander, that we freed from Microsoft-obsolescence, were given to a combination of Shaw High School seniors and senior citizens in East Cleveland. Shaw seniors have since taken their computers off to college, and, a few weeks ago, East Cleveland CIO Abulime Alli and I met with one of the senior citizens who received a desktop PC and now needed some tech support. I was  thrilled to help her out and interested to hear how having a Linux computer at home had changed her life.

 

 I didn't get my copy of the Plain Dealer, this morning... probably stolen off my porch. So, I thought, I don't like paying for a dirty old paper anyways, and only read some of the content, so why not just read it on-line at their union-busting Cleveland-dot-com website. Unfortunately, that is not a realistic option... every time I load the home page or any main section on the site, a viral pop-up advertisement for some Health Club attacks my computer.