CT is breakin’ it down:

�It�s all about changing the dynamics of a community,� said William Brody, president of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The dynamic of Cleveland is dysfunction.

This is CRUCIAL! Tell everyone you know that this kind soul has distilled Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point into an outline and posted it on the web.

12/100 Ways to Reach your Goals, a PDF.

Interesting Fast Company article. What happens when you do something that has no budget, few people, no tangible resource? Usually great things!

John Polk rocks! Look what he asks in his opinion piece Reinventing Cleveland�s Power Structure

• What if the decisions affecting the area�s economy were being made by people whose companies are actually growing here?
• Would the community�s priorities be different?
• And who might those decision-makers be?
• What do we do with all that pent-up energy and creativity?
• How do these entrepreneurs re-invent the community�s institutional infrastructure so that it becomes more relevant in a post-industrial economy?
• What might the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders do to shake up Cleveland�s corporate status quo?

Valdis sent me a cool link to an organization that is working to, as they put it, be the “splotz of glue” that keeps communities together. Sounds like a cool idea to me! Here’s how they explain it on their website:

“We Build Community through our everyday actions, and some of these actions have the cumulative effect of increasing the quality of life in a community. By deliberately doing more of these specific activities we can build the kind of community we want to live in.”

What specific activities are they referring to?

“What we have learned is this: Communities where trust is high, where people are informed about current events, where there are strong connections and high civic activity are communities that we want to live in. These are communities that have a good quality of life. We have also learned that doing only one of these activities (trust, inform, connect, get involved - what we call splotz of glue) is not enough. They must be done together and in abundance.”

I like it, I like it!

Get the Cool Cleveland Newsletter fer crying out loud!

Richard Florida’s Innovation Center may have to relocate outside of his hometown of Pittsburgh, where he teaches at Carnegie-Mellon. If you’re a Cool Cleveland reader, you’ve probably got a well-read copy of his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life. And you may have even caught one of his three or four appearances here in Cleveland in 2002, preaching from the podiums of the City Club or University Circle, Inc., about how Cleveland needs to become more tolerant and diverse, focusing on the arts, technology and creativity in order to attract, harness and mobilize the key 30% of the population that Florida calls The Creative Class: those individuals such as designers, software developers, financial wizards, legal eagles and medical geniuses. Now he finds that his message may be more welcome outside of Pittsburgh. He wants to start an institute devoted to the issues of the creative class and to put those ideas into action, and places like the University of Toronto, the New School in NYC, the Gates Foundation in Seattle, and supporters in Kansas City, Chicago and LA have stepped up to make him offers. It is always the prophet who is ignored in his own land, but is this an opportunity for Cleveland? He only needs $5-6 million for a staff of 5 to start. What could such an institute do for CWRU, the City of Cleveland and NEOhio?

From the Futurist Update:

“Computers should be put in places where low-income users are likely to find other people to help them–such as churches, barbershops, and commercial laundries. So says Lynette Kvasny, assistant professor of information sciences at Penn State. Without this kind of social networking to support learners, the millions of dollars invested in initiatives to bring information technology to minorities and low-income groups will largely be wasted, she claims.”