Brewed Fresh Daily

Google shuts down music blogs without warning

Now that everyone in Cleveland has posted to their Twitter and Facebook pages Forbes’s new article on America’s “worst winter weather cities” (I’m not linking to the article because I don’t think Forbes deserves the traffic), it’s about time to take a step back and look at exactly why Cleveland managed to come out on the top of this list.

It’s unfortunate that Tim Kiladze and Forbes have given some folks ammunition to perpetuate the self-depreciating victim attitude that seems to be too prevalent around here. Forbes is notorious for these “best of” and “worst of” lists, which typically rely on badly flawed methodologies. At the end of the day, Forbes’s motivation is to sell magazines and drive traffic to its website, not to provide any valuable insight about these cities. It’s a potential gold mine for the magazine because, no matter how the lists shake out, local media absolutely eats this stuff up. Until that stops (and there is no indication that it will), Forbes will keep turning the crank.

The most obvious question to ask about this “worst city” list is “worst compared to whom”? Kiladze tells us:

In compiling our list, we measured weather patterns in the country’s fifty largest cities, or Incorporated Places and Minor Civil Divisions as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.

50 largest cities… sounds reasonable, right? Not really, because the size of cities is determined by arbitrary boundaries. Using this metric, cities like ElPaso , TX, Tucson, AZ and Fresno, CA are all technically “larger” than Cleveland. Meanwhile, none of the cities in upstate New York, where it would be logical to think about the cities as inflicted with “harsh winter weather”, make the cut. Buffalo is the 69th largest city, Rochester the 99th and Syracuse the 174th. With those cities out of the running, Cleveland doesn’t have a whole lot of tough competition.

But there’s more. Other potential “bad weather” cities that you might expect to fall in the top 50 don’t make the cut either. A few include: Cincinnati (56th), Pittsburgh (60th), St. Paul (66th), Anchorage (67th) and Madison (81st). Eliminating all of these cities from the methodology is akin to kicking the Cavs and the Lakers out of the NBA and then declaring the team that wins the playoffs the “world’s best”.

Still, this doesn’t change the fact that Kiladze’s methodology finds Cleveland to have worse winter weather than Minneapolis. How did that happen? The author explains:

…data was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and tracks average annual temperature, total precipitation in inches and total snowfall in inches. The temperature and precipitation data was calculated over a 30-year period from 1971 to 2000–NOAA’s most recent figures because of its decadal calculation schedule–and the snowfall levels included up to 2008.

Here is where things really start to fall apart. Kiladze is using the year-round average temperature and the year-round average participation to draw normative conclusions about winter weather. This essentially means that any city with blisteringly hot summers is off-the-hook, regardless of what their winters are like, because the summer temperatures will skew the average. But it also means that cities with big variations in temperature benefit as well.

Consider that the average high January temperature in Minneapolis is a frigid 22 degrees Fahrenheit. In contrast, Cleveland averages 33 degrees in January – a significant 11 degree gap. But the average July temperature in Minneapolis is 83 degrees, versus only 81 degrees in Cleveland. When you average the numbers together, Minneapolis doesn’t look quite nearly as bad as it should.

Further, Kiladze makes no attempt to analyze how different cities respond to winter weather. It’s merely assumed that an inch of snow is an inch of snow, no matter where it falls. This is laughable. One of my worst travel experiences was on a trip I took to Atlanta in January of 2005. Upon arriving, a few inches of snow covered the ground, barely enough to make anyone in Cleveland think twice about canceling their dinner plans, but enough to ruin our entire weekend in Atlanta. There really was nothing to do in the city other than sit around the hotel and watch movies on cable. Point is.. a city unprepared for winter can be easily crippled. In a city that can handle it, life doesn’t have to come to a halt.

The bottom line is that the headlines makes a powerful statement that the fine print can’t back up. That doesn’t mean Cleveland’s winters are tropical or that I’m not anxious for it all to be over. It does show that Forbes’s lists are intellectually bankrupt and don’t deserve anyone’s time of day.

Yesterday, in Evansville, I worked with a core group of ten regional leaders from a three state region of twenty-seven counties touching Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky.

We explored how to manage a complex strategy in this large a region. In April, we will launch this approach with a regional gathering of about 100 people from across the region.

Thomas Malone from MIT calls this organizational structure a “loose hierarchy”. I prefer the term “managed network”. This approach is light weight and nimble. As we move forward, we are budgeting for 1.5 full time staff people.

Total admin budget will be about $100,000 per year. This approach replicates the model we have been using at Purdue with our 14 county region for the past three years.

Heard from my friend Eric Olsen. His daughter is opening a new gallery tomorrow at La Placé in Beachwood. My neighbor Jerry Schmidt is one of the artists. Here’s the presser:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Fresh Art at The O- A new Gallery Opens in Beachwood

Beachwood, Ohio- 02/01/10

Cleveland artists Kristen Olsen and Jenna Fournier bring a new and edgy art gallery into LaPlace, The O. The gallery will display the owners’ surreal and bold pieces as well as metal work by Hy Snell and Jerry Schmidt. Hy has been creating intricate lyrical metal pieces for roughly seventy years, and has shown extensively across the country. Jerry is the son of well-known Cleveland sculptor, Fred Schmidt, and is a very accomplished metal sculptor in his own right. The gallery also boasts unique jewelry and candles, which are all locally made.

The grand opening is set for February 6th from 6 p.m. until 9p.m. There will be a live artist’s reception as well as live music, hors doeurves, and beverages.

Kristen is a graduate of fine arts and art history from the University of Cincinnati, and has been showing in and working within galleries for several years. She currently has work showing in Rome, Italy. Jenna is a beautifully self taught artist, and her work shows maturity beyond her years. She has shown work extensively from Las Vegas to Cleveland. Jenna has worked in and apprenticed under well-known figures in the art business. With this gallery, these ladies want to create an inviting atmosphere not just for buyers, but for all curious and interested in art. They plan to have regular live music at the gallery as well as be painting and creating while the doors are open.

The O Gallery
La Place
2101 Richmond Road
Beachwood, Ohio 44122

See you there?

To figure out the colors of Anchiornis feathers, Mr. Vinther and his colleagues turned to Matthew Shawkey, a University of Akron biologist who has made detailed studies of melanosome patterns in living birds. Dr. Shawkey can accurately predict the color of feathers from melanosomes alone. The scientists used the same method to decipher Anchiornis’s color pattern.

Evidence Builds on Color of Dinosaurs

More here.

Yesterday, I went on a whirlwind visit to the Penn State and the wonderful people at the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

During my presentation, I introduced a framework for thinking about how regions evolve toward open innovation. The first horizon involves changing the prevailing narrative to emphasize the importance of collaboration and finding new pathways. The second horizon involves establishing one or more civic spaces and practicing civility. During this phase, regions start uncovering their networks.

In the third phase, a region starts moving toward more strategic habits of thinking and doing. They abandon old models of strategic planning and begin to learn faster, more agile disciplines of strategic doing. At the fourth horizon, regions establish a regular process of conducting strategic conversations and translating ideas into action. They continuously update their strategic action plan.

In the region around Purdue, we have gone through these four phases, and we are now continuing this work. Other regons around the country are at different points in their transformation.

In my talk yesterday, I focused on what universities can do to move regions ahead. Penn State, Purdue and The University of Akron will be collaborating on developing customized “strategy packs” for regions.

More later.

Hopefully, the hyperventilating over the Cleveland Foundation’s reduced support for the Future Fund will move to figuring out “What’s next?”

Here’s what we know:

The Cleveland Foundation will not outsource its economic development budget. It does not want to hand over a major slice of its economic development budget to a the Fund, headed by the president of the Gund Foundation.

The Cleveland Foundation badly fumbled the public explanation of its move. It could have effectively made the case that the Future Fund is a regional effort, and that after priming the pump, it was time for others in the region to step forward. The Cleveland Foundation could make the case that the Future Fund needs a sustainability plan beyond initial start-up funds (just like any other grantee).

The Future Fund handles the press better than the Cleveland Foundation. No surprise here. Abbott and Brent Larkin share a professional and personal bond that goes way back.

Neither the Future Fund nor the Cleveland Foundation leverages Web 2.0 effectively. The Cleveland Foundation’s failure to embrace new media means that it is hostage to the perceptions drawn by the press. If the Cleveland Foundation is worried about its image, quit complaining and do something about it. The Future Fund has never effectively engaged the region in an on-going strategy, despite its heavily promoted Voices and Choices. (Voices and Choices was the big Greek wedding, and little more.)

The Future Fund isn’t as collaborative or as open as it said it was. It’s probably time for the Future Fund’s leaders to stop promoting themselves this way — a nationally recognized collaboration, blah, blah, blah — and start focusing on the issues of strategy and governance that led to the blow-up.

The Cleveland Foundation did not kick the Future Fund to the curb. It’s still providing support, albeit not much. Larkin is certainly over the top when he writes, the the Foundation “kicked regional collaboration in the teeth “. This is the type of inflammatory commentary that does no one any good. The fact is that the Cleveland Foundation provided major support for the Future Fund over the last number of years. Without the Cleveland Foundation’s early support, there would be no Future Fund.

The Cleveland Foundation’s president needs to take a breather (and a course in handling public relations would probably help). As a real estate developer with strong interests downtown, Goldberg stands to benefit from the Foundation’s refocusing in Cleveland. Absent any public statement of broader interest or strategy, people will assume that Goldberg is more worried about Goldberg than the Foundation. (His petulance does not bode well for the Foundation.)

It’s time for the Cleveland Foundation and the Future Fund to step back and define their new direction clearly. The Future Fund should focus on developing its connections to higher education…major drivers of both talent and innovation. To get more professional focus, Ronn Richards would do well to hire his friend at Angelou Economics to give voice to the Foundation’s new direction.

It’s time to move on.

Continuing this pie fight does no one any good.

Here’s a place to start on a new path: How about the two organizations focusing their attention on a set of regional principles for collaboration?

Last night I went to see CityMusic Cleveland perform at the Fairmount Pres Church. While I enjoyed Schubert and Mozart, Matt Haimovitz kills the SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concerto No.1. Granted, my taste runs Kronos Quartetish with a bunch of Philip Glass thrown in, but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying the music and the venues especially St. Stan’s in Slavic Village on Sat.

By the way, I’m doing a bit of social media coaching, but this is by no means a paid endorsement. If you’ve read anything I’ve posted to the internets, you know I’m a raving fan of things CLE particularly when it comes to culture and the arts. I’m excited to work with Eugenia and her org—they grok social media and are doing awesome community work.

From Youngstown: Third Frontier is a success
From Columbus: Lee Fisher commentary: Third Frontier is key to nurturing Ohio recovery