Time to rally the bloggin’ troops. The only person that showed up last time was Chas. I’ll make sure I personally invite the Olsens. If you’re in Northeast Ohio and have a blog, please register and vote. They get cancelled if 5 people don’t vote, and last time I had to beg, borrow, and steal just to make sure it wasn’t cancelled. Even some of you who intend to blog someday are welcome.

I’m not sure why anyone would want my opinions in their inbox, but you can subscribe to my blog through Topica. The URL is http://www.topica.com/lists/brewedfresh. You can also subscribe by sending an email to brewedfresh-subscribe[at]topica[.]com. I’ve got to warn you. Every time I post, you’ll get email of it. I know, scary thought.

I’d like to see this list used as a discussion group for you cool Clevelanders, so you can participate by sending an email to brewedfresh[at]topica[.]com.

I’m sending this one in by email.  Now all I need is a phone that send text messages and I’ll be mobloggin’ in no time.

Frank sent around a great email today. I asked him if I could post an excerpt and he agreed. If you’d like to read the whole thing, send him an email. There’s plenty more good info, including suggestions on implementing the ideas:

When you think of creativity, think Cleveland Water-Works. Three basic elements are required: the faucet, the distribution network, e.g., the pipes, and the source. The world’s best-designed waterworks is of no value to the people it was designed to serve if there is no water. Having an abundance of water is of no value to the community without a way to tap into it and distribute it to our faucets.

Up until now, Cleveland’s discussions on creativity and the Creative Class have been focusing on the faucet, perhaps a little on the pipes, and not at all on the most necessary element of all, the spring.

Creativity theory notes three complementary aspects of creativity: raw, adaptive, and productive. All three are of absolute necessity. However, to borrow again from the water-works motif, as long as the region continues to remain fixed on the faucet, we like California, will forever be looking elsewhere for water, and depending upon someone else to lay the pipes. The analogy is obvious. The faucets are the producers, those who shape the idea into a usable product or service. The pipes are the adapters, those who gather the raw ideas from the source and move the flow toward production, along the way refining the raw idea.

I was at the City Club today for CrainTech’s IT Breakfast. One of the speakers described their business as “Taking raw data, running it through the brains of the architects, and the output are documents”. Very similar to Frank’s point. What goes through your mind? What’s the output?

Lauren Dubick sent me an article about blogging:

In a conference room in Lamont Library, Dave Winer is evangelizing, doing his best to convert to his cause the University’s far-flung Webmasters who’ve come to this monthly meeting of the Harvard’s ABCD committee. Earlier in the week, the Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics was his pulpit, and a few hours after his ABCD sermon, he’ll reel in a few more believers at the Law School. He’s a preacher with a projection screen, and, in his jeans and sneakers looking more like a software developer than a gospel-sayer.

In fact, Winer is a software developer; as founder and CEO of UserLand Software, he created software that facilitates Weblogs. Not coincidentally, it’s the wonder of Weblogs - simple personal Web sites that authors frequently update - that Winer is preaching as a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (HLS).

Not only are Weblogs (”blogs” to those in the know) getting a buzz as the Internet’s next big thing, but Winer and the Berkman Center think blogging might change pedagogical practices at the University and create community on Harvard’s famously decentralized campus.

Chris Corrigan is looking forward to a day when:

Open Space would be an ideal way to spawn a whole nest of weblogs in an organization, as each person leaves the meeting and enters the office to begin blogging the outcomes, next steps and results. With comments on each blog, people could begin linking ideas and knowledge and recreating the Open Space environment on a constant basis to share knowledge about whatever the organization is working on.

Maybe that day is sooner than we think.

I know there’s a lot of things going on this Friday night, but I really think you should come out to Painesville for the closing reception for the BK Smith Gallery’s show Beauty Mark. Where else will you get great music, wonderful art, interesting people, and world class poetry by Ray McNiece? The best part is, you get all this AND you’ll be helping the educational outreach of the Gallery. Did I mention the massage available by Bella Donna Spa? That’s reason enough for me to go. But there’s also jewelry from Finestra and a silent auction of paintings by Bridget Ginley. I’m totally jazzed about it. This is probably THE coolest thing to happen in Painesville. I thought I had to go downtown to do this sort of thing. Not anymore!

Jeff Melton is going to the Memphis Manifesto Summit.

Hosted by Richard Florida, The Memphis Manifesto Summit is an unprecedented gathering of the Creative 100, the best and brightest, most active and creative young minds from across the U.S. These 100 young professionals will share their thoughts and insights in the areas of business, culture, design, society, education and science to create the Memphis Manifesto - the definitive report on transforming cities that want to compete for the Creative Class.

He says:

I am getting excited about attending this Summit next week after finally having a chance to read the preliminary messages and ideas being exchanged on the listserv. If you’re going, drop me a line. Bon voyage

Can I get 100 of the most active, creative minds from Cleveland (or Northeast Ohio) to add something to the Cleveland Manifesto Wiki page? Is it that people understand a listserv but not a wiki page?

Chas was concerned that I had trouble making it home. I heard the same news story on the way to the Civ Coffee Klatch. Don’t worry Chas, I made it home OK.

For you continued participation. BFD passed another milestone yesterday: 20K page views

While poking around the internet like I usually do, I came across an interview with BK Smith Gallery Director Lyz Bly on WBKC. Click on the title of the post to listen.

My CD came in the mail from Marc at Disquiet. I listened to Clicks+Cuts. Marc was right. Its probably the most enjoyable electronica CD I’ve got since Force Feed.

This article could have been written by William Zinsser:

A great deal has been written over the last few years about the need for brevity on the Web. Whether Web writing has improved as a result is debatable, but one thing is certain: the word has gotten out. These days one can’t gather three people in a room to plan a Web site without someone’s sounding off about the need for brevity.

That’s a good thing. Our collective consciousness has been raised.

But there are at least two downsides to this Web-brevity mania. First, perhaps following Newton’s third law, it has at times caused the opposite reaction in print. It is as if writers, reeling from the constraints imposed by the Web, can’t help but pour forth in print. Second - and far worse - it has put the cart before the horse: brevity has begun to supersede clarity in importance in our eyes. Striving for brevity isn’t enough. We need to write tight.

If you can make it, on the last Monday of the month, a group of us get together at Civilization for coffee in Tremont. Civ is on the corner of W. 11^th and Kenilworth. There isn’t an agenda. We’ll just have coffee and talk, no big whoop. Hope to see you at the offical start time at 5:30. Us serious coffee drinkers should be there around 4.

But isn’t it absurd to let technology books pass into the public domain after 14 or 28 years? What kind of technology was available in 1975?

The following O’Reilly technical books are currently in print and set to be released under an Attribution license after either 14 years or 28 years after the publication date, given author permission. Titles that have been cleared by their authors are denoted below with a pale green background in the publication date column, titles still pending are shown with a pale red background.

I think its a wonderful gesture. I fully support stopping intellectual property perpetuity. But what’s the value of some (most?) IP after 14 years?

Bummer for local nominee Spongi. I guess its another sign that we’re in the New Normal.

I’m glad someone else is. Look what Sage Lewis says:

“What impressed me, by far, were the thoroughly intelligent questions people asked. They were asking questions about conversion utilities, positioning strategies within the top spots, affiliate marketing troubles, potential problems with Overture partner strategies with Gator… just to name a few. I was very proud of Cleveland. Nice job everyone!

I never knew the story behind the creation of grape juice. It amazes me how innovation happens, and how people respond to it:

In 1869, dentist Thomas Welch was elected Communion steward at the First United Methodist Church, Vineland, N.J. He objected to the use of wine for the sacrament and refused to touch it. Meanwhile he heard of Louis Pasteur’s new method of killing bacteria in milk (”pasteurization”). He decided to try applying the same principle to preserving the juice of grapes unfermented.

Dr. Welch, his wife, and son Charles gathered grapes from their trellis, washed and cooked them, and squeezed the juice through cloth bags. He poured it into bottles, stoppered them with cork and wax, then boiled them in water to kill any yeast in the juice that would start the fermentation process. It worked!

Welch asked his church to substitute his new “unfermented wine” for the traditional Communion wine. At first the elders viewed his suggestion as “an unacceptable innovation,” but he convinced them. Word spread. Temperance-minded churches begin asking for Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine. Thou-sands sampled it at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. That year, young Charles left his dental practice to market the family juice full time.

I woke up this morning with a James Taylor song running in my head. What do you supposed I did to deserve that sort of punishment?

Today is the first day of the rest of the summer. How do I know? Today was the dreaded day, the first start of the lawn mower. Its all uphill from here. Yard work every weekend. Can you tell I don’t enjoy it?

Its always good to know who’s linking to you. I noticed that The Hairy Eyeball was. HE provides this link to the Berkeley Intellectual Property blog entry Revolution is not an AOL Keyword*:

You will not be able to stay home, dear Netizen.
You will not be able to plug in, log on and opt out.
You will not be able to lose yourself in Final Fantasy,
Or hold your Kazaa download queues,
Because revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

You wonder why Cleveland and Northeast Ohio gets a bad rap? Its because people like Fast Company editor Heath Row sees stories like this and publish them in a blog that’s read worldwide:

“A bookstore in Ohio has come under fire for throwing away hundreds of unsold books when it went out of business. A local TV news reporter came across the overflowing dumpster and got upset that the books weren’t donated to area nonprofits. The reporter became even more upset when she learned that taking the books out of the trash was illegal.

NewsChannel5 was told that tearing front covers off new books is standard procedure when a bookstore closes. It’s called “stripping a book.” … [T]o take these books from the trash bin is illegal; the books would be considered stolen property. Inside the front cover, a warning states that a book without its cover is unauthorized. It was reported to the publisher as unsold and destroyed, and neither the author nor the publisher received payment.

I just checked a mass-market paperback — Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World — and it has no such warning. Ah, here in Stephen King’s A Bag of Bones, it says, “The sale of this book without a cover is unauthorized.”

Dumpster dive away, Media Dieticians. It’s legal unless you sell the books.

If you see me out behind the local bookstore, you’ll know why.

Dave Manelski is reporting at About.com that Cleveland is the fattest city in Ohio:

According to Men’s Fitness Magazine, Cleveland is now the 6th fattest city in America. We moved up from the number 13 spot attained last year, and jumped ahead of Columbus, which now ranks 8th in the national standings after finishing 6th last year. At the rate we’re piling it in and on, we should overtake Houston for the number one spot by next year. The people of Houston would be glad to shed that dubious distinction, having held on to the number one spot for three years in a row now.

Obviously, improving our self image includes shedding a few pounds. It’ll probably do wonders for our energy level as well.

John Ettorre has a piece in Enterprise Development Magazine. I’d link you, but its one of THOSE magazines that doesn’t provide online content. I take that back. They do. Its so outdated, you’ve probably heard about it somewhere else.

Kudos to Eric for setting out to dispel some myths about the scarcity of Rock ‘n’ Roll talent from the region. He recites a litany of musical acts from the area, as well as putting it in the proper context of all the other cities that have made their contributions to the heritage of Rock ‘n’ Roll. I think he should know:

“Over a 20-year writing/editing/media career, Eric Olsen has written in depth on a vast array of topics including politics, current events, world affairs, popular culture, music, music industry, digital technology, opinion and commentary, etc., for periodicals, books, TV, radio, and the Internet.

Internet: Founder/editor/writer: Blogcritics.org

Popular culture writer for various publications including Playboy, Billboard, Alternative Press, Option, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Akron Beacon Journal, Hear/Say, Cleveland.com, etc

Editor/Author: Networking In the Music Industry (Rockpress, 1993), Encyclopedia of Record Producers (Billboard Books, 1999)

TV: music critic for Fox 8 Morning show 2000-2001; host/writer of Dancevision music show in Akron/Canton 1993-1995

Radio: founder/host/producer/programmer “Cool Tunes,” one of the most highly-regarded and longest-running specialty music shows in the country: WRQK 1990-1994, WENZ 1994-1996, WAPS 1999-2002

Don’t forget Panelist on an upcoming discussion hosted by the Society for Professional Journalism at the Great Lakes Brewing Company.

Last night my wife and I were at MOCA, participating in a discussion about Christine Hill’s Pilot {Cleveland} led by the intrepid Thomas Mulready. At the risk of violating any of Christine’s copyrights on the production, I wanted to share a quote from one of her “guests”; author, mother, grandmother, entrepreneur, and former First Lady of Ohio Dagmar Celeste. She “consults, coaches, and counsels individuals, groups, and businesses through personal and professional transitions and challenges”. When asked why she prefers coaching to counseling, Dagmar replied “I want to work with people who want to be successful”. AMEN. I hope she finds plenty of clients in Northeast Ohio.

Mike Nemeth (no relation, except maybe creatively. I like his style) is one of us Northeast Ohioians. In West Point. That’s something for us to be proud of. Even more than that, he’s been producing a website, distributing email, and making videos (the one I link to travel to troops around the world, including Iraq) that, as he describes it “dance on the line of what ‘the brass, higher, etc…’ views acceptable”. But does it with incredible integrity, “[I]t is never my intention to bring discredit or insult upon the Academy or any of the individuals, cadet or officer, who lead us”. How did I find out about him? I talked with his mom, Lisa, one of the creative forces behind Finestra@Studio 58N. It must run in the family…

A nascent, still anonymous blogger wrote something that was incredibly beautiful and a shame not to share. Expect more soon:

Few people know that there are truly beautiful places in the city limits of Cleveland featuring 100 feet high sheer cliffs, mallards, Canada geese, great blue herons, deer and giant rainbow trout. I know these places. I love them. And that’s why I get up before work and visit these places.

Tim didn’t ok this, but I think its good enough to let the world know he’s blogging again after a long hiatus. Check out the cool, clean design.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”