Nothing better than working from the patio, with a Blue Moon and Coconut Shrimp. Thank you, Tremont Wireless Internet Neighborhood Network!

Care to join me?

I had the pleasure of helping Jack Ricchiuto do an Open Space Technology session with one of his clients this morning. Last night Jack was doing some reading and came across references to ‘canadian tables’:

Earlier that week I had strolled by our School Boardroom and was amazed to see chairs set up in a circle, tables tilted on end holding flip chart paper…

Now I have to point something out about this. Michael Herman may not have been the first to do this, but when we were in Alaska we discovered that our space did not have a good enough wall to put the agenda on. Michael, the seasoned pro that he is, just started opening up a bunch of six foot long folding tables and standing them on end which made a very serviceable wall. And as the proceedings grew in number, so grew the wall such that it covered one end of the meeting space and rounded the corners and started coming down the side walls. To my Canadian eye it really began to resemble the end of an ice hockey rink prompting myself, Judi Richardson and a player from the Alaskan youth hockey team in the Arctic Winter Games tournament to start playing an impromptu match with a black puck-shaped stone I had brought from my island.

Now this may all seem like Greek to some of you (they are rolling their eyes in Israel and India as we speak) but the fact that an improvised hockey game broke out at the merest suggestion of an arena prompted Michael to refer to this particular agenda wall design as “Canadian Tables.”

And that’s how it is known today. “We don’t have a good wall? That’s okay, we can use Canadian tables!”

Serendipity has a way of preparing you.

From Cool Cleveland:

Instead of opening their doors to Cleveland’s bright young talent, the roster of the incoming class of Leadership Cleveland, whose mission it is to “build and strengthen regional leadership through networking, education, partnerships, and service learning for the purpose of improving the quality of life in Greater Cleveland,” is starting to reinforce the perception that “the community is not nurturing new ideas,” according to Crain’s Cleveland Business. From Crain’s:

“I’ve heard from a lot of people who applied to Leadership Cleveland over the years, that basically, their application was looked at and the selection committee said, `Well, they’re only 25. … They’re only 35. … They’re only 40,”‘ said Margaret Judd, president of Executive Arrangements Inc., a Beachwood event planning and relocation firm. “That’s the time most people need help with their leadership skills and if you don’t get into Leadership Cleveland until you’re 50 and you’re the president, well, who needs it then?“

The emphasis is mine. Nicely said, Margie.

File this under WTF:

When an AOL user pops up her buddy list, it would show what TV shows her friends are currently watching. Click a link, and her TV would change to that channel. “This enables friends to exchange messages that include links to a particular network or TV show”

Well, for one thing, I never have the TV on. For another, I’m not sure I want to know what other people are watching.

From Unmediated.org

Scott Kovatch is posting notes from Apple’s big gig. Check them out by clicking through the title.

Valdis replies:

“You are welcome! It was fun. Anyone from this community attending a useful conference should do the same… eh? This would be fresh information and knowledge into the community.”

I’d be more than happy to open up BFD for anyone attending a conference. If you’d like to contribute, use my contact info there on the left.

Says says Zoe Baird, president of the Markle Foundation and co-chair of a task force it funded that produced the first comprehensive study of the information-sharing capabilities of the nation’s intelligence and law-enforcement agencies in Fortune Magazine:

In Chicago, the FBI gets a tip that terrorists plan to infect large numbers of Americans with a dangerous virus. But in the past the informant revealed information on smuggling, not terrorism. Agents can’t tell if his data are reliable. Meanwhile, in Kabul, someone with al Qaeda associations tells a CIA agent he’s heard that sleeper cells are being set up in the U.S. While he can’t remember many details, he recalls something about a Northwestern University microbiology student.

If the U.S. had good IT systems for intelligence, the two pieces of information in this hypothetical case would be quickly correlated. Northwestern is near Chicago, so the reports together might suggest a credible threat. But held by different agencies and taken alone, each could easily be underestimated�and today that’s what is likely to happen… The problem isn’t lack of awareness on the part of agency leaders. It’s more one of deeply ingrained culture… We need officials to speak out, from the White House on down, about the necessity of building networks to protect us in a networked age.

Yes! We need our elected officals to speak and act differently in a networked age, or be held accountable.

Please help me support Cleveland bloggers supporting fair trade. Ladygoat writes:

On [Saturday, July 24], along with dozens of other bloggers around the world, Foodgoat & I will participate in Project Blog. We will blog every half hour for 24 hours straight, starting bright and early at 8 am, to raise money for charity. It
wasn’t easy choosing just one out of so many worthwhile causes, but I am excited to announce that our efforts will be supporting the organization TransFair USA… Foodgoat and I are going to blog every half hour for 24 hours on July 24. Our theme will be Fair Trade: we’ll be sampling various fair trade products, including tea, chocolate, bananas, and whatever else we can find. And since I haven’t pulled an all-nighter since my undergrad days, the second half of the day will likely feature lots and lots of fair trade coffees as we blearily try to keep on bloggin’.

Ya! Fair Trade coffee is the best. Let me know if you need any help picking or brewing.

Steve Goldberg got me a headset today, so I dl’d Skype. I’m georgenemeth there.

“A community can represent many things and be directed toward a definite goal, but community itself is the focus of a spiritual science that inspires universality. Day-to-day living in a community fosters a very practical concept of existence. Community life represents the frontier between the macro and micro in terms of human organization, making it possible to experience all levels of human existence. The community is, therefore, a vast landscape for a material realization whenever each person enters into contract with the gifts, virtues, and shortcomings of its members. It is also the immense spiritual and psychic laboratory that enables our spirits to develop.” -Alex Polari de Alverga

Emphasis mine.

Just wanted to publicly thank Valdis for keeping BFD readers up to speed on Supernova. I truly wish I could have been there. I can’t wait until he gets back, so I can hear more about it.

Chas Rich is much more articulate in his post then I would have been in mine:

The attacks between the two local alt weeklies Cleveland Scene and Free Times, has cooled in the last couple months. Maybe because both realized no one cared, or that it didn’t make a difference to readers — other than for amusement. No one was going to stop reading one or the other. Most will read both. There isn’t a lot of material in either, if you aren’t looking for sex ads, lines, personals and such.

Scene, though, seems to be taking a new tact. Taking shots at some allies of Free Times. Cool Cleveland, which in a very short span has gone from being a simple e-mail newsletter about cultural activities in the Cleveland area to a nice website with online columns, trying to galvanize political support in the arts community, and organizing some of the activities to bring the arts community and others together. The creator Thomas Mulready, has done guest columns in the Free Times, and CC has gotten some positive publicity from Free Times.

Last week Cool Cleveland sponsored a pretty big party in Cleveland Heights at Cedar & Lee. A couple hundred showed for the party, and it appeared to be a success. I didn’t attend.

Scene, needed to diss it in some way, by claiming the attendees were offended by a very visible labor protest across the street that featured a giant inflatable rat… So who was actually offended? Scene is snarkily taking a shot at the entire group with alleged second hand claims that “Some people thought it was over the top,” and conflating it to offending their delicate sensibilities.

Weak.

Please click through to Chas’ site and add your comments there.

They sure didn’t ask me what I thought about it. We were putting Cool Cleveland together on Monday when Thomas got the call saying there were going to be protesters. We were all jazzed. What is more Cleveland than a good ol’ fashion union dispute? The giant rat was icing on the cake. Let’s hope future Art/Tech/Dance parties have as much happening.