A Cleveland tradition…

I’ve posted pictures from CoolCleveland’s most recent party.

Here’s a BFD comment from Mary Beth the Quilter that I don’t want you to miss:

“[R]eal geeks [are] at one with the universe! Able to do whatever life asks of them. Build huge things from no code? Excavate in someone else’s code for the answers to life’s questions? Listen to your problems? Bring something to a potluck? Help you move? No problem… Give me geek any day.

Not to quibble with terms but is hackers, (not crackers) that are at one with the universe ; )

I haven’t been keeping up on Jack Ricchiuto’s new blog, have you? Here’s a smattering of economic development questions:

If few innovations come from committees, why would a community or organization try using committees to create innovations?

How important is personal transformation to civic engagement and leadership?

What might be possible from more conversations between the business communities and university communities?

How can people and organizations collaborate while respecting their respective identities? Does collaboration always need to be permanent and lead to a long-term relationship? How can we share projects while still feeling free to spin off into diverse collaborations? When does permanency become an obstacle to sustainability?

What would economic policies look like from a place of abundance instead of scarcity?

How important is it that an economic region have a geographical “center” and if so should that center have unique responsibilities in their region?

How important is it and why would it be important for regions to compare themselves to others? If it is, what’s valuable to compare?

How do individuals collaborate around small projects around passionate opportunities?

How important is it and why would it be important for regions to compare themselves to others? If it is, what’s valuable to compare?

What evolutionary value do grassroots new business startups and collaborations add to any local economy?

Does the size or foot print of a “region” matter when economic activities are pursued through natural social networks?

Is centralized planning, the star of communist regimes, always doomed to be arrogant and alienating?

How does scale of the place designed for economic and community development impact the planning process and outcome?

Can a community that doesn’t know itself have faith in itself?

To what extent can large research, academic, and funding institutions in a local economy care about helping 200 grassroots entrepreneurs who want to start up new businesses?

Intro to regional transformation from June Holley’s paper:

The field of regional development blossomed in the last decade, as researchers and practitioners increasingly asserted that the region, rather than the nation state, was the most effective geographic unit for supporting excellence and innovation among entrepreneurs.

However, in spite of the obvious dynamism and dramatic shifts that characterize the economy of the 21st century, much of the discussion of regionalism continued to be mired in concepts and language of the industrial age. Many regions started their renewal initiatives with large convenings of area power brokers, who created a common vision of the future of the region and then developed a plan intended to move the region toward that vision.

Unfortunately, this type of linear, rational process is ill suited to creating an entrepreneurial environment, which is marked by uncertainty. In the same way, such a static model has had little success in solving the massive problems of poverty and environmental degradation that continue to plague inner cities and rural communities. Transformation, not just tinkering, is in order.

Valdis Krebs emailed me this article with the comment “I used to play beach volleyball in this little town on Lake Mich… didn’t expect them to be so progressive!”

The city of Grand Haven, Mich., is the latest municipality to embrace Wi-Fi as a way to provide Internet access to residents, provide high-speed data services to city departments and try to lure new tech-savvy residents.

But the Grand Haven Wi-Fi network, which was turned on yesterday, also offers more than the usual Wi-Fi access. It has also been designed to provide service to boaters up to 15 miles offshore on Lake Michigan and support mobile voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone service.

I threw some emphasis in there for obvious reasons.

Got this with a note about the upcoming blogger bash with the Olsen’s:

Perhaps you remember the original concept of Blogcritics.org: “free CDs for bloggers.”

Blogcritics (515 members, 17,000 entries, 70,000 comments) celebrates its 2nd anniversary in August, and as it turned out, we were way ahead of our time: the concept that record companies, DVD distributors, book publishers, etc would provide review material for bloggers was met with slack jaws from the companies, who barely knew what blogs were, let alone saw them as valuable marketing outlets.

Now things have changed - blogs are hot, people are aware of them. We have a system in place whereby review material from dozens of labels, publicists, publishers, concert promoters, DVD distributors, movie studios, etc are now available to our members, free of charge. We only ask that they be reviewed. Our review material database has almost 500 items listed and only about half of them have been claimed by our members. New material is added daily.

We truly now do provide “free stuff for bloggers.” We are actively looking to increase our membership. We would love for you to join Blogcritics and/or tell your readers about our new review material program. Free stuff is good - everyone wins. More info on the program and joining Blogcritics here.

We have also added a special Election 2004 section, where we will collect our ongoing, omni-partisan election coverage.

If you haven’t checked out Blogcritics in a while, now would be a great time.

Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you, Eric Olsen

If you’ve got a blog here in Northeast Ohio, please drop me a note and I’ll send you specifics on the 3rd(?) Annual Olsen Blogger Bash, complete with tiki theme.

A BFD reader with the nom de plume At Work sent me a link to this site:

(TEK.noh.sek.shoo.ul) n. dandyish narcissist in love with not only himself, but also his urban lifestyle & gadgets; a straight man who is in touch with his feminine side but has fondness for electronics such as cell phones, pda’s, computers, software, and the web.

If I wasn’t 92% metrosexual, I’d be one of these. I wonder if there’s a test yet?

Steve Hall writes at Adrants.com

Public Relations specialist B.L. Ochman has written a summary of ten companies who could have benefited from the use of a weblog. From that LEGO Spiderman video to a line of footwear Tiva made for an elephant to the launch of Newman’s Own Organic Dog Food, Ochman contends all of these companies could have achieved greater return on their efforts had they investigated weblogs.

Emphasis mine.

Gearing up for the Cool Cleveland party this afternoon. You gonna be there?

Here’s a link to the paper that June gave us when we were down at ACEnet. I love the title: “Transforming Your Regional Economy through Uncertainty and Surprise: Learning from Complexity Science, Network Theory and the Field”

I bumped into Georgio at the Artefino Gallery Cafe and he showed me the book he’s working on that documents the history of the Tower Press building and the artists that are living/working there now. When it’s published, it’ll be a gorgeous coffee table book that I’ll want.

I love James Robertson post:

Megan Santosus looks at the impact of hierarchical organisations on knowledge management. To quote:

Becoming a true knowledge management organization, in which information is shared seamlessly among employees and departments, has always been an acknowledged challenge. But when I read Jeff
Nielsen’s book The Myth of Leadership a few weeks ago, he convinced me
just how much the deck is stacked against KM.

I’ve added Joe’s blog o’ ranting to the NEO Blogroll. It looks like he’s been blogging for a while. If you start a blog, or know of someone who’s started one in the area, please let me know!

Are any of the NonProfits in Northeast Ohio using the Network for Good?

From one of Valdis’ infamous emails [he’s part of the dark matter of the blogsphere]:

The best thing is to visit, and eat, and talk and meet the networks that have been built… you will be amazed at bottom-up emergence, knowledge creation and sharing, spinoffs and recombinations….

Knowledge dynamics, not spread over a hierarchy, but over many small towns and communities, and spreading.

One of my websites exceeded bandwidth today and was down for a couple hours. Not much fun.

speaking of the new economy, here is an article of interest. it proports that albany is the next austin, and austin is not amused. i think its important to see why people feel this way and what they are doing.

Thanks, Mr. NYC. Have you started your own blog yet?