Northeast Ohio has an abundance of brilliant, independent producers, while many newer cities are stuck with chain outlets, hollywood movies and corporate branch offices. This week’s podcast points you to the Indy Rock Triple Play at bela dubby in Lakewood, the City Fresh Hop in Slavic Village, and The Bang and Clatter Theatre Company’s benefit at Nighttown. To hip your iPod, click here.
What does it mean to be a Clevelander? There seems to be a different spirit in the air these days about what it means to be from Northeast Ohio, and about how screamin’ wonderful it is to live here. The issue of regionalism is forcing people to recognize that the high-profile faults of the inner city only sound bad because we’re not including our entire region in the statistics. If Columbus wouldn’t have gone regional and annexed it’s suburbs, not only wouldn’t it be the largest city in Ohio by a long stretch, but their inner city would show up pretty much statistically the same as Cleveland’s. The new Cleveland-Plus campaign by the Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Greater Cleveland Partnership and TeamNEO is an innovative, collaborative program that offers our best chance, and millions of dollars, to attract business and tourism to our part of the world. And I’ve always kidded there were two ways to deal with our region’s leadership vacuum: assassination and attrition, and it seems that the latter has finally taken hold: we’re seeing a younger generation take over, and they exhibit little of the cynicism that our mainstream media continues to feed us. These young people are redefining what it means to be a Clevelander.
To listen to the Cool Cleveland podcast, just click here.
For families and kids, this is a great week to have fun in Akron, Independence, University Circle and at a bank. To listen to the Cool Cleveland Kids podcast from Max, just click here.
Are these podcasts useful? When and where do you listen? Max and I want to know.
From the interview I did for CoolCleveland.com with Baiju Shah of BioEnterprise:
Bioscience is booming in Northeast Ohio. Check out these figures: $400M invested in regional companies. 80 percent of investment from outside the region. $59M in licensing revenue. In five years. Not resting on their laurels, organizations throughout the region are working together to further the successes they’ve achieved together. BioEnterprise President Baiju Shah talks to CoolCleveland.com’s Chief Info Officer George Nemeth about the past five years and the big news—a collaboration with BioE’s counterpart in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse is a public/private partnership, founded by the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, UPMC Health System, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its regional foundation community. Listen to the 11-min audio file here.
A press release from Congressman Tim Ryan’s office:
The effort on the part of two medical consortiums comprising businesses, hospitals and Universities in Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania represents a new way to look at regionalization. Congressman Ryan sees this as the first step to creating a viable “Tech Belt” encompassing the Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas.
“Our region has been linked for over 100 years, first as the Steel Belt, then as the Rust Belt. This is our chance to emerge as the Tech Belt,” said Congressman Tim Ryan. “I believe very strongly in the new direction BioEnterprise and the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse is taking. As a next step, I am calling a regional summit of leaders from local industries, elected officials and economic development organizations to create a regional model for economic advancement that will be competitive in the global marketplace… We must commit the time, energy, resources and political leadership necessary to compete in the global economy. What BioEnterprise and Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse are doing should serve as a model for cooperation for our entire region. I pledge to work with my congressional colleagues in Ohio and Pennsylvania on ways we can build consensus around a vision for the future. We must make the most of this opportunity to bring good jobs, increased investment and a better quality of life to our communities.”
I encourage you to click through and read the rest of this feature. After I read it I wondered about what’s next? Maybe we can get a head of the curve by creating Web 3.0 vs. trying to catch up with Web 2.0.
Still, Sir Martin is surely right about one thing: We are not witnessing the beginning of the end of old media. We are witnessing the middle of the end of old media. Both print and broadcast — burdened with unwieldy, archaic and crushingly expensive means of distribution — are experiencing the disintegration of the audience critical mass they require to operate profitably. Moreover, they are losing that audience to the infinitely fragmented digital media, which have near-zero distribution costs and are overwhelmingly free to the user.
The following is an excerpt for George. Of all the people I’ve met in NEO over the last 4 years he embodies, understands and leverages, more than anybody, the power of this shift.
“I always found Marshall McLuhan annoying,” says Bruce M. Owen, senior fellow at Stanford University and author of the seminal “Television Economics,” “but the medium conditions the message. It’s already happening.”
Advertising Age 3/26/07 - Bob Garfield’s Chaos Scenario 2.0: The Post Advertising Age
