I think the operative word is sharing:

Several people responding to the news online at Cleveland.com have also called the deal extortion.

I certainly understand the perspective, and that is why Commissioner Jones’ remark is so important.

The Northeast Ohio Mayors and City Managers Association is working on a study that hopefully will result in a “macro way forward.” The study is a comprehensive look at the benefits and challenges involved with implementing revenue sharing throughout the 16-county region. This won’t be easy work and it may be months before initial outcomes are available. I credit the region’s political leaders for recognizing the present system isn’t sustainable and hopefully their work will result in a new way.

Regionalism needs to be about sharing — not creating winners and losers. The Avon interchange project may be just what we need to encourage a new approach to physical development in Northeast Ohio.

As today’s vote showed, if we don’t come together to shape a common destiny we run the risk of having others try to dictate our destiny for us.

Interchanges and Regionalism Continued | Advance Northeast Ohio

First it was Jeff Cole of the Center for the Digital Future. This time it’s the Director of one of the nation’s oldest and most successful urban conservation organizations.

A couple of questions that came to me as I was reflecting on today’s talk:

• Why do we talk of regionalism, when cities like Chicago are metropolitan or cosmopolitan?
• If Chicago can complete the Burnham Plan that was begin in 1909, why can’t Cleveland?
• Who understands the interconnectedness in Northeast Ohio, particularly in the ecosphere?
• Who’s concerned about the urban forest of The Forest City?
• Are we willing to tax ourselves to green the city like Chicago is?
• Why is it that Jerry Adelmann says “I sense there’s a lot of energy around these issues here… I’m just not aware of what’s going on.”?
• Why do people ask about the ROI for quality of life?
• If people say of Chicago “Our signature asset is our lakefront”, what do we say ours is?
• Who, besides Howard Landau, is waving the banner to bring people together?

I took a bunch of notes while Adelmann addressed the intimate crowd that Howard assembled—but I’ll leave you with this one thought: someone needs to convene folks that will talk about issues that we have in common—air quality, water quality, climate change. Chicago has a mayor who’s cited everywhere as being a leader. He can rally the business community, get disparate groups together, get Chicagoans to pledge to help the environment.

I found the following about “Brandjacking” in today’s MarketingVOX rather timely:

The “Brandjacking Index,” a four-week survey by MarkMonitor, found that cybersquatting, in which illegal sites pirate popular trademarks via phishing, clickfraud and similar tactics, runs rampant online.

Brands abusers serve as dangers not merely for consumers, but also for the brands themselves. They are often better web marketers (emphasis added by me…see addendum below), with media and Internet companies the most attractive targets, accounting for 31 percent of the abuse.

I bet the powers that be never thought they’d be “Brandjacked.” And come to think of it I wonder why the Cleveland+ and Cleveland+ Business websites each don’t have a blog, podcast and/or social network incorporated into them?

Report: ‘Brandjacking’ Intensifies - MarketingVOX

Addendum: I decided to enter a handful of keywords in Google to see if the Cleveland+ Marketing Alliance was doing any keyword advertising. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear as if they are as nothing came up linking back to their websites. But when I Googled “GCP” the following came up as the third paid search listing:

Wasting $8.5 MM
fCleveland+
A response to Cleveland+
www.fclevelandplus.com

Silly me. I thought journalists were supposed to be objective? At least that’s what I learned at the KSU School of Journalism.

ABOARD CONTINENTAL FLIGHT 9017 - There are no city-limit signs in the skies above Northeast Ohio. Some 2,300 feet above the rooftops, all that’s obvious are the ties that bind.

The roads and highways that weave an uninterrupted thread through diverse neighborhoods. The unbroken shoreline of the lake that gave birth to a shared industrial heritage. The sports stadiums that funnel widespread differences into a single passion.

And that was the point of an event Thursday that was more poetry than news conference.

Beacon Journal | 04/27/2007 | Regional campaign uses simple equation

Not sure what the brand promise is for Cleveland+ so maybe some of you can enlighten me. Do you think people in Akron, Canton and Youngstown will be happy with Cleveland taking the lead? I think it is interesting that The Funders all appear to be Cleveland based organizations. I guess time will tell in terms of what kind of regional buy-in there is.

To measure the campaign’s success, the alliance will keep track of prospective development in the pipeline, inquiries from meeting planners and business owners, hotel nights booked, national media attention, and other factors.

PD/Cleveland.com: Cleveland+ chosen as ‘brand’ for region

Crain’s Cleveland Business: Regional branding effort ready to roll