Brewed Fresh Daily

"You might be interested in the new figures on the depth of the job loss in metropolitan Cleveland during the recession that we remain in locally. They became available yesterday, and are posted up on the research section of the CEOGC web site. I attach a chart that adds up the bad news. As you see, Cuyahoga County has lost 7.7% of its jobs during the last three years. The raw job loss in Cuyahoga County alone was 62,403. Even the eight county Cleveland-Akron-Lorain-Elyria metro area lost 7% of its jobs, a raw job loss of 79,525. Cleveland's job losses were more rapid than the -4.3% job loss in the entire state of Ohio, which lost 233,448 jobs. Further, Ohio's job loss was more rapid than the -1.5% job loss in the USA as a whole. Thus, it is clear that the recession has been brutal in metropolitan Cleveland. The level of human suffering that has been caused by this massive job loss has been staggering. When we lose 8% of all our jobs, we have a massive disaster on our hands. Further, all that talk that you hear about the national recession being "mild" does not apply to Cleveland or Ohio. The recession has been severe here at the local level, and it continues to be severe right now... It is also interesting to note that although this same information has been in the possession of a very large local newspaper, they have thus far not seen fit to mention it."

"Artist/curator friend Mark Soo did a piece for one of the Infest openings where he visualized the curators' social network using balloons with people's names printed on them as the nodes and ribbons tying them together as the edges (the data comes from "invites" he got the curators to send to one another)."

Iced instant coffee served in a water glass, the icon of 1980s cafe society, has been cold-shouldered by young Greeks lured by the smoother charms of Italian cappuccino. According to statistics presented yesterday at the CoffeeBiz international fair in Thessaloniki, some 70 percent of young Greek coffee drinkers prefer cappuccino � which most drink iced, in a form pioneered in Greece � with only 30 percent going for the frothy �frappe� instant coffee, another Greek invention. The figures were based on a survey of 200 Athens cafes. A few years ago, frappe accounted for 80 to 90 percent of coffee consumption at cafes frequented by younger people. Greeks go through some 48,000 tons of ground coffee every year, while worldwide consumption reaches 6.6 million tons. According to coffee wholesalers, only 7 percent of the Greek population never drinks coffee.

Almost everyone can and should be a hacker, according to the curators of a new exhibition on the fine art of hacking at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sof�a in Madrid, Spain. Alongside the museum's collection of masterpieces by Picasso and Dali, Hackers: The Art of Abstraction explores the connections between hackers, artists and anyone engaged in any kind of creative work, an idea that the curators of the show say was inspired by McKenzie Wark's The Hacker Manifesto ... "I have been always fascinated by the invisible world of hackers and the notion of hacking as a tool to understand the world's workings and to reconstruct it in a personal and creative way" ... "I believe that hackers are the great intellectual adventurers of our time, but in mainstream culture hacking often has negative connotations," Sichel added. "With this show we hope to refute the negatives and make people aware that in an age of increased surveillance, hacking can be a vital countermeasure and a commendable act of self-defense."

Two representatives from the Northern Chiapas Coffee Network spoke to Ithaca High School students Wednesday about the conflict in their country and their desire to set up local fair-trade coffee markets. Miguel Gonzalez Hernandez, 50, an elementary school teacher in Chiapas, Mexico, and Angel Alvarez, 30, an agrarian engineer, told students in four different classes about how their organic coffee network operates and their involvement in the conflict in Chiapas.

It's become a regular habit for David Kelley and other frequenters of the Everett Public Library: Check out some books and get a cup of coffee. "I think this is a great idea," said Kelley, as he stood with a stack of library videos under his arm waiting for a chai-tea latte. "This used to be dead space. A museum piece that wasn't that interesting."

"Default Quote Here..." - Default

spamassassin -c /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf -e > /dev/null/

"Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy." - Mao Zedong, 1893 - 1976 "Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist, seeing the rich man and his fine home, says: 'No man should have so much.' The capitalist, seeing the same thing, says: 'All men should have as much.'" - Phelps Adams "How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." - Ronald Wilson Reagan "A communist is like a crocodile: when it opens its mouth you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile or preparing to eat you up." - Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965 "I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harvard University commencement address, 7 June 1978 "Communism is like one big phone company." - Lenny Bruce

More than ever before, our technical civilization has cushioned life on all sides, yet more than ever, people helplessly succumb to the blows of life. This is very simply because a merely material, technical culture cannot give help in the face of tragedy. The man of today, externalized as he is, has no ideas, no strength, to enable him to master his own restlessness and division... He has no peace.

"My title at KeySpan is corporate ombudsman, but what I really do is help foster change in this old company. I also try to preserve a sense of spiritual connectedness in our agenda.

"Corporate America not only has financial problems, it has spiritual problems." -Kenny Moore, Corporate Ombudsman, KeySpan Corp.

Hello Ryzers! Just joined this community this morning and am already excited about updating content. This is something relatively new to me- the thirst for updating content. I've tried three times to start a blog, but a little intimidated by the collaborative nature of them, I've never had much luck. Then, I found something to write about. my music. So, the web becomes something to get people writing again. I've met a few of the "underground digerati", pioneers in online underground publishing. It makes me realize The Web Is Underground Publishing. With so much to choose from, finding new sites, new sources, new news... its an amazing experience! Incidentally, just got out of a meeting with some local people interested in developing media for the Northeast Ohio region- and while I won't go into the gory details, I can say I learned the following valueable lessons: 1. Choice is good. The more options, the more connections, the closer we get to providing new perspectives- the deeper the culture becomes. We tend to think about culture in terms of art, entertainment, tradition while we generate culture every day. Getting that culture to people, getting people to gather around it... what offers more choice than the net? 2. The web is all about links. Blatantly obvious to most people, forest for the trees situation for me. Link to others, have them link to you, you will grow. Thus Ryze. 3. Stop thinking and tell your story. I am a serious person much of the time- way too serious. Intensity is my curse. If I can just produce without being concerned about the details, what's next?

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one." - Mark Twain

"In another example that just about anything can be ranked, Purina has ranked the healthiest cities for pets. Cleveland comes in 28th place." - Chris Thompson is the editor of CrainsCleveland.com.

Did I hear you mention a - and I quote - "stack of cards" ! (refering of course to a somewhat conspicuous and outdated archiving system used by humans during the late 19th and 20th centuries..)

The web marketing agency, SageRock.com, has moved into the The Northside Ice/Coal Complex in downtown Akron. The three-employee company had been based in the home of Rocky and Sage Lewis. �We had a whole floor in our house, but keep growing a little faster than expected,� said Rocky, who is vice president of sales and marketing. The 4-year-old company plans to add a paid search specialist in April and expects to add a fifth employee next fall. The company is leasing 2,400 square feet of space in the building, which was the original ice house for Akron.

"like here on moxie, everything is brewed fresh daily"

"I've been doing a ton of digital photography of late and if you've noticed, I've been posting images above the 'Recent Artwork' section of the blog. The one to the left of you is titled 'Athena of Clevelandia'. I've got several in this series and I'm quite excited about them."

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." - Colin Powell

"The Power of the Brewed Fresh Daily weblog is the way it weaves together online blogging with the process of building a network of valuable business contacts. For any entrepreneur or business thinking about a weblog, but wondering how it could be made relevant to a local market, take a look at the Brewed Fresh Daily model. It uses a people-oriented focus to draw in a following, integrate it with traditional offline networking techniques, and in the process build a stronger network of valuable business contacts."

Have: More ideas than time. The ability to influence young minds. Want: Like-minded individuals with the desire to build Cleveland's arts community Title: Chair, Fine Arts Dept Home: Cleveland Heights, OH USA Company: Cleveland Municipal School District From: Auburn Twp, Geauga County, OH Industry: Education/ Visual Artist, Interests: Urban secondary education, Visual arts education, promoting regional artists, developing collaborations between the schools and the arts community, Universities: Ohio University Athens OH Cleveland State University When asked what I do for a living, I'm apt to respond that I attempt to make silk purses out of sows ears. Lately, I have been succeeding. I teach Visual Art to inner-city teenagers at a trade school in the city of Cleveland. This is a school for the adcademically disinclined, that has been struggling to overcome it's reputation as 'Last Chance High". I was initially hired to teach Sign Painting back in 1998 to a student body comprised of mostly boys studying welding, construction, auto tech, machining, and diesel. I convinced my principal that sign painting was obsolete in this age of technology and asked him to let me teach art. I was amazed with the facility, the shops, the equipment, and the technical abilities of my students. This was a sculptors paradise. Too bad, I was a painter. To remedy my lack of 3D expertise, I sought local sculptors for residencies, and began writing for grants to be able to pay them. I began establishing relationships with the various arts institutions in the city as well as individual artists and independant galleries. I became interested in creating public art with my students and recieved major funding to accomplish that goal. We are now involved in several public art projects with nationally and internationally renouned artists. We keep looking for new ways to continue our collaborations with the community, develop new talent, and change a few lives. I also enjoy writing. My chosen career has provided me with many stories. I have been writing a column for a local quarterly arts magazine, mostly autobiographical/personal musings. I am going to include my latest essay on this page. It explains a lot about who I am, and what I do all day. Read on...[by clicking on the title of this post]

• Every Tuesday from 1-3PM @ the University Circle Arabica
• Every Friday from 1-3PM @ Cafe AhRoma in the Trinity Commons

OpenSpaceTech is a leading edge community and organization development practice. It invites people working on complex and important issues to connect and deepen their work, through responsible self-organization. Open Space is more than just a phenomenal meeting process. It forms the basis of a new and powerful way of working and being in organizations and communities. It honors and invites contributions from all levels and groups. It leverages inherent expertise and knowledge to create new options, possibilities and progress. It gets people and information moving in powerful new directions -- and gets our most important work done.

• Catalyzing broad-based collaboration to respond to changes, issues or environments that simply were not "in the plan"
• Creating new products, new projects and new forums for involving customers, suppliers and strategic partners in the operation of a business
• Re-structuring and the creation of truly team-based collaborative systems that meet major organizational challenges
• Community planning and visioning that engages citizens and stakeholders in active, inclusive and productive public process
• Facilitating dialogue, planning and the possibility for peace between people in deep conflict

"Clients don't come to you asking whether you know Flash or Dreamweaver. They come to you with problems to solve."

"My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life." - Miles Davis

Depending on your appetite for duels among policy analysts, you�ll either love or hate two recent pieces about the so-called �creative class� that appeared in the liberal Washington Monthly and the conservative City Journal. In Washington Monthly, ubiquitous Carnegie Mellon professor Richard Florida argues that the Republican Party�s anti-elitism threatens to stifle creative work product and ruin America�s economy. He throws this partisan zinger comparing the last president with the current occupant of the Oval Office: �Clinton's whole life is a testimony to the power of education to change class. Bush prides himself on the idea that his Yale education had no effect on how he sees things. Clinton was a famous world traveler, appreciative of foreign cultures and ideas. Bush, throughout his life, has been indifferent if not hostile to all of that. � Clinton reveled in the company of writers, artists, scientists, and members of the intellectual elite. Bush has little tolerance for them. Clinton, in his rhetoric and policies, wanted to bring the gifts of the creative class � high technology, a tolerant culture � to the hinterlands. Bush aimed to bring the values and economic priorities of the hinterlands to that ultimate creative center, Washington, D.C.� But in a City Journal piece entitled �The Curse of the Creative Class,� writer Steven Malanga argues that Dr. Florida�s theories about the creative economy have a big problem: The basic economics behind his ideas don�t work. �Far from being economic powerhouses, a number of the cities the professor identifies as creative-age winners have chronically underperformed the American economy,� Mr. Malanga writes. �And, although Florida is fond of saying that, today, �place matters� in attracting workers and business, some of his top creative cities don�t even do a particularly good job at attracting � or keeping � residents.�

A new report from Policy Matters Ohio documents that, of the 199,000 Ohio manufacturing jobs lost between 1999 and 2003, one in six vanished directly as a result of international trade. Although free trade advocates argued that NAFTA and other trade agreements would add jobs to the U.S. economy, 45,734 Ohio jobs lost between 1995 and October 2003 can be traced to increased imports or relocation of production out of the country. The report examines trade adjustment assistance program data, which omits much trade-related job loss because jobs weren't covered or workers weren't aware of the program. Because the program data omits so many trade-related job losses, the report also discusses an Economic Policy Institute economic model that considered exports as well as imports, estimated impacts throughout the economy, and projected what manufacturing employment would have been had the trade deficit remained at its 1994 level, when NAFTA was passed. This model finds that increases in the trade deficit from 1994 to 2000 removed more than 135,000 jobs and job opportunities from Ohio's economy. The Policy Matters report recommends that trade agreements be more carefully constructed to better meet needs of workers and that supports be put in place to assist workers and communities with the transition as jobs leave Ohio. To see the report or some of the many articles written about it, see: http://www.policymattersohio.org/trade.htm.

"Intel Corp. is proposing a concept for a hybrid fuel cell that could drive a thin-and-light notebook computer for eight hours. The chipmaker is trying to rally notebook, battery and component makers to turn the idea into a viable product by 2007."

"The British Virgin Islands will have full wireless broadband covering all four major islands. The government selected Solectek to build the network, which is already running in"

"California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that the marriage licenses San Francisco is issuing to same-sex couples are illegal, after the city sued the state over a law ban"

�Our Creative Arts & Industries initiative is designed to educate the public on creative digital arts as a medium for economic growth in Northeast Ohio. Guest speakers from local companies will provide a greater understanding of new media technologies and their potential for the public, and will help to develop collaborative partnerships to further the creative possibilities at the intersection of art, science, technology and business.� - Bill Scheele, Director of NewCAT

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by orginality, overcomes everything." - George Lois

A forum on digital arts and the opening of a new digital arts exhibit this weekend at Case Western Reserve University will give the public an eye-opening look at cutting-edge art. The forum, �Creative Arts & Industries,� will be held from 9 a.m. to noon Friday and Saturday, Feb. 20 and 21, at the Peter B. Lewis Building at the CWRU campus. For more information, see the New Center for Art and Technology web site. NewCAT also is hosting the grand opening of bits&pieces@PBL, a digital art exhibition. The event will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 22, at the Peter B. Lewis Building; the cost is $5, payable at the door.

Please join us for the upcoming Coffee Meetup. Vote to meet at the Phoenix Coffee on Lee and we'll serve free french press coffee!

A good friend of mine, a business librarian at the main branch of Cleveland Public, casually mentioned that it was the library's birthday today -- 135 years old! Wow. Even older than the NY Public Library. CPL is an institution of inestimable value. I don't know about you, but I use one of its many online databases almost daily. Yet when it comes to calling attention to itself, the library is a rather shy creature, hesitant to toot its own horn. So I'm playing Gabriel today, calling attention to this wonderful resource in our midst. It's helped with my business many times, and I hope its helped many of you. Happy Birthday, CPL.

If you want your neighborhood to be gentrified, what must it have? Proximity to work and entertainment, of course. A pleasing streetscape is nice; so is a mix of building types (bonus points for funky warehouses!). Oh, and the housing itself must be desirable. The houses can be dilapidated, but they must be the kind that, with new kitchens, roomy bathrooms and a fresh coat of paint, you'd be proud to have your friends visit. Which brings us to the problem with many older suburbs. They have proximity and sometimes they have quaint downtowns and tree-lined streets. But the housing often falls into the I-Love-Lucy zone: not old enough to be historic but too dated and small to work for today's homebuyers. Cleveland's inner suburbs (they call themselves the "First Suburbs") have a lot of this kind of housing, and they've banded together to find ways of changing things. Their solution: Buy up a few "up-and-down duplexes," gut them and turn them into fashionable side-by-side townhouses. Definition: Up-and-down duplexes, as the name suggests, are houses where the owner has added a second story and rented it out. This was a popular thing to do in the first half of the 20th century, when the older suburbs were taking shape. Problem is, nobody wants these ungainly houses anymore. So the First Suburbs Development Council, an association of 14 Cleveland suburbs, is showing builders and prospective homeowners how to turn these houses into something desirable by, in a way, tipping them on their sides. The first demonstration house is an 83-year-old up-and-down in Cleveland Heights, which, when renovated, will become a pair of townhouses with three bedrooms, two-and-a-half bathrooms and garages. When the renovation is completed, the First Suburbs group will show it off, sell it and move on to other demonstration projects. The group wants to redo a couple of up-and-downs, then tackle some small bungalows.

In a satirical article called, How to Keep New Leaders from Emerging, CEO Fred Smith listed these keys to making sure potential leaders in your company never help you accomplish your vision. He suggested: Create a threat environment � let people know that if they fail, they're out. Create an atmosphere of criticism � always point out mistakes and never recognize achievement or progress. And finally: Expect failure � people will tend to live up to your expectations. Of course, if you want the opposite effect, do the opposite. "Have you eliminated a threat environment, recognized achievement, and expected success?"

Here's another argument against outsourcing your business to China. American Greetings was embarrassed to learn that boxes of Valentine's Day cards featuring SpongeBob SquarePants were misprinted so that the yellow cartoon character was black. The character suddenly went from funny to offensive. Execs with the greeting card company blamed the error on its printer in China. David Blinderman, director of global product development for the company, told the Detroit Free Press that the printing facility is one of the company's most reliable. "Culturally, the guys on press in China wouldn't have the faintest idea of who a SpongeBob was or who a black SpongeBob was."

"The guerrilla mindset is best exemplified by the basic premise of the book, ' 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance': If the only reason you ever get under your motorcycle and tinker with it is to fix something that's wrong, so it will run better, your motorcycle will always be breaking down. But if you enjoy the process of tinkering with your motorcycle, and always fool around with it whether it needs fixing or not, your motorcycle will run more dependably."

"Just had to share this story about the 'after effects' of going to a Cleveland Ryze event. In the last week, I've had follow-up talks with at least a half dozen people who were at the Feb mixer. Some were there as guests, others as new members; but for all of these people, it was a first-time event. And each one, separately, as if reading from a shared script, commented on the positive, forward-looking energy of those they met. They liked the optimistic buzz in the crowd. One guy, a contractor/builder, who previously had never quite summoned the confidence to call on a top local/national developer, finally did so, the next day, after the Ryze mixer. And within the week, he had a breakfast mtg with Mr. Big, someone he thought was out of reach. Good stuff."

In a war zone or an earthquake, you have to visit the epicenter to really understand what's going on. That's why I found myself, one rainy December morning, sitting in a booth at Buck's of Woodside, the diner best known as Ground Zero of the New Economy. Buck's is the place where HotJobs.com, Netscape, and PayPal got funded and the favorite hangout of SV VC's to this day... "If Buck's is an early indicator, says owner Jamis McNiven, "then we've been up for some time. We're on the way back in and we're about to hang 10." Pancakes equals profits

Ryze's chief mission is to connect its 120,000 registered users for business reasons. "It's the whole golf and business thing," Mr. Scott said. "Or the water cooler in business, where you have those soft interaction points. People connect as people, not just as business entities." Ryze's approach is similar to that of other social networking sites. Registrants set up personal Web pages to communicate with current and prospective business contacts. A typical personal page might include photos and graphics, along with a r�sum�-like description of business and academic achievements, before going into personal hobbies and other nonbusiness topics. From there, users can build a network of "friends of friends" by visiting pages of acquaintances and asking permission to include their names on a list there. Other sites, like LinkedIn, recognize the degrees of separation between people more overtly and have referral mechanisms to ease introductions. Users of Ryze and other sites also frequently join an industry-specific network, where they can post to message boards and establish new contacts. Ryze earns money by selling gold memberships which, for $10 a month, allow users to search the site more extensively than nonpaying members can. (Mr. Scott would not disclose the number of gold members.) For $6, Ryze members may place ads for jobs and other services atop message boards and in the site's classified ads section for 30 days.

John, Jack and George - it's your type of personal encouragement and hands-on recruitment that'll be the tipping point in NE Ohio's renaissance. You're making it easier and easier to come home, I tell you. Maybe the region needs a recruitment campaign that goes beyond corporate headquarters and star ball players.

World oil production will peak within this decade, or, in the best-case scenarios, sometime in the next decade, says David Goodstein in a new book, The End of the Age of Oil. Once that happens, the world supply of oil will begin to decline gradually, even though large quantities of oil will remain in the ground. The world demand for oil will continue to increase. The gap between supply and demand will grow. There will be no other source of oil to flow into the system. In the best-case scenario, he writes, we can squeak through a bumpy transition to a natural-gas economy while nuclear power plants are built to get us past the oil crisis. In the worst case, "runaway inflation and worldwide depression leave many billions of people with no alternative but to burn coal in vast quantities for warmth, cooking and primitive industry."* But even current known reserves of uranium can supply the earth's energy needs for only 25 years at best. "Unfortunately, our present national and international leadership is reluctant even to acknowledge that there is a problem. The crisis will occur, and it will be painful."

Just over a week ago, I published my personal call to arms that included this statement:

And despite what many say or believe, this is a place where anybody can do wonderful and brilliant things. For the young especially, Cleveland is a place where you have the opportunity to build something truly spectacular, and where you can do Good Work.

At the time, I should have referenced John Ettore's excellent treatise in the Free Times where he says:

...dozens of these bright and highly motivated mavericks won't be nearly enough to replace the old political/business leadership vacuum we have.

Thankfully, they won't have to. They're being joined by a rising cohort of hundreds of what might be called social entrepreneurs. ...their stock in trade is social (and sometimes financial) capital, accumulated simply through the power of their ideas, achievements and social networks. And in their rich appreciation for the town's real culture, history and appealing stew of ethnic complexity, these activists are building a new generation of leadership richer than anything that went before largely because they are increasingly being connected through small collaborations that can often lead to large changes.

This is what we all can do; we all have the power to make small changes that, together, move mountains. John's own manifesto has not fallen on deaf ears. A bright fella named Anton Zuiker read John's words, and felt moved enough to consider coming home, and I think that there are more folks like Anton who are ready to make changes not only in their own lives, but in a place that itself is ready to be changed.

Come back home.

"There remain plenty of examples of talent moving into our region, if we care enough to notice. There's the recent move of the U.S. headquarters of espresso machine manufacturer Saeco to Greater Cleveland. This half-billion dollar company has a 30 percent market share in Europe and is looking to grow in the U.S., and with more than two-thirds of North America's population within 500 miles of here, Saeco finds that it can deliver to 70 percent of their accounts within one day. The manufacturing base here offers expertise and a trained work force. And Cleveland's work ethic is much stronger. Next they want to host a large event that would draw attention to Cleveland as a center for coffee roasting and manufacturing, as well as the alternative spin-offs of coffee and underground culture."

Freshly ground coffee makes for a wonderful potpouri. Whether it is for your home, office, or car, the wonderful smell of coffee will mask the "foulest" of odors. So replace those fancy aromatherapy scents with something that a true coffee addict will love, that wonderful smell of freshly ground coffee.

"Yesterday was the blogging panel at Davos. Jay Rosen was the moderator and the panelists were Orville H. Schell, Loic Le Meur, yours truly and Hubert Burda. You all already know Loic and Jay I'm sure. Orville is the Dean of the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and was at the Media Leaders discussion the day before too. He's got some great perspectives and his positive and insightful view on blogs was encouraging. Hubert Burda is the CEO of Hubert Burda Media, one of the largest media conglomerates in Europe and I was extremely impressed by his positive and open view on blogs and media. In other words, we had a great panel. Jay kicked it off by saying that we were going to ignore the official title, 'Will Mainstream Media Co-Opt Blogs and the Internet'. ;-) I explained that blogging meant a lot of things. There was the technology of blogging, the act of blogging and what journalists were talking about most of the time. I explained the power-law and asserted my position that the head of the curve, or the more popular blogs, were like an amplifier and that I agreed with many people who believe that the 'tail' or the more personal blogs was where most of the interesting stuff was going on. I talked about Ross Mayfield's layers and the idea that a lot of interesting sources could be filtered by special interest groups, through a social layer and to the amplifier where maybe they can connect, merge with mass media to a certain extent. Because of the the media orientation of the panel and the audience, we decided to focus on the impact that blogging had on journalism and media."

Richard Macmanus from New Zealand asks :

"Does Location matter more than than The Blogosphere would like to think it does? Is blogging too American-centric? I live in New Zealand, so I don't get to attend any of the blog conventions, blogger lunches, etc. And I do feel like I'm missing out on something. e.g. nobody sent me an invitation to Orkut (it's invitation only). I'm probably not interested in Orkut anyway, but it did make me wonder if living in New Zealand is affecting my ability to actively participate in the blogosphere"

It did matter to me a little when i started blogging.  The usual concerns of whether anyone would read me or bother with my thoughts.  The perception of an overwhelming dominance of the Western world in the English blogger field. It does not today, we have built bridges across waters through conversations at our blogs, IM, Skype and email. And was lucky to have timed my holiday well so i got to meet some others. There are so many i haven't met F2F yet we talk. Still i do feel frustrated that i cannot attend the conventions, and meet other bloggers face-to-face.

As the article points out, Starbucks is being shrewd in dealing with both the business issues and the social issues surrounding its business. Skeptics will say that Starbucks is motivated solely by its own interests. Maybe so, but Starbucks is attempting to do more than most large corporations which are supplied by developing countries. If the program is even halfway successful, it could be a big boost for the small individual farmers who supply Starbucks. And it is a good example of how big business can lend a helping hand to small business -- in a partnership that works for both sides.

"The only time I've seen more people introducing someone new to someone else was at the Chicago Company of Friends."

I'm the webmaster and one of the founders of the new Cleveland Music/Art/Writing/Performance community, Experimental Behavior, and have found myself thrust into the spotlight of helping to promote the entire arts community for Northeast Ohio. My entrepreneurial efforts are currently concentrated on Infinite Number of Sounds, a band, media performance group, and a record label based in Cleveland, OH. I own half of the label and peform on-stage with the group as a VJ (live video editing/projection to the beat). We peform regularly in cities all over the midwest, from New York to Chicago. I ran my own media production company (web/video/audio) full-time for about 6 years, and now still operate a barebones version on the side. My day job is at Baldwin-Wallace College where I am the Webmaster and Academic Support Specialist. My job duties include web and intranet development (although the public website was outsourced before I was hired), multimedia creation and consultation (I run the 2 multimedia labs on campus), webcasting, etc.