Brewed Fresh Daily

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!"

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?"

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"

"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."

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.

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'.

"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

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.

Although Boston�s gleaming new $800 million convention center is set to open in a few months, so far it has booked only a handful of conventions. So dire is the facility�s outlook that it will need a $12�15 million annual public subsidy in its first few years of operation and may not reach its full booking potential for a decade, say Boston officials. Even that may be too optimistic, judging by what�s going on in Baltimore. There, a vastly expanded convention center that reopened in 1997 is finding it so hard to lure business that city officials are now searching for ways to make the facility more attractive, including spending millions in public money to build a subsidized hotel next door.

Everything employment-related in one little neat package. Stop by to benefit from my personal mistakes and the mistakes of others as we collectively attempt to hack out a living in northeast Ohio. Who knows? We might learn a thing or two together along the way!

I didn't get to meet that many new people again, because I took Julia along (Scott's out of town for 10 days visiting the real Cupertino for Apple's Developers Conference) and it was a challenge to keep her entertained, but it was great to reconnect with some folks I've met before. I had a chance to talk with Ann Ruznak again, and Gloria Ferris, and Ron McDaniel... and of course George and Jack. I wish I had been able to talk with their new colleague, Adele, who is a former student of mine, but the joint was hoppin' and it seemed like we were always separated by at least two different conversations...Make sure you click through the title and read this great post. I have to say that Julie was darling and is quite the artist. One of these days, I'll scan the potrait she did of me and post it.

posted by George Nemeth  # 6/24/2004 12:06:00 PM

MAKING THE CONNECTION: THE 2004 NATIONAL SUMMIT FOR COMMUNITY WIRELESS NETWORKS... at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, August 20-22.

Car pool, anybody? Making the Connection: The 2004 National Summit for Community Wireless Networks will be the largest community wireless networking event to date and will bring together technology and policy leaders, decision-makers, students, researchers, and other participants in wireless networking and community networking initiatives for the express purpose of discussing policy issues and practical solutions to problems facing community wireless networks.

All kinds of spinning will go on to soften the story, turn it around, turn it upside. But the cold hard facts are staring us in the face, and have been for many years. Cleveland missed the Internet. At the very moment that the technology economy took a cyclical downturn, Cleveland's leadership patted itself on the back for not having taken the big risk and not executed against a technology strategy for the region. Calls for urgent action, to articulate and build consensus around an IT strategy for Northeast Ohio were largely redirected by well-intentioned people with designs on boutique strategies for IT-related activity to grow a new economy in NEOhio. Not good enough.

When leaders made effective decisions, they followed these 8 practices:

• They asked, �What needs to be done?�
• They asked, �What is right for the enterprise?�
• They developed action plans.
• They took responsibility for decisions.
• They took responsibility for communicating.
• They were focused on opportunities rather than problems.
• They ran productive meetings.
• They thought and said �we� rather than �I.�

Reagan didn't defeat communism, but he did help put it out of its misery.

Rather, the knowledge economy set a pace that make-and-sell central planning simply couldn't maintain.  As a direct and indirect consequence of the failure of the Soviet Union, half the world's population has joined the global economy at, not coincidentally, the moment in history when information technology has become newly affordable for hundreds of millions of people.

This, more or less (that is, less the caveat about Reagan), is the essence of what Rich Karlgaard calls the "cheap revolution."  It bodes well for the world. As Rich noted in his speech tonight in Bozeman, the middle class in China is already 300 million strong.  Add in the emerging middle class in Eastern Europe and India, and it seems clear that we're likely at the beginning of an era of wealth creation unprecedented in scope and, possibly, scale.

"They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the system from within." - Leonard Cohen

Tonight, my neighbor Dave and I checked on an absent elderly neighbor who we discovered, with the help of the EMS, died in his house a couple of days ago. He was a rather eccentric but likeable death camp survivor with no known relatives. He died alone and awaits the potential fate of an anonymous burial. The only religious liturgy he had was the Buddhist prayers I chanted alone at his bedside before escorted for the coroner. May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness, May all be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow; May all being never be separated from the sacred happiness, which is sorrowless.

A sliver of entrepreneurs, free spirits and tech-savvy types are filling up Internet-ready restaurants and using them as a base of operations, I wrote in today�s Plain Dealer. The free wireless services are big with students, consultants, free-lancers and other home-office professionals who are on the move and need constant access to both their computer and the Internet. "Here, you bring your hard drive and work off of your world," said Jack Ricchiuto, who coaches executives and project managers on collaboration and Web-based technology. Want to know why journalism is fun? To research this story, I spent several days sitting in coffeehouses interviewing Wi-Fi users.

Here's a concise, practical guide to best practices for building entrepreneurship in smaller communities. The Kauffman Foundation drafted the report: Grassroots Rural Entrepreneurship, Best Practices for Small Communities. Download a copy.

Have you seen the beer commercial where a guy trains a falcon to swoop down on sidewalk restaurants and steal beers for him and his buddies? The funny part, of course, is the chaos caused by the aerial attack, as diners dive under tables and waiters flee in terror. As it turns out, though, the idea of falcons roaming the skies of big cities isn't fanciful at all. In fact, peregrine falcons love big cities and nest on the top floors of many skyscrapers. In Atlanta, you'll find a falcon nest (they're called eyries) atop the SunTrust Building, in Cleveland on the lovely, historic Terminal Tower and in Seattle on the east face of the Washington Mutual Tower. So what makes falcons such committed urbanities? Food, security and the hand of man. Turns out that one of falcons' favorite foods is pigeons, which cities have in abundance. (There's no evidence, by the way, that they have a taste for bottled beer.) In the wild, the enemy of falcons is the great horned owl, which thankfully are not city dwellers. Then there's the hand of man. Falcons were nearly wiped out by the insecticide DDT in the 1950s and 1960s. What brought them back was the banning of DDT in 1972 and the release of captive, bred birds in various locations, including cities. As luck would have it, tall buildings closely resemble the cliffs that falcons choose for their eyries in the wild. Only problem: Sometimes young falcons run into plate-glass windows. How would you recognize a falcon if you saw one? Full-grown, they're a bit under two feet in length with long pointed wings (about three and a half feet from tip to tip). They're dark gray on the back and light on the breast with dark markings. Their heads are distinctive, with long hooked beaks and dark coloring that makes it look like they're wearing helmets. Still aren't sure you're looking at a falcon? Watch for the large bird snatching pigeons out of the air. Footnote: Falcons have become so popular in cities that some places have set up "falconcams" to keep watch on their nests. A good falconcam is the one in Cleveland, which you can view by clicking here. Bonus: The web site opens with the sound of a falcon's cry.

It's our first adventure in the Inner Ring; this Thu 6/17, we bring the Cool Cleveland vibe to that most venerable and artistic of corners in Cleveland Heights: the corner of Cedar and Lee Roads. Cool Cleveland's latest Art/Tech/Dance party starts off from 4 to 8PM with our famous open bar and hot hors d'oeuvres from neighborhood restaurants. Wander outside to the outdoor Mini-Park, and even stroll the abundant pubs, restaurants and art galleries right next door. Drop by the Cedar-Lee Theatre for free shorts by Ohio filmmakers. Then at 8PM, enjoy a ticket to the opening night of Grease, free with your party admission.

"people need a place to express their opinions, listen to others and develop a sense of identity beyond set social roles." bingo! this charming little article gets to the heart of coffeeshop culture the world round. you can't do this over coca-cola in the food court at the local mall. as i've said before, it's just the nature of coffee: of the world's most social, romantic, and intellectual fine beverage.

Cleveland-based Koyono found their famous Black Coats were included in the celebrity gift bags given to guests at last week's MTV Music Awards. Recipients included musical artists such as D12 with Eminem, the Beastie Boys and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah�s, and presenters like Eve, Jimmy Fallon, Snoop Dogg, Halle Berry, Dave Chappelle, Kirsten Dunst, Kate Hudson and Tobey Maguire. Along with the Apple iPod Mini and other high-end consumer items, the gift bags, offered in lieu of pay, included the Black Coat because it is "unique, innovative, luxurious, hip and cutting edge," according to MTV. Koyono President Jay Yoo says the Black Coats "have been selling well internationally, primarily to this curious collection of geniuses, artists and innovators."

Maryland has started to implement wireless hot spots at welcome stops along the Interstate 95. Smart move. With a relatively small investment, the state is building the state's brand effectively. Read more.

The initiative is another effort to brand Maryland as a leading technology state, a focus of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development and Secretary Aris Melissaratos. It is also seen as a way to keep travelers connected in their increasingly Web-centric business and personal lives. "If they can go online while they travel it's a convenience for them and it ties in with Maryland's strategy of being a leader in technology," Castleman said. Users will get free Internet access for the first 10 minutes and will then be charged $4 per hour.

"I never drink coffee at lunch. I find that it keeps me awake in the afternoon." - Ronald Reagan

The National Campaign Against Dirty Power has an interactive map showing the annual deaths per 100,000 adults attributable to the pollution coming from power plants. The statistics are based on research done for the EPA (PDF). Unsurprisingly, areas which rely heavily on coal power fare the worst.

Ronald Burt, in his innovative and influential book, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition, provides fascinating support for the argument that both people and companies benefit by sitting in a �structural hole� of a network. A structural hole exists when there is only a weak connection between two clusters of densely connected people.

Although we entrust the management of a country of nearly 300 million people to democratic institutions, we find it inconceivable to consider truly democratic management of our businesses. Why? Notwithstanding the challenges of peer-based management, it would would seem to offer considerable strategic advantages in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment. If small, flat companies are more entrepreneurial than large, hierarchical corporations, is it not possible that fluid democratic networks of peers can be more entrepreneurial than small companies dominated by "big chief" founders?

Do you want to know what entrepreneurs really do? They cold call. They clean bathrooms and mop floors. They make copies and fix computer problems. They answer phones. They fill out paperwork. They work weekends, and holidays. They have to, because their employees just want to work 40 hours and leave, and they can't afford to hire any more help. Sure, they do lots of other things too, but when you hear that "entrepreneurs do it all", that includes the shit jobs. Barry Moltz was right when he said "You Have to Be a Little Crazy" to want to run your own business. Don't get me wrong - it's a blast. The fast pace, the tough decisions, the incomplete information, the grey areas - it is like playing a sporting event, only it is a mental one. But, it isn't glamourous - it is hard. If you do it, do it for the fun. If you are in it for the prestige, you will get a quick wake up call.

"THE WORLD IS YOUR CUBICLE!! Get outside!"

Will is a local blogger, web standards activist, and self-made Cleveland historian who I thought you should check out, add to your blogroll, and maybe drop a line.

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE!!! This is an extremely innovative program that I hope will grow over the years. Cleveland area artists/technicians/designers/people in film/videogaming/product design/architecture should attend. Due to the last-minuteness of this, we hope to entice people by only charging $20. This is an incredible bargain, and worth many more times that price. I hope to see you there. -Grant Marquit ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Saturday, June 12, 2004 3pm - 5:30 p.m. MOCA Cleveland 8501 Carnegie Avenue The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Cleveland, in collaboration with JumpStart, Inc., will host "Innovation at the Confluence of Art, Technology and Design," as part of Innovations Week events (June 6-13, 2004). This program will feature a case study of the internationally-acclaimed artist Rona Pondick, who is revolutionizing the way sculpture is created by merging imaging technologies developed for military use with advanced patinization processes and metallurgical techniques. Following will be a discussion moderated by Dr. Stephen Brand, Chief Imagination Officer of The New Enterprise Factory, with panelists Chris Riker of Nottingham-Spirk Design Associates and architect Bill Mason, American Institute of Architects. For more information, contact Kelly Bird at (kbird@mocacleveland.org) or 216.421.8671 x36 or Grant Marquit at 216.229.9445 x159. Donation bar & appetizers to follow. PLEASE RSVP to kbird@mocacleveland.org or grant.marquit@jumpstartinc.org. Thank you for supporting innovation in Northeast Ohio. +++++++

To the question "How do you know when you're finished?," Jackson Pollock replied "How do you know when you're finished making love?"

the veil of darkness is beginning to lift and the branches of the tree are spreading the light.... Percy Shelley said it best, "when winter comes, can spring be far behind?" we have long been in the midst of a dark winter here and there remains MUCH work to do before our spring begins, but websites like this give me great hope that change is in the air...

Welcome to TheTree.us, a portal to the environmental and conservation organizations of Northeast Ohio. The site was created by EcoCity Cleveland in concert with other nonprofit organizations to highlight the events, volunteer and employment opportunities in the region. The development of TheTree.us was made possible through a grant from The Cleveland Foundation.

1. Brew strong Costa Rica Tarrazu in a vac pot at a ratio of 100g [note: approx. 3.6 oz.] of medium ground coffee per litre [note: approx. 32 oz.] of brew water, 'up' time 2 minutes.
   [note: this is roughly 'double strength' coffee, according to scaa chief ted lingle's brewing control chart.]
2. Chill resultant brew in sealed glass container at 2C [note: approx. 35 degrees f., but at home most of us just have our fridges at about 50 degrees f] for 12 hours.
3. Serve in chilled 400ml [note: approx. 14 oz. tall] glass with 1 scoop vanilla ice cream and 100ml [note: approx. 1/3 cup] cold whole milk, sugar syrup on the side.

The discussion following my post about the community with the drugs problem has produced some amazing responses. In order to keep the space open, I have set up a page in the Open Space Wiki. Feel free to contribute both here or there.

Rob Cross, whom I met at the KM Forum a few months ago, has just released (through Harvard Business School Press) his new book, �The Hidden Power of Social Networks� (coauthored with Andrew Parker). You can download from the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Newsletter an excerpt on why social network analysis reveals How Org Charts Lie. I think the book is excellent: well researched (unlike most books on �networking�) and full of useful ideas. It will likely motivate you to use social network analysis in your own organization (which Rob and his coauthor Andrew Parker are happy to provide).

I realized that I don't feel nearly as creative as I used to feel. I think my creativity has been killed by my daily grind. Almost everything I do right now is focused on the operational aspects of a new business. Since I started these long days focused on getting everything in place, I haven't had time to do the things I used to, and I think those things helped make me creative. So what I would like to add to the debate is this question: Are we uncreative because we simply don't have the time? Seriously, creativity takes work. It takes varying stimuli and inputs. I don't have those right now. My thinking has moved from dynamic and non-linear to linear and one-dimensional. I can tell. It really sucks, but I can't break it until I have time to stop this one-track thinking process I have of growing a new business. It's a catch-22, because I'd probably grow the business better if I used some creativity.

It's funny, but when I'm writing code I can't work outside. But when I need to write a spec, slides for a presentation, or something like that, it's the only way I can do it. Sometimes the benefits of working at home far outweigh anything I could find in the best company in Cleveland.

" I've been thinking a lot lately about impermenance. Over last weekend I had a thought that hit me like cold water on my face - my three year old son could be hit by a bus tomorrow... now, as maudlin as all this sounds, I'm not walking around in fear or dispair. Quite the contrary. In fact it has acutely alerted me to a couple other tenets of zen, interdependence and being present. I'm kissing my wife goodbye more often. I'm holding my son in my arms and tickling him until his laughter is so loud it hurts my ears. I'm reallizing the time I spend with my family is more precious than the time I spend shackled to a computer. That the time I spend with ANYONE is the most important time at that moment."

On a recent business trip to Zurich, I noticed something interesting. Each day, without fail, the hotel cleaning staff aimed the shower head in my room toward the wall so that when I turned on the water I would not get wet. Such attention to detail is so very, well, Swiss. Since I travel almost constantly, I was impressed � and I was also quite discouraged. The Swiss have what they call an �innovation problem�. A number of countries are likewise suffering. What that means is that while countries like my own are constantly turning out new products and services, the Swiss feel themselves to be falling behind. Indeed, the economics attest to that fact. In the last decade, Switzerland � though rich � has hardly grown at all. Switzerland is neat and tidy. Pass a railway yard and the railroad ties are stacked neatly in rows. Pass a parking lot and the cars are parked in orderly rows. Hop on a tram that is supposed to arrive at 8:08 and at 8:08 it is there. Given such orderliness, why would a company like Novartis move its worldwide research headquarters to such a disorderly place like Cambridge, Massachusetts, where drivers don�t signal when making turns, cars are parked on top of, rather than inside, the parking lines, and the subway is always late? The answer is � I believe � that innovation is a very messy process that thrives in what can only be called �the gaps�. In other words, the US is at present the innovation capital of the world because it is such a disorderly place.

Some may see this as a stretch to apply Kurtzman's logic to the Cleveland metropolitan area, but it reinforces my own sense of the challenge this region faces as it appears to suffer from structured, institutional, and "orderly" thinking that, in turn, may help explain the region's low ranking in innovation and entrepreneurial start-ups.

James Robertson points to Jack Vinson who links to a discussion board that began with a post by Martin Dugage: "Before the development of weblogs, 'online community' tools like forums, mailing lists and bulletin boards were predominantly used for community building. Experience seems to show that weblogs are proving far more effective in creating meaningful interpersonal connections than centralized community spaces on the web. Can networks of bloggers be seen as the future of online communities?"

Copyright
All things published in (on?) Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency are copyrighted, in the worldwide sense, and cannot be reprinted -- or even spoken about -- without the written approval of a McSweeney's representative. They will be standing at the exits, wearing red vests. Frequency
We will put some things "up," so to speak, on some days, and on other days, we will not put things up. Whether or not we put things up will depend largely on whether, on a particular day, we have anything to put up. For example, let's say that on Monday we have something which we want to put up. On that day, we will put that thing up. On Tuesday, though, we might not have anything to put up. We will worry for a moment about not having anything to put up. "Oh no," we might say, "another day has come, and we have nothing to put up. What will happen if someone visits this site and there is nothing new to look at? Will people be angry?" But then we will realize that, chances are, people will not be angry -- that, chances are, people will understand. Most people are pretty understanding. Length
Considering this is the web and all, we will try to keep things readably short. (Unless something needs to be longer, in which case that piece will be longer.) Design
Nothing will be designed. Links
There will be no links. Hyperlinks
Are those different from regular links?
I am not sure.
Well, we'll have none of those, either.
Okay. Archives
We will have those. Those will be easily accessible at the bottom of the site's page. Content
The site will consist of the following elements:
- Short exercises probably of interest only to the writer of the exercise
- Short essays that make attempts at humor, often pertaining to things in the timely vein, and just as often not
- Episodes from what we will be calling, for the time being at least, The Service Industry. To that saga, the following rules will apply: 1. At least once a week (see also: Frequency), a new episode will be posted. Much in the way one used to get different segments of a larger picture in the packages of bubble gum, it will be up to the reader to piece these episodes together at a later date. Which is not to say that each segment will not be able to stand on its own. No one ever said that. Did you hear someone say that? No, you didn't. Fine. 2. Though all episodes are based closely on actual events and actual persons, all names, and many dates, locations and what have you will be changed. We do this only in order to have the narrative flexibility required to weave the various threads together for the purposes of the inevitable best-selling book, which will be culled from these episodes and will be enjoyed by all. Proofreading
Will be done by an unqualified person.

"Its amazing what shows up in your life when one looks inside and becomes a little more clear about who they are. Knowing who you are really helps with knowing what you want. When you know what you want and ask for it, the universe always says 'YES.' Four months ago, some introspection brought me to the realization that I wanted to co-create new space in the world that would help people & the planet do some self healing. I guessed this meant I'd be in the home building or interior design business... "

In his Captology Notebook, Stanford University researcher BJ Fogg takes a stab at identifying situations that promote learning He defines learning as behavior change, which he believes is more likely if people are dissatsified, in a good mood, or when rewards, such as fun, are immediate. So, how might this apply to entrepreneurial learning?

It's only June, but already the John Kerry bumper sticker on my car gets me cut off on I-71 by obese white males in their pickups and Camaros who upon seeing my Kerry sticker, roar past, swerve into my lane, and flip me the bird out their window.

Californians Kennith and Gabrielle Adelman have used pre-dot-bust dollars to go solar in a big way. Salon reports on their experience--and their impressive domestic solar installation--in the first of a series on "the intersection of the environment and 21st century life. " (Hm: sponsored by Ford.)

I've been thinking a lot about online communities. I have a team of graduate students this quarter who have been exploring what we're calling "hyperlocal citizens' media." The question they're trying to answer is whether it's possible to build an online community oriented to a town or neighborhood -- one where citizens share information and make connections that aren't being fostered by metropolitan newspapers or local TV. To test some of their ideas, they've launched a real site (GoSkokie) that real residents of their chosen community have begun to really use. They've also been posting periodically to a weblog about their project. Along the way, they've made some exciting discoveries:

• Open-source software -- my students are using Geeklog -- makes the task of launching a site like this cheap and easy, even with only modest technology skills.
• Individuals (WestportNow.com), companies (iBrattleboro.com), and groups of volunteers (livefromarlington.com) are launching sites like this all over the U.S.
• The Bakersfield Californian has launched a new venture (Northwest Voice) that serves a rapidly growing part of the paper's readership with a website coupled with a weekly print edition that draws heavily from the site's user-contributed content.

Among the interesting questions that this project has raised for me are: What kind of publishing model works best to turn site visitors into content creators? (Fredericksburg.com and Advance.Net -- which is sponsoring my students' project -- have built significant traffic using discussion forums.) And is it possible for a traditional media company to create this kind of community site (and ethos), or can it best be generated organically, a la Craigslist? (This Online Journalism Review article about the "nerd values" of Craigslist is thought-provoking.)

Ross Mayfield writes at Corante about publishing a case study for how the 1UP.com division of Ziff Davis media used a hosted wiki for group communications. The results are a pretty compelling value proposition:

"We used to have over 100 group emails per day. Now it's rarely one per week, we've saved a month in a four-month software project, and everyone is on the same page... saved us 25% of the time of a four month project," said Tom Jessiman. "We couldn't have done it any other way. Otherwise we would have been stuck in endless meetings, trying to keep track of decisions with printouts and lost emails. We always know the latest version, and had archives of older versions. If there was any debate about something, someone would always say - go look at the wiki."

100 group emails per day add up to over $1M in soft costs. Part of my email is dead (kinda) rant. More on the business side of wikis in BusinessWeek and eWeek over the last week.

"Cuban coffee is like a cocktail," said Liliana Estes, owner of a local hair salon and friend of long-time Ocala resident Arturo Stable, who prepares Cuban coffee daily at his home. "What makes it unique is the way you strain it. It come out strong, but at the same time it's light." Estes often visits Stable for a sweet taste of coffee. Stable, who retired 20 years ago as a language teacher in Marion County, and was once a lawyer for the National Institute of Coffee in Havana, Cuba, is equipped with an Italian coffee maker. It has a base that unscrews, a filter and a sort of long funnel through where the coffee rises. He puts several teaspoons of sugar in a separate cup, leaving a spoon in there. "The secret," he says as he pours water into the base of the coffee maker and closes the filter on top of it, "is to strain it very, very slowly." Once he screws on the strainer or filter on top of the water-filled base, Stable whips out Cafe Pilon espresso from his refrigerator. He dumps about four spoonfuls onto the filter, stops for a minute and peers down at the coffee, before saying in Spanish, "a little more." Drops in another spoonful. Twists the top part of the coffee maker on the filter. Puts the stove on high. Blue flames shoot up from his gas stove. He waits about a minute for the water to boil before turning the stove to a "low" setting. Five minutes later, as the coffee begins to escape through the funnel, he immediately grabs it, pours out a spoonful and returns the coffee maker to the stove. He bathes the cup of sugar with the first bit of coffee and whips it up with a spoon until it's a caramel-colored cream. When the coffee begins to boil he pours it into the cup with the cream, which becomes a sweet foam on the top of the coffee. The foam or espumita is what makes Cuban coffee authentic."

And I had a dream last night that I was feeling barely human. So save me a place in your parking lot. And save me a place beside you when you lie down to sleep at night. Someday I'll get it right. Someday well I'll get it right. Yeah one day I'll get it right. Someday well I'll get it right. Yeah one day I'll get it right. And if you see the dark clouds gathering out on the horizon. Don't be alarmed their just there for me. Just save me a place beside you when you lie down to sleep at night. Someday I'll get it right.

It's all about building relationships. Building a place for creatively entrepreneurial people to live and work is part of the CoolTown story. Helping them build truly meaningful relationships to succeed individually and as a community is just as important, and what the Entrepreneurial League System (ELS) provides. Known as the branded version of the Entrepreneurial Development System described yesterday, the ELS provides these key services: The Talent Scout identifies and recruits the entrepreneurs for the community. The Diagnostician assesses the entrepreneurs and assigns them to the appropriate league level. The Performance Coach develops their individual mental and emotional skills one entrepreneur at a time. The Success Team Manager brings together small groups of entrepreneurs at similar skill levels and markets to share ideas, resources and moral support. The Alliance Broker works to create business alliances among entrepreneurs in the system, The General Manager integrates the entrepreneurs and their service providers into a cohesive system, an identifiable entrepreneurial community if you will. My favorite ELS service is provided by the Opportunity Scouts, whose function is to actively identify new market opportunities and link them to entrepreneurs.

"Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity." - Albert Camus

Entrepreneurial culture to me is a climate/culture that fosters and nurtures (and rewards) entrepreneurial activity from ideation to implementation (Texas calls it "Idea to IPO"). An entrepreneurial culture cannot be just about having lots of entrepreneurs, rather it's about a resilient, self-renewing process of creating new businesses over time. The entrepreneurial potential of a community is clearly a function of the quality/quantity of potential entrepreneurs there (or perhaps lure-able there?) Before we can have a venture, there has to be an opportunity - but to have an opportunity, we need someone to identify and create/design that opportunity. Thus, we need those "someones" - a/k/a "entrepreneurs. This also means we need a culture that nurtures and supports the perception and enactment of personally-viable opportunities. What can we do to encourage people to see more (and better) opportunities?

Most developments in art are superseded and often directly initiated by advances in technology and science. The past century is a prime example of how awesome breakthroughs subjected art through fascinating transformations. Liberated from its past role of pure representation, art emerged dynamically to draw new courses through a remarkable array of experimentation and theoretical discourse. This journey, in its vast entirety, was sustained through great personal struggles of independent artists and the few individuals and institutions that supported them...

Hand carved, sterling silver 100% Colombian Coffee ring. I will custom fit a ring to your size, please email me for details and ordering. I can make the ring with or without the "100% Colombian" text around the ring, it's all up to you how you like your coffee cup ring. Juan Valdez would be proud.

Having placed Vermont on the 1993 list of endangered places, which helped communities steer the first three Wal-Marts to smaller downtown buildings and spotlighted the big-box economic and environmental impact nationwide, the National Trust for Historic Preservation did it again this year, because the company's oversized fourth store marred Burlington's suburb of Williston, because seven more "behemoth stores" reportedly planned may hurt other towns, and because, says trust president Richard Moe, "Wal-Mart should change to accommodate Vermont, not the other way around."

Bill Nevins, a New Mexico high school teacher and personal friend, was fired last year and classes in poetry and the poetry club at Rio Rancho High School were permanently terminated. It had nothing to do with obscenity, but it had everything to do with extremist politics. The "Slam Team" was a group of teenage poets who asked Nevins to serve as faculty adviser to their club. The teens, mostly shy youngsters, were taught to read their poetry aloud and before audiences. Rio Rancho High School gave the Slam Team access to the school's closed-circuit television once a week and the poets thrived. In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel. A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy. The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job. Bill Nevins was suspended for not censoring the poetry of his students. Remember, there is no obscenity to be found in any of the poetry. He was later fired by the principal...

Advanced features and meet-and-greet events cost $15, but entail the interaction that members can use to seal a deal, says Valdis Krebs, a Westlake networking consultant who has designed software to help organizations identify communication shortfalls. Krebs takes attendees' names and plots them on an easy-to-use map that allows people to see ahead of time who knows whom. It's sociology meets geography meets management information systems ?4 different, he says, because it is intelligently unpredictable. "It's good to have a map so you know where you're at and you know where you are in relation to where you want to be," he says.

Maybe it's because of all the bullshit oil politics, or maybe it's because I just revisited my crunchy Vermont roots-- either way, I'm fascinated by Biodiesel at the moment. It is an old concept that's seeing a rebirth among socially responsible and environmentally conscious youth. My friend Nori runs her Merc on Biodiesel and taught me all about it.