Thanks Norm..

Laura Steinbrink participated in the April 23 - 25 I-Open Leadership Retreat. In addition, Susan Altshuler and I spent one day last week teaching Darin Siley, Executive Fellow, FOEFF, ANEO and other orgs.. the fundamentals of Open Source Economic Development. Susan and I shared what we are working on now, and then agreed to meet again with Darin to further explore a couple of future opportunities to collaborate for the purpose of strengthening the various organization's efforts. Laura had asked us to meet with Darin to help make the case for a Near-Time license purchase for FOEF to build, oversee, and develop a regional talent network, efforts she thought simliar to Ed's model of wired-nation.net

We are scheduled to meet Darin again next week to follow up with potential partner organization responses.  I-Open would hope to move forward on some potentially fundable opportunities. In all honesty, I do not know what the likelihood of this is, but we certainly are open to providing support through coaching, training, and mentoring. Somewhat related to your inquiry about funding, the I-Open "Home Base Team" (Susan, Dennis Coughlin, and myself) remain 'Fund Free" at this time. We have been supported over the last year+ by generous financial contributions of family. We recieve equally generous in-kind contributions of time, information, ideas and guidance from many, many people here in NEO.

Ed's work is meanwhile, generously and widely adopted across the country. But not here in NEO, where it is needed most with it's 20 year annual history of nationally ranking poverty. Why is that in a region richest globally in legacy assets?

Economic development is complex today. We are fortunate to learn from Ed Morrison whose gift is, among other gifts, the ability to communicate complex concepts in a simple way for people to understand. We are also fortunate to have practicing, sustaining communities like REALNEO, Brewed Fresh Daily, Meet The Bloggers, Lakewood Observer  - people who have the experience of Strategic Doing based on the opportunities they see and who have a history of working in the Civic Space.

By educating and promoting a regional environment of open innovation partnered with a culture of leaders who understand the Civic Space, I believe we can move forward. This will require some kind of a shared understanding between Civic Space leaders and organizations whose mission it is to invest in economic development of the value of what OSED practices and tools and the resulting exponential growth means to regional transformation: Prosperity. We saw this beginning to occur with the REI OSED Civic Forum model. This is what was not acceptable to downtown real estate owners and others because it demands a relinquishing of personal control.

My hope is that enough time has passed for us to see the direct results of repeatedly investing in further and further failed systems; deepening spirals of needless poverty, disregard for our natural resources, and increasingly siloed legacy assets, that we are ready to do things differently and move forward together.

As we learn from Valdis Krebs, innovation happens through networks, rather than top or bottom or any variation on that model. Cognitive shifts need to occur integrating the new practices of collaborative leadership, networked systems of organization, and Strategic Doing to reach new levels of purposeful activity around things that work today. Our region is rich with thought leaders to guide us as we make these shifts. My hope is for all of us to work together, quickly, to become a global leader in Open Source Economic Development practice and consequently, sustainable economic transformation.