How to upload an image for the RealNEO header -- without using a blog post:

This giant water lilly pad - about 5 feet across - is in the greenhouses at Kew Gardens in London, England.

Why care?  Care, because, our ecosystems are collapsing.  We can not ignore the reality of the effects of our actions and inactions.  The tipping point means that there is no going back.

EMF: Richard Box's Graphic Demonstrations

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.11.08
It is always a controversial subject here. Are EMFs harmful? Are WiFi routers and cellphones frying our brains? While the scientific consensus in North America suggests we need not worry, the art of Richard Box gives us serious pause.

Realneo.us is having issues renewing its domain name -

We are working on the problem and will NOT have it resolved on Thursday , Valentine's Day but  very likely FRIDAY. 

The Euclid Corridor Bus design doesn’t make sense to me. 

The Mad Potter covers my home town
Written by: George Nemeth
Got this email from a friend who was at last night’s Midtown Brews free-for-all:

I keep looking for the signs.  Today's Plain Dealer proclaims hope for downtown.  Believe me, I want to believe it.  How many downtown employees live, shop and recreate downtown?  Have institutions done all they can to encourage a small footprint? I like Michael Schwartz at CSU--does he live nearby?  Ditto, for all the CEOs and intitutional leaders at the Clinic, CWRU, CPL, NEORSD, NOACA... 

Susan suggested that the text Input Format options (when posting a blog/comment/etc.) provide more choice than is needed or wanted for the typical user.

Here's an email from our partner in Smaller Indiana,  Bruce LaDuke. Bruce participated in the Midtown Brews Open Conversation. Be sure to click through to the website to learn more about how other leaders are innovating to illuminate solutions through open forms of conversation.

Near-Time, Purdue Center for Regional Development Partner to Launch First Nationwide Community of Regions Focused on Workforce Innovations

Today Near-Time announced a partnership with the Purdue Center for Regional Development to launch the first nationwide community of regions focused on innovation and economic development. This partnership is a spinoff of the U.S. Labor Department's WIRED Initiative. The new nationwide community is accessible at www.wired-nation.net.

Technology and Organization Opportunities to Accelerate Innovations in Open Source Economic Development

The February 7, 2008 Midtown Brews forum, Our Ohio Energy Portfolio: Economic Development in Your Backyard, brought together perspectives of Cleveland government, foundation and citizen decision makers. Elisa Young, traveled from Meigs County, Southern Ohio, to share her perspective as a seventh generation land owner, report on current local costs to human life, and natural resource devastation in proportion to the affect of current concentration of, and construction of future power production facilities. The Open Conversation was generated by about 100 participants and joined by 30 members of the Smaller Indiana social network contributing questions and observations via broadcast video and chat. Government leaders City of Cleveland Councilman Matt Zone, City of Cleveland, Ward 17; Nolan Moser, Law Fellow, Ohio Environmental Council ;  Andrew Flock, Painesville Councilman; Andrew Watterson, Cleveland Sustainability Programs Manager, City of Cleveland Department of Utilities; and Foundation leader, Richard Stuebi, BP Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at The Cleveland Foundation, NextWave Energy, Inc., Founder and President.

The Open Discussion focused on issues and revealed the magnitude of the topic, the enormity of consequences, and our failure to innovate.

Was this conversation really just a result of a lack of technology and organization innovations, a long-term lack of citizenry participation and business leadership? ...

How did we get to this point?

Our situation has changed. We're required to make decisions at a level of comprehension beyond our capability, exaggerated by unforeseen forces and at a new speed. Tomorrow, the forces will be more complex, the speed will have increased and window of time, shrunk.

Why should we be surprised?

Consider what's involved. Of all animals on earth, humans score the lowest in cognitive capability to plan for the future, and our brain capacity based on size is miniscule in proportion to the scale of the new kinds of decisions we are responsible to make.

Leaders are experiencing previously unexperienced - 

• Forms of change
• Quantum levels of change
• Leaders are required to interact with new economic systems
• Required to respond to unforeseen future forces
• Navigate a landscape comprised of a few resource rich decision making entities verses a pool of burden bearing constituents (you can flip ownership of burden with the same disastrous unbalanced outcomes, the point is responsibilities are not shared)

We are all in this together, and ultimately, we are all affected equally. Regions and their communities are experiencing a whiplash of issues, topped with a new misunderstanding of speed, lack of planning, strategy, and metrics to guide regional decision-making in this new landscape. What will be required for people to halt uniformed guesswork, lavish and desperate spending of resources on quick stop solutions? Because of a confluence of perfect storm factors, every decision made will affect our survival sooner than our experience tells us.

This is not about finger pointing, back slapping, or deal making between a few individuals or corporations, it is about the power of collaborative leadership, employing critical thinking skills to scale brainpower, engaging high end technology innovation, and designing new models of organization.

Moving forward.

• There is a need to dramatically increase alternative energy innovations
• Dramatically increase funding for research
• Ensure open access to results
• Regular apolitical theoretical and practical summation of research
• Identify future forces affecting energy
• Build open networks to engage the public, private business leadership, government
• Design technology tools for a new rate of speed and visualization

Navigating these new landscapes requires new learning. Adopt the practices and tools of Open Source Economic Development (158.5 KB) deployed by I-Open. I-Open is creating the open spaces to build the open networks for new conversations focused on regional transformation. With our technology partner Near-Time.net, we are building online collaborative communities to sustain the conversations between face to face meetings, share information, and accelerate enterprise development for regional transformation.

 
Some next steps to learn about new practices and tools:

Article 19 just sent me a wallop of good dance video. Thanks Neil!

Let's begin here with Hofesh Schecter

With All Able-bodied Men at the Front French Women Have Had to Raise the Crops for Their Homes and Their Armies as Well

And break.

Then when it warms up like it did over the past two days, the pipes thaw out.

And water floods everything.  

And when the building is filled up, the water pours out under the doors and into the street - just like it is doing at Sweet Daddy's.

"No matter who becomes our next president"

Surprise!!!

 

Covered on Realneo in the past here, and here, today Dana Paterson is front page on the Cleveland Free Times

Yep, just like we suspected... the Opportunity Corridor never was planned as a corridor and neither was the boulevard along the lakefront on the west side. This is soooooo stupid. Take some of those tax dollars and pay for a few interns to do fact checking for ya ODOT!

I am nonplussed that after all the BS about West Shoreway slowing, medianing, tree planting, access providing and boulevarding someone finally checked the book and discovered that this never should have been proposed in the first place!!!

From Alenka--East Cleveland Rising!!!

 

(note added November 24, 2011- Cassidy Laudadio has organized the Warner and Swasey Observatory Preservation Project)

Norm, we have a deadline tomorrow, please give me a telephone call to work out details ASAP
Thanks, Jeff