The pace of adoption of open source software is accelerating at astounding rates, as we see entire nations officially dumping Microsoft and going free. Recently, Venezuela switched to open source, and plan a university to develop programmers... now, read two great postings about Brazil - developing countries are wising up... developing Ohio is wising up too, as you'll see...

Community
of Minds  Technology Networking Event

Location

Here's an organic interpretation on the interconnections of TOPSOIL - Technology Optimization Platform for Social Organization, Innovation and Learning - REALNEO - Regional Economic Action Links (North East Ohio) - OSED - Open Source Economic Development - and IP - Intellectual Property - being the ecosystem enabling and nurturing Entrepreneurship and unique value creation and growth.

OSED consists of (B)rainpower, (I)nnovation and (Q)uality atoms, held interconnected with the magnetism of REALink Dialogue and Inclusion. These atoms combine in infinite combinations of Intellectual property molecules, which combine in organic structures forming more complex elements like schools, universities, companies and governments within a community ecosystem, in North East Ohio called NEO. The more supportive the ecosystem, the stronger the elements, and more elements to thrive. At the foundation of the ecosystem is TOPSOIL - the healthier and more nutritious the better. Branding and Marketing promote elements and ecosystems versus others, completing the OSED framework.

Congressman Sherrod Brown was the speaker at the first Cleveland City Club Friday Forum of 2005, on January 7, where he presented insight from his recently published book on American free trade policy, Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has Failed, and shared personal perspectives on life in Washington, Ohio, and around the world. Appreciative attendees enjoyed the company of an insightful speaker, empowering statesman, and refreshing intellectual – and we may well have been the first to learn Brown is seriously considering a run for Ohio Governor in 2006. Where else but the City Club may we the people of Cleveland get up close and personal to explore the most important issues in the world, with the most insightful people in the world.

Analyses and best practices of Phoenix, Arizona

City of Phoenix offers support for local artists via ICE - Information Community Effectiveness. The following eNews from City Hall highlights "a new pilot grants program designed to assist individual artists living in Phoenix and working in all artistic disciplines." The focus is quite basic and low-level and low-cost - one could say negligible, in the big picture... $10,000 total... yet for individual artists this is a sign the city cares about their development and success. As NEO's Community Partnership for the Arts is now planning how to allocate $100,000s of dollars to artists, it is worth thinking so small with some of that money, to spread the wealth like in Phoenix...

If you for some reason like Microsoft you will not like this news, or the fact the world's progressive governments are mandating or expressing preferences for eGov development with open source applications and technologies - mandates include in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil,
Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy and Peru - preferences include in Bahrain, Belgium, China and Hong Kong, Costa Rica, France, Germany,
Iceland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Philippines and South
Africa - noteworthy is that "The Venezuelan government has founded an Open Source academy in the city of Merida in an effort to provide a supply of capable staff." Hello America, Ohio, and regional governments... are you serious about participating in the global economy? Better get open about using IT, and developing our workforce...

How do cities encourage and empower residents to be great civil servants - to develop an appreciation for social responsibility? Perhaps through appreciation for jobs well done. The mayor of Baltimore used his "Taking Care of Business" eNewsletter to thank local businesses and 1,000s of citizen volunteers for making their schools better, and below is an eNewsletter from Mayor Rybak of the indisputably effective city of Minneapolis thanking "civic leaers" for their contribution to the quality of life of others in that community - from community gardens and a food co-op to developing a social contract for families to have dinner together at least 4 times a week - it seems the least good citizens deserve from their elected officials is an occassional "thanks for the help".

No big surprise NYNY Major Bloomberg is a master of ICE -
Information Community Effectiveness - as that has made him untold $ millions.
But I am always surprised how well he and NYC.gov use the WWW to serve the
diverse needs of citizens - through his virtual outreach he makes clear he is
an ingenious and caring statesman very deserving to lead one of the world's
most remarkable and complex cities. For example, today I received the following
"Health and Mental Hygiene News" on "How to Find a Doctor",
which "tells
you how to find the doctor you want regardless if you have insurance or not,
lists many free or low-cost health insurance programs, and explains how having
a regular doctor can greatly improve your health." How many 100,000s of
people in NEO need this knowledge, from an eGov taking care of citizen needs?

The city of Milwaukee is taking a lead leveraging virtual community to make their physical community safer. Their city website based Compass interface “provides additional ears and eyes to watch out for crime and it will help promote neighborhood security� and "marks a significant collaboration between city government and the community, in order to provide more timely and accurate information.� Through Dialogue and Inclusion, Milwaukee is becoming a higher Quality, Connected Place, just like we want to be here. Read more about Compass and see it in action, linked below:

-----Original
Message-----
From: MilwaukeeE-Notify [at] milwaukee [dot] gov
[mailto:MilwaukeeE-Notify [at] milwaukee [dot] gov]
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 2:09 PM
Subject: Incident Level Data Now Available on the City

I receive lots of great e-knowledge from the city of Indianapolis, which has great ICE - Internet Community Effectiveness - and they (and other high-ICE cities) use the WWW for more than just political grandstanding. Below is a nice example, where Indy Gov is leveraging their eGov excellence in collaboration with their Colts football team to collect money for Tsunami victoms - Colts C.A.R.E. - (Communities Assisting Relief
Efforts). So, a city is leveraging relationships with citizens and an event attracting 10,000s of people to raise money to help 100,000s - that's a smart community and administration - read on about champions working together:

The first mayor who really stood out to me as a master of ICE - Information Community Effectiveness - who understands TQI, and performance management, and WWW effectiveness and other aspects of organizational and IT excellence, was Martin O'Malley, Mayor of Baltimore (other first choices, Beecham. Palo Alto, and Bloomberg, New York). I'll share more about them and their ICE in the future - for now, consider O'Malley's words below about their innovative program to involve businesses and volunteers in saving their schools:

This book provides content and links related to optimizing eGovernment - critical to making NEO a Quality, Connected Place

I monitor economic development ICE - Information Community Effectiveness - of the 50 largest cities in America and see many exceptional practices I'll begin sharing here. Today, I received an outreach from the city of Phoenix sent to their "Neighborhood Legislative Updates Mailing List", to which I subscribe. It points out "The State Legislature will convene next Monday, January 10! Through this e-mail alert system, we will provide information on the state legislative session and will continue to share information on neighborhood-related bills that the city of Phoenix is tracking." This is a city governance best practice, both in using IT to communicate with community stakeholders (and they provide many categories of such electronic outreach) and by involving the city community with legislative matters impacting their city and neighborhoods. Consider how important it is for our state to work effectively as a community, yet how often NEOs complain that Columbus doesn't understand our needs - and how little we do about becoming empowered as a voice in state-wide issues? Phoenix uses the internet to empower the people of that community - in more ways than this.

Information Communications Effectiveness (ICE) is now the key to governmental and political success. The benefit to citizens of effective government technology (IT) and telecommunications - from process improvements and knowledge management to ecommerce, communications, collaboration, individual empowerment and optimal economic development - is so powerful and transformational, it is inconceivable a less tech-savvy up-start could upstage an effective ICE-savvy incumbent. We have never seen an ICE-savvy politician surface in NEO, so all communities here are just waiting for information revolution.

Good information posted in today's Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter - the most interesting reference is: "Typically, we have seen that the civil liberties and education levels of a
nation strongly determine its level of technology adoption..." - let's make the nation of REALNEO as good as Denmark, with great IT, education, and civil liberites for all!

From Brown University's ongoing analysis of city eGov, we read:

The researchers examined the electronic-government efforts of the
nation’s 70 largest city governments. Rounding out the top five were San Diego, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. At the bottom of the rankings were Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Greenville, S.C., Syracuse and West Palm Beach.