Wanted to pass along a notice that the Northeast Ohio International Business Network (NOIBN) will have networking reception.

When: Thursday, 2/24
Time: 4:30-6:30pm
Where: Clarion Hotel, Rockside Road, Independence
For More Info: contact Radhika Reddy @ 216-344-9441. If you plan to attend, please call.

The reception is co-hosted by the US Export Assistance Center, Ohio Department of Development, World Trade Center-Cleveland and NE Ohio international business organizations.

There will also be a few speakers including:
Honorable Robert de Leeuw, Counsel General of the Netherlands
Kirk Merritt, Ohio Dept of Development, Director - International Trade Division
Robert Farley, President, Team NEO

Regards,
Greg Ziernicki
440-554-5938 (c)
440-268-9442 (h)

Location

I happened to catch the NOVA program "A Daring Flight" onÂ
Louis Blériot developing the first airplane to cross the English Channel, which in fact revolutionized the airplane industry at its beginning. Lessons Louis learned from Dayton's Wilbur Wright made this possible, and over the years following his Wright "schooling" Louis gained nearly every flight record in existence, with a plane that exceeded the Wright Brothers' accomplishments, becoming the most popular airplane in the world at that time. Understanding that transformation in time, place and industry offers many lessons for NEO now, in our transition.

Everyone knows MIT is a remarkable university - now you can learn how, exceptionally. Through their OpenCourseWare site you can access their free, open publication of MIT Course

Materials. They invite you to view all

the courses

available at this time... for example, from their Brain and Cognitive Sciences offerings:

Open-Source Practices for Biotechnology - New York Times,
February 10, 2005

Researchers from Australia have devised a method of creating genetically modified crops that does not infringe on patents held by big biotechnology companies.

The people behind the new technology-sharing initiative, called the Biological Innovation for Open Society, or BIOS, say that patents covering the basic
tools for genetically engineering plants - which are controlled by
companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer CropScience - have impeded
the use of biotechnology in developing countries and also in smaller-acreage crops, like vegetables, in the United States.

The Doctor Will See Your Prototype Now - Wired,
February 2005

The Physiome Project is assembling digital models of every system and anatomical feature of the human body - from large organs to tiny cellular and molecular functions.
The system would allows physicians to test various scenarios on your digital model - surgery, radiation, chemotherapy - and watch how your system reacts.

At the January 21, 2005 City Club forum, Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove ended his presentation with his vision for the Cleveland Clinic leading the inevitable "socialization" of healthcare in America - he declared the age of private and small medical practices and hospitals has ended and large, efficient world-class healthcare providers like the Clinic will create a universal umbrella of coverage. He is correct, and Cleveland is very fortunate to have a world-leader of this movement here - the Clinic is just as able to be a world-hub of socialized healthcare as any other provider, and Cosgrove is clearly capable of leading NEO to the forefront of this global transition - NEO should be center of global healthcare industry and excellence - read the notes from Cosgrove's presentation to better understand how and why!

But the socialized provider aspect of the healthcare revolution is just one opportunity now before NEO - another was surfaced a week later with President Bush's 02.28.05 visit to the Clinic to praise their use of information systems to streamline and automate patient records - featuring before the world the Clinic's successes standardizing how patient records are maintained and communicated. To highlight this transformation, mentioned by Cosgrove the prior week at the City Club, the Clinic was not only able to use excellent medical information management to be the first providers to identify health risks of the pain-killer Vioxx but was then able to notify their 11,000 patients using Vioxx that they must stop taking the medication, literally real-time. Thus, effective medical information systems reduce healthcare problems, saving money and lives.

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...

There is no experience to compare to hearing a genius present the future of the world's most complex situation, realizing that genius is leading NEO's most important institution, and is a leader of the world's most important industry, and will save our local economy.

Cleveland Clinic's incoming CEO Delos Cosgrove M.D. presented a full house at the Cleveland City Club with a clear vision on the current and future state of the healthcare industry that is critical to understanding global quality of life, economic development, and our region's national and global potentials - there will be no more important discussions initiated in this region this year.

Bottom line, while it is awesome the Clinic represents over 5% of our area economy, what is remarkable is they are a global leader in the largest and fastest growing industry in the world, and positioned to play a dramatically greater and changing role in our economy and their global industry. They offer much more than their $2.5 billion contribution to the 2004 regional economy, their 29,000 NEO jobs (65,000, with trickle-down), their $310 million in NEO taxes paid, and their $250 million in uncompensated services for area residents in need - the Clinic is our world-class leader in the industry most responsible for improving people's quality of life, and global productivity, at the time when the potentials of the greatest breakthroughs and innovations in the history of healthcare are just becoming apparent, and while more centralized and socialized policy is inevitable. While the fact is the Clinic is a world-class hospital, the true excitement today is not that the Clinic saves lives but that the Clinic is positioned to save the region's life, making Cleveland one of very few true healthcare capitals of the world.

Those companies with diverse board (of directors) representation benefit from having executives who "get away from group-think" and "challenge the prevailing way of thinking," promotes The Greater Cleveland Roundtable in their weekly e-news on trends in diversity and inclusion. They further quote the CEO of diversity award winner Pitney Bowes as saying diverse directors "pay more attention to moral issues and how the frontline employees feel...They're more challenging of the orthodox ways of thinking." That is the kind of thinking we need in NEO - go to the Roundtable site and subscribe to their eNews for such insight in your box weekly.

A Community of Interest committed to the understanding North East Ohio's greatest strength is our cultural diversity, and that is the key to our sustainability as a community, society and economy

Who cares about open source? The world's teachers, and countries, for example. Today on ZDNet UK there's a headline that could be about NEO college students, but is not - it's about some students in the UK, who developed an open source Linux operating system package for schools, which is also being embraced by nations and industry (and they're seeking US distributors, if anyone here wants a good second tier opportunity - see http://SchoolLINUX.com. How many open source savvy students are we nurturing here to be such innovators? And how soon will we at least use such open source innovations to transform our schools here, so they may better serve our students, so we'll have effective global innovators in the future. These are the brainpower challenges for our region to become a quality connected place for new economy development in the future. Time for NEO leaders to push these issues to the very top of the agenda to drive economic development here. Read how it's happening beyond our island...

There is a fascinating article in the 01/16/05 NY Times on the challenges outstanding international students have finding jobs in the US. Considering the US is an immigrant-based economy and, except for Native Americans, we're all relatively recent transplants, the current "lock the gates" federal policy is probably the most harmful to the US economy of any of the current administration - we are not importing knowledge workers, at a time when the world is eclipsing us in brainpower. As you read on you'll see, there's Ivy League brainpower all over the world and some of it wants to work in America - foolish US policy is keeping it out, driving US companies to send work abroad, as other economies gain competitive advantages over the US. Perhaps smart leaders in NEO can excel as world-experts in bringing global brainpower here, as a unique value of NEO. Tell me, why not! Read on...

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.

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...

Speakers
> Congressman Sherrod Brown

Friday, January 07, 2005 12:00 PM Congressman Sherrod Brown Ohio's 13th Congressional District

Reservation

Ohio’s
13th Congressional District representative since 1992, Sherrod Brown
will discuss his latest book "Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade
Policy Has Failed," a critical examination of free-trade policies 10
years after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Location

The future of the Internet and social networking is being build upon a foundation of a "meta identity standard" - and our identity and lifestyle aggregation guru Marc Canter points out, on his great blog, "creating a meta-identity standard will be 2% technology and 98% politics". He goes on to propose "to nominate Dick Hardt and his Sxip Networks technology
to lead this effort forward. Sxip can be a 'mini-backplane' of sorts -
that can then plug into Kim's mega meta momma backplane he's talking
about. I really think it's possible that 2005 can be the year that this
all comes together." For REALNEO, we are integrating the SXIP backplane into our identity management system, as is so well supported by our CMS Drupal and our Bryght development partners' efforts, making us world-class compliant to follow the "Laws of Identity" developed by the Kim Cameron referenced above, which are included below. Thus, REALNEO users' social computing future is secure.

Over the past year everyone in the interconnected world started waking up to the value of Information Technology for individuals to transform every day life on Earth, for good and bad - a point largely demonstrated by the role the Internet and blogs/wikis now play in social organizations. 2004 saw a new dawning of enlightenment. And, overnight, a tsunami taught us that individual IT empowerment is transforming life on Earth for all, evolving us from isolated people and communities to an interwoven fabric of interconnected humanity sharing one planet with personal familiarity with the quality of life of all others.

Welcome to the DESIRE Project

The DESIRE project ran from July 1998 until June 2000 and was a
collaboration between project partners working at ten institutions from
four European countries - the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK.

Ethnic Virtual Community links and articles.

The Middle East Virtual
Community is an attempt by academic nationals, resident in the Middle East, to open,
promote and sustain intra-regional channels of communication and cooperation.  This
will be done through the utilization of technologically advanced tools - including
Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) - to the benefit of the Middle Eastern communities,
and particularly to promote universal human values and mutual respect. 

This site will be crucial for the development of this
Community - as a channel for information dissemination, as well as interaction.  The
site will regularly host Conferences on various topics of interest that cut across
national boundaries.  Through these conferences, we will bring together scholars from
around the region who will provide diverse perspectives, in terms of the discipline(s)
through which they approach the conference theme.  The first
conference in the series was held on this site, August 1-15 2000.

International Virtual Communities links and articles.

Here's another idea for our region to consider: A pilot program to promote immigrant entrepreneurs. A recent article from Inc magazine outlines SmartStart in Maine. The initiative targets the development of micro-enterprises.