In the 01/09/05 Plain Dealer business section is an article about Glengary,
they pitch as "A Different Kind of Venture Capital". Glengary seems to embrace many concepts in the Open Source Economic Development framework, especially leveraging Brainpower and Innovation Networks. From the article: "Its
model consists of circles of partners who help "client companies" grow.
Glengary generally invests a small amount of money in
each of its companies, then its partners invest their time, talent and
services." Some interesting aspects are their "executive on loan"
concept, their slate of preferred service providers, and their
affiliation with Baldwin-Wallace Business School (and some strong
investor partners). There seem to be concepts to embrace here, and
synergies to explore. Read on, consider the synergies, and let's Ideate on this model!

Bodwin Theater Company Director Kevin Cronin contributes to
the Cleveland Plain Dealer "Voices in the Arts" series of guest
columns on arts and culture in NEO with a compelling business case for
encouraging more filmmaking and related industry in Ohio. In his analysis, he
explains how this industry "cluster" can generate greater unique
value and economic benefits for this region than may casinos and convention
centers, which tend to monopolize the local development mindspace. To
illustrate the potentials, Kevin highlights data on benefits of the film
industry in Canada and the states of Louisiana, Illinois, Alabama, Oregon, New
Mexico and New Jersey, totaling $ billions... concluding "If Ohio wants
film, commercial, TV and digital-media jobs and income, it needs to take the
legislative steps to compete effectively. They are sensible, cost-effective, necessary
tools to compete with other states and countries to generate employment and
business growth." With elections coming up for Cleveland Mayor (for which
current Film Commissioner Carmody is apparently running) and for Ohio Governor, both of which will
focus on workforce and economic growth, it is timely now to push for the benefits Kevin proposes this creative cluster offers in
the future - make the candidates address these opportunities before they get our votes.

Cleveland Plain Dealer architecture critic Steven Litt writes of a "Golden Opportunity" for University Circle's future in proposing Case University, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and other local arts and learning institutions make optimal use of their master planning to leverage innovative networking and world-class brainpower to build a higher quality, well-connected powerhouse for this region - a "collegetown" gateway integrating University Circle institutions and stakeholders with surrounding community and regional interests. Steven prods UC-related leadership to follow models of excellence found at well planned universities in Cincinnati, Tempe, and Chicago and recounts "Philanthropist Peter Lewis, chairman of Mayfield-based Progressive Corp., has encouraged such collaborative thinking by hinting that he might open his purse for the right mix of projects. But in a speech at the UCI annual meeting in November, he said he was unimpressed with a confidential plan forwarded to him by Case. Nevertheless, Lewis said he's keeping an open mind." UC leaders must become more open and open-minded in their master planning, as that was clearly a critical success factor common for the three "best-collegetowns" highlighted above, and for securing the support of global leaders like Lewis. Read on for Litt's open vision for UC "to create a sense of urbanism and to heal the rift between town and gown":

who works at night excavating? quietly, year after year? Does it really amount to anything, or just early bird food...

Fortune IT columnist Kirkpatrick predicts for 2005 exactly what is the foundation upon which REALNEO is aleady built, with TOPSOIL... highlights:

• More "bottom-up" transference of power—much more - long-term consequences will be vast, especially in the developing world. Technology is suddenly giving people who've had no voice at all a surprisingly powerful one. I'm not sure that I'd want to be a dictator these days.
• This power shift is revolutionizing the software industry. Open-source software is a "bottom-up"; technology that is gaining acceptance among business clients and even consumers. We now know that big companies aren't the only ones that can create top-quality software.
• Consumers who discover that Firefox is a great product are now more comfortable with the concept of open-source software in general.

Here are Fortune's complete IT predictions, worth knowing:

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.

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?

<>From Good Morning Silicon Valley today:

You kids ... why, back in my day they had to put content on physical
media! Anyone with an interest in the economies of digital distribution,
particularly those working in the entertainment industry, would do well to spend
a cup of coffee or two reading Wired's interview with Bram Cohen, whose Bit
Torrent technology is turning the world of traditional media on its head. During
the last century, content companies had to be massive to afford distribution.
But in this new Bit Torrent world, economies of scale aren't needed anymore.
"The content people have no clue," Cohen
told Wired. "I mean, no clue. The cost of bandwidth is going down to
nothing. And the size of hard drives is getting so big, and they're so cheap,
that pretty soon you'll have every song you own on one hard drive. The content
distribution industry is going to evaporate."Â

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:

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 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.

The Earned Income Tax Credit: Connecting Working Families with Tax Benefits

Sponsored by: The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland

Location

December 31, 2004, Dan Gillmor ended a ten year gig writing about technology at the San Jose Mercury News and siliconvalley.com to focus on other efforts, including a blog called Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism - A conversation about the future of journalism "by the people, for the people" There, he share fresh insight on a field he knows well, demonstrated in his 2004 book We the Media, and the insight on his blog ranges from developments in open source journalism to the underlying technologies. Why go from the mainstream media to a blog? Read on (and I agree with Dan - stop using PDF for your documents, it is a closed, ineffective publishing medium):

A Medium Coming Into Its Own

The graph, from a new study (summary) by the Pew Internet
& American Life Project, tells us something vital about the expanding
authority of blogs. While the number of new blogs is rising, readership is
growing even faster.

Note: I wish these studies were available in plain HTML, not
just PDF format. You can find the PDF here.

From Ed Morrison's always insightful and expert ED Pro website are his predictions for 2005 - feel free to add yours as comments to this posting.

Predictions for 2005 Predictions are always a tricky business, but they're fun to think about. Here's what I expect to see in economic development in the coming year.

In a recent REALNEO posting I reflected on the relationship
of optimal ICE - Information Communications Effectiveness - to political
sustainability, thus challenging the survivability of IT-ineffective public office
holders. It then occurred to me I've never seen used the term "political
sustainability" and so googled that and found a fascinating analysis of the
relationship of effective Environmental Management and political sustainability,
thus challenging the survivability of eco-insensitive public and private office holders.

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.

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.

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.