Norm and Evelyn are forging ahead in East Cleveland.  Little House on the Prairie has nothing on these guys. 

If the world hasn't caught on yet, some of the ideas I presented this weekend as exhibitor during the Ingenuity Festival held here in Downtown Cleveland have caught the distinct attention of our Pope and President, among others.. and though Mr. Bush is now under the duress-caress of a legitimate censure threat he, like so many others has to know a great thing when he sees it.  Who doesn't ?  The key now is to work collaboratively and cross-sectionally to manifest those ideations and innovations particularly and proactively preventative of Biblically-briefed, Catastrophe-causing and Armageddon-averting measures so we can assure a sustainable future for us all.  It is my belief we have five years until a pivotal time in history, and this is indeed a Messianic age - one which is facilitated by what spiritualist Eckhart Tolle and so many others refer to as the frequency holders (Findhorn Retreat)..   So perhaps polytheism returns, and we will all be gods ?   .   And as I jest, in part,  I am simultaneously serious - this isn't enigmatically expansive, or bucolic bipolar banter but rather real and rugged rapture we're talking about!

Location

Located in the heart of the historic Hough Bakeries Complex is the Inner Circle, a weekend club and reception facility operated for the past 7 years by the Hot Sauce Williams family. Starting shortly, operation of the Inner Circle will expand to extended hours every day, featuring a cybercafe, meeting space, computer terminals, free wifi, independent film, the Linux Cafe, art, culture, and great food, coffee, and even wine tastings, via a broader partnership of friends. This pan is from the deck and patio area, and features Guyanese chef and reggae performer and DJ Edwin, who will help operate the Inner Circle, shown with Hot Sauce Williams founder LeMaud Williams, as well.

Bill Callahan and I are pleased to offer a last moment opportunity to join an important conversation just beginning on making NEO a global leader in the use of Free Open Source Software, with the man who wrote the Open Source Definition, Bruce Perens. Bruce is Vice President of Developer Relations and Policy for FOSS-related SourceLabs, of Seattle. NEO is fortunate to have a local connection with Bruce, as the Director of Marketing for SourceLabs, Athena Diamantis, lives in this region. Digital Vision Director Bill Callahan and East Cleveland CIO Abu Alli met with Bruce and Athena last week to discuss how to make NEO a world FOSS leader, and we decided that is a topic deserving much broader and more open attention. So tomorrow we continue growing the dialog.

Join us, if you may... 8 AM breakfast tomorrow at the Juniper Grill.

Location

It is always exciting to see powerful uses of the technology we use for realneo - Drupal. Derek recently pointed out that the New York Observer uses Drupal for their web presence and I just found a posting on the website of the originator and keeper of the Drupal flame, Dries Buytaert, that Ozzy uses Drupal - his label Sony uses Drupal. I'd heard that about Sony, but hadn't connected it with any of their sites before... this...

<

Martin Varsavsky, founder of FON, and author of his "Blog of an Entrepreneur", posted there an interesting letter he sent to all his employees: "FON is Dropping Microsoft, Adopting Ubuntu". I had seen, on some of his earlier blog entries, that Martin had a major Windows crash and lost his whole hard drive (been there) and so after 20 years with Microsoft he switched to Ubuntu (done that) and also Apple - after a month he settled on Ubuntu. It has been fascinating reading Martin's celebration of discovering FOSS - I remember having the same awakening. It is very exciting to now see Martin move his company FOSS, and to highlight how he is doing this and why - read his personal account here... and think about how this could be happening all over NEO...

While not currently a powerhouse in Free Open Source Software (FOSS), Northeast Ohio is positioned to begin excelling with FOSS in some very strategic ways that may add great value to the regional economy. 

Because of FOSS, we may now bridge the digital divide more quickly and completely here than has any other large urban center in America, we may soon have the highest percentage of workforce properly educated for the new economy, and we may lead the world in some fields of application development and technology innovation with global, open standards, all if the region now embraces FOSS..

About two years ago, the REALNEO team took on the challenge of helping to bridge the digital divide in NEO, in many ways, including recycling "obsolete" corporate computers, wiping the hard drives, and loading them with free versions of Linux and other Free Open Source Software (FOSS). One group of computers, provided by Progressive Insurance and Benesh Friedlander, that we freed from Microsoft-obsolescence, were given to a combination of Shaw High School seniors and senior citizens in East Cleveland. Shaw seniors have since taken their computers off to college, and, a few weeks ago, East Cleveland CIO Abulime Alli and I met with one of the senior citizens who received a desktop PC and now needed some tech support. I was  thrilled to help her out and interested to hear how having a Linux computer at home had changed her life.

 I didn't get my copy of the Plain Dealer, this morning... probably stolen off my porch. So, I thought, I don't like paying for a dirty old paper anyways, and only read some of the content, so why not just read it on-line at their union-busting Cleveland-dot-com website. Unfortunately, that is not a realistic option... every time I load the home page or any main section on the site, a viral pop-up advertisement for some Health Club attacks my computer.

Good morning all...

  I hope to see you all at Defrag tomorrow. 

  I have a short bit of good news.  I have created an e-mail address for all of your questions on the REALNEO family of sites. 

Westside Courts resident Emma Casey sits at home with her refurbished computer. Photo: Sarah Lai Stirland

Derek just sent me a link to this article that should get people here thinking about our local economy, violence, the digital divide and solutions... read about the type of bridges we're building for East Cleveland and Cleveland... from Wired, about 3,000 miles away from NEO....   Sarah Lai Stirland 04.04.07 | 2:00 AM SAN FRANCISCO -- The Westside Courts is a bleak concrete housing project in the city's Western Addition where violence is closer than a high-speed net connection, and one resident's first steps online include plans to create a memorial for the people who've died here. Last month, volunteers turned on a novel broadband network in this 135-unit block, throwing a digital lifeline to Emma Casey and other tenants. Using a refurbished PC she picked up for $100, the 47-year-old mother of two adult children is now going online to help her son find a job, get health information and, she says, pay tribute to neighbors who've met with violent or untimely deaths.

Academic debates about the reality and cost of the so-called digital divide -- and the ability of individuals to fight economic disadvantage with nothing more than a computer and an IP address -- seem to crumble in a place like this. Like water and heat, internet is a clear necessity in the modern world, opening doors to education, employment and engagement.

I received an informative email this afternoon from Richard McDougald Enty, Planning Team Leader, Programming & Planning Department, Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, about some of their Transit Oriented Development initiatives and vision. It is very exciting to see this as an active subject for discussion and planning here. I am a strong supporter of Transit Oriented Development and consider it the core foundation on which we should rebuild the City of Cleveland and surrounding suburbs.  Here is the vision from RTA:

This week's edition of Dee Perry's arts & culture television program Applause!, on WVIZ, features a segment on REALNEO... so I'd like to invite all the friends of realneo to join us for a screening party for the first broadcast of the program, Thusday, March 29, from 7:30 - 8:00 PM, at the great A.J. Rocco's Cafe, at 816 Huron Road, by East 9th Street. As a special treat, I was pleased to learn that A.J. Rocco's had already planned a very cool and complimentary event for that evening - Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman will be the guest bartender from 6-8 PM.

Location

I was quite honored to be contacted, a few weeks ago, by the producer of one of my favorite television programs, Dee Perry's "Applause", asking for information about REALNEO. Seems he was doing research on the spectacular Convivium 33 Gallery, which we have featured extensively on REALNEO, covering Christopher Pekoc here and Clarence Van Duzer here (photos from which were featured in Cleveland Magazine), so REALNEO came up in search results. The producer saw REALNEO as in interesting source of insight on arts and culture in NEO and suggested to his staff doing a segment on Applause about REALNEO. Even though we scheduled the interview, this seemed very abstract until I just saw a promotion on WVIZ for the show, featuring a scrolling view of the REALNEO home page.

It is a great pleasure to have our original Drupal developer Derek Arnold back in the server seat for REALNEO and all tech things 7gen (shown here at my favorite wifi and human friendly coffee house in town, Talkies). Besides already cleaning up months of tech messes, less than two weeks back on track, Derek is now in Sunnyvale, California, as probably the only NEO representative at the Yahoo sponsored OSCMS (Open Source Content Management System) conference, the Drupal Performance and Scalability Seminar and the Drupal Hackfest - March 22-25, 2007. We've been touching base while he is there and it is clear he is learning lots of great insight, spreading NEO love in the open source world, and showing all that we are serious about making this a real open source domain (and I mean realneo and this region, in that).

 REALNEO members and visitors will have noticed some technical difficulties over the past few months and especially over the last few days, for which I appologize. This has been the result of a combination of too few people doing too much hard, complex work, and the enormous growth of our community and response of the world - we are now supporting dozens of virtual communities world-wide, and 100,000s of hits a month at REALNEO alone. All this with what has been largely a volunteer corp. Well, all that is now changing for the better, and further growth. To insure a stable future for the community, we are pleased to have the great talent of Derek Arnold back on our team - welcome back and thanks, Derek.

As a core group of innovative urban planners and developers move forward creating a new way in East Cleveland, it is exciting to look back along the main street that brought us to today, and that will take so many deserving citizens past those with little insight who have driven so much of this region into poverty. Looking back, and forward, here is a powerful set of perspectives from CIA graduate and Kent Urban Design graduate student Joe Stanley, of NEO Main Street, from two years ago, under a former administration. Now, under Mayor Brewer and his staff, redevelopment of this community is underway  - thanks for your vision and keeping the faith, Joe!

"ITS A NEW DAY IN EAST CLEVELAND"

This was tucked away in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Business section today, straight out of Associated Press, without any local perspective - yawn, how boring is this subject. Well, over the next few months expect to see it is not so boring!

            Cleveland Public Library welcomes critically-acclaimed author Connie Briscoe to its Writers and Readers Series, Sunday, February 11 at 2 p.m. Free and open to the public, the event will take place at the Main Library, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, E. 6th Street and Superior Avenue.
            Born with a hereditary hearing loss, Briscoe never let her disability derail her from her life and career aspirations. Although she attempted to write a novel several times, it wasn’t until after pushing ahead in her career as an editor, traveling and pursuing other passions, that she attempted a second time to write a novel. What emerged in 1995 was the bestselling Sisters and Lovers. 

Location

I watch the BBC 11 PM World News, rather than the local Northeast Ohio news, because I want an international perspective on affairs in America and world-wide. To learn what is happening in Northeast Ohio, I use the Plain Dealer as one frame of reference but depend on personal research, involvement in the community and connectedness through networks and alternative media, increasingly found through the Internet, to know what is happening in the region.  The main reason I find it necessary to look outside the US mainstream for news is well documented by a project out of Sonoma State University called Project Censored, "which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media."  Below is their list of stories over-looked and/or self-censored by the country's major national news media in 2007 - how does this fit with your observations on the world as reported by mainstream media in NEO and America?

Thanks to an anonymous donor, East Cleveland has received some excellent equipment to start setting up a pilot proof of concept wireless broadband mesh network in some part of the city - location to be determined. The donated equipment is from a similar proof of concept deployment in Washington, D.C., and includes several commercial wifi antennas and routers and cabling to set up a small multipoint demonstration network, running the open source CUWiNWare mesh application and wifiDOG contained portal application, all routing to the city of East Cleveland's open source Drupal community portal, at http://eastcleveland.org. All this, combined with other digital divide bridge programs there, makes East Cleveland approaches to information technology some of the most interesting in America.