When Doug Clifton became editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I was in frequent communication with Columnist Tom Brazaitis. I shared with Tom information technology advice to improve the newspaper - like adding email addresses to the articles in the paper (which they didn't do at the time), and completely transforming how they used the Internet. Tom suggested I contact Clifton directly, which I did, and Doug was very receptive to feedback and we ended up corresponding regularly. Doug added email addresses, but he couldn't do anything about the web side of the paper, because Advance controls all that out of NYNY.

I haven't been in touch with Susan Goldberg, since she replaced Doug as Editor, but now is the time.

Whenever industrialists, developers, non-profits, politicians, Foundation wonks, etc. plan something big for NEO, they get together with the media... Plain Dealer "Editors" and talking heads... what happens next is anyone's guess, but the process is always to meet with the editors.

As REALNEO is now one of the most innovative social networks in the world, and is positioned, with real.coop, to drive growth of the free open source software and social computing sectors, from this region to a global level, and as Star Neighborhood Development is positioned to drive growth of free open source food sectors, from this region to a global level, which will collectively create 100s of jobs and new enterprises in the urban core, and will shift investment of $10s millions from failing economic sectors to these sectors, over the next year, and $ billions over the next decade, it seems timely to explain exactly what all this mean to the media.

Some time within the next two weeks, REAL.COOP will host a media open house roundtable to explain to the people behind the talking heads and "The Editors", and to the talking head and real people who write and explain our news, who and what exactly REAL.COOP, REALNEO, and Star Neighborhood Development are now, and will be in 2009, 2010, and beyond.

As part of the roundtable, we will share with the media the economic development material prepared for Cuyahoga County leadership explaining their role in developing the free open source knowledge and nutrition sectors here, which is already largely developed on REALNEO and will be organized into business planning sections. REALNEO members have been writing and organizing this material for years, so it is ready for our roundtable.

In addition, this will be an excellent place and time to present to the media regional economic and social issues surfaced through REALNEO. Such matters will naturally come up in our overall discussions, but it may be logical to organize an issue section of our discussions that focus on a few issues, like the MedCon, the Strategic Investment Initiative in Tremont, and Frank Giglio's demolition. That part of our roundtable must be planned in advance, if anyone is interested in collaborating on that.

Next week we will have a planning session for this media open house roundtable, and I suggest we wll hold the roundtable January 15th - the day the media was supposed to announce the contract terms for the MedCon, or that it is officially a con... now delayed another month. That will certainly be one hot topic of discussion. Others?

Thoughts, interest to participate, suggested formats, times and places for our planning meeting and roundtable? Post here...

Disrupt IT