Each Tuesday there is an orientation on REALNEO at REI - these are free form open discussions offering REALNEO users the opportunity to get together and discuss the vision of the initiative and any implementation questions - join us - notes and comments post here.

Thanks to everyone who attended the Community of Minds event this evening. I appreciate especially those of you who came up to me after my talk with words of thanks and encouragement.

As requested by several of you, I've posted my presentation here on REALNEO (PDF file - 2.1 mgs) - regarding the session and presentation, please feel free to comment below, or add a page to this book with your comments (you must set up an account to post and comment).

Happy birthday Drupal

I. REALNEO Status

A. Drafting of Legal
Agreements

1. Bill Vasu has JD from
Marshall in Intellectual Property and he would be willing to help with framing
of legal agreements, etc.

A two-part forum on: The Economics of Early Childhood Development

 Awareness: Session; One February 1, 2005, 4:00-6:00PM, Cleveland Museum of Natural History on Wade Oval in University Circle

 Alignment and Action: Session Two, February 14, 9AM to 12PM, Hanna Perkins Center for Child Development in Shaker Heights

Each Tuesday from 2:00 - 4:00 PM REI is holding REALNEO planning and orientation sessions for open dialogue and inclusion supportig the Open Source Economic Development framework for North East Ohio. These sessions are open to everyone - feel free to come anytime between 2 and 4, and stick around after for the weekly Tuesday@REI meetings, from 4:00 - 5:45 PM.

Location

Topic: "Regional Economic Development in Indiana: An Update on Best Practices"

Location

Each Tuesday from 2:00 - 4:00 PM REI is holding REALNEO planning and orientation sessions for open dialogue and inclusion supportig the Open Source Economic Development framework for North East Ohio. These sessions are open to everyone - feel free to come anytime between 2 and 4, and stick around after for the weekly Tuesday@REI meetings, from 4:00 - 5:45 PM.

Location

Sonoma State University hosts a media research group called "Project Censored", with the mission to educate people about the role of independent journalism in a democratic society and to tell The News That Didn't Make the News and why. Project Censored "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". Project Censored is part of the open source knowledge building community that includes independent journalism, and REALNEO, that is transforming society world-wide, for the better. Read on for links to Sonoma State University's list of top 25 censored news stories of last year, as we work for an inclusive 2005.

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.

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:

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 Newsforge is a review of a site that may be useful for folks interested in the legal issues related to Open Source development - this site is from an attorney in Atlanta and it makes me wonder if many lawyers here in NEO are up to speed on these issues, and using leading edge information technology like blogging? If you know of such tech-savvy lawyers in NEO, post related information here - otherwise, I guess we can always go to Atlanta for our legal services...

<>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

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.

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.

Marc Canter participated in Steve Gillmor's December 31, 2004 Webcast on Identity Management and posted his observations on SXIP to his blog - this is an exciting evolution REALNEO supports... you'll soon see SXIP enabled and explained further here... for now, here are Marc's opinions:

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.