Tower City and Tower City Cinemas are often empty and eerily
quiet, even on a Saturday night, but that all changes during the Cleveland
International Film Festival. This past Saturday night the 29th
Cleveland International Film Festival transformed Tower City and its
surrounding areas into an energy infused cultural event that felt distinctly
unfamiliar and un-Cleveland like. A diverse group of thousands of people,
flowed through the building excitedly talking about the films they had seen or
planned to see.

Notacon is the second iteration of a yearly technology, arts and music event held at the Cleveland Holiday Inn.

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Jack Ricchiuto sent out 12 emails to convene a meeting to explore the
state of "facilitation" in NEO and 40 or so people showed up - 20
more said they can't come but want to come to a future event... all here are
interested to know each other. He convened this group to determine who are
facilitators in region, how may they work together as a "practice
area" and how can we help our community and clients understand what we do
and the value to the community. So he asks four questions:

March of Crimes
1300 Gallery
Cleveland, OH
March 11 - April 9,
2004
Opening Reception
March 11, 8 - 11pm

March of Crimes
Post No Bills. No Skateboarding. Vandals Will
Be Prosecuted. No Trespassing.

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Joe Stanley a 5th year interior design major at the Cleveland Institute of Art gave a presentation on his senior project to an enthusiastic crowd at the Peter B. Lewis building at 2 p.m. today as part of REALNEO. Joe's senior project is an ambitious vision for CIA, University and the City of Cleveland. It was exhibited at 1300 Gallery this past fall along with the work of several of his classmates. Joe's project and those of his classmates were destined to be forgotten after the exhibition (which only lasted one night), but Joe's project has been given new life through REALNEO. Joe has his own COIL at REALNEO called neomainstreet. neomainstreet contains images of Joe's models and drawings, a discussion of his design philosophy and its context within contemporary and historical trends in architecture and civic planning. Its a fascinating site of local, national and international interest!

In the March First Monday - An interesting transposition has happened. It used to be that the farther things were, the more difficult it was to know them. Today, thanks to communication technologies, we often develop relationships with what is far at the expense of what is immediately around us. This paper explores the increased irrelevancy that the near acquires through our use of online technologies. But by proposing a model of praxis that incorporates our actions online as well as offline, this paper also argues that online technologies can play an important part in bringing the epistemologically far near to us, and making the physically near relevant again.

For this REALNEO@REI orientation we will present a transformative demonstration of local urbanist Joe Stanley taking his senior project in Interior Design off the walls of the Cleveland Institute of Art, beyond 2&3D, and into cyberspace - see http://neomainstreet-com.bryght.net. Joe shares his vision for reinventing the CIA and redeveloping their two University Circle sites - exceeding old paradigms of project development, urban planning, and entrepreneurial communications - realized using REALinks social computing capabilities. Please join Joe and see his view of our future, at its best.

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The City Club of Cleveland's innovative Youth Forum Series featured a fantastic event on 03.07.08 for participants in the Student Group on Race Relations (SGORR), where probably around 200 high school students and educators and youth care professionals participated in discussions on issues of social consciousness.Â

DATE: March 16, 2005

Annual Meeting: How Cool is Greater Akron?
Hilton Akron/Fairlawn, 3180 W. Market St., Fairlawn
5:30 - 8:30 PM
Speaker: Rebecca Ryan, Founder, Next Generation Consulting, Inc.
Non-member Cost: $55.00 Member Cost: $55.00

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Ideastream's 03.06.05 Ideas program took an interesting look at economic development issues and opportunities in Akron, and how the city seeks to raise it's "cool" factor. They featured Elizabeth Sheeler, who returned home to Akron from Boston to work with the Akron Art Museum and ArtCetera because she feels she can have a bigger impact in her smaller home town than in a big city  she has started an after work arts party and networking scene in Akron - part of making the scene cooler there. The objective is to make Akron desirable to Gen-Xers  and the need is serious. Rebecca Ryan, an economic development consultant from Madison, WI, based Next Generation Consulting, has been hired to lead the Akron community to focus on their Gen-X quality of life  she notes only 4% of NEOs 18-24 have loyalty to this region vs. 25% nationwide, and only 35% of NEO residents in general feel there is good opportunity here for the young, vs. 69% nationwide. Gen-Xers are needed to replace Baby Boomers as they retire from the workforce, and Gen-Xers are the innovators needed to fuel the future of the economy, so not satisfying the Gen-Xers is very foolish.

Are you the representative of a nonprofit organization? New to fundraising?
Learn how to get in shape to raise funds and how to
identify prospective funders. Find out how the Center's
resources can help you become a more effective grantseeker.

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The media's portrayal of hacking, hackers, and hacktivism
before and after September 11 - The intensified
national debate on the security of cyberspace after September 11,
2001 negatively influenced online political activism, which is now
forced to defend itself against being labeled as a form of
cyberterrorism. Many of these socially or politically progressive
activities remain unknown to the public, or if reported, they are
presented in a negative light in the mass media. These conclusions
are based on a analysis of of hackers, hacking, hacktivism, and
cyberterrorism in five major U.S. newspapers over a one-year
period.

Friday, March 04, 2005 12:00 PM

Dr. Imad Moustapha

At the 03.04.05 Cleveland City Club forum, Syrian Ambassador Dr. Imad Moustapha introduced his talk on conflict in the Middle East with the illuminating praise that he was very excited to speak here, as he had heard about the City Club long before he came to Cleveland, and that it is as famous world-wide as the Cleveland Clinic. That is the level of branding and marketing Cleveland needs - global praise and relevance for our brainpower and quality and connected places.

Herb Crowther assembled an excellent and diverse panel of experts with a range of backgrounds, affiliations and interests related to the future of "energy" and implications on Earth and here in NEO - "scientists, entrepreneurs, energy specialists, economic development and community development professionals". The session flowed as follows:

There is an absolutely fascinating editorial in the 02/28/05 NYTimes about the President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, who "is fighting to keep his job, after suggesting that
women might be intrinsically disadvantaged in studying science." The editorial concludes: "In the Information Age, we are all at Harvard - and everywhere else -
for life, and it will be interesting to see how we all get along." Read on and consider how times have changes, and how well are we in NEO going to get along?

Understand
Lakewood's communities through the meme lens of Spiral Dynamics. This
program will focus on recent economic, political and social

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Case's Weatherhead School of Management Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI) and other community leaders support an initiative to distribute used computers and ease access to free or low cost Internet access for area residents in financial hardship. The first community being supported through this vision is East Cleveland, where REI drives ECHO - "Extending Community Home Online" - as part of an East Cleveland 2010 community redevelopment initiative. This effort is not in social service for the poor of East Cleveland but a critical initiative for economic development for this entire NEO region.

Social networks and personal identity and data aggregation companies are increasingly betraying the privacy, beliefs and rights of individuals, as recently demonstrated by ChoicePoint selling fraudulent access to 100,000s of individuals' private financial and other data, and described below with South Korean search service provider Lycos selling access to 1,000,000s of personal dating profiles aggregated from many private dating websites... which in fact is just a bait and switch operation for Lycos and dating site operators' to profit off lonely people. In another subversive way, Amazon.com aggregates individuals' buying preferences and opinions as part of their core business, and more recently is funding apparently unrelated social networking to learn your "43 Things". Results: ChoicePoint sold con-men 100,000+ identities - Lycos is selling personal profile data most people assume is held within trusting social communities - Amazon owns your preferences, hopes and dreams. Without regard to individuals' rights, Amazon, ChoicePoint and Lycos pursue only profits. Such abuse of individual rights by data aggregators and networking schemes is far from isolated, and will surface as one of the greatest new economy challenges of our time, defining who has the right to own and profit from the personal data of individuals. REALNEO believes this right should remain with individuals. What do you think... read on:

MarieSmith, president of AARP, will speak about Social Security and private accounts
proposed by the Bush Administration.

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NOTES POSTED FROM SESSION. Fascinating, whirlwind two hours focused on NEO as a global center for applied cognitive learning, arts, technology and their convergence. This Tuesday@REI brought together the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Case, Mark Turner, the Chief Information Officer of Case, Tom Knab, the Chief Information Officer of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Len Steinbach, and the Director of Integrative Studies, Department of Neurology, Case, Peter Whitehouse, M.D. REI Executive Director Ed Morrison makes introductions and moderates... share in the outcomes...

The Center for Regional Economic Issues promotes the understanding economic development begins with the unborn child, and many area community leaders realize effective early childhood development improves the economy. Two recent benefits of this enlightenment are a community of interest called NEOchildhood, pursuing a wide range of childhood development related opportunities for Northeast Ohio, and NEOBEAN, creating the Northeast Ohio Breastfeeding Education and Advocacy Network - all for parents, family, employers, policymakers, educators, researchers, caregivers and ultimately children. Good work!.Â

Cleveland Institute of Art interior design senior Joe Stanley has developed a comprehensive strategy and plan for the current Cleveland Institute of Art properties, where there are now poorly utilized, out-of-date facilities and surface parking lots, to be transformed into a new regional and global epicenter of creativity and economic development. Visit his community of interest dedicated to this project - neomainstreet - to see the model, plans, and a remarkable vision for developing exactly the innovation and quality connected places NEO needs for the future!

The following posting from Good Morning Silicon Valley surfaces a critical issue in social computing and in fact information technology - who owns your data. There is a social network called "43 things" that has attracted interest from people wanting to share their dreams and aspirations. The problem is that Amazon.com invested in 43 Things, so who owns whose dreams and aspirations? Read about this issue and the history of 43 things here, and decide for youself. REALNEO does not want to own your dreams but to make your aspirations more useful for you - read on about what Amazon has in mind for you...