One of the core launching points for making Northeast Ohio the Brightest Greenest place on Earth is at the Italian Cultural Garden. Always a bright green spot in our region, the cultural gardens are soon to become much brighter and greener through the infrastructure and workforce development initiatives being developed for Cuyahoga County by our cooperative.

I've been working with the Director of the Italian Cultural Garden, Joyce Mariani, and her board, planning to bring free community broadband wi-fi internet connectivity, wireless technologies, and optimal virtual community to the Italian Cultural Garden, and then the other cultural gardens and surrounding neighborhoods. Optimizing information systems for the Italian Garden is a perfect application of the initiatives we are developing with Cuyahoga County, which includes making Northeast Ohio a global leader in open source content management, community wireless, mesh networks, and related technologies.

Included in our information systems proposal to Cuyahoga County is $2 million in general information systems spending, of which $1 million is for bridging the digital divide, including deploying free open source broadband wireless mesh services in our urban neighborhoods and green spaces. We'll be developing the workforce here to innovate, manufacture, deploy and maintain technology and services in the community wireless sector of our open source new economy, which offers $ billions in economic opportunity for the region.

I have previously kept all aspects of this portion of our initiative entirely confidential, for obvious reasons.

The Cleveland Cultural Gardens is an especially important place to launch the wireless strategy of our brightest greenest place initiative, as it connects all cultures of Northeast Ohio with all points on Earth. Please add to the developing discussion on this specific program below.

From the perspectives of globalization and attracting international citizens, businesses and investments to our region, few places serve a more important ambassadorial value than our cultural gardens. With our information systems initiatives with Cuyahoga County, we shall add "new economy" functionality and purpose of the gardens, enabling expanded learning, teaching, and communicating. All that enhances the content, context and value of the gardens and our information and systems here.

It is certainly rewarding that our work transforming our new economy here is of such value at the very heart of our great international community.

It is interesting to consider, from Wikipedia, "Marconi was an Italian inventor best known for his development of a radiotelegraph system, which served as the foundation for the establishment of numerous affiliated companies worldwide". From the garden of his culture, we shall grow the brightest 21st Century evolutions of his 19th Century innovations.

We may all now look forward to sharing in one early celebration of the success of our brightest greenest initiatives when we bring to the world-wide-web Joyce's production of Opera at the Italian Garden, this Summer, live, free and in high definition.