As the NEO Excellence Roundtable prepares to grow NEO's physical community, by hosting an August 11th roundtable at Jones Day, in New York, NY, we are also adding a new feature to our format here at home by inviting regional thought leaders to share unique insight as keynote guests.

For the August 2nd NEO Excellence Roundtable, we will be joined by the engaging Stuart Mendel, Assistant Dean of the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University and Co-director of the college's Center for Non-Profit Policy and Practice, who just released a fantastic study called "An Assessment of Business Support Services Available to Existing and Start-Up Small Businesses in the City of Cleveland". We can't imagine a more valuable topic for discussion at the Roundtable, and thank Tony Kuhel for extending our invitation to Stuart.

Read more about Stuart's research and findings here - read the report here (.pdf file) - this is required reading, if you plan to attend this roundtable!

Our upcoming New York roundtable will be another major topic of discussion - we're using the NYNY Roundtable to raise awareness of economic development opportunity in NEO, strengthen cvirtual connections for our community, and brainstorm on the concept of creating a Community Development Venture Capital Fund for NEO. Read more about that pursuit here.

Of course, all that said, we'll certainly spend a few minutes speculating on the outcome of the intriguing school levy, which will wrap up yea or nay just a few hours thence.

We expect this Roundtable to draw a full house so please RSVP ASAP to Norm Roulet at norm [at] realinks [dot] us

About the NEO Excellence Roundtable: People who care about Northeast Ohio who are openly strategizing on how our region may achieve world-class status - we are establishing benchmarks for success and taking action in pursuit of measurable outcomes. Current pursuits include bridging the digital divide in East Cleveland, deploying the optimal social network for Northeast Ohio, exploring innovative approaches to funding regional economic development and entrepreneurship, and exploring innovative approaches to improve education in NEO.

We're nurturing face to face visioning and so have revived a storied tradition of roundtable lunches at the City Club, each Tuesday between 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM, where non-hierarchical area innovation champions are breaking bread and brainstorming. The NEO Excellence Roundtable format is casual and conversational - to join us for lunch, please contact coordinator Norm Roulet at norm [at] realinks [dot] us. Each attendee is expected to pay for your own buffet lunch, which is $13 and always excellent - if that is a barrier to you attending, please join us regardless and we'll cover the difference.

In the interest of supporting this open collaboration, we've also established a virtual Community Of Interest Link (COIL) called NEO Excellence - please visit at http://neoexcellence.realinks.us. To participate in the community, please "create an account" using the link found at the home page - or, if you have an account at another REALinks site... like at REALNEO... you may log-in with your username followed by @ that site's URL (e.g. your username [at] realneo [dot] us), and then enter your password from that site

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