Windustrious

Submitted by Susan Miller on Thu, 09/14/2006 - 13:44.

Welcome to new realneo member Sarah Taylor who has this brilliant idea. I am posting this for her today, but we look forward to her future posts as her newfound tech experince grows. Sarah says:

"The unique opportunity that Cleveland faces is to become, not only the first city in the U.S. to install an off-shore wind farm, but the first city in the world to install a wind turbine farm in fresh water.  Wind turbines will eventually be constructed in lakes, including Lake Erie.  The branding and marketing potential of being able to boast that we have created the first one on the planet, with the associated international recognition, would surely be enormous.  It would  translate into a powerful image of Cleveland as a progressive, productive, jobs-creating city, with a bubbling business climate, a place where young professionals will want to come and stay, and a very interesting tourist destination.

      We can lead the way, or we can simply follow along, after the trend has gathered momentum elsewhere.  Given our assets in infrastructure, location and historically-grounded expertise in relevant industries, one could say we had an actual responsibility, an obligation, to be at the forefront.  By acting now, we could reap the tremendous business opportunities of being in the vanguard of research, development and production of the equipment that the rest of the country, and the world, will inevitably be demanding.  If we reject this opportunity, and build turbines out on the lake only after others have taken the initiative somewhere else, we will be consciously throwing away not just that free marketing asset, but the economic advantages of taking a leadership role in this new technology.

 

      Just to clarify where I'm coming from:  Starting in 1999, I have pursued various avenues (including writing articles in the P.D. and Northern Ohio Live, organizing a forum of business leaders, and (with the help of people at Weatherhead) creating a web site http://www.neogehry.org, in an attempt to get Case, University Circle and other city leaders to capitalize on the Peter B. Lewis Building.  In particular, I thought that having a Welcome Center next to it would provide a great opportunity to showcase regional industry (20 out of the 30+ companies that constructed that building, doing cutting-edge engineering, are local).  As the years have passed, I have seen that even greater benefits could accrue to the city if this example of current success could be linked with past success (Heritage Tourism in the Cuyahoga Valley), and with our future contributions in (hopefully) addressing the world's energy needs.  There are many dynamic groups in Cleveland working on pointing out the economic and cultural advantages of showcasing our fascinating industrial legacy, as well as individuals and organizations energetically and knowledgeably promoting a sustainable future for the region and the world.  If the city's marketing forces could help in connecting up our history and our potential, our branding would surely become automatic.

 

      I have thought up a three-part slogan, which would connect our industrial past (in the Flats), our contemporary engineering success (as exemplified in the construction of the Peter Lewis Building in University Circle), and our manufacturing future (as symbolized by turbines in the lake).  Dennis Yurich created the exciting, funnily serious animation.  It ends with a picture that could be adopted as a very powerful static image for the city:  http://www.windustrious.org

     

      I am currently distributing Dennis's movie, together with these ideas, to those around the city who might be interested in them, and updating those with whom I've already met, including Peter Lewis.  I'm hoping that the human energy already being devoted to so many worthwhile, and overlapping goals for Cleveland's future can be encouraged to coalesce around this powerful project.

 

      Downloads of the movie can be obtained at http://www.yurichcreative.com/windustrious/downloads/  

The .zip is for the PC and the .sit is for the Mac. "

-- Sarah L. Taylor

 

 

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If only overlapping goals made for collaboration

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 09/17/2006 - 02:53.

I love Sarah's ideas and have long agreed and supported these objectives. The problem I see with the road ahead is that these are ideas that were born through grassroots presentations at REI, and a past wind conference, rather than dictated by the lofty powers that be, so the powers have needed to kill REI and other creative energy around this and let the bodies rot long enough so that when the powers take credit for having these great ideas everyone's minds are too fuzzy to remember where they heard all the ideas before. I don't understand this need for the powers to take credit for simple ideas developed by others - like being rich and powerful isn't enough, so they need to seem creative and original. What banker is creative and original. So Sarah has probably killed wind discussions for another three years so her burst of creativity may be forgotten, so the Powers may hire a firm for $100sK to do a worse video promoting a worse slogan, without any follow through then either. Considering such wind projects will not be cost effective for a long time, based on expectation of continued poor Ohio leadership, so Ohio doesn't have a chance of cornering any of the wind industry except what we already get, like bearings, I'd say little will come of this. Small scale wind, perhaps, but until Ohio as a state does as PA, NY and CA are doing, requiring purchasing of real alternative energy, and we get rid of the Power's President, in two years, and perhaps get a smart new president, if there is a smart candidate, and we see a major change in congress, and 65% of Americans stop expecting God to save our asses and we all start taking global warming seriously, and all the coal industry lobbyists die of black lung... we've a long road ahead for Americans, and a hard rain's a gonna fall.

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