Strategic direction : it's such an important thing, as Ed Morrison has long driven home.  Strategic doing, to me, involves careful planning and action - and its reassuring to see the core of talented thought leaders that have comprised this collective.

 All Aboard Ohio has just launched a social networking site, Ohio Passenger Rail. Join to: stay updated on the latest news, meet others who are interested in passenger rail and become a part of the grassroots movement to increase our transportation options.  

Topic: An Economic Forecast for Northeast Ohio

Speaker: John Burke, President, Burke Rosen & Associates; Professor Emeritus of Economics, Cleveland State University; Adjunct Professor, John Carroll University

Program Sponsorships and tables available. Earn 1 Continuing Professional Development hour.

Location: Hilton Garden Inn Cleveland Downtown

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Join us the first Friday of every month for networking at the Bier-Markt. FREE appetizers and nonalcoholic beverages.

Online registration not required but helpful: http://www.cesnet.org/evtView.asp?evtID=163. Ask about sponsorship opportunities: http://www.cesnet.org/conNew.asp

Location: McNulty's Bier-Markt

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This event has been cancelled.  Information about future Climate Change Committee programs is available here: http://www.cesnet.org/newsAnnouncementView.asp?nwsID=109

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Panel Discussion: "Transportation: How We're Moving Economic Development"

Moderator: Howard Maier, Executive Director, Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA)

Panelists:

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Sponsored by SE Blueprint, Inc. and Boundless Flight.

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Kickoff program for Leadership Breakfast Spring Series. Speaker: Jeffrey L.

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Discussion about issues related to climate change. Topic TBA. Free to attend; breakfast is on your own.

Local: Shula's 2 in the DoubleTree Cleveland South

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Sponsored by SE Blueprint, Inc. and Boundless Flight

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This was your NEO

This is your NEO on FFOEF

The war is on.  Bombs away....From Cuyahoga County Planning Commission blog:

Deconstruction is a wonderful opportunity to create revenue from what would typically be waste material that would be directed to landfill otherwise. The typical cost of demolition of a typical home in an underprivileged community often exceeds $8000. In addition, demolition needs to be accompanied with the use of excessive water - which is another form of waste - to ensure toxins like lead, asbestos, or mercury do not spew into the surrounding air, soil and water. When deconstructing, this toxicity spread and water use is circumvented.

A recently-released article in the Boston Herald offers some remarkably similar points to those I made recently on the Cleveland Planning group on Facebook - and have since been deleted - but in the grand scheme of things, this serves the greater good quite well.

"because the only thing better than the president using a mac is the president having a motherf*cking PAC-MAN sticker ON his mac."

-- theslyestfox

And...

Tim Russo noted this first on his blog . Jennifer Brunner has a senate website up and running at www.jenniferbrunner.com. And, the contenders?? Lee Fisher, PLJ? Nada.

Don't give up, yet...A few more weeks, and Cleveland can celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and then we are home clear once the film festival starts!  The winter of 2008-09 is almost, almost, almost over...  

Find a sunny, south-facing wall and hold on.  We will all be okay!

Ed was as furious as I can ever remember seeing him, as he shouted "the process is broken".

Ed was so right.

In the Fall of 2008, I proposed to Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones that the local foods sector offers the people of Northeast Ohio $ billions in economic development opportunities that may be distributed to a huge percentage of our 1,000,000s of residents in very socially equitably ways. I also proposed similar opportunities are available in open source information and social computing. And I pointed out regional organizational, strategic, social and operational barriers to success and proposed specific solutions to maximize workforce and infrastructure development, massive scaling, and social equity.

Below is a heartfelt appeal to those to reach out with their social networks to demand inclusion of key legislation that would curtail regional and state funded programming and could have many negative consequences as a result.  This particular piece of legislation, still up for debate is the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund.  The importance of this particular element is elucidated here for your perusal. 

You’re Invited to the Governor’s Regional Conversation on Poverty World Café Forum

On Feb. 9th, the Governor's Anti-Poverty Task Force is coming to Cleveland. There will be a regional meeting from 10 to 2 at Trinity Commons, 22nd and Euclid.

The following topics will be discussed:

What does it take to create a community without poverty?

How do these recommendations fit into our vision of a community without poverty? What is happening in our community that takes us toward this vision?

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This just in, via Cleveland City Council, via Facebook... "Another step taken toward Breaking the Cycle of Abandonment". This is about how City Council has decided to spend our community's $25 million in Federal taxpayer funds from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) - the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development - intended to help our impoverished inner city. You must ask yourself, who decided how your $25,000,000 should be spent here, how did they really decide this, and is this a step forward or backwards?