The source file can be found at Wordle.net Visualizing speech and text can be insightful. You can create your own Wordle with a couple clicks of the mouse and a text file.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH

September 8, 2008

In our national obsession with 'top 10 lists', we now have the Top 10 Fastest Dying Cities. Reports of our quickly approaching demise has lead to plenty of hand wringing in the maturing cities of the Great Lakes coping with aging. Civic cheer leaders find the need to write letters to our own City newspapers to remind ourselves that reports of our cities death are, to paraphrase Mark Twain, 'greatly exaggerated.'

I know of no precedent in the post-World War Two era (1950-present) where a large city has died. Natural disasters, epidemics, environmental disasters, wars, and armed conflicts have all led to the death of many people and major collateral damage on urban infrastructure. However, the suggestion or even intimation that cities die is an anthropomorphic fallacy.

By my count, there are nearly 500 cities around the world who are experiencing population loss. The number of shrinking cities (more than 10% population loss) in the United States is at least 59. Indeed, more than a quarter of all large cities worldwide have already experienced population loss.

We are not alone.

Yes, St. Louis and Detroit have lost nearly 60% of their population from their 'golden years'. Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo have all lost 50 percent or so their population since their peak years. The rise and fall of population centers is intimately related to the relationship of our cities to the engines of the world economy. As such, cities in central and southwest England, the Ruhr region, the Saar, and in the Italian Po Valley have all experienced shrinkage. In the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France, and Japan, shrinking cities account for one out of every three metropolitan areas.

The History of Shrinking Cities


World Map of Shrinking Cities from 1kilo on Vimeo.

Connecting the Dots: The re-invention of cities and the broadband economy

As a group, shrinking cities of the early 21st century face multiple hurdles. It is a kind of 'perfect storm'. Economic dislocation, challenges of leadership, human will, deeply seeded aversions to change and risk, combined with the enormous challenges of re-imagining, re-inventing, and re-invigorating the 'idea' of the 'new city' of the 21st century make the effort ahead daunting, to say the least. The 'new city' is locked in our mental image that the 'old city' can be re-ignited and returned to its former glory with a bit of engineering, luck, and hope.

In some cities, especially those in Asia, Portugal, Spain, and parts of Latin America, public policy and emerging new leaders have harnessed their re-invention and 'new city' projects to the generative qualities of the broadband economy. In this country, cities and federal agencies are still debating the value of a national broadband strategy. Imagine if we had the same 20 years debate over the positive impact of public support for rural electrification or the massive investment to support the build out of the inter-state highway system. Electrification, inter-state highways, ports, airports, and national transportation logistics have been inextricably linked over the past 150 years to the health and well being of cities. The same is true as it relates to the art of city-making in the 21st century.

Not withstanding the rhetoric and propaganda of the incumbent interests, inside of a decade we have gone from one of the most connected countries to barely being among the top 20 ultra broadband countries. Our bandwidth to price point ratios are no longer competitive with our traditional economic peers. More important, the emerging cities of the 21st century in Asia are leveraging the dynamic use of the 'new' transportation systems to level the playing field and enabling competitive advantages that attract talent, capital, and innovation. Citizens in these cities have 100 times more bandwidth at price points that are comparable to DSL and cable modem pricing in the United States.

Contractions of cities and their populations is a natural and predictable part of the evolution of the human condition and the economies we create. For some cities the aspiration may be to uncover the youthful elixir. For others, the rallying cry may be to return to former glory by some magic formula. There is at least one other arc of possibility. The connected-city of the 21st century may be the DNA of the 'new city'. Population size remains relevant in the connected community but does fall victim to the demographers imperative that size equals destiny. The art of designing a connected-city, especially as part of a re-invention project, may well be one of the biggest opportunities of the 21st century. Connected-cities enables learning, participation, and opportunities to re-discover the value of human ingenuity. Connected cities and their citizens and neighborhoods can export virtues like art, education, culture, and sport over the 21st century transportation system known as the Internet. Creativity, diversity, smart and green are important inputs into the connected city allowing us to better balance economic opportunities with creating livable neighborhoods, accentuating quality of life, and a more sustainable approach to the broader eco-systems within which our cities evolve.

Technologies, like rural electrification, or the inter-state system were not the answer to every challenge in the 19th or 20th century. Likewise, the ultra broadband economy of the 21st century is not the answer to every challenge we face. Nevertheless, I have been among those that have attempted to articulate that a pre-requisite ingredient to the process of re-imaging and re-inventing the cluster of cities undergoing phases of contraction is taking a bold position on leveraging the thousands of strands of fiber optics that lie beneath our city streets and a long the railways tracks and other rights of way. The art of creating a connected community is not only about a broadband network that connects thousands of cities and enables trillions of transactions every day. Connected cities make possible connecting human networks, networks of cultural communities, and creating new networks of hope. The 21st century may well be viewed by historians of future generations as the century of creativity. The connected-community is a form of democratic renaissance that enables and inspires that kind of creativity. It may well be that cities facing the challenge of population loss are the very place where connected-cities of the future will be prototyped. Whether we succeed in creating a new city model for the future is one of the great challenges of the next decade here in the Great Lakes and for the new administration in Washington, DC. The stakes have never been greater.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH

September 7th, 2008

Indeed, while nearly 90% of American adults complete a high school education, and as many 70% of those with a high school education pursue post-secondary education opportunities, attaining a college degree is still a pretty special occasion in the life of the American adult population.

The U.S. Census Bureau publishes annual data on college attainment. I've created and pasted in a gadget based on the Census data that will allow you to explore the American adult population and its achievement of a four year degree or more. In 1940 less than 5% of the adult population in the United States had a four year degree. Today that number is about 29%. While not so long ago more young adult men had at least a bachelor's degree than their female counterparts, today about 33 percent of young women 25 to 29 have a bachelor’s degree or more education, compared with 26 percent of their male counterparts.

We still have a very long way to go. The pursuit of a higher standard of living and achievement the American dream is significantly related to education attainment. Adults with advanced degrees earn four times more than those with less than a high school diploma. Workers 18 and older with a master’s, professional or doctoral degree earned an average of $82,320 in 2006, while those with less than a high school diploma earned $20,873.

The data below also suggest that achievement of education outcomes is still significantly segmented by racial realities. While in 1940, less than 1.5% of the African American adult population had a four year college education, today that percentage (of the adult population) is still only 18.5% (and 18.9% of young African American adults age 25-29).

As those of us with the privilege to work on a University campus settle in for another year of dynamic interaction and discovery with the young men and women who attend our colleges, it is important to reflect on how special that experience remains in the life of the cities within which we work and study, and the country as a whole.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, Ohio
September 5, 2008

Jeff, I like this reflective impulse. When public personalities such as yourself take time to remind all of us that the very technologies that we create and consume need to be tamed in order to find and maintain balance in our lives, the light bulbs do go off.

The old Mario Andretti line that "if you feel you're in control you aren't going fast enough" is an artifact of an interesting inherited worldview.

The pursuit of control is an interesting existential need. 500 years ago, the emergent Renaissance era was largely defined by placing humans at the center of the universe. Controlling nature became the ultimate pursuit for western society and has guided much of our philosophical thiking for these past 500 years. Through multiple 'scientific revolutions', building off of each other, we have reached a proverbial inflection point. The emergent, hyperconnected 'Net is as much as any force in human history responsible for the current dislocation and sense of loss of control in the traditional centers of power.

Jeff, you are one of our generation's Galileos (heretic, storyteller, visionary). But where Galileo helped to usher in the scientific worldview, we are now in need of a new, equally compelling worldview that helps us make sense of the emergent unity of the 'Net in which we again understand that we are an intimate and active participant in the making and remaking of the universe of our own creation.

I would suggest that emergent era might be termed something like is the Epoch of Ambiguity. Those who learn to embrace ambiguity and actually strive in the multiple inconsistencies that present themselves will thrive. Mastery of ambiguity is not control. There are multiple dynamics at play, many of which are made possible by the communications and technology revolution of which you (and us) have been championing. The resulting condition not only resulted in us 'loosing' control. Control is not shifting elsewhere. What is emergent is a new (500 year?) arc of human activity and ingenuity. Examples of the new emergent condition abound. The shifting and conjunctural forms of power and alliances on the world stage, the tsunamis of population movements moving to work, the growing pervasive distribution and availability of advanced communication and technology, and the growing cross-border and 'regionalization' of people, commerce, and ideas are not only creating dislocation. I do not see this as a matter of a 'transition' from one period of 'control' to another. The permanent state of affairs is dynamic change and layers of ambiguity. Some people, geographies, and cultural heritages and traditions are thriving in the emergent era.

One of the many challenges is that when you are at the center of the receding order, it is mightily difficult to view any other dynamic as anything but the loss of control, whether that is an individual, an organization, a region, a country, or set of cross-boundary cultural practices.

I can't think of a better and more exciting time to be involved in the world of education and technology.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
August 4, 2008

Through their submissions, students will connect with people around the world to share their ideas about Freedom and become facilitators in a very important, global dialogue concerning some of society’s most critical issues. Creating Freedom Awareness—at a time when we need it most—is, perhaps, the 21st Century’s greatest challenge.
Please let faculty- and student directly- know about this amazing opportunity.

The deadline for teams to register for the contest is July 6th. Thanks for getting out the word in the next week.

The contest info and rules can be found at:
http://edcommunity.apple.com/freedomcontest/

For students, course management systems are really convenient ways of gathering access to formative grading and other related conveniences. Most are rather critical of their faculty colleagues use and knowledge of the technology. As the social networking platforms emerge as a major portion of the student experience and course management systems become management utilities, its important to begin asking whether we should move more and more of the 'learning' to their platform rather than demanding that they conform to ours. Knowing full well that students may well resist the convergence of spaces, over the next year or two, I suspect we will see leading edge faculty and organizations bringing value to student social networks that will begin to blur the boundaries.

Eighty-two percent of students self-reported that they spend time in the social networking world. A significant number of students report that they are spending 20 hours or more a week! in their social networks.

Eighty-nine percent have a presence in FaceBook (with only 48% having MySpace accounts).

Students report that they are using these platform technologies to keep in touch with friends (97%), sharing photos, videos and the like (67%), finding out more about people (51%), communicating with classmates about course-related activities (50%) and event and scheduling (48%).

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
June 10, 2008

Franza chose to make the case that the 3-D virtual web is an infinitely creative pedagogical learning space that allows co-creation of learning materials by students and faculty members. Immersive spaces like Second Life also make it possible for hundreds of retired science educators around the world to engage as mentors. Bob also made the case that the economics of the inherited educational institutional framwork for learning is non-sustainable in both dollar and cents terms (in terms of the waste of overbuild) and in terms of ecological sustainability. When asked about limits to this approach, Franza pushed back and suggested that its a matter of will to re-invent and make relevant the education of the next generation of life scientists.

The Seattle Science Foundation itself is an immersive convening collaboration space for physicians, scientists, technologists, engineers, and educators, fostering in a world class training facility, to improve healthcare through professional education. As we think about modeling, event-based collaborative research and learning spaces, the Seattle Science Foundation is an intriguing model of active researchers and educators engaged in important and pressing activities.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
June 10, 2008

In the release of its path breaking report released last week, the Brooking's Institute "Shrinking Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America" calls on Washington to develop a new policy framework to create incentives to reduce the country's carbon footprint. I have pasted below the profile of NEOhio.

According to the study,

Federal policy could play a powerful role in helping metropolitan areas—and so the nation—shrink their carbon footprint further. In addition to economy-wide policies to motivate action, five targeted policies are particularly important within metro areas and for the nation as a whole:

* Promote more transportation choices to expand transit and compact development options

* Introduce more energy-efficient freight operations with regional freight planning

* Require home energy cost disclosure when selling and “on-bill” financing to stimulate and scale up energy-efficient retrofitting of residential housing

* Use federal housing policy to create incentives for energy- and location-efficient decisions

* Issue a metropolitan challenge to develop innovative solutions that integrate multiple policy areas

It's this last recommendation that peaked my interest and I want to share with other technology and facilities leaders in NEOhio. Can we architect a common Green IT approach for NEOhio following the successful model we developed 5 years ago for connecting NEOhio with ultra broadband through OneCommunity? Later this summer, I'd like to invite those interested to a working session on the topic with an eye to issuing some principles for further exploration on a regional basis.

Here is the report synopsis for our community...

Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America

Metro Area Profile: Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH

The report “Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America” quantifies for the first time the amount and most significant sources of carbon emitted—from highway transportation and residential
energy consumption—by the 100 largest metropolitan areas in 2000 and 2005. Substantial variation exists among these “carbon footprints” of metro areas, due in part to their development patterns, rail
transit, freight traffic, carbon content of electricity sources, electricity prices, and weather.

To access the entire report, see www.blueprintprosperity.org

Per Capita Carbon Footprints, 2000-2005

Trends. Metropolitan Cleveland’s per capita footprint from transportation and residential energy use increased 4.28 percent between 2000 and 2005. The average per capita footprint of the 100 largest metro areas and of the nation increased 1.1 percent and 2.2 percent during this time, respectively.

The transportation portion of Cleveland’s per capita footprint increased 3.1 percent between 2000 and 2005, compared to an increase of 2.4 percent in the 100 largest metro areas. The residential portion of Cleveland’s per capita footprint increased 5.4 percent between 2000 and 2005, compared to a slight decrease of 0.7 percent in the 100 largest metro areas.

Snapshot = 2005. The average resident in metropolitan Cleveland emitted 2.235 tons of carbon from highway transportation and residential energy in 2005 (rank 31st). This compares with 2.24 tons of carbon emitted by the average 100-metro resident and 2.60 tons of carbon emitted by the average American from transportation and residential energy.

From highway transportation. The average Cleveland resident emitted 1.072 tons of carbon from highway transportation (rank 12th). The average 100-metro resident emitted 1.310 tons and the average American emitted 1.44 tons from highway transportation.

The average Cleveland resident emitted 0.842 tons from autos (rank 11th) and 0.230 tons from trucks (rank 21st), compared to 1.004 tons from autos and 0.305 tons from trucks from the average 100-metro resident.

From residential energy use. The average Cleveland resident emitted 1.163 tons of carbon from residential energy use (rank 74th). The average 100-metro resident emitted 0.925 tons and the average American emitted 1.16 tons of carbon from residential energy use.

The average Cleveland resident emitted 0.694 tons from electricity (rank 52nd) and 0.468 tons from residential fuels (rank 73rd). This compares to 0.611 tons from electricity and 0.314 tons from fuels from the average 100-metro resident.

There's an opportunity for the IT community to lead the region in raising the challenge of greening our industry.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
June 10, 2008

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.

What are the challenges and opportunities for the 21st century university to at once be relevant to the grand challenges of confronting the human conditions of tomorrow at the same time not be locked-in to infrastructure and question-sets that we only conceive of today. From an IT-centric view of the world, the challenge can be framed in terms of the question as to whether are we building tomorrow's technology for yesterday's world?

Among the many many challenges facing the 21st century university, IT leaders gathering at this year's summer symposium where challenged to think about the issues facing us as not only be external to the IT world. Of course the litany includes challenges like rising costs, privatization, increasing pressures on revenues, increasing pressures to account for student success and institutional performance.

Our (IT world's) relative success in bringing network technologies to the world of higher education has succeeded in aiding in the democratization of access to university research and learning. At the same time, the logical extension of our success challenges our traditional roles within the landscape of the higher education eco-system. At the same time as higher education is in many ways more important than ever before and the key gateway to the wealth of nations in the 21st century, the network effect challenges our identities as educators, the rewards and recognitions, and even the manner in which scientific knowledge is created and disseminated.

How is the (Internet) cloud growing to envelop the University?
How is the University using the cloud to extend its presence?
How does 'cloudliness' alter the form of our social institutions.
How do we look at the cloud as either a competitor that threatens to disintermediate our attention.

It's time to extend these forward looking challenges and contradictions as part of both our IT strategic planning as well as Case Western Reserve University's strategic plan.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
June 10, 2008

Yesterday, Heidi Cool in her blog posed the question "how has blogging impacted your work?".

Over the past four years or so, I have tried to use Bytes From Lev as a platform for three arcs of activities that I see as germane to my work as University CIO. First, I have attempted to use the blog as a vehicle for raising issues and offering commentary to the professional technology community at Case Western Reserve University. Most every CIO in Higher Education will share that not withstanding the explosion of electronic communication one can never communicate too much, especially to one's colleagues in the IT organization(s) across the campus. IT organizations remain largely hierarchical in their nature and is as often the case, communication does not flow as naturally as I might want across and down the organization. Using the blog is not a substitution for various face-to-face exchanges but I hope that the community of IT professional at our university who care to read my blog from time to time will have a sense of the 'big' issues that help frame my daily work and possible derivative impact on the lives of other IT professionals. I think leading by example and using the blog as a communication device is an attempt to 'lead from the front'. I have encouraged others to consider the same approach.

Second, our University has an important role in the life and aspirations of the broader community in Northeast Ohio. Through various activities, including the use of Bytes from Lev, I have attempted to reach out to the community around NEOhio to share in the development of a vision of a "connected community." My underlying conviction has been and remains that the long term health and well being of Case Western Reserve University is inextricably linked to the health and well being of Northeast Ohio. The future of NEOhio is intimately connected to the process of re-imaging, re-inventing, and re-invigorating what we want to be in the 21st century. An intelligent, innovative, creative, connected, and educated community capable of charting its own future in the digital age is an important part of our future. I have used my blog as a platform for advancing insights and attempting to provoke dialog where I can on this portfolio of topics.

Finally, I have long believed that an additional piece of advocacy and leadership that CIOs are compelled to engage in as part of our professional obligation is to educate the public and our civic leaders. In particular, I have used this blog to advance my work as CIO to comment (sometimes at length ;-) on the importance of next generation broadband connectivity and advanced technologies as part of a critical strategy for American competitiveness and for support for the vital role of higher education in a wide range of public goods from basic science to educating critically reflective citizens. CIOs have a tendency to bemoan the lack of knowledge and sophistication of the public and our civic leaders around technology and public investment in technological infrastructure. I've tried, in a very modest way, to use Bytes From Lev as a platform to invite readers to glean insights on issues that might inform their work in various settings. A week doesn't go by in which a church committee, a civic organization, a staffer for an elected official or a journalist or analyst doesn't contact me for follow up on topics raised in the blog.

Blogging is one important tool in the professional repertoire of the CIO. The blog is a symbolic representation of my personal conviction to try and be transparent in my communication and management style. It is an invitation to collaboration whether here on campus, in the geographic regional of Northeast Ohio or beyond national borders. I also lend my voice through the blog to the public education and leadership advocacy work that I think we CIOs have an obligation to attend to in an effort to frame discourse and decision making on campus, in the region, and around the country and regarding the future direction and responsibility of higher education.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
May 29, 2008

Williams presentation outlines the plausible impact of web 2.0 technologies on the administration of universities, the governance of universities, the nature of future collaborative research, teaching, and of course the manner in which collaboration technologies render obsolete the notion that learning is a spectator sport.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
May 22, 2008

Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Korea, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden led the OECD in broadband penetration, each with at least 28 subscribers per 100 inhabitants (pg 25). The United States was 15th. Over the past 3-4 years, the largest growth in broadband penetration in per capita terms was in the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Finland – countries that now lead the OECD in penetration overall (again the United States was ranked 15th in terms of 'growth') pg 29).

While the leadership in Washington continues its aimless exploration for a national broadband policy framework, states, regions, cities, and local communities need to be thoughtful and proactive in their investments in digital infrastructure. These local, regional, state investments represent an imperative to fully understand broadband policies as an intervention strategy inextricably linked to creating a and enabling a sustainable future. Until such time as communities articulate their willingness to take responsibility for their own future through local investment and creative engagement with broadband strategies, the United States and in particular parts of the country like the Great Lakes region are likely to suffer. As we debate the merits of private sector leadership versus public investments, we are driven to further distraction. These are not binary choices.

The $25m Knight Foundation investment with OneCommunity in Digital Universal Access through the Digital Center of Excellence (http://www.onecommunity.org/solutions/solutions.aspx?id=518) is premised on the assumption that there is indeed a ‘third way’. A third way of approaching the development of consensus around leveraging technology to attend to community priorities and the roll out of a broad macro technical network architecture across broad geographies. Thus far, neither city hall (government directed) nor privileging the private market have produced the digital town square of our common hopes. In a number of the cities where OneCommunity is engaged (and others who are working with similar assumptions about the DNA of the sustainable connected community), the third way is premised on a multi-tenant model of schools, libraries, healthcare facilities, universities, museums, public broadcasters, public safety, and various layers of government co-investing in a portfolio of wire and wireless infrastructure to deliver program and community priorities. This is an additive strategy where there is demonstrable opportunity for private public partnerships. The convergence of philanthropy, the public sector, the private sector, and well educated and articulate community stakeholders represents an emerging opportunity for important engagement and potential regional transformation.

In the case of OneCommunity, the focus on a tiered strategy at the infrastructure layer (multiple wireline and multiple wireless technologies) combined with a governance model that supports and is informed by networked leadership and economic development, and a funding model based on aggregation of internet services AND program and shared services has produced a viable model here in Northeast Ohio over 5 years. Aggregate bandwidth of the 150 organizations leveraging the bandwidth touching more than 1500 facilities and well over a million users has grown more than 100 fold in the past 5 years. Mobility and wireless connectivity has also exploded. Where 5 years ago there was basically no mobile wireless connectivity among the subscriber institutions, today, at any given time in the middle of the day more than 3000 wireless users are connected to wi-fi infrastructure in the area I know best which is the mesh and wi-fi deployments in Cleveland Heights, East Cleveland, and Cleveland around University Circle. The model is sustainable and is delivering access in one of America’s poorest cities and a research sandbox for one of the most sophisticated engineering faculty in the land at Case Western Reserve University (and everything in between).

Our experience suggests that there are dozens of cities and various stakeholders in those communities prepared to revisit the messy choreography of the ‘third way’ to enable the roll out of broadband connectivity as an ‘intervention’ strategy in support of broad public policy goals. Just this past week the Intelligent Communities Forum Immersion Group brought an international delegation of leaders from South Korea, Japan, Europe, Africa, and Canada. While we learned much from them, we also think there was genuine interest in our 'third way' model.

A patchwork quilt of such local and regional community networks provides a viable basis for stitching together a sustainable economic future in which the community both uses technology to address its highest priorities and has a meaningful sense of its owning or at least contributing to its own future.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
May 21, 2008

Both Anne and Stacy participated in last week's Collaboration Technology and Campus Engagement Summit.

Stacy kicked off a terrific panel on the Future of Virtual Worlds and Education with this 3 minute video on her research activity.

The panel discussion which featured Mark Turner from Case Western Reserve University's Cognitive Science Department, Cory Ondrejka co-founder of SecondLife and now from USC, and Edward Lee Lamoureux, Bradley University is available below (50 minutes).

Anne Helmreich is the Director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. She hosted a fabulous series on "Cities" this past year. We are also working with Anne and Baker-Nord on a joint venture for next year with the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland's installation on digital art. Anne participated in our expert capstone panel on Web 2.0 and the Future of Learning which is available here.

Congratulations to Stacy and Anne.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
May 18, 2008

Craig also rubbed shoulders with some of Cleveland's digerati at the second annual Cleveland Techsync Cleveland event last night sponsored by National City Bank and organized by Beta Strategies founder, Cathy Horton. Today at commencement Craig echoed a line he shared last night at TechSync when asked why he had chosen not to sell his company and take the money and run. 'Having enough money to take care of my modest needs and a bit more for the future is all I need. I know lots of people who have tonnes of money and they are no happier than most anyone else and are often times burdened by their wealth.' A simple and yet profound message for graduates.

Let's hope it won't take Craig Newmark another 30 years to make his way back to Cleveland and a follow up visit to Case Western Reserve University.

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH
May 17, 2008

Anthony Williams, co-author of Wikinomics and keynoter at the Summit shared the impact of collaboration tools across an amazing breadth of social, economic, and learning environments (to the many who have asked, yes, Anthony's keynote will be available as a video stream --soon). One of my favorite TED Prize winners is architect and community activist and maverick open source humanitarian Cameron Sinclair. Cameron has leveraged collaborative tools for engaging both hundreds of architects (Architecture for Humanity) around the world but also engaging those architects in dozens and dozens of community projects both near and far. For folks in Cleveland, you have an opportunity to join us in dialog with Cameron Sinclair at MOCA Cleveland's Talalay Lecture being held on Wednesday, May 21, at 6 pm at the Idea Center in Playhouse Square here in Cleveland.

The devastation in Mynamar and China over the past 10 days provides a graphic backdrop for some of the conversation on socially-engaged architecture. Please join us, if you're in the neighborhood. For a backgrounder on Cameron see his TED talk below

Lev Gonick
Case Western Reserve University
May 13, 2008