Bob from Cleveland

The Plain Dealer has begun what appears to be their version of Quiet Crisis - Part Deux: how will the readers respond?

Numerous organizations in greater Cleveland are attempting to tackle the issue of civic engagement.  The Cleveland Leadership Center has a committee to discuss the issue and a newly launched Citizens Leage has been formed; but what are the “non-connected citizens” doing?

What about the individuals who live in Westlake or Solon and work at Moen or Progressive Insurance.  These are the folks who drive their kids to soccer or baseball practice without thinking about what event they are missing downtown.  These are the people who shop at Crocker Park or Legacy Village and who have probably never been to Ohio City or Little Italy.  Again, how do we engage these Cleveland assets?

I grew up in North Olmsted and Westlake.  My parents made the effort to take me and my two sisters downtown on a regular basis to attend baseball games, enjoy musicals at playhouse square, see the sights at Tower City during the holidays, and occasionally enjoy a pie at Mama Santa’s.  We were westsiders who realized that Cleveland did not stop at East 9th.  I can’t say that this was the case for many of my friends but I appreciate that my parents knew that this “education” would be valuable at some point in our life.

I’ll argue that a large portion of the civic engagement deficit in Cleveland is due to the parents of greater Cleveland.  If only the parents would take a few extra minutes to educate their children of the cultural, civic, business, educational, and athletic assets that we have in our own backyard.  Would the graduating high schoolers of this region view Cleveland differently if they had this conversation?  What if parents explained that many of the activities that the family participated in, even if in a limited basis, were in Cleveland; would the kids think of Cleveland differently when they drove to the airport or to Severance Hall?  Would the kids view their hometown with a greater appreciation if they knew that the oil industry was born in the flats, that Akron was the capital of rubber, and that our sports teams have been trend setters in many arenas.  I wonder.

I grew up listening to stories of my grandparents growing businesses and familes in the neighborhoods that I now live and play in.  Every fall when I vote I meet a little old lady who reminds me that she has known my family for over 50 years and my neighbor never forgets to tell me that she shopped at my great-grandfathers butcher shop at 104th and Madison.  These stories have encouraged me to become more engaged.  I love this town and the people that make it real.

Clevelanders are not motivated by slogans or flashy logos; they are motivated by success and truth.  Tell a Clevelander to believe in something and they will be apprehensive, but demonstrate success to a Clevelander and they will be a fan for years.  So, I ask one thing of the civic engagment discussions going on at the moment: demonstrate success.

Share your successes with the Plain Dealer at sgoldberg@plaind.com.

Where will the PD take this new interest in public discourse?  The beginnings for “Quiet Crisis - Part Deux” are being laid and it would appear to be much different than its counterpart from a few years back.  My one desire is that the paper not only shed light on BIG ideas, rather; highlight the baby steps that are being taken today to solve regional problems of great significance.

One article today discussed “regionalism” but once again only focused on Cuyahoga County.  Regionalism is much bigger than Cuyahoga County and needs to involve our equal partners in Akron, Lorain, Medina, Youngstown, etc.  Each mini-region brings its own assets to the table and is part of a comprehensive economy.

So, thoughts on where this series is going and in what ways the residents of this region can drive the dialogue?  Submit a letter here.

I recently met over breakfast with a community leader who was instrumental in the creation of Playhouse Square back in the early 1970’s.  What a story!

The short story is that one of the theaters was about to be torn down after years of neglect and abuse.  An individual working for the school district (who was not from Cleveland btw) could not see this happen and decided that “something had to be done to save the building.”  His logic was that if the region was going to be able to attract top talent the region needed to have cultural and entertainment assets to lure the talented types: my how some things never change.

A small group of committed citizens (the oldest being in his early 30’s) worked diligently to: stop the building from being demolished; establish an organization to formally lease the building; create an operating plan to generate revenue to pay for operations; and ultimately hire an architect to create a master plan for the district.  Now, those were just some of the activities for the first building.  The group ultimately went on to form a land bank for future expansion, obtained revenue from numerous sources to renovate and upgrade specific buildings, and modified the legal structure to what we know today as the Playhouse Square Foundation (The Playhouse Square Foundation Partners throw a great party every year btw…).

This story is one that I am amazed has not been captured by Ideastream, CSU, or some other historical record keeper; more in the future on how I think we can change that.  While the topic of this post is Playhouse Square, the purpose is to ask the question: what are the 20 and 30 somethings in Cleveland doing today that will be paying dividends in the region 30 or 40 years from now?  Look at one decision to a question in 1972, “can we save this building”, led to the creation of one of the most recognizable districts in Cleveland in decades.

So…what are the questions that we could be asking ourselves today?

It’s been a busy day for Bob and social networking tools.  This morning the City Club was approved for their group and Identi-fyi: Cleveland launched on facebook…woo hoo!

First off, both are a work in progess so keep the comments coming.  The goal of each tool is to spread the word on the amazing assets of Greater Cleveland and both are “open” so I encourage you to join up if you’d like to be kept in the loop.

Click HERE to add the “Friends of the City Club of Cleveland” to your LinkedIn profile.

On Facebook, seach “Identi-fyi: Cleveland” to add this awesome group to your FB profile.

Also, feel free to leave a comment regarding either group…

Socially yours,
Bob

Thanks to “The Moderate Voice“ for bringing this to my attention.  I think that author Michael Hais did a great job in summing up my generation with two words: civic engagement.  He took it one step further:

“they are a generation that is not intent on — as other types of generations are — not intent on implementing their own personal moral values, but rather in rebuilding civic institutions, in acting together as a group to resolve political problems, which we expect the Millennials to do, problems such as health care that have really bedeviled the U.S. political process for the last 40 years or so.”

Obviously this quote is geared towards the political ramifications of the actions of Millennials (as is their book) but we are seeing this philosophy carried out every day in many areas.  Yesterday, after the Collaboration Technology Conference, I posted about how web 2.0 technology should be utilized in the recruitment of the millennial generation.  That effort needs to occur, but during the conference I was listening to speakers who are using this same technology to make a difference in the civic realm.  From community organizing to personal blogging, the speakers were civically engaged and many were of the “millennial” generation.

Think of the challenges that we are able to quickly solve when we open up a question to our Facebook or LinkedIn network.  I’ve posted several technology related questions on LinkedIn and typically have multiple solutions within half a day.  Wikinomics, a book on this very topic, outlines several challenges/opportunities that have been solved through crowdsourcing.  Corporations are using web 2.0 technology to source new products or improve existing products, community groups are using weblogs to quickly disseminate information, and college students are using Facebook to stay in touch with friends across the globe.

With the Millennial generation growing up surrounded by technology I wonder how this “phenomena” will continue to grow and in what ways it can be utilized to address the civic issues that we’ll be facing in the coming decades.  Could crowd sourcing lead to a design for a center to house conventions, or the future of an educational systems curriculum, or could we even modify our own behaviors based upon the general input from a large audience, such as the entire population of the internet.  This example gives you a small idea of what that could look like.

Do you feel that you are civically engaged?

Enjoy,
Bob