7.11.06 Tuesdays@FUTURE: Building Gaming and Simulation Industry Networks

BRAINPOWER FOR THE INNOVATION ECONOMY

ON 7.11.06: Mike DeAloia, Tech Czar for the City of Cleveland, and a team of collaborators discuss efforts to establish a downtown Gaming Center, with deep ties to regional game design and development networks in the Region.

ON HORIZON: Dan Cuffaro, Chair of Industrial Design at the Cleveland Institute of Art and former Creative Director at a leading Boston-area product design firm, Altitude, presents innovative concepts for the Cleveland Design Prize and Design District.

ON TOPIC: The new economy demands fresh thinking and relentless networking. Tuesdays@FUTURE is attracting an eclectic crowd most passionate about open source networking as a model for innovation in Northeast Ohio. We are engaging in open dialogue high on collaboration, with a regional focus on the Creative Industries and Technology.

If you are part of an initiative or organization that could benefit from this exchange, or have a new initiative to present bring it to the open forum.

Send your comments, suggestions, and feedback to:

FUTURE: Center for Design and Technology Transfer @ The Cleveland Institute of Art, 11610 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44106 collaborate@future.cia.edu

Betsey Merkel, Network Development, The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) Cleveland Midtown Innovation Center, 4415 Euclid Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44103 USA Tel. 216-246-2447

Tuesdays@FUTURE: Building Innovation Networks: Our Digital Opportunity

Speaker: Rick Pollack, Manager, IT and Operations, Nine Sigma

Date: Tuesday, June 27
Time: 4:30 P.M. to 6:15 P.M.
Place: FUTURE: Center for Design and Technology Transfer @ The Cleveland Institute of Art
11610 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
Map Link


Join us Tuesday to learn from Rick who has over twenty years of experience in the software industry and currently manages IT and Operations for NineSigma of Beachwood, Ohio. NineSigma offers a collaborative process that allows large, primarily Fortune 500, companies to tap into a worldwide network of scientists, businesses and inventors to compliment and amplify their internal R&D capabilities.

We'll learn from Rick the challenges and sweet spots in building global information networks. Check out your opportunities. Ride the wave with us in your next brainstorming session to build product for a new digital experience.

More about Rick... In addition to working fulltime for NineSigma, Rick is the owner of Knowledge Information Technology, Inc.; the company is currently developing AdvancedPlay, an innovative, online, multi-user environment for children and families.

He has founded several companies including:
Software Management Group, Inc. (SMG) of Cincinnati in 1997. SMG developed a telecommunications billing platform and custom software. SMG is now BlueSpring Software and has raised over $16M in venture capital.

eCCS, Inc. of Cincinnati in 1998. Rick worked as managing partner and Vice President of Product Development during the design, development and implementation of the premier CRM platform for the automobile retail industry. The company grew from start-up to a revenue-generating firm with 25 employees and was acquired by The Reynolds & Reynolds Company, the $1B leader in automotive information technology, in 2000.

Rick holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from The University of Cincinnati.

Read about NineSigma in:
Wired 6/06 – The Rise of Crowdsourcing

Harvard Business Review 3/06 cover article: Connect and Develop: Inside Procter & Gamble's New Model for Innovation

BusinessWeek:
4/24/06 cover article: The World’s Most Innovative Companies

6/19/06 cover article:
Innovation Champions

Check out more opportunity on the University Circle Innovation Zone Wiki here.

LIVE BLOG: Building Brainpower in the Second Curve

This is the first social network map for the Tuesdays@FUTURE forums. This map shows the social networking activity resulting from the first two Tuesday@FUTURE forums.

Participants at today's forum include people who work in engineering, Phil Bessler Director of the Baldwin Wallace College Business Plan Center, the creative and arts industries, technology, innovation networks and arts placement.

We begin by cruzing through global examples of new and different ways learning can be approached today. Far surpassing documents, the creative learning environment includes kinetic and visual learning.

Here are links we discussed below:
"Digital Natives", by Marc Prensky, is a fantastic description of the cognitive changes affecting the way students learn today. Lev Gonick, Case's IT Director, summs up the U.S. capability to educate as not 10 years behind, but not even in the race.

Informal Learning and Community Libraries.

Ned Kahn creates kinetic sculptures. Learn more here.

Ned's brother, Ted, is an educator in the Bay area. Ted works on Collaboratories. Learn more at his site DesignWorlds for Learning.

The University of Michigan does extensive work on the concept of collaboratories - spaces of shared learning and resources connected by the Internet. Go here.

Arts Wisconsin has integrated the arts into everything they are doing. Check it out here.

Nine Sigma is creating new opportunities in technology - to address specific challenges in industry by outsourcing capabilities on a global scale. Nine Sigma has a program that will pay others for their connections.

See the article, "The Rise of Crowd Sourcing," in the June issue of WIRED. Large companies are now reaching out to the global space to identify the few companies that may specialilze in disruptive inventions to solve a specific challenge. The hardest challenge is to overccome the first level barrier of sharing and perception of value.

"The World is Flat", Tom Friedman version II is excellent reading. Between ubiquitous computing and inovations in service the competition barriers to international trade are gone. Take for example FedEx, who does all of the repair on Toshiba computers in 3 days to accelerate innovation and customer service. Read the WIRED review here.

The best IT skills are coming out of E Europe - Romania. If you are a lone inventor you can outsource all skills and services on an internet basis. This is a great time for being an inventor!

The Kahn Brothers: Innovation at the Intersections of Science, Technology and Design

Last week we met with Ted Kahn, Founding Director, DesignWorlds Bay Area Science Education Collaboratory. Ted lead a workshop for Cleveland Museum of Art staff sharing his approaches to learning, creativity, visualization and cognitive science.

Ted thinks alot about new ways of connecting existing resources and assets - such as the plethora of treasures museums curate - by creating virtual work spaces kids can self-create to explore and innovate. Teacher national standards are taken into space design and function; as well as methods to promote transparency to facilitate connecting and leveraging diverse areas of project content.

Ted says the biggest problem is sustainable engagement. This is certainly the commonly missing part of the education puzzle today and it is what Open Source Economic Development is all about: leveraging new practices and tools to strengthen process catalyzing unprecedented and exponential growth in innovation and entrepreneurship. And in a networked world, building from the core to the edges.

Visit the San Francisco Exploratorium - a virtual platform focused on inquiry, stimulating kids to develop different perceptions enabling their ability to move forward. The material strengthens the connection between science, art and human perception.

Ted's brother, Ned Kahn, creates kinetic sculptures. These are awesome learning modules that express design, nature and offer a hands on approach to learning about natural systems. Visit his work here.

You can read more about Ted's work and visit some of the outstanding institutions he works with below:

Ted M. Kahn, Ph.D., President and CEO/Chief Learning Officer, DesignWorlds for Learning, Inc./DesignWorlds for College
20370 Town Center Lane, Suite #235, Cupertino CA 95014 Tel: 408.252.2285 Fax: 408.516.9920 Cell: 408.569.4875
Email: ted@designworlds.com

Founding Director, Bay Area Science Education Collaboratory
Adjunct Faculty, Foothill College— Krause Center for Innovation
NMC Fellow : New Media Consortium
CSTS Fellow, Center for Science, Technology & Society
Santa Clara University

A Technology Mentoring Program for Young Women

Fifth-Third Bank Supports Digital Animation Summer Program: Digital Animation: A Technology Mentoring Program for Young Women is a free summer program that teaches rising 8th and 9th grade girls how to create computer-generated animation. Each year the program selects fifteen young women with exhibited artistic potential to work with mentors from arts and technology fields at The Ohio State University.

Read more here.