James Levin, the founder of the Ingenuity festival – has moved to Wooster, OH and teaches a class at the College of Wooster called “Entrepreneurship of the Event”. It is part of the Center for Entrepreneurship.  James is teaching his students how to produce local events.

Their showcase event is called the “Wooster Jam” and it’s happening this weekend, April 20-21 – at the Wooster Fair Grounds. Coinciding is an Ethnic Festival featuring foods and  dancers from various ethnic communities.  This is a CLASSIC Cleveland thing – mix r&;;;r, blues, Zydeco and bluegrass, with Opera, Saris, Scarf dancers and the Irish Jig.

We're totally going to be going to this event this weekend!

One of the things James talks about (in the video interview with Mulready) is how the event is being produced and managed by his students.  This is the same kind of experiential training that we are doing in our “Digital City” project.  The Wooster Jam is entirely being produced by students, while James mentors and guides the students through the labyrinth, around the trapdoors and barriers and into the promised land of successfully produced live events.

Thanks to Thomas Mulready for the pointer. I had missed meeting James before he left town, but we DID create a social network for the Ingenuity Festival – which I use as a teaching tool. So I feel like I’m one degree removed from James and his efforts.

This is EXACTLY the kind of activities we want to be doing!

Events are a great way to teach, to employ and they serve as an anchor point of ANY community!

Originally appeared in "Marc's Voice"

I'm in Weirton, W. VA pitching our Digital City project concepts.  Here's an initial set of players in the region:

Did you know that they used to use Donkeys to make rum?

I'm going to be in Tampa, FL this week = pitching the Digital City project.  The idea is to identify government officials, investors, educators, entrepreneurs, local industry, community organizations and a creative community - which when working together - can create an environment we call a "digital economy ecosystem."

I'm being hosted by Marv Scaff and the GazelleLabs business incubator.

I'm back - still working hard - on lots of networks, sites and efforts.

Here's our new brochure.

And I'm headed to D.C.

Hi Folks --

Here is my last email to the group to close the gap:

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Hi Everyone --

On Monday we had a meeting of some artistic minds interested in the project.  Neil and Drew are drawing up some notes and sketches on artworks that could be driven by the water.

Peet is creating sketches on transporting the water.

I do need someone to begin working out the details of powering a pump using green energy (ie bicycles, solar power, wind, etc.)

One idea that come from last weeks meeting was that we don't necessarily have to pump water up from the river as part of this whole loop.  A series of rain barrels could serve as the source for the project and it would be a lot less heavy lifting to pump water from the end of the cycle to the beginning of the cycle.  Working out the water dynamics of moving water up the 15ft slope of the bridge is definitely an engineering problem but not as big as pumping up directly from the river.

Getting the water up from the river could actually be a learning opportunity for people carrying gallon jugs a distance that many people in the world do every day.  I'm not writing off pumping up directly from the river, but it may come down to cost finally.

We're having a meeting on Wednesday April 20th at 5:30.  All are welcome -- we'll be finalizing the sketches of the project so I can have it ready for our curatorial process.  Any information on materials and costs will be helpful to have.

Here's what we need at this point:

-  Some more information on power - how can multiple sources of energy plug into this

-  Purification - what kind of purification can be used that is innovative

- Any more innovative ideas for what can be driven by this water supply and how visitors can interact with the water.

If you can't make the meeting, feel free to email me ideas.  I'll also be setting up a bulletin board for this so we can post/share ideas.

jk