Like Drinking From a Firehose

The last couple of weeks have been so stuffed with amazing events and great projects, some underway and others in various stages of development, as to make my head spin. In the past, I've written about these kinds of periods (like last May), when wonderful things, events, projects and people are coming in so fast and furious as to cause near-vertigo. Only those periods seem to be coming closer together, always a little curse but more blessing. Anyway, I've attended so many cool events in the last couple of weeks that I won't try to describe them all today. Instead, I'll use the weekend and its more reflective rhythms (which of course includes hanging with the family and watching the latest Browns loss) to catch you up on some impressions from, among others, these recent events: a Press Club Hall of Fame installment dinner, for which I was honored to write a tribute to the towering TV guy Virgil Dominic; a lecture at Hathaway Brown by NYTimes education correspondent Jacques Steinberg, on his new book about getting into Ivy League colleges; a packed-to-the-gills JCU Entrepreneurs Association dinner where one Wal Mart big foot filled in for another; the latest Community of Minds event; my first visits to the new Legacy Village, just a few hundred yards from our house; a long lunch interview with my old crony, the thrice-published (and working on book #4) thriller author Rick Montanari (who was good enough to tell me he'd spotted a typo in Woody Allen's name! I told him there's no such thing as typos in WorkingWithWords!); an inaugural Akron Business Conference (yesterday) that was an uqualified success in large part due to the fine efforts of my friends Tom McNamara, Barb Payne, Jim Cookinham and Dustin Klein; and (perhaps coolest of all), the latest chapter of the emerging NEObio revolution co-engineered by our colleague Steve Goldberg, who also appears to be a bit staggered by the vertigo accompanying the success of his rapidly growing baby. And needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), the best part of cool events and projects are the smart, stimulating people you meet and the new learning they offer. Enough to feed the brain and spirit for a long time to come.

Quick Hits. Anyway, while I haven't the time nor mental juice today to really describe all that, I did want to mention a few quicker-hit developments. More congrats to our staggeringly successful fellow blogger and economic development whiz Don Iannone, for his soon-to-be-launched third blog, which to my delight is going to take his trademarked razor-edged look at this region rather than his normal beat--the country and even the world. It should be a real intellectual treat as well as an incredibly useful tool for development folks and just plain citizens. In fact, you can take an early look at it here. The Cleveland and Akron chambers are planning major launch announcements soon, and you know those two groups can agree only on two things: that Lebron and Don Iannone are world-class local treasures...

Time For An Update, Folks. And if you needed any more evidence that the well-intended but clueless old top-down structures like Cleveland Tomorrow are tottering, check this out. The site is housed on Nortech's site (Nortech being just so much old wine in a new jug), but the link at the bottom to Cleveland Tomorrow's strategic plan for Cleveland takes you to a musty old document (it's nicely designed, at least) with TRW's chairman talking about what a great region this is (so great that he pulled up stakes!). And I think it's equally telling that the document carries the name of Dix & Eaton in the the very URL, D&E of course being the longtime ghostwriters to the town's power elite. And speaking of these new wine in old jugs, should we be concerned about the ability of the new TeamNEO to do the right thing, since ethics-challenged First Energy plays such a central role in its founding? The utility company seems to have trouble doing the right thing when it gets involved in the public sector, as witnessed by its troubles with nuclear reactors and now the outrageous way in which the Ohio Consumers Counsel Rob Tongren tried to deep-six a report that would have saved consumers billions in rate hikes. Do you think the supposed consumer watchdog became the utility's lapdog without any subtle or overt prompting from FE?...

You'll Appreciate This. If you look closely enough, you'll notice that the principals of Appreciative Inquiry are rapidly seeping into the culture. For the layman, I'll define it thusly: learning to pay more attention to the glass half full than half empty. But we'll expand a bit on that theme in coming weeks. But I noticed yet another example in this recent headline pun in a New York Times Circuits section article about digital photography. The headline: "What's Right With This Picture?"

Tom Friedman's Minnesota Moderation. NYTimes columnist Tom Friedman is revered for his books (like The Lexus and the Olive Tree), his three Pulitzers (I'm pretty sure there's no one else now living who can claim that many) and his common-sense approach to the muddled Mideast. But closer readers might catch something else altogether: a squeamish inability to call something what it is. Okay, so you might like how he finds the middle of every issue and avoids taking sides with either the right or the left. But for me, he's becoming impossibly namby pamby about some serious issues. And the latest evidence is this unbelievable lead from his column yesterday: Since 9/11, we've seen so much depraved violence we don't notice anymore when we hit a new low. Monday's attacks in Baghdad were a new low. Just top for one second and contemplate what happened: A suicide bomber, driving an ambulance loaded with explosives, crashed into the Red Cross office and belew himself up on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This suicide bomber was not restrained by either the sanctity of the Muslim holy day or the sanctity of the Red Cross. All civilizational norms were tossed aside. THIS IS VERY UNNERVING (caps added). Now, think about this. He started so well, so vividly, in setting the scene. And he used just the right word, depraved, to describe it all. And after he paints all that nearly unprecedented horror and nihilism, he sums it up by calling it....very unnerving! Leave aside the fact that, for reasons I can't imagine, he used the nearly meaningless squishy intensifier adjective "very," (for which he should have at least one of his Pulitzers revoked). But is this scene merely unnerving? C'mon, Tom. You need to get a little more worked up than that...But here's a bigger outrage. This week, Delaware Senator Joe Biden got on his soapbox about how unfair college football's Bowl Championship Series seems. He lectured one official at a Congressional hearing that "It looks un-American, it really does. It looks unfair. It looks like a rigged deal." Sorry to wake you from your slumber, Joe, but there are a few deals in America that are better-rigged than this, and more importantly, they're costing Americans lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Perhaps you might better direct your outraged at the rigged pharmaceutical industry, the rigged corporate lobbying apparatus just down the street from you on K Street, and worst of all, the rigged system by which so many in government have just about stolen the country out from under its citizens. And when you've cleaned all of that up, then by all means, turn your attention to some football games involving college football. But first things first, Senator...

Breaking Through the Clutter. Finally today, we bring you the tale of the sandwich board. When I lived in Chicago, I recall once driving to O'Hare and being caught in the usual mile-long snarl, only to notice a young guy carrying a sandwich board. It implored people to hire him, and included his phone number. In the next day's Tribune, I read that he was inundated with job offers. I've often told that story to recent grads (and others) as an example of the crucial need to think of something that others haven't, so as to break through the clutter and avoid being simply another lifeless resume in a pile on an HR person's desk. And sure enough, the other day while leaving I-271 and entering Cedar Road, I noticed a guy once more with a sandwich board. "We want to be your plumber. Jack's Heating & Plumbing." A tad less poetic, perhaps, but I'd guess it will be nearly equally effective. In fact, I'll check on that soon for you. In the meantime, I'm taking applications for the newest position here at WorkingWithWords: you guessed it, I need someone to stand with a sandwich board in heavily trafficed areas, and induce readers to visit the site. The pay isn't much, but just think of the psychic rewards of getting more people to read...