Within 20 minutes of arriving, on Saturday, December 6th, at Ingenuity's Flannel & Finery 2025, I was blown away by the stage show that greeted me as I entered the artistically lit cavern that is the Ingenuity Cleveland Hamilton Collaborative building. The rest of the evening proceeded with electronic music of the Tesla Orchestra, fun food, circus jugglers, Smoke and Mirrors laser game, and a crafts area where I used an ink press to make an Ingenuity Cleveland 2025 ornament. There was a costume bar where attendees could get creative and outfit themselves with fancy masks or add some flair to what they were already wearing. Cleveland was dancing into the night as the Ingenuity dance party brought a fun group of people out to move with the music until just past midnight. After the music ended, it was nice to talk to other people who had been on the dance floor. Everyone I met was so friendly and welcoming!
I learned of this party for creatives from an invitation that Ingenuity Cleveland Executive Artistic Director Emily Appelbaum sent to me and others. When we saw each other, Emily greeted me warmly and thanked me for promoting Ingenuity over the years on social media and in my Ingenuity Cleveland blog posts. I suggested that I get a photo of her, since I rarely get one at the events she plans. We took the photo you see at the top of this blog post. Later in the evening, I learned from Assembly for the Arts President & CEO Jeremy Johnson that Emily Appelbaum was offered a position in California, and would be leaving Cleveland. After learning that she would be leaving her leadership role in Cleveland after 10 years, I was especially glad that I made a point of getting a photo with her.
This a blog post about two stories. First, as the title indicates, it is my opportunity to share my photos, the people with whom I connected, and some of what I learned at the Futureland AI Forward Summit on Thursday, November 20, 2025. The second story is how I am having a busy month, and to save time, I used AI for the first time to write part of this blog post.
I want to mention here that it was great to see the performance of Myles "Humble G" Smith of International Multimedia Group, and later have a great conversation with him and Jalá Smith. I had written a blog post which featured Humble G many years ago , so it was great to see him perform again!
In the afternoon, I attended TerDawn DeBoe's presentation, "Workshop: From AI Overwhelm to 10X ROI in 90 Days." You can learn more about her work at WorkWithTerDawn.com and InstituteOfBusinessai.org. I was interviewed about what I thought of her presentation, and if she uses it in a future promotional video, I will add it to this blog post.
The second story was driven by my goal to create the text for this blog post quickly. It was after 11:22 pm, and I was finishing the draft of my blog post about the Grand Opening: Upland Sims Park Expansion - City of Euclid. I was tired, but I had set a goal of starting the text about the Futureland event, and I did not want to go bed without beginning to write it. I decided that since the Summit was about using AI, and was sponsored by Google, I would try for the first time using the Google Gemini AI platform. I gave it minimal promps and the text I had shared on social media. By 11:40:38 pm, I had an OpenDocument (.odt) file of a blog post text, and then decided it would be easier for me to add an HTML file to my website. I had Gemini create the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language - HTML5 version). I finished the evening at 1:02:09 am by choosing the following privacy option: "The activity you selected is being permanently deleted from your account and no longer tied to you."
I currently don't plan on using AI, since it does not meet my current needs, but at the same time I think it is important to learn what it can do. I highly recommend attending future Futureland Summits, since their presenters did an excellent job of introducing technology that could further positive objectives in our community.
Is this the end of an era? After 20 years of the Euclid Beach Park Now organization hosting Remembering the Sights and Sounds of Euclid Beach Park, their board voted to discontinue this annual event after this year. Julie was the only board member to vote for continuing this Cleveland tradition in the future. This event has taken place every year at what is now the Cleveland Metroparks Euclid Beach Park. This year's event, on Sunday, September 28, 2025, from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, took place exactly on the 56th anniversary of this now-defunct amusement park's closing on September 28, 1969.
There was a huge crowd attending this year's event!!! They enjoyed the amusement park displays, carnival food, and the special car show entitled "The Cars We Drove to Euclid Beach." With such a large, enthusiastic level of participation in 2025, we hope that some sort of amusement-park-related event will be created to replace this 20-year tradition in 2026.
As I parked my car, it was a beautiful summer day for the Cleveland Museum of Art36th Annual Chalk Festival on Sunday, September 21, 2025. Less than ten minutes later, it started raining, but fortunately, it was a short cloudburst. The rain only returned on and off for the rest of the afternoon. Despite the fact that I missed seeing the pre-rain chalk drawings by just a few minutes, I still found the artwork most enjoyable, along with the festive environment of the Fine Arts Garden.
I heard a fellow attendee of the event state that the brief rainfall brought a “soft focus” to the chalk artwork! That was an astute observation.
For this, my fourteenth Chalk Festival blog post, I want to thank all the creative people who participated. The chalk art created at the Cleveland Museum of Art Chalk Festival every yearis outstanding!
We were fortunate that the eighth annual Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Asian Lantern Festival was extended beyond its original August 24th end date, since we had just returned from our second trip this summer. Nine years ago, we enjoyed a similar event in Columbus, Ohio, during the winter (December 30, 2016, Ohio Lantern Festival at the Ohio State Expo Center and Fairgrounds), but we had never attended this annual Cleveland summer event. We put together this blog post to show the good time we had when we visited the zoo with our sons on the evening of Saturday, August 30, 2025.
The Asian Lantern Festival had interactive displays, and while we were writing this blog post, we learned that there were more interactive exhibits this year than in the past. We had fun standing on sensor platforms and hitting large buttons that activated the displays.
It was great that the festival was much larger than we expected. We enjoyed the event, and expect that we will go again in the future.
I put together this blog post to share some of what I saw while visiting eight area galleries in February 2025. There is a variety of artwork presented, which will appeal to the different tastes of different people. I hope this encourages you to visit those galleries that have items of interest to you.
Thank you to the following galleries for an enjoyable month visiting:
I am grateful that we have so many galleries to enjoy in our area. I hope you take time to visit the institutions I mention in this blog post! Have fun!!!
