Cleveland Foundation

As a way of saying thank you to PlayhouseSquare and Cleveland Play House for Holidazzle, and to Downtown Cleveland Alliance, Cleveland Public Library, and Cleveland Public Square for Cleveland Winterfest 2016, we have gathered our photos and tweets from the day. We enjoy these great events every year.

We also want to mention the role that the Cleveland Foundation is taking this year with the new Cleveland Public Square. The foundation is supporting a winter skating program and the year-round Cleveland Foundation Centennial Plaza.

Two months before the Creative Fusion Spectacular, on Saturday, September 17, 2016, my wife, Julie, and I attended an art event of The Cleveland Foundation's Creative Fusion program. There we saw three new Cleveland murals being created as we watched, near Transformer Station in Hingetown.

Then, when I heard that The Cleveland Foundation had arranged with Ohio City Incorporated to have their Creative Fusion Spectacular on Saturday, November 19, 2016, I knew I wanted to attend to take a special tour of the finished neighborhood murals, and see the temporary Creative Fusion Gallery at 2529 Detroit Avenue, Cleveland.

I want to begin with a BIG thank-you to BVU Director of Communications and Technology Melanie Meyer for inviting me to attend the inaugural BVU Ohio Nonprofit Technology & Communications Summit on Friday, September 30, 2016, as their guest representing the good work of Cleveland GiveCamp.

The mission of BVU: The Center for Nonprofit Excellence "is to promote business volunteerism and foster excellence in nonprofit organizations." This has led Melanie and me to explore how Cleveland GiveCamp can reach out to the nonprofits served by BVU. As a provider of free tech solutions to Cleveland and Akron area nonprofits, it seemed logical that Cleveland GiveCamp be present at BVU's first tech summit. Cleveland GiveCamp has the largest number of tech volunteers of any of the nation's other GiveCamps. 

Thank you to the Cleveland Young Professional Senate, the Cleveland Foundation, and The City Club of Cleveland for the Greater Cleveland Caucus events that took place in 2016. I think this type of activity is very important to our community as a starting point for making positive change and plans for the future.

After attending the final Greater Cleveland Caucus event for 2016, I decided to write this blog post to:

• Thank the organizers
• Capture some of the information shared about this final event
• Encourage people to learn about the Greater Cleveland Caucus by reading my past blog posts and related materials

Every year, we visit and write a blog post about the Cleveland Museum of Art's Chalk Festival. It is one of our favorite events in our community. This year, we also visited other art events on the same weekend, so we included our @sos_jr tweets with photos of these events as well. Enjoy!

On Saturday, May 14, 2016, the Cleveland Young Professional Senate held their fourth annual YPCLE: Young Professional Civic Leadership and Empowerment Conference at The City Club of Cleveland. This year, it was entitled YPCLE: The Millennial Caucus, and was part of the Greater Cleveland Caucus Series. This series is the result of a partnership between the Cleveland Young Professional Senate, the Cleveland Foundation, The City Club of Cleveland, and others.

I am so glad that I was able to attend this event, and pleased that some college students who I invited also attended. I look forward to learning how the ideas developed at the caucus will be become an action plan for our community.

My goal for this blog post is:

• to give those who did not attend information on what occurred

• to create a public repository for some of the information I gathered in relation to the event

• to remind us of the work yet to be done

I have attended the grand opening of the Cleveland Public Library TechCentral MakerSpace. The technology center staff at the Akron Public Library gave me a tour during the Akron Maker Faire. Now, I am pleased to be able to write about the Cuyahoga County Public Library's new Innovation Center at their Garfield Heights Branch. I was fortunate to be part of a special orientation tour given to members of the Cleveland Digital Publishing Users Group (CDPUG) for their March 31, 2016, meeting.

The Saturday, March 12, 2016, inaugural Greater Cleveland Caucus: A Town Hall Meeting on Community Solutions engaged over 400 attendees from throughout Greater Cleveland to spend their Saturday morning in serious dialogue about key community issues. In addition, representatives from more than 70 nonprofit organizations staffed informational booths before the caucus started, and then joined the attendees in brainstorming priorities within eight “caucus areas.”

I want to start by thanking the Greater Cleveland Caucus Series partners for this 2016 initiative. I hope that the Caucus Series, and their related events (such as debate watch parties), provides structure for positive outcomes for Cleveland's future, and acts as a catalyst to involve more Greater Cleveland citizens in that future. 

UPDATE -- MAY 9, 2016: Videos of the Fred Talks speeches from the March 12 Greater Cleveland Caucus Town Hall have now been added to this blog post!

I have always enjoyed reading Janet Cho's #SocialMedia Tips articles, so I was honored when she contacted me to be featured in her column. 

Smarter #SocialMedia Tips from #HappyinCLE Stuart O. Smith Jr. (@sos_jr)

EASTSIDE GREENWAY 
The Eastside Greenway seeks to connect the east side of Cleveland with 18 Greater Cleveland municipalities through a unified trail network that will link neighborhoods to employment centers, transit and existing green spaces. The communities within the study area include East Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, Beachwood, Pepper Pike, University Heights, Richmond Heights, Highland Heights, Highland Hills, North Randall, Mayfield Heights, Mayfield Village, Euclid, South Euclid, Lyndhurst, Bratenahl, Orange Village and Warrensville Heights and eastern portions of Cleveland.

The Eastside Greenway project is a great idea, but in some ways I feel that it might be too early to write about it. Today it is just a great idea -- a concept for the future. I look forward to writing again about how the work of today's leaders made a difference in the quality of life.

Just imagine having bike paths that would tie the different eastside communities together! I think it could make a big difference in how the people there will live and interact.