My wife and I agreed there is no other event providing the opportunity to stroll casually down the middle of downtown Cleveland streets on beautiful summer evenings, to peek inside history-filled buildings, to learn about new technologies, to take in adventurous art, and to feel a part of this community in general. This festival clearly has the potential to become our unique event in the world. Ingenuity is the only event I know with the ability to reveal the promise of our region.

This full-color, 15-page program makes the festival look exciting and easy to navigate. The layout and information design would indicate that Ingenuity is really learning how to present itself! The Tech Center & Gallery page looks very cool, with descriptions of exhibits including innovations from Kent State University, the Youth Technology Academy’s robotic “Cage Match Tournament,” and a virtual reality peek into engineering, rocket testing, and satellite tracking from NASA Glenn. The lower floors of the Halle Building will be a fantastic site for these and the other exhibits from high-tech companies…and air conditioned, too! A few months ago, I got an early look at how Ingenuity plans to use this space–that was exciting enough. But the featured lineup is perfect and should all be successful crowd-pleasers!

And I should also mention any information or listings not in the program are on the much-improved Ingenuity website, ingenuitycleveland.com. This is the first year Insivia has gotten its hands on the festival site, and they created a simple, easy-to-use Ingenuity information source that is very cool without being overwhelming. Insivia has been working with ingenuity in some way, shape, or form for years, and have had a palpable passion and understanding of the potential impact of the festival from the start.

Overall, I’m thrilled to say Ingenuity.08 is presenting itself better, more clearly, and more professionally than ever!

Jim Cossler spoke about the Youngstown Business Incubator’s focus on business-to-business information technologies, and the adamantly “open-source” relationships he is building between innovative incubator residents. YBI holds its tenant companies accountable for playing well with others. “YBI is about connections,” Jim said, and described his expanding campus in the heart of Youngstown which connects people inside the incubator through smart design of hallways and offices, through BBQ pits and greenspaces, and through the expectation that incubating companies help each other problem solve. I’m a sucker for an operation charging itself with making connections between innovators, but he takes it one step beyond by promoting YBI networking outside its building as well, using people-networks to efficiently reach out to make connections across Northeast Ohio and around the world. Even the artists springing up in YBI’s backyard are being considered important to the process…perhaps it’s time Cleveland, Greater Cleveland, and the entire Clevelandy-Cleveland+ region stops looking down its nose, and looks ahead to where Youngstown has gone in the meantime. Maybe we could consider following in their lead…

Craig Zamary’s concept of a Green Energy TV site serving as a “YouTube for sustainability efforts” is exciting, and I am very interested to see how this company evolves. It’s worth logging on just to scroll down the multitude of videos they house to find subjects of interest. I will have to settle for my own guess work on his long-term strategy, because the Green Energy TV business plan, unlike the open-source nature of all else YBI, is top secret.

Congratulations to Midtown Brews for keeping a vital forum alive and thriving!

I first noticed Ruth West, director of visual analytics and interactive technologies at the UC San Diego National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, with her last exhibit, “Ecco Homology.” This project brought biologists, artists, and computer scientists together to compare genetic similarities between humans and the rice plant! The exhibit produced an immersive environment which generated scientifically accurate, stunning visualizations of the building blocks of life.

When I spoke to her in 2007, she was feverish about finishing her new project, “Atlas in Silico.” “The point of the artwork is to show that we are all a part of the flow,” West said, and then launched into an explanation that went beyond my grasp of “the new era of metagenomics,” but I understood enough to see the connection between her reflection upon humanity’s biological quest for understanding and the gene work coming out of the labs of Northeast Ohio!

This exhibit should also be interesting to our community on a sustainability level. The data used is from the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Survey, which collected samples of the microbial biodiversity of Earth’s oceans, producing data which could help us work toward biological energy production, bioremediation, and possibly the management of greenhouse gasses! Check out http://camera.calit2.net for a better understanding of metagenomics in general, and the Ocean Survey in specific.

I’ve been hearing some exciting developments at Ingenuity board meetings and a staff meeting to which I was granted access…I’ll report more soon! In general, the Ingenuity Festival is the best hope for raising public awareness of complex technologies being developed here. There’s always so much to do and learn, so please let me know about any exciting exhibits or demonstrations I shouldn’t miss!

Me? I can’t wait to experience Atlas in Silico…