History 

Midtown Brews is a collaborative business development initiative that is a spin out of the 2006 Nead Brand Partner's Midtown Mornings program, an early morning coffee and open networking forum.

Midtown Mornings also produced Martini's Over Midtown, a celebration of Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs and their stories of innovation.

With the savvy bottle cap concept and logo (above) designed by partners Mark Nead and Mark Zust and the generous sponsorship of Jeff Friedman, owner of the Midtown technology company, Webtego, Midtown Brews began connecting business leaders from the get go!

Here's the Midtown Innovation Map and the Midtown Social Network map.

Purpose: Midtown Brews builds open networks for business development

When Jeff Friedman was chosen as one of Al Gore's 1000 young leaders trained in climate change, we incorporated a climate change and energy focus.

What role does Midtown Brews play in Northeast Ohio regional transformation? What is the role of partners and participants in this Midtown business development process? Here are some strengths partners bring:

 
Meet The Bloggers  brings a knowledge and practice of open conversations to begin to build open networks, strengthen stories, and share brainpower.

Our technology business hosts  Webtego and Insivia (they will be alternating two months at a time) offer cool places to convene with a real world focus.

As a Midtown Brews partner, I-Open brings new models of Open Source Economic Development  (158.5 KB) anchored in collaborative leadership, social network building, and Strategic Doing (27.4 KB) (we begin by asking, What's next?). With our technology partner Near-Time.net we are building national collaborative online communities in Bioscience to continue the conversations between face to face meetings, share information, and accelerate enterprise building. You can learn more by becoming a member of the Midtown Brews network and participate in blog posts, forums, and document creation.

Recently, we expanded the social network by connecting with SmallerIndiana a network of people and ideas who understand these new paradigms and are moving quickly to connect and innovate.  We have asked this network what would be valuable to folks in Indiana? What other networks can Midtown Brews connect to?

By bringing technology, creative industries, and energy thought leaders together, how can we identify the new innovation opportunities to accelerate workforce development and transformation in NEO?

A General Guide to Program

6:00 PM - 6:05 PM

Welcome - Hosts and Midtown Brews team - Andy Halko; Jeff Friedman; Gloria Ferris

6:05 PM - 7:00 PM
Introductions (Your Name - Affiliation - Why you are here) and Open Conversation (for all participants)

7:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Networking

7:30 PM
Close

Simple Rules for Discussions 

(Modified from the MacNeil/Lehrer convener template for Making Change forums)

The Moderator will guide the discussion, yet remain neutral.

The Moderator will make sure that:

• Everyone is encouraged to participate.
  
• No one or two individuals dominate the discussion.
  
• All participants listen carefully to each other and consider all ideas and viewpoints.
  
• A positive and constructive atmosphere for discussion and analysis of alternatives is maintained.
  
• Everyone understands that this is an open forum and there is no right or wrong answer.