Akron

I had an informal meeting last week with my good friend Jeff, who has an e-commerce website. He reads this blog and during the meeting we talked about one of the posts - this one in which I ramble on about my possible future. Anyway, while we were talking about it I mentioned Brewed Fresh Daily, Knotice, Sage Rock, and probably some other bloggers / people / companies that he hadn’t heard of that are based in Northeast Ohio. I thought about doing a post about these bloggers / people / companies, but then I thought it’s probably better as a stand alone, not a post that will disappear from the homepage in a week or so. So… I’d like to introduce NEO2.0.

NEO2.0 is a wiki to help promote all of the great things happening in Northeast Ohio. I feel that the people that are working hard to push our community forward don’t get enough recognition - especially in the early stages of their projects - I’m hoping this wiki can help a little in that regard. (The password is ohio.)

For now I’m just using a free hosted wiki (from pbwiki which I highly recommend) - but if it gains a little traction I’ll consider hosting it or doing something other than a wiki. Ideally, I’d create a social network for the type of people interested in this site that allows the people that I’m trying to promote to connect, exchange ideas, and maybe plan some interesting events. We’ll see - that’s a long way from where this is right now.

Try it out and please add as much stuff as you’d like. Remember the password is ohio.

Update: This has been corrected.

Welcome to Akron, where spelling doesn’t count. This week for website Wednesday and Marketing Thursday (I have to take the day off for Turkey Day) I’m going to point you to the Downtown Akron website and its glaring spelling error. The Homepage if fine, but for the “Do Downtown” portion of the site Downtown is spelled Downtow in all of the Title Tags - yikes. That may seem like a small mistake to you (though I wouldn’t stand for it, ever) but it becomes more important when you consider that the “Do Downtown” portion of the site is the likely the main draw. Many downtown businesses are listed on that part of the site, and the pages do fairly well in Search Results… so it’s not just in the title of the page that shows at the top of the browser - it’s in the search results (I know my technical readers will be familiar with that concept, that’s for the less techno-savvy readers). Googling Downtow Akron will give you a good idea of the real problem.

Worse, today the Akron Beacon Journal is promoting this website as the first step in the plan of the new head of the Downtown Akron Partnership.

I like a lot of what the city has done to revitalize itself, I like the “Do Downtown” concept - but you have to hit on all cylinders if you want to earn respect.

I’m leaving Portage Lakes. Sad, and not only because I will now have to change the title of my blog. I will still be in Akron, but the owner of my house has decided to sell it. It’s been a great time living on the lake. Other than the obvious great lake location, I’ve gained a new appreciation for this part of Akron. I’ll only be about 20 minutes away but I doubt I’ll make the trip back very often… although I may make an exception for Pav’s.