Category: Articles
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Nurturing Creativity, Destroying Stereotypes
What are your iconic images of West Virginia culture? A group of old-time fiddlers? Crafts at Tamarack or the Mountain State Arts and Crafts Festival? Most likely these images include older, white folks keeping Scotch-Irish traditions alive in the rural hills. A great avenue towards sparking creativity is combining things that may never have been…
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More Media Innovation in WV
For those who haven’t heard about it, you might want to check out WV Newsline, a news aggregating service started by Paul Helmick. The service pulls headlines from a multitude of state news outlets into one page so you can quickly view what is going on around the state. There are versions for several other…
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Clusters of Opportunity
It’s great to see some progress on West Virginia State University’s Media Center project. Combined with the numerous marketing firms that line Capitol and Summers Streets in Charleston, we could ultimately incubate a nice little marketing-media industry cluster in downtown Charleston. Economists have been learning a lot about the “cluster” dynamic of industries. Basically, independent…
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What Can We Learn From a Model Creative Community?
We just finalized our first Creative Communities workshop here in beautiful Shepherdstown, WV. An impressive group of over 20 local leaders from various categories attended, including the Jefferson County Development Authority, American Public University, Shepherd University, Frontier Communications and many others. Special thanks to Jane Peters, Exec Director of the JCDA for organizing an impressive…
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Creative Community in the Northern Panhandle
Oglebay Institute StratusWave Communications – Justin Seibertdirectom.comDirect Online Marketing
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Succeeding in Different Eras
I was honored to be the invited speaker at this week’s Rotary Club of Wheeling meeting to discuss the Create WV initiative. Some fantastic people in Wheeling. [Quick aside: What is the equivalent of the Rotary Club for young people? Aren’t organizations like that a critical part of developing the next generation of leaders?] Before…
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Speaking of Wireless
Sunday’s Charleston Gazette-Mail has a story covering the plan to cover the East End of Charleston with Wi-Fi connectivity. Details are thin, but this is similar to the efforts of other cities who have attempted to spark economic activity by treating Wi-Fi broadband coverage as a public utility. Municipal Wi-Fi was on a real tear…
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Wild, Wonderful, Wireless
We’ll get there…one hot spot at a time. createwv.typepad.com View this photo Incidentally, shouldn’t we just go ahead and make it law that all libaries must include a hip coffee shop?
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New Media from the Mountains
One of the most exciting things we’ve observed during the Create WV initiative so far is the creation of new media businesses bursting forth around West Virginia. The media industry – news, entertainment, etc. – has gone through dramatic changes with the explosive growth of the Internet and the advancement of media creation tools that…
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Building Livable Communities
One area we haven’t touched on yet during this Create West Virginia dialog is the topic of livable, sustainable communities. This is a topic of interest not just because it is an attractor of creative New Economy talent, but also because of its importance to all citizens concerned with our future quality of life. A…