BLACKHEART Cleveland

The Cleveland blogosphere is full of egomaniacal poseurs who only promote Cleveland as a front for personalized, self-contained, circle-jerking whuffie inflation. Far too many Cleveland bloggers are interested in increasing their apparent social capital (and lining their pockets while doing so) than actually improving the city. Norm Roulet at RealNEO, George Nemeth, “Tech Czar” Michael DeAloia, Meet the Bloggers, and the Cleveland Social Media Club, I’m looking at you.

Jeff Buster thinks that:

shaking out the good, bad and the ugly PESONALITIES may not be the most productive way to advance NEO. Shaking out the ideas is another thing.

Well Jeff, you’re wrong. The personalities are the problem. In the time that Cleveland bloggers have spent chasing grant money or scrambling for access and influence with the people in power, they could have actually accomplished some game-changing benefit for the city. Yet whenever two or more gather in the name of Blogging for Change™, agendas and personalities clash and the conversations inevitably turn toward monetizing the activity. “Hey this sounds great! Let’s get someone to pay us to do it!” And then, when the smell of money starts to smell like work, the new hotness becomes the new hot potato.

You don’t think the Cleveland blogosphere luminaries are out to make a buck and make a name for themselves? Wake up! Grab a cup of coffee and read on.

Data Point One - Norm Roulet & RealNEO

Here’s a pretty egregious example of money chasing:

Trust-fund baby Norm Roulet keeps trying to squeeze $10 (or 20 or 30) million out of the County to (initially):

establish 1) Real Co-Op Food: a $10 million economic development co-op fund for local foods sector development in 2009, and 2) Real Co-op Info: a $10 million economic development co-op fund for open source information technology and social computing development in 2009.

which then morphed into the RealNEO messiah-of-the-month Marc Canter’s idea:

I have proposed a $10 million open source social computing community development initiative to Commissioner Jones and many of the directors at the County and have every reason to believe that will proceed, which will shift all our focus to developing “Citizen Dashboard”

and we get back to the food thing which claims that RealNEO was

recently recognized as one of the top networks of our type in the country, by the Knight Foundation

but the truth comes out in a comment:

The Knight Foundation did not recognize Realneo.us directly, but rather The Knight Foundation funded a study at, as I remember, the University of Missouri school of Journalism.

What this really means is that the Knight Foundation hasn’t even heard of RealNEO; just some journalism researchers in Missouri. What is troubling though, is that Norm Roulet is essentially lying on his resume about the Knight Foundation recognition in order to improve his chances at getting some cash.

Remember, this is a guy who, when asked for details on how to draft a proposal for grant funding for RealNEO said:

Our proposal to the county includes funding to figure all that out - to be honest, it is an expensive and time consuming process to define

Not only is it stupid to assume that someone is going to give you money when you don’t even have a plan, it definitely shows a lack of integrity on the part of RealNEO as a whole to make up something to put into a grant proposal in order to get money, instead of having a legitimate idea and then seeking grant money for it. Including grant money to go to Paris:

I like your thinking - REAL COOP/REALNEO needs to be at Drupalcon09 in Paris, and push for Drupalcon10 in NEO.

It’s going in the budget for Cuyahoga County, I can tell you that right now.

Hm. Sure sounds legit to me!

Data Point 2 - Meet the Bloggers

Meet the Bloggers was a fantastic opportunity to legitimize the “local bloggers as citizen journalists” paradigm. It ended as a bloody gutter abortion due to personality conflicts and greed. Meet the Bloggers started as a way to get more in-depth coverage of candidates in the 2005 Cleveland mayoral race. There were some costs associated with the project, a variety of fundraisers were held, and funding was sought to help sustain the quality of the content.

Funding ended up being sought a little more zealously than quality content, and when Tim Russo, one of the founders and the main driving force for scheduling top quality interviews, was kicked out because of his past, no one else had the gumption to keep things kicking. The last interview was two years ago, and toward the end, Meet the Bloggers scraped the barrel-bottom by interviewing their friends (perfectly great people in their own right, but not up to snuff in terms of MTB’s initial ambitious goals).

There have been indications lately that Meet The Bloggers is going to be resurrected (or, more likely, turned into Zombie Meet The Bloggers).

Where the plot really thickens however, is that just about every piece of information about the reasons the original Meet the Bloggers aborted has mysteriously disappeared from the internet. Just about the only thing you can find about those fateful weeks in 2006 is in this post by Bridget Ginley. Incidentally, she’s said that:

my post about the whole meet the bloggerbooger screw over has had more hits in the last few weeks than ever before.

What is clear is that someone committed a felony by hacking into Blogger Interrupted and deleting three posts. Only three posts are missing, and it just so happens that all three posts have to do with Meet the Bloggers. Tim Russo has his suspicions that George Nemeth is involved in this fiasco. In response, George posted this smug non-denial:

Here’s a note I sent my MTB friend Tim regarding his recent technical glitches:

Hey Tim. How are you doing? It’s been a long time. Sorry to hear that you’re missing content on your blog. I can imagine how you feel. Last time BFD crashed, I lost about 5 months of posts that I’ll never get back. While jumping to the conclusion that I “hacked your blog” seems reasonable based on our past history, hacking would be unprofessional and frankly unethical. I think my standards are much higher then that.

which stinks to holy hell. Another commenter says:

what you have quoted here is something i would write if i were guilty as a former buffalo bills running back.

To summarize: Two posts about George Nemeth and one post about Scott Piepho and their involvement with Meet the Bloggers were deleted by someone who hacked into Tim Russo’s weblog. The bad blood between George and Tim results in accusations from Tim and a snarky non-denial from George.

As of now it appears that Tim is letting the issue go, but if there is one conclusion that can be reached from this little story, it is that the parties involved in Meet the Bloggers have made it a morass of self-interest. What could have been an amazing 4 years of innovative citizen journalism was ruined by avarice. That makes any attempt to resurrect Meet the Bloggers automatically up for suspicion of ulterior motives. Where’s the money this time?

Data Point 3 - Cleveland Social Media Club

I’m sure there are plenty of members of the Cleveland Social Media Club who just think it’s a fun excuse to get some drinks and pass around some egoboo, but the main movers and shakers are after money, again. The newer, innocent members of the Clevosphere are in danger of being sucked into the “how can i monetize my opinions” paradigm by the same old crew that has spent the last 5 years trying to get money for their own opinions. The newbies have no idea what they are walking into. The names are familiar:

For example, the Cleveland Social Media Ventures Workgroup, headed by former Cleveland Tech Czar Michael DeAloia:

The SMVF was originally conceived as an “ever-green” fund that would raise between $3.0 million and $5.0 million in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio to invest in the fledgling social media industry. The SMCC took it upon itself to apply for Third Frontier Funds from the State of Ohio. Every economic development group that the SMCC took this concept too offered key advice but little in the way of overt support. Based upon the complexity and the very short duration of time that the SMCC had to register with the State of Ohio it was decided to shelve the concept until the fall of 2009.  That was until the SMCC, after during significant research, discovered an opportunity to request $30,000 in a grant from the Civic Innovation Lab (www.civicinnovationlab.org). These grant dollars would help support the legal fees and consulting fees necessary to successfully launch the SMVF.

Sound familiar? From the same post:

All expectations out of the event were that other start-ups were going to begin percolating in Cleveland. I am part of two start-ups (and a third being discussed) that will begin development and beta testing very soon.

That should definitely sound familiar. In fact, it sounds like Michael DeAloia is trying to use the Cleveland Social Media Venture Fund as a way to funnel money into his own start-ups. He should get together with Norm Roulet!

George Nemeth is in the mix again, looking for money, any money at all (comments can be found digging through here):

who else should we be talking about this to? Is there federal money (Congressman Ryan’s Tech Belt Initiative)? Venture Capital? Angel investors?

and can’t understand why TechLift might dismiss their request:

Why would they torpedo our request? It’s probably the most viable proposal they’ll receive…

I’m guessing the reason is because grant-making committees are bloodhounds after bullshit proposals. They can sense insincerity and greed just by smelling the paper such proposals are printed on.

The Cleveland Social Media Club sounds more like a non-profit than a club. They have a Steering Committee, a Social Media Center Workgroup and the aforementioned Social Media Venture Fund. And the membership is crowd-sourcing Michael DeAloia’s and George Nemeth’s work for them. One way these guys have improved over the years is that they’ve figured out a way to get other people to do the work for them. Join a group to help the Tech Czar fund his own start-ups!

Addendum

Tom Guard at The Daily Bragger got his feelings hurt a couple of weeks ago when we commented about his post about the CSMC and sent BHC an email:

I really thought you had a great concept with your blog. I enjoyed reading it. I even considered linking to it. That is until I got a pretty vile backlink. Why would it be such a bad thing for members of Cleveland’s Social Media Club to get together and write an ebook on social networking? There is no marketing ploy. As a blogger, local business owner and resident inside the city of Cleveland, I’m really dissapointed with your latest post. Good luck with your blog,

First off, this email is a joke. It is written by a guy whose LinkedIn profile claims his primary job is Author/Blogger and whose job description consists of: “Write and demonstrate blogging tips, social media tips and opinionated news.” His business is telling other people how to make money by blogging. No wonder he had his feelings hurt, his whole shtick is self-marketing.

Also, George Nemeth, CSMC founding member, does SEO marketing for Adcom/Optiem, a marketing agency; Dominic Litten (founder of CSMC), Senior Account Executive for Fathom SEO, a marketing agency; Michael DeAloia does little else but talk about social media marketing on his blog and his best friend, John Heaney is a social media marketer. And that vapid Cleveland Social Media video? - It was made by thunder::tech, a local marketing agency who’s founder, Jason Therrien, is also a member of the Cleveland Social Media Club.

So, Tom Guard of The Daily Bragger, when you tell me that anything the CSMC does isn’t a marketing ploy, I call bullshit. Try harder.

Wrap-up

It’s just… tiring; the same people year after year, trying gimmick after gimmick to get someone to hand them money. That’s the way people seem to operate in Cleveland. How can I trick people into funding my pet project? How can I scam some cash for my business associate? Screw whether the project is viable, or whether it even needs money to be a success in the first place. What’s in it for me?

You know what… trying to bootstrap your ideas in order to make a buck is the American way. There’s nothing wrong with that. But pretending that your motives are altruistic while doing so is scummy shyster behavior. Be honest, motherfuckers. Admit that you’re out for yourselves, to feed your egos, to make an easy buck. You’ll feel a lot better about yourselves - it will be freeing. Come out of the closet. And, in case you didn’t know this, your efforts at marketing improve nothing. Try harder.