Joel LibavaIf you are a Clevelander who considers themselves tuned in to our dynamic and growing web community, you must be super-familiar with George Nemeth’s Brewed Fresh Daily Blog. Right? Well I just did an interview with George, who wields some local internet power…………
I met George last year, through his BFD blog. I commented about something to do with Cleveland’s economic woes, and he not only posted MY comment, but he linked to my new blog. {New at the time!}
I sent him an e-mail thanking him, and he responded, and liked what I had to say. Since then, George has been a wonderful and encouraging supporter of mine. Anyway, George wields some power in the Cleveland blogosphere, and has quite an active readership. George also has "Meet The Bloggers." That has a more political feel to it. Blogs like MTB, are a newer way to reach out to voters. Cleveland’s blogging community is very well know around the country, and George is one of the reasons why.
George and I sat down {No we didn’t} and discussed BFD, and what George has been up to:
1. What date is the first post on BFD?
July 29, 2002
2. How did you come up the idea, and the name?
I started doing the blog because I had a
domain (nemeth.ws) and wanted to do a website. I read an article somewhere
about blogger.com (I think it was Wired) and thought I would give it a try.
3. You run BFD. You help with Cool Cleveland.com. You have your "Meet The Bloggers" site. {MTB} How do you keep up with it all?
Serious amounts of caffeine…….. usually in the form of coffee, black.
4. What other projects are you working on, that you would be willing to share?
Right now, I haven’t committed to any
new project. I recently became a homeowner (in the City of Cleveland) so I’ve been fixing up our house, and
getting involved in the community. I’ve been attending community development
corp. meetings (Northeast Shores. Check out their blog: https://northeastshores.blogspot.com/).
Additionally, I’ve become a trustee to ArtsCollinwood. Their website is
ArtsCollinwood.org
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5. Please share your thoughts about Cleveland, and the direction it is headed in.
That’s a tough question, Joel. While I’m
optimistic about the long term future (did just buy a home here), I’m got some
serious concerns about the near future.Cleveland is the proverbial tale of two cities.
One one hand, there’s plenty of things to be excited about—windfarms on the
lake, the ingenuity festival, serious economic development in the arts and
creative industries. On the other, there’s a chronic lack of vision and
leadership at the civic level. I’d cite the changes at the city’s department of
economic development, the trouble in city council, initiatives like the convention
center or casino gambling that fail to gain popular support, county
commissioners raising taxes without address the public’s concerns about how the
money will be spent. I think we’re at a crucial moment in history, and if our
leaders become more responsive, we’ll all have a much better future.
Well spoken, George.
