Category: Up To Speed

Links to keep you up to speed on what’s happening in Cincinnati and what we can learn from other cities.

Categories
Up To Speed

Cincinnati submits bid to host NCAA men’s tournament

Cincinnati submits bid to host NCAA men’s tournament.

After successfully hosting the biggest event in its history, Cincinnati leaders are eyeing the next big event to keep the tourism boom going. While many were busy lobbying Major League Baseball to bring the 2015 All-Star Game to Cincinnati, other leaders were filing official bids to host preliminary rounds of the 2014 and 2015 NCAA Men’s Division I basketball tournament, and the 2014 NCAA Division I hockey regional. More from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

The Greater Cincinnati Sports Corporation submitted four different bids: one for each of the second-/third-round games in 2014 and 2015, and for the regionals in each of those years. Only one of the four would be awarded. It’s not very often that a city has gotten back-to-back March Madnesses in the same two-year bid cycle, an NCAA official said…Even with having to accommodate a major media contingent, U.S. Bank Arena would have over 16,000 seats. That’s 4,500 seats more than McKale Center in Tucson in each of its five March Madnesses since Cincinnati went dark: 1994, 1997, 2004, 2005 and 2011.

Categories
Up To Speed

Germans dominate ethnic makeup of Ohio cities

Germans dominate ethic makeup of Ohio cities.

What may be unsurprising to many locals, new U.S. Census numbers confirm that German-Americans make up the largest ethnic group in the Cincinnati region. Analysis shows that approximately 28% of Cincinnatians responded that have German roots, which is more than Ohio’s two other major cities (Cleveland 17%; Columbus 23%). More from The Business Journals:

German-Americans form the largest ethnic group in the United States — 45.7 million persons. But their prominence is even more striking when viewed at the local level. On Numbers has analyzed ancestry data for every metropolitan and micropolitan area covered by the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey. German-Americans are the biggest ethnic group in more than three-fifths of those markets — 580 of 942.

Categories
Up To Speed

Bunbury Music Festival impresses in year one

Bunbury Festival: 2012 Wrap Up | Each Note Secure.

Cincinnati has been left without a noteworthy summer rock festival since Desdemona ended and never returned in 2006. That was until Bunbury entered the scene July 13-15. The music festival went up against an impressive array of local events and two well-established rock festivals nearby in Louisville and Chicago. More from Each Note Secure:

Regardless of Bunbury’s minor hiccups, I was blown away by the size, organization, and turnout of the festival. The festival pulled in 55,000 people in its first year, which is mighty impressive considering it shared dates with two other musical festivals that have been around since 2002 and 2005 respectively…Bunbury haters will continue to balk over the lineup (there’s always Midpoint!), but I was impressed that the festival was able to draw a wide range of folks, from older fans of GBV and Jane’s Addiction to the younger fans who came out for Neon Trees.

Categories
Up To Speed

With World Choir Games finished, Cincinnati eyes next major event

With World Choir Games finished, Cincinnati eyes next major event.

The 2012 World Choir Games exceeded all expectations, and city officials are being praised for their ability to execute the international event flawlessly. With the two-week event now over, Cincinnati leaders are eyeing what might be the next major event for the Queen City. More from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

As the Games’ concerts and contests unfolded, as medals were won and lost, as choirs from around the world roamed the streets of Cincinnati giving this old river city a vibrant international feel thanks to midday traffic jams, conversations flavored with a multitude of accents and scenes sweetened by sidewalks teaming with smiling faces, the city’s party planners made a wish list. The events discussed included: Cincinnati’s 225th birthday, a World Choir Games-sanctioned Games of the Americas – starring choirs from the tip of North America to the toes of South America – and a new Tall Stacks Music, Arts & Heritage Festival, all in 2013; Baseball’s 2015 All-Star Game, and the University of Cincinnati’s bicentennial in 2019.

Categories
Up To Speed

New iPhone will expose Cincinnati’s lack of open data

New iPhone will expose Cincinnati’s lack of open data.

With the imminent introduction of the next generation iPhone from Apple, the new phone and iOS interface is poised to eliminate Google Maps in favor of Apple’s own mapping software package. The move, which will come by fall of this year, provides driving directions but relies on third-party applications to provide transit directions. The Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) is one of the top ten agencies that does not provide the necessary open data necessary to create a transit app to replace Google Maps. More from The Atlantic:

The strategy relies on a pretty big assumption, and third-party developers need open data to build these tools…Many cities still aren’t sharing their data, including big ones like Atlanta, Phoenix, and Detroit. Along with hundreds of other metros, these cities do provide their transit data directly to Google for use in Google Maps, using a standardized format Google developed known as the General Transit Feed Specification (or GTFS). Giving data to Google is not, however, what developers mean when they talk about “open data.”