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| MATR Newsletter - Tue Oct 13, 2009 |
"This allows me to take orders from all over the globe and live in the most beautiful place in the world." Scott Morrison - Rocking Chair Builder to the World http://matr.net/articl ... .html
"I know that Montana is the greatest place in the world to raise a family, to start and grow a business. You know it, and I know it and now we will tell the world." Gov. Brian Schweitzer -- "Billings, Montana (#1 among small metro areas) and Missoula, Montana Included in CNNMoney.com Best Places to Launch Small Business Startups" http://matr.net/articl ... .html
Ignite Missoula
Dorsey & Whitney LLP
- Watch Ignite Missoula's First Night of Presentations!
Even though you may have missed the inaugural event, you can now see all of the presentations via the miracle of modern technology. (You really should try to be at the next one because the crowd and the networking are half the fun.
TechRanch
- Don’t Just Close Your Eyes and Leap: Top Five Issues in the Facebook Terms of Use
Even if you already have a Page, it is not too late to reduce your company’s legal risk in several areas.
Highway 12 Ventures
- Organizations like TechRanch are essential to stop Montana’s ‘brain drain’
Despite its successes, TechRanch struggles to keep its doors open. Like all non-profits landing grant funding and other financial support is a continuous challenge.
MSU Leadership Institute
- Legal Documentation For Venture Backed Seed Deals
The call for streamlined documentation has created a somewhat Newtonian effect (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction).
Come Home Montana
- New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof calls on Americans to act at Montana State University Leadership Institute Event - He inspires MSU students to save the world
What brought his attention to the plight of women and girls, he said, was realizing that while about 500 Tiananmen students were killed, just as many infant girls die in China each week -- 39,000 a year -- from neglect and lack of medical care because they are girls.
- Montana State University student leaders surprise retiring President, Geoff Gamble with scholarship award in his name
"President Gamble has had a tremendous impact on student leadership development at MSU, and this scholarship recognizes that," said Carmen McSpadden, director of the MSU Leadership Institute. "He is such a student-centered leader."
Montana Business
- Montana Career Opportunity - Senior Software Developer
seasoned software developer with 5-10 years of experience to help convert legacy systems to web-based (internal and customer facing) systems.
- Montana Career Opportunity - VoIP Administrator - Glacier Bancorp, Inc.
Coordinate strategies for defining, deploying, and maintaining the company's IP telephony systems. NEC IPS experience desired, degree in the field of computer science helpful.
- Former NASA space shuttle engineer who's now a Montana chair maker creates DVD to teach the world how to build fine chairs
"This allows me to take orders from all over the globe and live in the most beautiful place in the world."
- American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana clicks - "Oh boy, how far we've come,"
"The use of Electricity for lighting is in no way harmful to health, nor does it affect the soundness of sleep."
- History gathering for 'those who love Montana's past' Oct. 15-17 in Great Falls.
Ever wonder who made Great Falls the "Electric City," what Charlie Russell did to "rustle up" interest in saving bison, where the first brewery in Montana was located, or how Malmstrom Air Force Base came to Great Falls?
- Billings, Montana (#1 among small metro areas) and Missoula, Montana Included in CNNMoney.com Best Places to Launch Small Business Startups
"I know that Montana is the greatest place in the world to raise a family, to start and grow a business. You know it, and I know it and now we will tell the world." Gov. Brian Schweitzer
Montana Economic Development
- Montana Based Profitech Hospitality Group Helps Bars, Restaurants Control Costs
The software systems White sells, customizes and services help owners track everything from how many times a table is seated each night to how many appetizers, entrees and drinks are sold. His software can improve communication between hosts, wait staff and cooks, adding to the business's profitability, White claims.
- Montana Entrepreneurs: Concern about drug abuse inspires business - Awareness Drug Detection
"The best way to attack the problem is prevention, detection and intervention," he said. "And, like the battle against cancer, the earlier the better."
- La Cense Ranch of Dillon, Montana first to receive stringent USDA "grass fed" certification
The USDA launched the standard as a way to verify companies that claim that their cattle are 100 percent grass fed actually are.
- Healthy competition: St. Patrick, Community walk fine line on collaboration in Missoula, Montana
We need to be working on economic development issues here in Missoula, because there are some threats to our client base out there now," said Fee. "That's a competition that's not St. Pat's and Community. That's Missoula versus the rest of the region."
- Health chief promotes Healthy Montana Kids
A family of four can earn up to $55,125 per year and have their children qualify for Healthy Montana Kids.
- NorthWestern Energy Submits Energy Efficiency Program Plans to South Dakota Public Utilities Commission For Consideration
NorthWestern Energy has submitted a plan to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission that, if approved, would enable the company to offer its customers a broad array of energy efficiency programs.
- Building With New Efficiency - Montana Sustainable Building Systems of Whitefish, Montana, promises highly sustainable, environmental buildings
“We’re about to build North America’s most advanced wood-processing plant by light years.”
- Bitterroot Resort foreclosure proves a fitting end
Opponents of unregulated sprawl, at long last, can pause for a breath.
Regional Economic Development
- The Montana Rural Health Initiative (RHI) Launches Incubator Program.
The Incubator is a program to provide assistance to communities interested in starting a health prevention or wellness program. If you are starting such a program in your community and are looking for assistance in getting the program going, you are invited to apply to the Incubator.
Careers
- The Rural Brain Drain
What is going on in small-town America?
- Oklahoma Regents Implement Making Place Matter Project
Making Place Matter, a project of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, was designed to provide tools and practical insights for community and campus leaders as they seek to build partnerships and to create a more vital and viable economy in their local and regional communities.
- Empowering Rural America - A New Model Emerges
Sustaining economic recovery through broadband coupled with workforce development, collaborative entrepreneurship and innovation.
Funding and Building your Business
- Universities try innovative ways to get grads jobs
“All this stuff is trying to shake the paradigm,” he said. Instead of concentrating on internships, website applications, and uploads, “we’re trying to get people talking to people.”
Montana Education Excellence
- Five Qualities Venture Capital Firms Look For in Startups
The key feature is strong leadership--it's absolutely vital as far as KPCB is concerned and this makes good sense: Start-ups are often relatively small enterprises, with short management chains and they'll face significant challenges on a day-to-day basis. Good leadership is key to surviving these.
- Cisco rolls out tool to help employers block porn.
Cisco has rolled out new technology it says can help employers be much more effective at stopping employees from surfing to porn sites -- a practice that can trigger sexual harassment lawsuits -- or to other sites deemed non-productive.
- How to set up a Facebook and Twitter account for your business
Twitter http://www.twitter.com is a free social and microblogging service that allows users to send brief, frequent messages of no more than 140 characters. Messages are known as Tweets.
- Social tools like Facebook, Twitter help business get word out - Companies big and small cashing in with Facebook, Twitter
"I attribute the second location totally to Facebook because of what it's done,"
Idaho Business
- Superintendent Juneau Announces $6 Million Early Reading First Grant for Montana
Known as the Montana Partnership for Early Literacy (MPEL), the project will assist approximately 400 young children gain literacy skills at a young age.
- Waded Cruzado-Salas offered presidency of Montana State University
Cruzado-Salas is current executive vice president and provost of New Mexico State University.
- New science class lights up gifted students in Bozeman, Montana
Bozeman High has always pointed to its college-level Advanced Placement classes as its way of serving the brightest students. But AP classes aren’t offered until sophomore year, so there was nothing for ninth-graders, said Jill Schaunaman, gifted and talented coordinator for the Bozeman schools. Creating a gifted science class, Schaunaman said, “is a cost-effective way to meet gifted kids’ academic needs.”
- 'Double Take:' Montana State University graduate and X-Games athlete, Kevin Connolly's unusual viewpoint is at heart of new memoir
It's not your average college graduate who within two years of leaving the university has his memoirs published by a major publisher and exhibits his photos in top galleries across the world. But then, Kevin Connolly has never been average.
Oregon Economic Development
- Idaho's tourism industry puts focus on the state's image
If North Idaho's tourism industry is to thrive despite the nation's economic conditions, businesses catering to the traveler must help change the way the state is viewed by the rest of the country.
- After hard times, Idaho town of Emmett reinvents itself
New businesses and civic improvements in Emmett are bringing new hope to the former wood products and fruit-growing area.
Washington State Business
- To gain more income, Oregon universities are recruiting foreign students
The students came to OSU this fall in the first wave of a push to double the number of foreign students in five years, lure $15 million more in tuition and add more international flavor to campus.
Education
- Diverse 'clusters' put Spokane on the map
It has long been a truism the city does not suffer the lowest lows or enjoy the highest highs because of the diversity. The local nature of most clusters has insulated the area from some of the shocks to the national economy.
- Businesses dip toes into online networking pools
For every active Twitter-using company in this area, one can easily find dozens more looking for guidance about how to use it effectively.
Community
- How video games are good for the brain
Concerns about violent programs persist, but researchers are discovering that playing can boost cognitive function and foster positive behavior
- School Stimulus Funds Not Used As Intended
The Department of Education's inspector general reports that some states are using stimulus dollars to replace money they've cut from their education budget — despite instructions to the contrary.
Connectivity & Communications
- There’s No Place Like Home, Americans are Returning to Localism
Perhaps nothing will be as surprising about 21st-century America as its settledness.
- Bring Americorps to your Community - Grant Funds Available for Montana Organizations that Address Community Needs
The grants will be awarded through the Montana Commission on Community Service to organizations that address pressing community needs on topics including; education, clean energy/environment, healthy futures and veterans' issues.
Energy and Climate Change
- Twitter, meet Second Life - YouTube videos viewed 1 billion times a day
After all the wild economic swings we've endured the past decade, we have failed to learn some essential lessons.
- Why Email No Longer Rules… And what that means for the way we communicate
Just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate—in ways we can only begin to imagine.
- OECD research faulty U.S. rates for mobile use not really higher
He raises an issue that MTA long has been concerned with: international rankings of U.S. broadband usage by the OECD. Such rankings have been “faulty,” Spiwak points out.
Miscellaneous Ramblings
- States not meeting renewable energy goals
In their quest to draw more renewable power, states have come up against obstacles such as the recession, red tape and an outdated transmission system that makes it difficult to move solar or wind power from where it's made to where it's needed.
- Green walls taking root in green building design
Like green roofs - their perpendicular counterparts - green walls are covered in vegetation and provide the benefits of natural insulation and removal of air pollutants.
- Pilot "Clean Coal" Project Capturing 90% of CO2
"One of the biggest challenges facing our industry is the development of cost effective technology that will allow us to capture carbon from the operation of power plants around the world," said Klappa. "Today, with the success we're reporting from the research here at Pleasant Prairie, the solution is one step closer to reality."
- Drive to Link Wind, Solar Power to Distant Users
Proposed Station Would Connect Separate Grids, Enabling Electricity Generated in Remote Sites to Reach a Wider Market
- California solar users could see their wallets get fatter
The bills, long sought by California's renewable energy industry and among hundreds signed by the governor late Sunday night, could radically change the relationship between businesses and homeowners and their local utility company, making them paid producers and suppliers of electricity.
- Transforming Clean-Energy Industry Into a Local One
In Rock Port, Mo., spinning turbines already are producing more than 100 percent of the town's annual energy requirements.
- Wood making comeback as power source
Another plus: wood-burning boilers can churn out a steady supply of electricity. Solar power is only made when the sun shines, and windmills turn only when the wind blows.
Cool Stuff That's Coming
- Where the Hell is Matt?
This is a video I've watched many times. It's really simple but for some reason, it always gives me a great feeling about mankind.
- 10 Best Things We'll Say to Our Grandkids
1. Back in my day, we only needed 140 characters.
Government Technology
- Speed Bumps That Also Generate Electricity
The MotionPower device also captures kinetic energy that would otherwise be lost and turns it into electricity that host businesses could use to offset their operating costs.
- Bright Ideas: Color-Changing Roof Tiles and Solar-Panel Highways
A team of MIT students http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/madmec-roof.html has come up with a new idea in roofing, called Thermeleon http://thermeleon.com/ -- after the color-changing chameleon -- that turns white when hot, and black when cold. The tiles use a common polymer that reacts to temperature.
- Next boom could be in clean technology
Our economy sure could use the Next Big Thing. Something on the scale of railroads, automobiles or the Internet -- the kind of breakthrough that emerges every so often and builds industries, generates jobs and mints fortunes.
The Creative and Cultural Economy
- To Do More With Less, Governments Go Digital
“This is about the modernization and mechanization of services.”
Transportation
- CraftNet - SKETCHES - September 2009 Volume 5 Number 3
CraftNet is an international network of community colleges devising innovative ways through partnerships to develop artisan-based strengths into a sustainable growth sector for each of their service areas.
- AAA offering "Outdoor Junkie" web site for outdoor activities and enthusiasts in Montana, Alaska and Wyoming
The new "Outdoor Junkie" web site allows local adventurists in Montana, Alaska and Wyoming to share stories, pictures, videos and links online.
- Hundreds of parishioners and guests at Missoula's First Presbyterian Church - including the grandson who shares his name - celebrate the legacy and life of John Norman Maclean, so emotively portrayed in "A River Runs Through It,"
"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." People must, he wrote, search for God in the rhythms of nature. And in the discipline of fly fishing, you seek God by whipping the fly rod "on a four-count rhythm between ten and two o'clock."
- Digital Cities: The transport of tomorrow is already here
Four cities where the future of transport has already arrived.
- Federal Electric Vehicle Tax Credit Must Be Changed
It’s a road we’ve traveled before, but this time we need to get it right.
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