|
|
|
| MATR Newsletter - Tue Jul 7, 2015 |
This MATR newsletter sponsored by: 
Add an event... Upcoming Events
New Events
MATR supporter: To subscribe or unsubscribe from the free weekly MATR newsletter, please visit our list info page |
"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence." -- Vince Lombardi, American football coach
Senator Tester's 15th Small Business Opportunity Workshop, 7/17, Missoula, Montana http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html
Great Falls Development Authority
Come Home Montana
- Great Falls Development Authority Top 14 for July 5, 2015
Here's the GFDA Top 14 for this week, celebrating great things happening to move Great Falls Forward.
- Great Falls Area Labor Demand Certification
The purpose of assessing the workforce is to provide employers with labor information necessary to make better informed decisions for private investment that minimizes risks for hiring, retaining, and developing the workforce.
Montana Business
- Missoula Police officer's good deed hailed by touring bloggers
Not all good deeds go unnoticed.
Montana Economic Development
- Heaven Scent Solutions from Whitefish, Montana
All-Natural Products For Body, Home and Business- Using Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade® Essential Oils
- Help wanted: With low jobless rate, many Montana employers face challenges finding workers
"It becomes a seeker's market," when unemployment is so low, said John Harper, a supervisor at Billings Job Service. "That gives lots of opportunities for employees, but for an employer, there is a lot of pressure on them."
- Kickstarter Campaign - Air Pump, River Guide Grade from Missoula, Montana
This is high volume hand pump for rafts and other inflated craft. It does not need maintenance and is easy to use, It stands 36 inches.
- The cost of selling a drink: Liquor licensing in Montana is expensive, unique; some want to change it, some say it's fine
Although the secondary market for selling liquor licenses is legal, it's also largely unregulated and can only be measured by the sale prices voluntarily reported to the state.
- It's all about employee engagement: Billings-based Elation strives to change the way people work
Elation provides a variety of services that are designed to help businesses and nonprofit organizations improve their performance. The company offers a series of leadership courses, specialized coaching sessions and personal development programs.
- Montana's CTA Architects
Firm sees innovative potential in neglected, industrial downtown space
Rural Communities
- Senator Tester announces Business Advancement Panel for 15th Small Business Opportunity Workshop July 17 in Missoula
Montana small business owners will have exclusive access to top economic development leaders
- Montana to award $15 million in research funding
The legislature agreed to fund research into Montana job creation, important sectors of state economy such as agriculture, natural resources, manufacturing or health and biomedicine, and into solving Montana-specific problems.
Developing an Angel Network in Montana
- Rural American Communities - Where Holding On Is a Western Adventure: Sandpoint, Idaho
Sandpoint, Idaho, hugging the edge of Lake Pend Oreille, is bucking a major demographic trend: In an era when many rural places are bleeding out, this one is holding its own.
- National bike routes bring cyclists, cash to rural towns
"A lot of communities want bicycle tourism in their towns. Bicyclists tend to ride on rural roads, and because of that it brings a new type of tourism these communities don't normally see."
Idaho Business
- For Start-Ups, How Many Angels Is Too Many?
"Now everybody and their family and their pets who have some money want to get into angel investing."
Regional Economic Development
- Idaho's early childhood education supporters plan another run at getting state support
A coalition of working and former Idaho CEOs and other advocates of early childhood education hopes to present a proposal that would seek state dollars to help pay for community-based preschool.
- Port of Lewiston is getting its fiber
A 14-mile, fiber-optic network that the Port of Lewiston is pursuing will make a backup system available to telecommunications providers at an affordable price, said Port of Whitman County Executive Director Joe Poire.
Workforce Development
- Economic development marketing hacks you need to know
Even the best marketers need to revisit their strategies from time to time to ensure they are on track.
Community
- A tsunami of unemployment is about to hit
Policy makers will have a big new problem to deal with: the disappearance of human jobs.
- The biggest and most disruptive layoffs in America are coming from the military
The Army has already discharged 80,000 troops. The next 40,000 will be harder, especially for the communities that depend on them.
Funding and Building your Business
- Portland, the Mission, and the housing affordability debate
If we care about preserving the option for people to remain in their communities now - which we should, for reasons both ethical and political - then we need to acknowledge the need for both housing growth policies and anti-displacement policies.
- New Guide Helps City Leaders Design for Physical Activity and Health
Our bodies are designed to move. Our cities should be too.
Energy and Climate Change
- Anatomy of a VC Deal: How One Seattle Startup Raised $12.5 Million
"The intention is to obliterate the statistic that 53 percent of college grads are underemployed or unemployed," says Hamilton, Koru's CEO. "We're fixing a problem for employers, too, because it turns out that employers struggle to figure out who the right hires are when people don't have a lot of experience."
- Marketers Say They Would Spend Even More on Digital Ads If Measurement Improved
"Marketers are looking for the shortest path to ROI possible. They want to attribute a media purchase, whether it's on a TV network or a digital property, to a sale."
Connectivity & Communications
- Missoula treatment plant to use methane to generate power
The city has made tentative plans to install a new system at its wastewater treatment plant that will use methane to power the facility and sell any surplus electricity back to the market.
- Green Pope Goes Medieval on Planet
No potential coalition of interests threatened by a seeming tsunami of regulation--from suburban homeowners and energy firms to Main Street businesses--can hope to easily resist this alliance of the unlikely.
- Self-driving taxis could help environment, says Berkeley study
In the year 2030, booking a robot taxi from Uber or Google (or whichever company has won the battle to establish the most efficient self-driving fleet) could also help the environment.
GIS Technology
- We've finally hit the breaking point for the original Internet
It's finally happened. The North American organization responsible for handing out new IP addresses says its banks have run dry.
Government Technology
- Montana Students Build Town and County GIS Infrastructure
This signal will be a community benefit to the approximately 300 farmers that had $67,212,000 (2012) in sales of wheat, beans, lentils, barley and other crops.
The Creative and Cultural Economy
- Silicon Valley 'civic-tech' companies driving transparency in local government
From how much a community spends on police equipment to the amount of a check written to a contractor building the new fire station, more details of a city's budget are moving from paper or clunky software to sophisticated Web applications -- marking an information revolution that could lead to better government.
- CIOs Rethink the IT Department
Government IT chiefs react to looming retirements and tech changes.
Miscellaneous Ramblings
- Organized chaos: Thousands expected for folk festival in Butte next weekend - 7/10-12
Seventy-two-year-old Donna Weiss is besotted with Montana.
Cool Stuff That's Coming
- What is code?
You, using a pen and paper, can do anything a computer can; you just can't do those things billions of times per second.
Transportation
- Kickstarter Campaign - The Electron: Cellular dev kit with a global data plan
The Electron is an Arduino-like cellular development kit with a SIM card and affordable data plan from the creators of the Spark Core.
- Leap Motion's Augmented-Reality Computing Looks Stupid Cool
We swipe down a transparent, floating to-do list---and then plunge our hand through it, like a movie character encountering a ghost for the first time.
- Lessons from Overseas Cycling Infrastructure
LennyBoy (civil engineering professor Glen Koorey) posts terrific information concerning bicycle planning best practices, based on his three-month tour of North American and European cities.
- Will autonomous cars change the role and value of public transportation?
Self-driving cars could alter how we get around--and also change the way our cities work.
- Google's Waze Launches a Ridesharing Service in Israel
It's no secret that the search giant has had a stake in this area for years, especially considering its long-in-development driverless car project.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the free weekly MATR newsletter, please visit our list info page