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| MATR Newsletter - Fri Sep 1, 2006 |
"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work." -- Peter Drucker
Interesting story about a new economic development opportunity in rural Montana ---"Grasslands on a Grand Scale in Montana - APF and WWF" http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html
2006 Montana Elections
Come Home Montana
- Meet the bloggers in Montana
You might not know their names, their online pseudonyms or their blogs’ URLs, but the number of Montana politicians, political insiders, journalists and voters who do is growing every day as they exert an increasing impact on the state’s electoral politics.
- Talk to candidates about higher ed, chancellor urges
Montana State University-Billings Chancellor Ron Sexton asked faculty and staff members to stress the importance of higher education when visiting with candidates for the 2007 Montana Legislature.
Developing a more Entrepreneurial Montana
- Rural living not like city life
Many counties and some organizations have compiled information for prospective property owners. Some publications are titled "Code of the West," in reference to the "Code of the West" in a novel by that name chronicled by Western writer Zane Grey.
- Change is bustin' out all over in Winifred, Montana. Large new hangar and city center are among many new additions to Winifred
Like phoenix rising from the ashes, Winifred continues to emerge from the rubble of its lost years during the last years of the 20th century.
Developing Tech Jobs in Rural Communities
- Could you be an entrepreneur? Consider these characteristics
Before you leave the workaday world, you need to determine whether you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
Montana Education Excellence
- Nearly 60 Percent of Tech Workers Looking for New Jobs, Says Survey
The restless tech workforce is not limited to the IT industry. Among the workers surveyed one-quarter work with companies that are primarily in IT. But 16 percent work in education, 15 percent in government, 8 percent in healthcare, and 7 percent in manufacturing.
Education
- “MAPS” (Media Arts in the Public Schools) expands ahead of schedule in Montana
“One of MAPS goals is to create jobs for our graduates in the media - a field they are passionate about,” Rosten said. “The Darby program gives us this opportunity and we'll be hiring 2006 MAPS graduates Luke McLean and Danielle Corona to work with our new Darby students.”
Montana Business
- Developing the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) Education Pipeline
For almost 50 years, ACT has played a pivotal role in promoting student access into and success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. ACT research points to several key steps federal and state policymakers and educational leaders can take to strengthen science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.
- Grand Canyon University creates eMBA program focused on leadership that was crafted with input from national business experts.
Grand Canyon University will launch an executive MBA program focused on leadership that was crafted with input from national business experts, including a best-selling author and the president of Southwest Airlines.
- New England colleges could go high-tech to good advantage
We’re into a century when workers without a community or four-year college degree — including strong grounding in math and science — will be consigned to low-paid jobs. Take 100 graduating ninth-graders in New England today. Based on recent performance, there’s not a state in the region in which more than 77 will actually graduate from high school, 52 will actually enter college, or 29 will successfully graduate with either an associate or bachelor’s degree.
- San Francisco Begins Mandarin-Language Immersion Program
"It would be foolish to not provide future generations with the tools necessary to compete in the global economy.
- Education leaders: More cooperation is required in Montana from many sectors
More cooperation between the business community, secondary and post-secondary faculty and administrators, along with increased scholarship opportunities and dual enrollment programs, were some of the ideas the leaders discussed as ways to help ease the transition.
- North Idaho College lowers tuition for Washington, Montana students starting next year
"I think we can draw students from those schools if our tuition is in a range that's viable for them,"
- GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) receives grant
“This grant provides another strategy for teachers to break away from teaching to the middle and instead use technology in the classroom to differentiate instruction among students,”
Montana Economic Development
- Western Montana InBusiness: "Women are now the most powerful engine of global growth."
We talked with men and women about the wage gap, asked several prominent Missoula women to share their own stories and looked to the future. What's next for women in business?
- What a Printing Company in Montana (PrintingForLess) Can Tell Us About School Design and Leadership.
A post about school design thanks to having the pants charmed off of me when I visited the Printing For Less PrintingForLess.com corporate headquarters in Livingston, Montana several weeks ago.
- New McLaughlin scientist focuses on Parkinson's
Stanford University Professor Irving Weissman said Cabin is among the "top one or two people" in the field of using mice models to investigate Parkinson's disease.
Developing Funding Opportunities in Montana
- MSU College Of Business Hosts Annual Family Business Day Sept. 22, Bozeman, MT
- The Phillco Economic Growth Council to invest in Malta home building facility
The company is selling shares and hopes to raise $1 million to help start the production facility in Malta, and possibly another in Roundup.
- Green Power, Inc., of Issaquah, Wash. claims technology turns trash into diesel fuel. Plans plant in Montana
The company expects to open the first plant using the technology next year on tribal land in Fife, a suburb of Tacoma, Wash., with a second to open in Montana soon after.
- Marketing wind energy complex process
As a Canadian company jumps the many regulatory hurdles to build the first direct transmission line between Alberta and Montana, the wind parks that would pay MATL to use the line have remained in the background.
- Drop in cost spurs UM’s switch to biodiesel. Missoula Embraces Alternative Fuels
“It’s the right thing to do to support homegrown fuel,”
- Your Invitation to "Innovation That Matters" with Experts from IBM
What are the trends in infrastructure and information management that might convert corporate data into timely market knowledge?
- Havre seeks county help with port authority
“One thing that came across in our meetings with Shelby,” Brekke said, “is that Bear Paw Development doesn’t go out and seek economic development. Shelby’s port authority has the authority and budget to go out and seek economic development.”
Montana Biotech
- "Angel Market Trends: Sophistication and Organization"
He highlights fundamental differences in practice between angel investors and VC managed funds, and underscores the significance of angel investment for the seed and early stage market and the nation’s entrepreneurs.
Funding and Building your Business
- Matching up with 'angels'. Colorado group looking for biotechs in search of money
CTEK, a statewide nonprofit group that supports innovative entrepreneurs, teamed with the Colorado BioScience Association to form the biotech group. It is accepting applications through the CTEK Angels program.
Legislative Newsletters
- Entrepreneurs, Start Your Wikis
But there's more to Wikipedia than skipping a trip to the library. The site's underlying group-think principal can be applied to manage and build businesses more effectively.
- Talent hunting in the counterculture. Pyromaniacs on the payroll? Sure. Counterculture events like this week's Burning Man attract exactly the kind of creative people you want working for you.
So many tech types attend Burning Man, it's a running joke in Silicon Valley that you can't get any software code written or raise venture capital funding the week before Labor Day.
Idaho Business
- The Montana Legislature September 2006 Interim Newsletter
The Interim contains articles related to interim committee work, general Legislative Branch news, and other articles of legislative interest.
Wyoming Business
- 3 Idaho firms make Inc. growth list. NightHawk Radiology Services in Coeur d'Alene, Bart Larsen Trucking in Roberts, and Bodybuilding.com in Boise. Century Gaming in Missoula, MT also makes the list.
"People naturally want to meet others with their same passion," Bodybuilding.com CEO Ryan DeLuca said in a news release. "How cool is it that if I am in Idaho and I am having a problem building my arms, I can talk with somebody in Australia who had the same problem but found the way to overcome it?"
- Stoel Rives names 22 finalists for 1st Idaho Innovation Awards. Winners to be Announced at Intermountain Venture Forum 9/26-27
"We not only exceeded our goal of receiving 50 nominations, but we were very impressed with the wide variety of technology that the nominations represented."
- A fuel cell technology company plans new plant in Idaho. Hawaii-based company looks at unnamed sites along Snake River
"Idaho is a very attractive place for us to expand our business, and we look forward to contributing to Idaho's growing and diversified economy,"
Other Economies
- Venture capitalists venture to Wyoming. Access Venture Partners
"That's one thing that has been a missing link in the past,"
- Employers in Sheridan, Wyoming seek help from foreign workers
"Getting qualified employees is more difficult than getting guests."
Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)
- ConnectKentucky Presented National Excellence in Innovation Award
The national award recognizes Kentucky's Prescription for Innovation as a national leader in innovative strategies for economic development.
Montana Education/Business Partnerships
- Reminder - Still Time to Register for Bozeman SBIR Conference and Phase II Grant Proposal Training!
You now have the opportunity to learn all about this $2 billion federal program specifically for small businesses, and meet with a dozen federal SBIR and STTR Program Managers, along with dozens of technology firms from around the nation, at an important 3-day event coming up in Bozeman, Sept. 11 - 13.
The Creative and Cultural Economy
- Project Vote Smart offers students political-research internships in Montana
Project Vote Smart is located 100 miles south of Missoula on 152 acres along Rock Creek. The former dude ranch was picked in part as a sort of aesthetic payoff for employees and interns, Kimball said.
- MSU College of Business Class Seeks Businesses to Offer Consulting
Montana State University's College of Business is seeking local and regional businesses that would be willing to offer MSU management students practical business experience this fall and spring semesters in return for research, issue analysis or operational advice.
Careers
- The Montana State of the Arts Newsletter September 2006
The Montana Arts Council - Strengthening the Creative Economy of Montana
Energy
- Seven Tips for Writing An Online Profile for Work
Whether it's for your employer's Web site or a social networking forum, your online profile could have an impact on your career. Here are seven tips for writing one
- Unleash your inner genius: Ten great ways to boost your personal creativity
Let’s say you are wrestling with a tough issue – maybe at work, at home, with your children or in your social life. You have been stuck for a while and you can’t seem to make a breakthrough.
- How to Get a Job By Asking for It
Anyone can learn to apply the tricks of the sales trade to a job interview and close a sale. Following these nine steps will help you ask for the job--and get it.
Making the Most of the American Prairie
- Pennsylvania signs deal making it the largest state purchaser of renewable energy sources in the country.
The agreement calls for 20 percent of electricity used by state government to come from renewable sources like wind and hydropower. That's twice as much as in the current contract.
- California to cap greenhouse gas emissions
The bill would require the state's major industries — such as utility plants, oil and gas refineries, and cement kilns — to reduce their emissions of the pollutants widely believed to contribute to global warming.
- Smart Buildings Make Smooth Moves
A building that mimics a living system would be able to sense and respond appropriately to exterior conditions like varying winds, temperature swings or changing sunlight. Inside, the building might change to accommodate crowd flow or better circulate warm air.
Connectivity & Communications
- Grasslands on a Grand Scale in Montana - APF and WWF
Nowhere else in the United States is conservation more possible and more essential than in northeastern Montana's plains, says Jonathan Proctor, the southern Rockies and Great Plains representative of Defenders of Wildlife. There are no large national parks or monuments protecting the Great Plains (the Charles M. Russell NWR encompasses prairies only on its fringes) and only 1.5 percent of U.S. grasslands are publicly owned. Most of those are in national grasslands that feature cattle, not bison. "The plains are the least represented ecosystem in our national parks," Proctor adds.
Cool Stuff That's Coming
- Blogging: A Start-Up Guide
By reading this you are half way there.
- How popular are you?
The Internet's ability to track everything one looks at or clicks on has created a new gauge for the millions of computer users who have a flag planted in cyberspace.
- Maine lags nation in high-speed Internet penetration but it has a plan.
The paper provides an overview of broadband technology, its value in rural development and initiatives to expand high-speed Internet across the state.
- Solar power may soon bring the Web to remote areas
All you need is a rooftop and the sun, claim the inventors of a solar-powered wireless device.
- Wheelchair friendly car lets you roll right in
With the Kenguru, you just open the back hatch and roll yourself right in.
- Digital camera neutralization technology available. System Blocks Unwanted Video & Still Photography
Gregory Abowd, an associate professor leading the project, says the new camera-neutralizing technology shows commercial promise in two principal fields – protecting limited areas against clandestine photography or stopping video copying in larger areas such as theaters.
- New Rules! The CEO of AOL, and the President of Fox Interactive discussed their views of the wild world of new media.
The panelists discuss the realities of the new world and the opportunities and challenges faced by traditional media. Given the paradigm is shifting, broadcast companies might look very different within the next five years, both in business models and the types of content, specific to different types of media, they produce.
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