MATR Newsletter - Mon Jul 11, 2005 |
"This is as close to heaven as it gets. "You cannot use it up. The day is not long enough for Montana." James Lee Burke
Cross-border group, The Pacific Northwest Economic Region, covering Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon has bold agenda - Forum will tackle power, security, disease http://www.matr.net/article-15240.html
Come Home Montana
Developing a more Entrepreneurial Montana
- Alumni drawn back to Dutton
Dutton schools, which opened in 1930, celebrated their 75th anniversary. Matilda Matthys, class of 1931, was most senior. Matthys now lives in Conrad. Husband-and-wife teachers from Indonesia and Africa traveled the farthest, Odden said.
- States Focusing on Rural Entrepreneurship and Education as the key to a Successful Future
"It's good to have these people here but we have to work to see that rural opportunities continue or they'll leave,"
- Homage to One Fun Day: The Small-Town Summer Celebration in Dutton, Montana
It’s called Dutton Fun Day, and it's part of a long and beautiful tradition: the small-town summer festival in rural America.
Education
- SBA Announces Web Chat Series for Small Business Owners
The U.S. Small Business Administration is launching a live Web chat series on entrepreneurship beginning in July. The monthly chat sessions will feature successful entrepreneurs fielding questions from the participants.
- Entrepreneurial Leadership Training at Stanford University
"To EDUCATE the general Stanford community on high-tech leadership and entrepreneurship. To assure highest-grade QUALITY of speakers who come to Stanford. To create a FUN environment for listeners and speakers to learn from each other."
Montana Business
- Online learning is changing education in Montana
Online learning -- also called distance learning or e-learning -- is growing in popularity, in Montana and around the nation. Nearly 1 million U.S. students enrolled in courses that took place completely online in 2004, twice as many as two years earlier, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
- Professor: Washington State's schools must do better job to prep high-tech workers
"We're moving over to an information-technology economy, to a new economy, and if we want to be competitive in about five, 10 years, we've got to shift the education system."
- All-laptop high school to open in Utah
Textbooks are so last-century.
Montana Economic Development
- Neptune Aviation of Missoula unveils next step in slurry bomber evolution
"We have to come up with a modern platform if we're going to continue to fight fires," said Neptune owner and CEO Mark Timmons.
- University of Montana Business School offers class on ethics
The course will help participants think about ethics in the business environment. The focus of the course will be to identify some of the most pressing and difficult problems that managers confront.
- Montana manufacturer having trouble finding local workers - Simms Fishing Products Corp. of Bozeman to hold job fair/demonstration in Manhattan
The company will hold a demonstration night in Manhattan next week to see if enough people in the area are interested in applying for the openings. If there are, Simms may open a satellite office in that town to make waders.
Funding and Building your Business
- Montana businesses report success on European trip organzied by the Montana World Trade Center at the University of Montana
The Montana delegation spent the week in Munich, Germany; Madrid, Spain; and Dublin. The trade mission ends Saturday morning, although some of the business leaders will be continuing their European tour individually. Sherman, Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., and Mark Peters of the U.S. Department of Commerce accompanied and coordinated the 17 business representatives overseas.
- Ropin' the wind: Judith Gap Wind Farm to tap Montana's invisible resource
Already, local businesses are feeling the infusion of activity and dollars. Vacant houses in Judith Gap are a thing of the past, and fifth-wheel trailers are popping up in alleys.
- Targeting Tourism in Helena
A committee consisting of a cross-section of professionals from around town identified seven projects or areas to focus on going forward, as Helena tries to further develop its tourism economy.
- Great Falls trade talks with representatives from Thailand could yield ag windfall
The red carpet is rolled out and ready for negotiators in Great Falls this week for the next round of the U.S.-Thailand free trade agreement negotiations.
Regional Economic Development
- The Benefits of Business Process Standards
With the exception of IT system development, there is generally no clear basis by which companies can compare the capabilities provided by external organizations with those offered in-house, or to compare services among multiple outside providers.
Idaho Business
- Cross-border group, The Pacific Northwest Economic Region, covering Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon has bold agenda - Forum will tackle power, security, disease
The organization -- covering Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon -- is designed to provide a forum for swapping ideas and figuring out how to resolve common and cross-border problems.
- The Santa Fe Plan: The Cluster Approach to Economic Gardening
The objective of cluster cultivation is to help create a competitive advantage out of the existing local business environment by creating synergies and by nurturing the region's key industry clusters.
Other Economies
- End of an Era - North Idaho utilities replace meter readers with ERT technology from Itron
Many of North Idaho's electric consumers and some gas consumers now have meters that transmit their data to equipment in a moving vehicle or to a substation's computer.
Universities and Economic Development
- "State has once again become the Hollywood of the Midwest,"
"The bottom line about this is the fact that but for these tax credits these productions wouldn't be in Illinois," he said. "It's an ultra-competitive world that we live in to try to get film productions to come to your locales."
Incubators and R&D
- IU boosts Bloomington for research - Regional campuses focus on educational and economic needs
“It is clear that state policy-makers expect Bloomington to use its research capacity to significantly aid state economic development activities,” it said.
University TechTransferThe Creative and Cultural Economy
- OSU bids to turn ideas into cash Group to aid Med Center startups
"UMC Partners will be like any other independent organization that might come to the university to license intellectual property," he said. "We feel this will open a series of new opportunities for working with commercial partners."
Small Diameter Timber Utilization
- Life in Montana is good for author James Lee Burke
"This is as close to heaven as it gets," Burke says. "You cannot use it up. The day is not long enough for Montana."
Non-Profit News
- Businesses rewarded for creative wood use
"You've created a natural resource out of something that was useless or had no value," Rey said.
Energy
- Serving on non-profit boards
If you are thinking about becoming more involved in an organization as a board member, (or you already serve) there are some questions you should ask yourself:
Connectivity & Communications
- The Dotcom King, Bill Gross & the Rooftop Solar Revolution
"Reinventing energy is a multitrillion-dollar opportunity. It's the next big disruption. It dwarfs any business opportunity in history." Idealab impresario Bill Gross
Cool Stuff That's Coming
- E911 Gets Wi-Fi Assist
This week, two of the biggest providers of enhanced 911 (E911) services for voice over IP (VoIP) providers made announcements about how they'll handle it.
- Media talk of Internet interaction - Movies, TV may be delivered online
"You're beginning to see a lot of relationship-building between the cable, telecom and content industries" on forging deals to deliver media online, Glickman said. "I think the opportunities will explode over the next four to five years."
- France Telecom, Microsoft to collaborate on Internet phone
That includes a handset that consumers can use as a cell phone but switches to a wireless Internet network while at home.
- Internet at home riding power lines
Douglas County's Liberty Media Corp. has teamed with Google, Goldman Sachs and Hearst Corp., among others, to help roll out a new technology for delivering high-speed Internet access over power lines.
- Robot lends 'a seeing eye' for blind shoppers
"When the robot reaches a destination — say, the Cheerios cereal shelf in the cereal aisle — the speech-synthesis engine generates an appropriate message telling the user that the Cheerios cereal boxes are on the shelf to his/her right." Kulyukin says.
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