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| MATR Newsletter - Fri Jan 18, 2008 |
An incident during Running's albeit serious presentation made people smile. When Running was explaining how, during the past summer, the Arctic ice pack shrunk to an unprecedented size, she overheard a kindergarten student say to a first grader, "Santa Claus is in trouble."
Seems like we get great national press about our efforts to address global warming just about the time we get bad.... "What Washington Can Learn from Montana (at least most of us) when it comes to efforts to reduce global warming" http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html --- " Climate talk's cancellation splits a U.S. town - Choteau, Montana High School cancels speech by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Steven Running" http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html
Boomtown Institute
Come Home Montana
- The Agurban from Boomtown Institute - What We Know About the Millennials
They're the hottest commodity on the job market since Rosie the Riveter.
Montana Chamber of Commerce
- Montana Career Opportunity - BID Director of Operations - Downtown Business Improvement District of Missoula.
This position will focus on implementing and managing BID projects and assisting with support functions as they relate to the mission of the Downtown Business Improvement District of Missoula.
- Montana Career Opportunity - RC&D Coordinator - Sidney and Butte, Montana
- High-Tech Meets High Altitude. Entrepreneurs take advantage of business and lifestyle in Bozeman, Montana
“I need to live somewhere that will allow me to participate in an equally intense outdoor pursuit, balancing the stress that comes from working extremely long days. Montana is that place.” Jen Boulden, owner of Ideal Bite, a Bozeman-based internet technology company.
- Cozy winter weekend in a small mountain town. Philipsburg, Montana
And if winter is not exactly high season, we still found our long weekend in Montana to be unexpectedly delightful.
- Come Home Montana - Executive Director - Montana Meth Project
Responsibilities include: budgeting, planning, program management, fundraising, public speaking, marketing, community outreach, and government relations. The executive director will manage the Montana Meth Project, combining the best practices and dynamics of both public action and private sector initiatives.
Developing a more Entrepreneurial Montana
- Politics still key to Montana's business environment
“The state of business in Montana is strong and financially healthy,” she said. “It hasn’t hurt that the global economy is demanding a lot of our products and services, including natural resources.”
Funding and Building your Business
- Hot Springs, Montana man shares unique energy idea
Calvert first showed us his designs some four years ago, and simply put, they involve placing electrical generating devices underneath, or alongside, downhill highway grades.
Business Plan Forums
- Employers Turn to Technology For Help in Retaining Workers
"I never really knew what was being done with the information in my review. It never came up again," she says. "Now it's become something more integrated into my career development."
- Uncovering Knowledge Structures of Venture Capital Investment Decision Making
Understanding the specific investment criteria for venture capital funding is of foremost importance, since this may substantially improve these firms’ chances of acquiring funding. The authors have chosen to predict funding by measuring the decisions on both funded and unfunded business plans.
- The New Recruits: Older Workers Who Can Be Wooed Into Staying
An expected wave of baby-boomer retirements has some managers fretting about worker shortages. But experts say many firms are overlooking a big supply of potential employees -- older workers who can be wooed to continue working.
- "It's Not About the Coffee: Leadership Principles from a Life at Starbucks."
"Everyone working in Seattle said 'No,' but I told them to 'just go do it and don't tell anyone,' " .... it now accounts for 20 percent of the coffee giant's business.
- Venture Capital: What Investors Look For
Evaluation of potential market opportunity ranks a close second.
- Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Play Poker
For Coelius an appetite for risk and fine-tuned poker skills helped him secure funding and get his startup off the ground.
- Inside Entrepreneurship: 'Early stage' can mean different things to VCs
The primary difference between a raw startup company and an early-stage company is evidence of business progress.
Education
- University of Utah Students To Receive $10,000 in Opportunity Quest Business Innovation Competition
“The Opportunity Quest competition is open to all university students and empowers them to take their business ideas and turn them into working businesses,” says Cameron Bailey, Director of Opportunity Quest.
Montana Meth Project
- Do state education proficiency tests make the grade?
A lot hinges on how well students perform on their state tests, including the principal's job and a school’s reputation. Yet the difficulty of state tests differs widely. See what’s at stake in this excerpt from “State of the States 2008,” Stateline.org’s annual report on significant state policy developments and trends
University TechTransfer
- Peg Shea to Retire from Montana Meth Project
"Her leadership and guidance have been invaluable not only in Montana but also crucial as we establish programs in other states." Tom Siebel, founder and vice chairman of the Montana Meth Project.
Cool Stuff That's Coming
- Making the Deals in Tech Transfer
"We do more than technology transfer. We do development, licensing and commercializing," he said. "I like to say we help advance the university mission of bringing the benefits of discovery to the world by converting our inventions to products that help people."
Regional Business
- The Tesla Story from Stanford University - How do you power a fast car without gas? With a really big battery.
These may just be bumps in the road in developing a breakthrough auto technology, or they may augur one of the more spectacular flameouts in recent startup history.
- Steve Jobs's Macworld Keynote: An In-Depth Look
"Today happens to be exactly the 200th day since the iPhone went on sale and I'm extraordinarily pleased to report that we have sold 4 million iPhones today." -- Steve Jobs in his keynote speech at Macworld 2008.
- Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision
Engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.
Developing Funding Opportunities in Montana
- US WiMAX operator DigitalBridge Communications has raised $20 million in venture capital to expand operations in the West and Mid-West
The telco has already raised $11 million in an earlier round of financing. DigitalBridge currently offers fixed WiMAX services in the cities of Rexburg and Pocatello, Idaho; Missoula, Montana; and Washington, Indiana.
- Fed Bails Out Wall Street at Main Street's Expense
Interest rate cuts designed to stimulate the economy are having the opposite effect, and small businesses are starting to feel the pain on Main Street.
Montana Business
- An angel uprising puts pressure on VCs. Investors with personal cash are raising their profile
Last week, venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson hired entrepreneur and angel investor William Bryant as a venture partner, responsible for Pacific Northwest companies. Besides helping found several startups, Bryant was an early investor or board member in nine other companies.
GIS Technology
- Local Montana artists and their foundries take Calgary Stampede by storm
As for why foundries in Montana are proving even more popular than the artwork coming out of the state, Burkhart ventured that it came down to sheer numbers. “Montana has more foundries per capita than anywhere else in the country,” he said.
- NorthWestern finding VisionNet's consolidation service invaluable
The service is one of many offered by VisionNet, which was originally established to provide distance learning programs for rural Montana schools. That evolved into higher education interactive video, and on to studios to allow other organizations and companies access to video learning and conferencing.
- Big Sky Airlines successor struggling in Montana. Great Lakes Airlines needs pilots, planes for routes, and both are in short supply
"If we're not careful, probably Essential Air Service will go out the door, and without EAS in Eastern Montana, we will not have air service," Rabenberg said. "There aren't enough people."
- Shane Coleman, Commercial and Intellectual Property Litigator Named Partner of Holland & Hart
A Montana native, he earned his J.D. from the University of Montana School of Law and his B.S. in electrical engineering from Montana State University.
- Cabela’s gives Montana FWP $50,000
“Cabela’s understands the public and commission will scrutinize their representations and follow through regardless of the money,” Colton said after the meeting. “It’s a nice gesture and appreciated, but it will not change our scrutiny.”
Montana Economic Development
- Web-Based Mapping Tools Help Governments Transform GIS into New Services
Citizens, businesses and governments are finding new ways to reap the benefits of this revolution in how location data is understood and depicted. Data once found exclusively in GIS circles is appearing in common, everyday tools.
Idaho Business
- Missoula Area Economic Development Corporation Newsletter
MAEDC Annual Meeting Scheduled: To Feature the Arts in Missoula
- Conference connects small Montana communities
Gary Cunningham, Northwest area Foundation Vice President said, "One of the main struggles across the region is the issue of population retention in rural communities; having people stay and having the business and economic opportunities for young people in particular to stay."
- PPL Montana offering up community grant money
The grants are awarded in the spring and fall and organizations can request up to $10,000. The deadline to apply for the money is on January 31st.
- Analysis shows The Great Falls Development Authority directly assisted in creating 635 jobs from 2002-2007
"We have set some substantially higher goals for the five years going forward," said Brett Doney, CEO of the GFDA.
- What Washington Can Learn from Montana (at least most of us) when it comes to efforts to reduce global warming
"We recognize that there is climate change happening," says Schweitzer, who was the first governor in the U.S. to sign the 25 x '25 initiative, which aims to have 25% of the country's energy produced from renewable sources by 2025. "We know that moving now will mitigate those effects."
Government
- British company plans Boise call center
WDS Global expects to fill 600 jobs by year's end. Boise officials think the pay rate may not appeal to many.
Montana Education/Business Partnerships
- The state of the Union — crumbling
The numbers are staggering. More than one in four of America’s nearly 600,000 bridges need significant repairs or are burdened with more traffic than they were designed to carry, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
- Is the partisan party finally over? Former Gov. Angus King is among those seeking a solution.
Angus King, former independent governor of Maine, was among 17 prominent politicians who met recently to seek solutions to the partisan acrimony that has so poisoned national affairs.
Non-Profit News
- Ennis, Montana teacher Martha Northway receives technology grant
The purpose of the Qwest Teachers and Technology grant program is to identify, highlight and recognize Montana K-12 teachers who are using technology in the classroom in new and innovative ways, to improve student performance, and to share this information so that others can do the same. The Montana Association for Career & Technical Education (ACTE), which is part of the Office of Public Instruction, partnered with the Qwest Foundation to administer the grant funds.
- University of Montana Business Students Need Clients for Marketing Plans. This is a great opportunity for your company.
Thank you for considering this opportunity to help University of Montana students to engage in experiential learning.
- Grant to the University of Montana from Toyota U.S.A. Promotes High School Science Education
The expanded program will offer students greater access to University-based mentors through classroom visits, laboratory tours and increased distance-learning opportunities for areas outside Missoula, including Corvallis, Libby, Whitefish, communities on Idaho’s Nez Perce Indian Reservation and a remote Native village in Alaska.
Energy
- Google.org announces $26 million in philanthropic grants
Recipients include a company that develops solar power technology, an organization hoping to predict global epidemics and humanitarian disasters and a group that helps support small and medium-sized businesses in developing countries.
Montana Education Excellence
- Cheap Ethanol from Tires and Trash
GM teams with a startup aiming to produce low-cost biofuels.
- Washington State University Host Competition that Seeks Fresh Solutions to Global Energy Needs from High School Students
The new Imagine Tomorrow competition hosted by Washington State University mobilizes student teams to develop solutions to the planet’s growing energy needs.
Leadership Montana
- Montana Board of Public Education Announces Significant Progress on Access to K-12 Distance Lerning
"I am pleased that we were able to offer a positive solution that will move education forward for our students in Montana," said State Superintendent Linda McCulloch.
- Billings School District 2 was given the go-ahead for some $1.6 million in wind power development
The district spends about $3 million a year on utilities, about half of that on electricity. Based on conservative estimates at today's rates, the district could net $34,000 a year after bond payments.
- Climate talk's cancellation splits a U.S. town - Choteau, Montana High School cancels speech by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Steven Running
In fact, part of the talk Running gave last Thursday night was about what he calls the “Five Stages of Climate Grief.” Stage one is denial, and stage two is anger. It's folks mired in those steps that got Running's speech canceled, he said. An incident during Running's albeit serious presentation made people smile. When Running was explaining how, during the past summer, the Arctic ice pack shrunk to an unprecedented size, she overheard a kindergarten student say to a first grader, "Santa Claus is in trouble."
- Academy proposed for Montana's gifted students
The best and brightest students in Montana could find a unique home at Montana Tech under a proposal by the chancellor.
- MSU lab keeps Montanans safe from biological invaders
Montanans don't think a lot about "Homeland Security," but one Montana State University unit that serves both ag producers and home gardeners also serves to keep us safe from other biological invaders.
VIRUS ALERTS
- Female leadership: changing business for the better
Workplaces today use more direct communication and less hierarchy. Women helped effect this change.
- Nebraska Publishes Identity Theft Repair Kit
"Identity theft is crippling to its victims, both financially and emotionally," Bruning said. "This repair kit gives consumers peace of mind and a road map for minimizing the damage to their good name and credit."
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