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| MATR Newsletter - Fri May 9, 2008 |
"You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world." - Tom Brokaw
It's graduation time and the Montana Universities are sending out a new wave of our best and brightest to make their mark in the world. While this happens every year around this time, it seems the graduates and the programs that have nurtured them are just getting and better every year. I hope you'll take a bit of time to read some of the success stories in our Montana Education Excellence category http://matr.net/news.p ... lence . Some will leave Montana to pursue their dreams but will someday want to Come Home. The challenge for Montana is to develop those opportunities that will encourage them to come back and contribute their energy and innovation to the future of Montana. All the best Graduates. God speed and best wishes. Just don't forget Montana.
Vision Net
Montana World Trade Center
- Vision Net Brings High Definition Video Conferencing to Montana. Why Drive to Meetings When You Can Be Green?
Companies using video to reduce travel benefit in multiple ways: from maximized productivity and faster time to market, to reduced operating expenses and carbon emissions.
City Club Missoula
- The Montana World Trade Center - How Can We Catalyze Growth in Montana? Export our Expertise
To promote international business opportunities for our members through partnership collaboration and cooperation. The ability to apply this unique model to natural resource, environmental, and development issues around the world.
Montana Meth Project
- City Club Missoula - “Urban Fringe Development Area Project: How Will Missoula Grow?”, 5/19, Missoula
The next 20 years in Missoula will see the need to create places to live for 15,000 new households. The market is changing, and people are interested in smaller-scale neighborhoods with schools, shopping and restaurants nearby. Missoula can make room for these new places within the present-day urban area. But how will we choose to grow?
Developing a more Entrepreneurial Montana
- Montana Meth ad theme will return - “15 bucks for sex isn’t normal. But on meth it is.”
The ugly reality portrayed is just that — reality — and ignoring it will do nothing to help it go away. Exposing the horrific consequences of meth use has been a hugely successful deterrent these past three years, leading to a 45-percent decline in teen meth use and a 72-percent decline in adult meth use.
Leadership Montana
- Entrepreneurs with Disabilities: The Role of Assistive Technology, Current Status and Future Outlook
Small business is a growth industry in the United States. Persons with disabilities are among those who are taking part by starting up businesses, especially home-based businesses.
Montana Business
- Step-by-step guide to build a leader - "Developing the Leader Within You"
Each chapter in Developing the Leader Within You takes us to the next important element in becoming the leader that we were meant to be.
Montana Economic Development
- Plum Creek mills report $9 million loss
The company isn't expecting any large layoffs
- Montana's Rural co-ops prepare for Senate climate change battle
Representatives of Montana's 26 rural electric co-ops asked lawmakers this week to keep consumers in mind when considering legislation that would crack down on the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.
Regional Economic Development
- When a dam is demolished, the old ways return
That first extraordinary rainbow trout symbolizes the promises of tomorrow here in Montana and throughout the Rockies.
- Putting Whitefish, Montana on the Global Map
“Someone in Chicago doesn’t just wake up and say I’m going to Whitefish today,” Metzmaker said. “Somewhere you have to plant that seed.”
- Seven NEW Community-Friendly Grant Opportunities
- Develop education in Montana, not just coal
We need to focus our energy on the one resource that is limitless, inexhaustible and not bound by market forces: human potential.
Funding and Building your Business
- The 2008 Colorado College State of the Rockies Report Card
Included in this report: the role of immigrants, the challenge of affordable housing, the need to restore degraded landscapes, the continuing controversies over wildland protection, and the prospect of creating a long-term regional renewable energy boom.
- Concentration of resorts in Las Vegas is cited as economic model
Brookings Institution: Clustering similar businesses key to success
Incubators and R&D
- Seek out personal referrals for business services
Note how long it takes to get responses, said Andrew Field, president of PrintingForLess.com. "You want a fast answer when you first approach them. If they can't answer quickly, they can't do other things well either,"
- Feedback, even if it hurts - Your Employees Are Dying To Be Heard
"We felt that in the offline world customers communicate with other customers about our products and services, so why not allow them to do it in the online world?"
- Peterson Partners Announces Closing of $120 Million Fund
Generally, the companies that Peterson Partners will invest in have more than $10 million in revenues, are profitable and are at an inflection point in their development.
- Starting up: IdaVation offers something for start-ups, entrepreneurs
Kickstand's goal is to prepare entrepreneurs to take on the challenges of building their businesses. Our mission is simple: to help innovators network, learn and grow.
- Washington Technology Center - Microfabrication Lab, NanoTech User Facility to Operate Jointly
Facility will serve both academic and industrial users, and act as a micro and nano technology resource for companies in the state of Washington and nationwide.
- SEC Plans to Boost Small-Business Capital Formation
The commission wants to widen access to capital for exchange-listed companies.
- Business presentation – What’s the opportunity and how do you get it?
A very common issue is that business owners are overly enthralled with their solution and wants to tell you every nuance of it.
- Tech tools bring big success for small businesses
The impact has been dramatic.
- Inside Entrepreneurship: Noncash pay should reward patience
The issuance of stock options, common stock or some combination package is a very common form of noncash compensation to founders, first employees, board members, advisory board members and consultants.
- Most businesses didn't call up tax refund
Refunds associated with those claims amounted to only $876.6 million, or 17.5 percent of the $5 billion collected.
Montana Education Excellence
- Research Roundup at Montana State University (#277), Hot spring energy?, Disappearing Grasshopper, 60 pregnant women, Home in Kevin Dome?, Speeding up space
When the wind stops blowing, can Montanans turn to hot springs for energy?
Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)
- MSU College of Business dean to step down; interim dean named
"One of the great rewards of being provost has been the honor and privilege to work with Rich Semenik. He has provided extraordinary leadership, in every capacity to the College of Business and MSU,"
- ISBOMC’08 - Fourth International Symposium On Bioorganometallic Chemistry, 7/6-10, University Of Montana Missoula
Bioorganometallic chemistry has emerged as an important sub-discipline of organometallic chemistry.
- Peace Corps To Honor University of Montana As Top Producer Of Volunteers. MSU senior seeks to make a difference in Peace Corps.
UM now ranks 17th for producing volunteers among medium-sized universities and colleges with enrollments between 5,001 and 15,000. The University currently has 23 alumni serving in the corps.
- University of Montana American Indian students recognized for outstanding academic achievements
Gus Azure, Cedric Matt and Dez Pierre of the Flathead Nation were honored Friday at the University of Montana for high academic grades at the. They were among 50 top American Indian scholars at UM.
- University of Montana Class of 2008: Grad looks to clean water around globe and at home in Lame Deer. Graduation a dream come true for Indian nursing student at MSU
“The most important aspect of the reservation,” he says, “is keeping our water clean.”
- Record number of American Indian engineering graduates powered by new Montana State University support program
Sydney Resel is one of nine Native American students who will receive an engineering degree from MSU this year. That number is about three times larger than in previous years and thought to be a record high at MSU, largely because of the efforts of the Designing Our Community program, funded five years ago by a grant from the Hewlett Foundation.
- Montana State University Mountains and Minds spring 2008 issue now available
The third issue of the award-winning magazine also includes a story on the remarkable bonds of MSU graduates in Hollywood, the MSU student farm, and some compelling thoughts by David Quammen about writing, education and the West.
- MSU's Tim Alzheimer Recognized for Work with High School Business Programs - 2007 "Most Outstanding High School Economics Program"
"Under the leadership of College of Business faculty member Tim Alzheimer, the High School Business Challenge has proven to be one of the most successful and impactful developmental economic education programs in the state," said Semenik. "Literally thousands of high school students have been able to participate in a sophisticated, hands-on learning experience that would otherwise not be available to them."
University Business Plan Competitions
- Should VC-owned small businesses receive government grants?
The House of Representatives voted 368-43 in late April to dramatically overhaul SBIR and a related program, which goes by the acronym STTR. If passed by the Senate, the House bill would represent the most sweeping change in those research grant programs since they were created 25 years ago.
Idaho Business
- Business planning earns cash award in Idaho University competition
A product created in a University of Idaho laboratory to measure biodiesel blend levels was the winner of the business plan competition.
Utah Economic Development
- Canadian company nixes Idaho for cellulosic ethanol plant
For the last two years, Iogen had leaned toward building a cellulosic ethanol facility near Shelley, near where farmers already are under contract to provide the wheat and barley straw, corn leaves and stalks, and switch grass used to produce ethanol.
- Why are tech entrepreneurs moving to Boise?
This is an honest opinion from an entrepreneur who needs a support system to be successful in launching and scaling a business. I thought what I would offer you is a basic outline of the points I have been experiencing here in Boise.
- Idaho companies experience success in foreign markets
U.S. Commerce Department’s Export Achievement Certificates were awarded to these businesses on May 7 during World Trade Day at the Grove Hotel in Boise.
Wyoming Business
- Governor calls for making Utah's workforce more globally competitive
Huntsman said during a news conference today that the 17-member committee — consisting of leaders in government, business, education and labor — will report in early autumn about "future work force needs" and how to address them.
Education
- Eleutian Technology of Ten Sleep, Wyoming wins funding, may add jobs
The company announced Thursday that it has received $1.5 million in venture capital from Skylake Incuvest, a South Korean investment fund specializing in the technology sector.
Other Economies
- Practices from the Portfolio, Volume I
A set of case studies that we believe will inform practitioners who are looking to improve practice within their own organizations across three areas: human capital, organizational growth, and educational curriculum and quality.
- National Venture Capital Association Joins NewSchools Venture Fund to Raise K-12 Education Infrastructure Fund
Financial and Human Capital Will Be Invested in Education Entrepreneurs
- Top Colleges Dig Deeper in Wait Lists for Students
“If they go deep into their wait lists there’s a domino effect that has an impact on all of us.”
- Computer game's high score could earn the Nobel Prize in medicine
After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they're playing a video game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science.
Community
- Maine’s Technology Sectors and Clusters: Status and Strategy
Maine's technology clusters have grown and evolved significantly since 2002, when Maine's first analysis of its technology sectors was published.
Connectivity & Communications
- Missoula's Historic Trolleys and Streetlights
Only if we had the foresight to keep that infrastructure in place today!
Energy
- Is Cloud Computing a Benefit or Threat?
If we imagine a true computing cloud, a virtual data center with a million or more host systems linked in some way, with literally trillions of bytes of online storage, where is the information we're looking for?
- Everything you ever wanted to know about WimMAX
If WiMAX provides services analogous to a cellphone, Wi-Fi is more analogous to a cordless phone.
- Archiving E-mail Effectively
The White House's recent problems archiving e-mail could be solved by emerging technologies.
Miscellaneous Ramblings
- Melting glaciers release toxic chemical cocktail and penguins are picking it up.
Decades after most countries stopped using the insecticide DDT, frozen stores of the chemical are now dripping out of melting Antarctic glaciers - and into penguins.
- U.S. consumers rank last in world survey of green habits. Survey: More Americans feeling 'green guilt'
You know it and you feel guilty.
VIRUS ALERTS
- How To Complain For Fun And Profit
It's written by Bruce Silverman, a famous advertising copywriter, who came up with the "Never Leave Home Without It" tag line for American Express.
- Internet criminals gaining ground, experts say. Ways to protect yourself from infected sites
Internet users have no reliable way to know which sites are safe to visit, no matter how well known those destinations are, security experts say.
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