The State with the Best Education Wins!
	MATR Newsletter - Fri Jun 27, 2008

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"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -- Pablo Picasso

Congratulations to the Montana World Trade Center http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html and Printing For Less http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html . You make Montana proud and better through your excellence.

Montana World Trade Center

• Montana Rep. Rehberg Secures $300,000 in Funding for Montana World Trade Center in Missoula
  “These funds will help ensure the Trade Center can continue to hold trade missions as well as allow them to create new programs to expand their ability to assist Montana businesses.”

PrintingForLess

• PrintingForLess.com Named Finalist in 2008 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of Year® Award and 2008 American Business AwardsSM
  “I’m honored to be a finalist for the Ernst & Young Award this year and am very proud of our customer service team for being a finalist in the Stevie Awards,” says Andrew Field. “These nominations recognize how our investments in technology, training and talent have helped us to build a great company that contributes to the community and helps other entrepreneurs succeed.”

Boomtown Institute

• The Agurban from Boomtown Institute - Productivity and Agricultural Yields
  Agricultural technology is not just about machines.

Developing Tech Jobs in Rural Communities

• Rethinking the Country Life as Energy Costs Rise
  The Choice is becoming more well defined. A. Move back to the city, or B. Figure out how to make telework a preferred option.


• It’s all about the quality of life
  I’m looking for 2-3 tech workers who take advantage of, say, flyfishing or bicycling on their lunch hour and /or find the creative mix of Boise inspiring.

Leadership Montana

• A great commencement speech
  Many of you know John Masterson, founder of Modwest and Grupthink in Missoula. Here's the commencement speech at Texas Lutheran University given by his father a week before he retired as President of the University.

Montana Business

• LocatorWeb Store Location Software Now Includes Slippy Map Technology
  "Because if your customers can't find you, they can't do business with you. It's that simple."

Montana Economic Development

• Montana Growth Through Agriculture program releases new application and supporting materials
  

Regional Economic Development

• Tacoma, Washington 2020 - A thriving regional marketplace waiting to happen.
  By 2020, Tacoma will be a major employment center developing around successful world-class companies producing goods and services for the betterment of the community, its citizens, and the companies and investors doing business here.

Careers

• Manpower: 37 percent willing to relocate anywhere in the world for better career
  “More people are living and working away from their home countries than at any other point in history - about three percent of the world's population," Joerres said in a statement released with the survey. "These are not the one-way migrations of yesteryear. Talent goes where talent is needed, and we are truly becoming a global, borderless workforce.”

Economic Gardening

• Economic Gardening Helps Communities Grow Their Own Jobs
  Often contrasted with "economic hunting" strategies that aim to recruit development opportunities from outside the community, economic gardening is designed to "grow your own" jobs through entrepreneurial activity within the community.

Funding and Building your Business

• When You Can't Advertise for Investors
  Even a privately owned company can appeal for funds to so-called angel investors or venture capitalists. Get legal advice on how to do so


• How to learn from from the Boston Celtics
  #1. Great managers hire great talent.


• High-Impact Firms: Gazelles Revisited
  What are high-impact firms before they become high-impact firms? What happens after their high-impact phase?


• Product Design Review: Say-What? Why? Who? When? How?
  What exactly is a product design review anyway?


• 'Ball Girl' scores buzz for Gatorade - Now this is Viral Marketing!
  WOW!!!


• Inside Entrepreneurship: Angel investing getting tighter
  I've been told that my ideas are not big enough.


• An Increasing Appeal of Starting a Business
  For women who want flexible hours, autonomy, and the chance to profit from ideas their corporate bosses often overlook, nap time is very much over.

Incubators and R&D

• Citizen Scientists to the Rescue for Glacier Park
  Citizen science – a way to solicit more eyes and ears to help.


• Married researchers team up in cancer fight - McLaughlin Research Institute
  Their work is so indistinguishable that when Jenkins was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a high honor, she turned it down because her husband and research partner wasn't included.

Montana Education Excellence

• Several University of Montana MBA Teams Make Global Performers
  As a tribute to the caliber of MBA students at UM and what they have learned here, In the recently finished competition, seven of the 19 teams participating in the recent simulation placed within the 100 Global Top Performers in this simulation, which is performed at many universities across the globe.


• 100 lucky Montana teachers having loans paid off
  The program, which was authorized by the 2007 Legislature, is aimed to keep Montana educators in Montana classrooms.


• University of Montana to Host International Chemistry Symposium- July 6-10
  The conference topics span the many applications of metal-containing organic molecules to biology.


• MSU laser and optics researchers receive $750,000 NASA grant
  The grant comes from the space agency's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. MSU is one of only a dozen universities around the country to receive one of the grants.

Montana Education/Business Partnerships

• Missoula Children's Theater High School of the Arts school proposal gains support
  MCT wants to expand its existing summer-camp theater training program into an accredited, residential high school program. The performing arts school would charge tuition and accept students through an audition process, recruiting on a national or international level.

Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)

• How Big Money is Hijacking a Small Business Technology Program
  I've been wearing a black armband since April 23 to mourn the death blow that Congress inflicted on one of the great incubators of technological small businesses: the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.


• What Contributes Most to the Commercialization of SBIR-Funded NIH Projects?
  

University TechTransfer

• Venture Capital: University of Washington tech unit chief, Linden Rhoads knows the milieu
  She is the first true entrepreneur to lead the office, which during the past 26 years has helped create more than 235 companies.

Idaho Business

• Idaho Office of Science & Technology June 2008
  "TechLaunch was a great event! Getting great feedback and new ideas from the individual judges, as well as just learning about what's going on in Boise's and in Idaho's entrepreneur and investment communities was an invaluable experience."

Utah Economic Development

• Utah fertile ground for high-tech, but State execs warn of potential weakness
  Although both measured the conditions underlying the technology and science industries, and their vibrancy, executives at Utah companies warn that the long-term health of those sectors might be in danger because of weaknesses in math and science education.

Washington State Business

• UW's new College of the Environment could bring in the green
  There's no question the UW has great strengths in environmental sciences and related fields.

Wyoming Business

• Report: University of Wyoming doesn't adequately ready math teachers
  The council says the UW College of Education would have passed had it required more math courses for prospective elementary teachers. The council also criticizes the state for weak requirements.

Education

• Career Academies - Long-Term Impacts on Labor Market Outcomes, Educational Attainment, and Transitions to Adulthood
  The Career Academies produced sustained earnings gains that averaged 11 percent (or $2,088) more per year for Academy group members than for individuals in the non-Academy group — a $16,704 boost in total earnings over the eight years of follow-up (in 2006 dollars).

Community

• Seven New Community-Friendly Grant Opps have been added to the Extension Community Resources Program webpage
  

Connectivity & Communications

• Group Seeks High-Speed Broadband In Every Home
  A list of who's who on the Internet came together to promote a new group that launched Tuesday to expand broadband demand and deployment.


• Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web
  "Is this interesting to Google?"


• Online service lets blind surf the Internet from any computer, anywhere
  New software, called WebAnywhere, launched today lets blind and visually impaired people surf the Web on the go. The tool developed at the University of Washington turns screen-reading into an Internet service that reads aloud Web text on any computer with speakers or headphone connections.


• Get Ready For .smith, .sports Or .love On The Web
  Internet regulators have voted to relax rules on domain names

Energy

• Solar Costs Heading Down
  Silicon shortages drove up prices, but supplies are now increasing.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

• Gates' big-picture memos shaped Microsoft, changed tech world
  He wrote a series of course-setting memos to lead the company in these new directions — a new computer interface, the Internet, computer security. They stand as signposts at several key junctures in Microsoft's history.

Cool Stuff That's Coming

• The Fight to End Aging Gains Legitimacy, Funding
  Gandhi once said, describing his critics, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Non-Profit News

• Idaho gets $140K from Steele-Reese Foundation for Gear Up to encourage low-income Idaho students to attend college or university
  Gear up Idaho works with students and their families beginning in the 7th grade, encouraging them to take tougher courses, providing extra tutoring and then offering financial aid and scholarships upon graduation.

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