The State with the Best Education Wins!
	MATR Newsletter - Fri Jun 19, 2009

This MATR newsletter sponsored by: Add an event... Upcoming Events Blackfoot's Customer Appreciation Event, 6/19, Missoula, Montana POSTPONED : "Marketing Workshop For Montana Artists, 6/20, University Of Montana - Missoula UM Open House Aims To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 6/23, Missoula MATR supporter: New Events Blackfoot's Customer Appreciation Event, 6/19, Missoula, Montana UM Open House Aims To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 6/23, Missoula Effective Search Engine Optimization Strategies For Today’s World, 06/30, Bozeman Glacier Outdoor Center - Intro Fly Fishing Class: Holding Water & Choosing Flies, 7/2, Glacier National Park Hellgate Venture Network, 7/9, Missoula, Montana The 16th Annual NASVF Conference, 9/14-16, 2009, Oklahoma City, OK MATR supporter: MATR Web services provided by: To subscribe or unsubscribe from the free weekly MATR newsletter, please visit our list info page

"I know it's kind of a romantic notion that you're just going to have this one brilliant idea and then everything is going to be great. But the fact is that coming up with an idea is the least important part of creating something great." --Sergey Brin, Google co-founder

"Broadband Is Key to Economic Development - It's all about the children - Comments requested on Montana's future." http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html

Big Sky Commerce

• Big Sky Commerce Offers Conference Room to Non-Profits in Missoula
  Big Sky Commerce is donating the use of its conference room for a few hours each month to interested non-profits.

Blackfoot Telecommunications Group

• Blackfoot's Customer Appreciation Event, 6/19, Missoula, Montana
  Present this card as your ticket and join us at The Holiday Inn Downtown at the Park on June 19 for a FREE LUNCH or come by after work for a FREE SUMMER SOCIAL with appetizers, drinks and live music by local favorite, David Boone.

Montana World Trade Center

• Montana World Trade Center June 17 Newsletter
  Information includes: Montana Distressed Wood Product Industry Recovery and Stabilization Program Website

TechRanch

• Life on the "High Line" in Montana
  It doesn't take long to get to 'rural' in Montana. Go 10 miles north or south of most any stretch of I-90 and there you are.


• Is the Venture Capital Model Broken?
  I don't have a problem with the word 'broken' but I am concerned that some pundits are using it as 'broken, and can't be fixed'.

Highway 12 Ventures

• Simplicity - A powerful value proposition
  It is such a pleasant surprise when I find a new product or solution that solves a problem that I have, but doesn’t require hours of study to figure out how to use it effectively.

Modwest

• Data Center Overload
  and my blog lives at Modwest’s and my blog lives at Modwest’s http://www.modwest.com headquarters in Missoula, Mont. headquarters in Missoula, Mont.

Come Home Montana

• Hellgate Venture Network, 7/9, Missoula, Montana
  No speaker. No agenda. Just networking and socializing.


• A Barbarian at the Gate: East is East; West is Best (and that means Montana!)
  In Montana, if something is wrong with your meal, the waiter takes it "off your check." In N.Y., you would have to find a whole rat on your plate, and not just whiskers or a tail, for anything to come off your check.

Developing Tech Jobs in Rural Communities

• Microsoft opening Lehi, Utah office
  Though the office is relatively small, Microsoft's decision adds momentum to Utah's vibrant high-tech industry, which is seen as one of the state's engines of economic growth.

Three Cups of Tea - The Central Asia Institute

• Bozeman's Greg Mortenson receives national public service award - "Three Cups of Tea"
  Mortenson, 51, founded the Central Asia Institute, a nonprofit organization that has established more than 90 schools since 1993. He is also the co-author of “Three Cups of Tea,” the best-selling account of how promoting education became his life’s work.

Montana Business

• Montana Manufacturing Extension Center Forward Focus Newsletter
  Read how new business has sprouted for Cream of the West in Harlowton, Mont., as a result of more deliberate growth planning and how it is opening unexpected doors and helping increase sales and develop new markets in the latest Montana Manufacturing Extension Center Web-based Forward Focus Newsletter

Montana Economic Development

• Business owners frustrated with Sanders County Community Development Corp.
  Brooker said the Lake County Community Development Corp. helped Sanders County start its version, and is helping again since the resignation of Executive Director Steve Simonson and the loss of county funding for the position. Marshall is volunteering his time; chairman Milanna Shear said they hope to be able to hire a permanent executive director again in July.


• Northcentral Montana Events center back on drafting board
  A diverse group is once again discussing building a center in northcentral Montana to host events ranging from major athletic tournaments to conventions, conferences and concerts.


• Senator Tester launches resources website, video for Montana contractors
  “Montana businesses now have access to good resources thanks to Jon’s workshop and this new website,” said Webb Brown, President of the Montana Chamber of Commerce. “There’s a lot of opportunities out there thanks to the Recovery Act. Now I encourage businesses and contractors to follow through, be prepared and do their homework so they can compete, win and go to work.”

Regional Economic Development

• Governors Schweitzer, Otter elected to lead WGA, energy and climate change high priorities
  “Western states are at the very center of our country’s energy future, and Western governors will take the lead in building the bridge to a new energy economy,” Schweitzer said.


• Broadband Is Key to Economic Development - It's all about the children - Comments requested on Montana's future.
  Communities must adapt continuously and at an ever-greater rate, or risk seeing cherished ways of life vanish because lack of opportunity bleeds them of the children who are their future. Today broadband offers every community the opportunity to move from the periphery to the center in economic terms.


• Idaho businesses contribute over $100K for Pacific NorthWest Economic Region Conference, 7/12-16 in Boise
  "The importance of Canada to Idaho can't be overestimated," said state Rep. Max Black, R-Boise, a former president of PNWER. "Canada bought $1 billion in goods from Idaho last year."

Careers

• Want to Work for the City of Bozeman, MT? Hand Over Your Social Network Logins and Passwords
  The City won't look at "the things that the federal constitution lists as protected things."

Idaho Business

• Idaho's Governor Otter touts Project 60 ... plan to boost Idaho's economy to $60 billion, an 18 percent increase
  He calls it Project 60 -- a development plan geared at boosting Idaho's economy to $60 billion, an 18 percent increase -- by using a whole new set of high-tech ideas.

Oregon Business

• Slump Dashes Oregon Dreams of Californians
  Now the Bend area’s unemployment rate, at almost 16 percent, is one of the highest of any metropolitan area in the nation. “For sale” signs dot desert-toned, unfinished subdivisions. Luxury furniture stores downtown are going out of business. San Francisco chefs have fled.

Utah Economic Development

• Kanab, Utah, Chamber of Commerce gets $100,000 to support efforts to develop local entrepreneurs.
  "For many of Utah's smaller communities, entrepreneurship provides the best opportunity for economic growth", said Jason Perry, GOED's executive director. "Kanab's entrepreneur forum is a model for other rural Utah towns."

Community

• The Geography of Class in Greater Seattle
  Academics, perhaps Americans in general, are loath to admit to class differences, yet they remain very crucial to the understanding of how cities and regions evolve.

Connectivity & Communications

• Broadband Indispensible to Americans, Survey Finds
  The percentage of broadband users has increased from 55 percent in May 2008 to 63 percent in April 2009 - placing the Internet in the ‘must keep' category for many Americans.


• The High Cost of Internet Access
  Sherwood, Oregon rethinks fiber-optic access for all

Energy and Climate Change

• 'Game-changer': Report on climate change urges action
  U.S. coastal cities, including New York and Boston, could face a rise in sea level by 12 to 20 inches this century that would exceed forecasts for the rest of the planet if Greenland's ice sheet keeps melting as fast as it is now, researchers said in May.


• The Montana GreenPower E-newsletter June 2009
  Montana Bioenergy Tours Scheduled This Summer


• Wind Farmers: United We Profit
  Landowners in the wind-rich Upper Plains are joining forces to gain better -- and bigger -- business deals for locally produced power.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

• Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number of People?
  Slowing the rise in human numbers is essential for the planet--but it doesn't require population control

Cool Stuff That's Coming

• Ex-Microsofties launch Twitter search engine CrowdEye
  Users can search and browse through Twitter status updates, and further focus in on their interests by filtering their results. CrowdEye also shows the most-tweeted topics within a search

The Creative and Cultural Economy

• National Folk Festival in Butte, Mont., July 10-12 celebrating the West - and it's all FREE
  The lineup for the second National Folk Festival taking place in "Butte, America" July 10-12 stars about 250 singers, dancers and other artists, along with hoofed performers from all over Montana.

---

To subscribe or unsubscribe from the free weekly MATR newsletter, please visit our list info page