MATR Newsletter – February 6, 2023
The state with the best education wins!

Come Home Montana

• Montana ranks in top 15 for domestic migration

  New numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau shows a population increase of 1.5% totaling 16,003 people who moved to the treasure state.

• Economic Outlook: More visitors and businesses in Montana’s Dillon and Beaverhead County

  Beaverhead County is the largest county in Montana area-wise. It’s more than twice the size of Rhode Island and Delaware and its 5,572 square miles are 69 more than Connecticut has.

• Anaconda, Montana welcomes job growth and economic boom

  “We did all our infrastructure, water, sewer, our streets, our street lights, got rid of the blight, now have a very attractive community that people are wanting to be a part of,”

• Bozeman Landed Hyundai’s New Horizons Studio R&D Center. Now Montana Is On The Hunt For More Manufacturing

  Now a consortium of government, academic and business leaders in the state, including the Montana Manufacturing Association under the Montana Chamber of Commerce, has been working for the past few years on a collection of other attractions to draw one specific kind of newcomer to Big Sky Country: manufacturers.

Dorsey & Whitney LLP

• 2023 Employment Litigation Trends – The Dorsey Labor & Employment Practice Group

  The Dorsey Labor & Employment Practice Group has drafted the following papers to highlight the trends employers should expect in 2023 in employment litigation in state and federal courts nationwide as well as likely areas of enforcement action by federal and state governments and regulatory agencies:

Great Falls Development Authority

• Great Falls Economic Development Top 10 for 2-5-23

  Cost of Living in the Great Falls metro in 2022 was 87.4% of the national average, according to C2ER (Council for Community and Economic Research)

Montana West Economic Development

• Montana West Economic Development Business Bulletin Feb. 2023

  PeerSpectives Emerging Entrepreneur Roundtable – Applications Due

Montana Business

• As part of the MarkeTech 2023 conference, keynote speaker Sarah Calhoun of Red Ants Pants will be speaking for the very first time in Nebraska.

  As an industry leader in both business and functional fashion, Calhoun will bring her passion for rural communities, working family farms and ranches, and advocating for women in leadership.

Housing

• Milwaukee County Makes Substantial Progress on Homelessness

  In 2022, the county’s point-in-time count of unhoused people reflected just 18 individuals, the lowest in the country.

Visit Montana

• “Yellowstone” ’s Epic TV Expansionism

  The showrunner Taylor Sheridan has been given wide latitude to iterate on the world of the Dutton ranching family, but he’s best when honoring his Western’s melodramatic core.

Funding and Building your Business

• Maryland Could Have a 4-Day Workweek. Will Businesses Take the Opportunity?

  A bill introduced in Maryland would create a pilot program to test the four-day workweek. But some Maryland-based CEOs are skeptical.

Incubators and R&D

• The calorie counter – Evolutionary anthropologist Herman Pontzer busts myths about how humans burn calories—and why

  “Exercise prevents you from getting sick, but diet is your best tool for weight management.”

• Brain-frequency primer accelerates learning and retention

  The human brain can be primed to learn more than three times faster, simply by flashing a light at its individual alpha brainwave frequency for 1.5 seconds

• Eye-pressure-sensing contact lens both monitors and manages glaucoma

  If people with glaucoma don’t stay on top of their condition, blindness may result.

21st Century Education Initiative – “You Should Care…”

• Making the case for Gallatin College

  Bozeman leaders continue to press Gov. Gianforte, lawmakers for $38 million for the region’s two-year campus.

Government News & Events

• PEW – How Volatile Is Your State’s Tax Revenue?

  After years of relative stability, the long-term volatility of state tax revenue trends increased to a record high by the end of fiscal year 2021.

• Tester, Daines, Zinke, Rosendale Restart Montana Coffee Starting March 1 in Washington, D.C. – How About Gianforte in Montana?

  Bipartisan weekly event provides opportunity for Montanans to meet directly with their congressional delegation

Careers

• TED- The secret to making new friends as an adult – Marisa G. Franco

  Making friends as an adult can feel like a baffling obstacle course. Why was it so much easier to connect as kids?

Transportation

• Tesla Model S breaks winter range record

  The Model S – which finished at 530km (329 miles), only 16.40% short of its advertised 634 km WLTP range – is the only vehicle on the list that passed 450 km (280 miles).

• Terraline’s 500-mile ultra-aero electric big rig invites humans aboard

  “We have the opportunity to scale fast, accelerating the adoption of electrification across freight fleets today,” Terraline CEO and founder Graham Doorley explained in an announcement this week. “Our success has to be of our own making and can’t be predicated on the progress of autonomous technologies and regulation.”

Energy and Climate Change

• Gas stove makers have a pollution solution. They’re just not using it

  Four decades ago, the gas industry and appliance manufacturers developed a partial solution for this problem. They created a cleaner and more efficient burner. But you can’t buy ranges with those burners because the industry never manufactured those appliances for sale.

VR/AR, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Artificial Intelligence and The Internet of Things

• It sounds like Google’s getting ready to compete with ChatGPT

  Sundar Pichai is promising that you’ll be able to ‘interact directly’ with the company’s language models.

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