MATR Newsletter – October 30, 2023
The state with the best education wins!

White House drops an AI regulation bombshell: 10 new mandates that’ll shake up the industry

The problem is not people being uneducated. The problem is that they have been educated just enough to believe what they’ve been taught. And not educated enough to question what they’ve been taught.

Montana’s Tech Hub Effort

• Missoula, Bozeman to spearhead new Montana ‘Tech Hub’

  Montana Senator Jon Tester led a panel discussion in Missoula earlier this year where participants began planning their approach to compete for one of the 30 new Tech Hubs. The effort panned out and Montana was selected from a field of 200 applicants.

Come Home Montana

• Cowboy Culture And The American Way

  Americans celebrate the cowboy culture of rugged individualism. It’s what makes us exceptional but it is also our Achilles heel.

• Montana turns into feudal estates

  We understand what she meant by “Montana.” And during the pandemic, a lot of claustrophobic Americans thought likewise and transferred themselves to Big Sky Country. Too many for local tastes.

MEDA -Montana Economic Developers Association

• Trouble in the badlands: How Glendive, Montana’s government turned on itself

  Mayor Teresea Olson says she just wanted to grow Glendive. Instead, she found herself fighting City Hall.

• Newest way to woo workers: Child care at airports, schools and poultry plants and….what is your company doing?

  Businesses are increasingly taking on the national child-care crisis themselves

• What happened to the internet without net neutrality?

  Today on the show, what happened in the years without it and what happens next.

• Montana Dept. of Commerce allocates millions in housing tax credits

  Developers submitted housing tax credit applications for eight projects and requested almost $50 million to build or rehabilitate homes

• ‘Bidenomics’: Feds Seek to Promote Commercial Conversions Into Affordable Transit-Friendly Housing

  The federal government is going back to the future to help solve three problems: vacant office space, global warming and high housing costs.

• President Biden asks Congress for $16 billion to stabilize child care

  “The $16 billion request is intended to stabilize funding for more than 225,000 child-care providers across the country, with state-level grants ranging from $15 million in Wyoming to $1.8 billion in Texas…

• Missoula Economic Partnership’s 2023 Annual Meeting – 11/8 – DoubleTree-Edgewater

  Please join us for the Missoula Economic Partnership’s 2023 Annual Meeting as we elect new board members, reflect on the past year’s accomplishments, and engage in meaningful discussion around critical challenges in our community.

• NADO (National Association of Development Organizations) News

  Our Annual Training Conference in Cleveland, OH is less than two weeks away. Stay up-to-date with the latest information about the conference by visiting nado.org/atc2023 and downloading the Whova app. We look forward to seeing you in Cleveland!

Big Sky Economic Development

• Big Sky Economic Development News For You

  TrueSpace “The Science of Business Building”

Five Valleys Archery Club

• In Missoula, Tester Discusses Impacts of his Law to Protect Montana Hunter Safety Courses

  I’m glad to say we were heard. Lawmakers responded and passed legislation reaffirming how important our outdoor traditions are in this country and in this great state of Montana – and I’d like to thank Senator Tester and his team for listening and taking action to help protect hunter education and the future of hunting in the great state of Montana.”

Great Falls Development Alliance

• GFDA Top Ten for 10-29-23

  Thank you again for everyone who worked hard to enable the groundbreaking of the Baatz Permanent Supportive Housing development. Great community and state partnering spurred by NeighborWorks Great Falls’ leadership!

Montana Business

• LinkedIn exec reveals exactly how AI is changing hiring and recruiting

  On the latest episode of The New Way We Work, LinkedIn’s Head of Opportunity Project shares what new AI roles have already been created, how AI is changing the job market, and the impact AI will have on everyone’s job.

• Want A New EV Dirt Cheap? Get Ready To Act Fast In Two Months!

  The law that gave Bolts the tax credit back also changes the tax credit into a point of sale rebate starting in January. Instead of waiting for tax time to maybe get a tax credit, you can give your tax credit to the dealer instead, and they can in turn take the $7,500 right off the price of the Bolt. For states with no other incentives, this puts the price at or a little below $20,000.

• All but seven Montana counties join revolt over ‘95 mill’ school tax

  Related lawsuits from education advocates and county association are now pending before the Montana Supreme Court.

Montana Business and Govt. Agency Collaboration Success

• Hunters can thank Montana landowners through new portal on FWP website

  “We frequently hear from hunters how grateful they are for the access they get from landowners across the state,” said FWP Director Dustin Temple. “Many hunters enjoy incredible access to private lands. We want to help facilitate communicating their gratitude to the landowners who provide that access.”

Housing

• Missoula City Council takes up vacation rentals, again

  But city staff said it’s currently a non-issue, as vacation rentals comprise only a small segment of Missoula’s overall housing stock.

• Short-term rentals are on the chopping block in some Montana cities

  Housing is an issue across the country, and other municipalities have taken similar measures to ban short-term rentals, like New York City, which recently implemented an up-to $5,000 fine for hosts who aren’t registered with the city, the New York Times reported.

Funding and Building your Business

• This wild AI tool can turn any website into a better version of itself

  This unofficial makeover of Airbnb’s website by Adept’s Amelia Wattenberger shows the power AI has to remake websites to our personal preferences.

• Bay Area tech CEO worth $35 billion says ‘suffering’ wasn’t worth it

  “At that time, if we realized the pain and suffering and just how vulnerable you’re gonna feel and the challenges that you’re gonna endure — the embarrassment and the shame, and you know, the list of all the things that go wrong — I don’t think anybody would start a company,” Huang said. “Nobody in their right mind would do it.”

Idaho News & Events

• Idaho Technology Council Hall of Fame Gala 2023 – 11/14 – Boise

  The night will be filled with excitement as we also present awards for the STEM Teacher of the Year, the Idavation Awards, and the ITC Policy Champion Award.

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

• Montana State University awarded five high rankings by Intelligent.com

  Intelligent.com ranks institutions on a scale from 0 to 100 across six categories based on factors like academic quality, graduation rate, cost and student resources.

• Maryland launches nation’s first state-backed service year program

  The effort is a key step toward one of Gov. Wes Moore’s signature campaign promises: To eventually create a pathway for every recent high school graduate.

Montana Education/Business Partnerships

• University of Montana Creates New Partnership with “The Whole Group” to Expand Montana’s Technology Workforce

  The Whole Group, a new venture focused on delivering ServiceNow technology solutions to business and government customers around the world, selected Montana as the ideal location to build a skilled workforce.

2023 Montana Legislature and Politics

• Many Conservative US Politicians Push For Anti-Clean Energy Legislation

  Conservative politicians continue to write bills that are designed to maintain the devastating hold of the fossil fuel industry on US energy.

Government News & Events

• How Local Government Can Recruit and Retain the Gen Z Workforce

  They make up the smallest percentage of workers in state and local government. Despite being sought after, efforts to hire and retain them aren’t increasing those numbers.

Non-Profit News

• Winter is Here – Does the new overtime rule impact your organization? Montana Nonprofit Association

  We have lots of items for your attention in nonprofit world this week, including several big changes at the federal level that we hope you can take time to weigh in on. We’re also very excited for our upcoming Multicultural Partnerships and Perspectives series, which starts next week.

Transportation

• Taking an Uber in Phoenix? Your next ride may not have a driver

  The launch comes five months after Uber and Waymo announced their partnership, and will have driverless rides start Thursday in Waymo’s 180-square-mile service area in the Phoenix area.

• Why Robotaxis Can Make Cities Safer – Why Robotaxis Have No Place in the City

  How will these views be different in 2 years?

• Florida is adopting Safe System Approach to improve safety, reduce traffic deaths and severe injuries

  Pei-Sung Lin of the Center for Urban Transportation Research at USF, says this approach has reduced traffic fatalities by 50% in one generation in countries like Spain and Sweden.

• 1st Autonomous, Electric Aircraft In World To Get Approval For Commercial Flights

  After more than 1,000 days and nights of persistent efforts, they overcame all kinds of difficulties and challenges to successfully complete all type certification objectives, proving that EHang is fully capable of independently designing, developing, and manufacturing mature unmanned eVTOL products.”

• Duh — New Study Shows Cyclists Are Better People

  Carbrain makes you a bad person, according to the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

• City of Missoula awarded $380,000 for Reserve Street safety study – What do you think should be done?

  Missoula has been awarded a grant to conduct a safety study on Reserve Street which could pave the way for future safety improvements.

• 70+ cities, groups report progress a year after committing to shared-mobility goals

  The shared-use mobility “action agenda” seeks to reduce reliance on private vehicles while creating more sustainable and equitable transportation systems.

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

• White House drops an AI regulation bombshell: 10 new mandates that’ll shake up the industry

  The voluntary code of conduct will set a landmark for how major countries govern AI, amid privacy concerns and security risks, the document seen by Reuters showed.

• Chatbots in Healthcare: Top 6 Use Cases & Examples in 2023

  Today there is a chatbot solution for almost every industry, including marketing, real estate, finance, the government, B2B interactions, and healthcare. According to a salesforce survey, 86% of customers would rather get answers from a chatbot than fill a website form.

• How Grammarly’s A.I.-Powered Tool Scaled to 30 Million Daily Users

  After working on plagiarism detection technology at Blackboard in the late aughts, Max Lytvyn came to the conclusion that the root of plagiarism was people’s desire to write better. He left Blackboard in 2009 to co-found Grammarly, a grammar checking tool that now has over 30 million daily users and a valuation north of $13 billion.

• Why Read Books When You Can Use Chatbots to Talk to Them Instead?

  Book publishers are experimenting with chatbot editions of new titles, providing “conversational companions” for readers.

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