MATR Newsletter - Mon Mar 1, 2010 |
"Our public education system does so much for every community and for our state. Public education truly is the cornerstone of our democracy and the bedrock of economic development in this state." Montana Superintendent Denise Juneau http://matr.net/articl ... .html
"Huls Dairy of Corvallis, MT is one of seventy five (75) Blue Ribbon Small Business Award winners competing for the national U.S. Chamber of Commerce “Dream Big Award” in Washington, D.C.!!! VOTE for the ONLY Montana business to qualify and be recognized!" http://matr.net/articl ... .html --- "City Club Missoula Presents: “Not As Advertised” - Are You Media Literate?, 3/8, Missoula" http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html ---
Missoula BarCamp
Dorsey & Whitney LLP
- Missoula BarCamp 2010, 5/1, University Of Montana, Missoula
Missoula's annual participant generated conference on art, technology, and making a difference.
Idaho National Laboratory
- (Reduced Rate Available from Dorsey & Whitney in Missoula) International Biomass Conference & Expo, 5/4-6, Minneapolis, MN
Dorsey is one of the sponsors of this upcoming Biomass conference in May in Minneapolis. Feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested. We can get a reduced conference rate for our clients and friends, so any interested Montana person or company should contact me (and not register online). Contact: Jack Manning, [email protected], (406) 721-6025
PrintingForLess
- Eastern Idaho prospers amid recession. - Idaho Falls has switched places with the Treasure Valley as Idaho's most diversified, stable economy
And today's Idaho Falls and the surrounding metropolitan area have a far more diverse economy than ever before.
The Burton K. Wheeler Center
- PrintingForLess.com Wins Multiple National Association of Printing Leadership Marketing Plus™ Awards
“Marketing Plus recognizes those companies that have demonstrated their ability to realize the full potential of marketing in all its forms as a key driver of their clients’ success and their own growth.”
- Printing For Less February Newsletter
This month, we're highlighting a super-sized new product, providing a handy toolkit to help you navigate the murky waters of social media, and introducing the first of a 3-part educational series on making email and direct mail work for you.
Highway 12 Ventures
- The Wheeler Center - "The 'Next' Economy: A Public Discussion On Jobs And Innovation" including keynoters Craig Barrett (Intel Corp) and Paul Kedrosky (Kaufmann Foundation for Entrepreneurship), 4/5-6, Bozeman, Montana
With the collapse of a number of businesses, projected revenue shortfalls, decreasing stimulus funds, and 6% unemployment, how will we rescue our economy in the short and long term? What is "next" for our economy?
City Club Missoula
- The Paradigm Shift Continues…
Last year, my partner Phil wrote a post about how Derek (our college-aged summer intern) used his iPhone in a creative way when injured in a mountain bike accident. Last week, we once again witnessed Derek demonstrate how today’s younger generation turns to technology first when confronted with a everyday challenges.
MAPS™ : Media Arts in the Public Schools
- City Club Missoula Presents: “Not As Advertised” - Are You Media Literate?, 3/8, Missoula
City Club Missoula brings a presentation on media literacy. What are the effects of the messages that our children and grandchildren receive on a daily basis from modern media? Are children learning attitudes and behaviors while viewing hours and hours of media that are not positive?
Missoula Children's Theatre
- Premiere Of 2010 New Media Arts In The Public Schools (MAPS) Student Films, 3/27, Corvallis, Montana
Two comedic/dramas produced and directed by our Hamilton, Corvallis, Victor and Darby high school filmmakers. And a documentary by the MAPs adult class.
Montana Ambassadors
- The Missoula Children’s Theatre (MCT) partners with the US Forest Service to launch The Children and Nature Initiative - "Where Is The Great Outdoors?"
By embracing dialogue and action regarding children’s health and healthy lifestyle choices, MCT is seizing the opportunity to further realize its mission - The development of life-skills in children through participation in the performing arts. It’s all connected.
Developing a more Entrepreneurial Montana
- Montana Ambassadors look to state's future - Montana On The Move
The Montana Ambassadors is a volunteer, not-for-profit organization of leaders in business, education, and the professions with a common dedication to living and doing business in Montana and furthering the best interests of the state, serving at the pleasure of the Governor.
- Montana’s Recovering Economy: Where Do We Go From Here? 2010 Montana Ambassadors Annual Meeting and Conference Summary
The 2010 Montana Ambassador Annual Meeting and Conference was a great success. This conference summary includes photos, a summary of events as well as presentation files that were made available from our keynote speakers and panelists. Thank you for joining us and making this event possible.
Montana Business
- The new worldwide startup
The infrastructure needed to start up a tech company is now decentralized.
- Build A Stronger America - Join the Entrepreneurs Movement - The Kauffman Foundation
According to the Build A Stronger America Movement Poll, 19 percent of Build A Stronger America members have seen the profitability of their business increase, whereas only 8 percent of the general entrepreneur population says the same.
Montana Economic Development
- Software billionaire Siebel selling Montana's N Bar Ranch for $45M
The N Bar is one of Montana's oldest ranches, in continuing operation since 1878, 11 years before Montana earned statehood. In 1885, Tom Cruse, an Irish immigrant who developed the $50 million Drumlummon gold mine north of Helena, bought the N Bar and launched a cattle empire stretching 100 miles to Jordan.
- The little power plant that could. - Small Northwestern Energy facility south of Butte can help light 40,000 homes
"I bet 95 percent of people don't realize that Butte has a power plant," said Rich Potvin, manager of the Basin Creek Power Plant, located south of town behind the Butte Industrial Park.
- Izaak Walton Inn's locomotive turned luxury lodging now boarding near Glacier National Park
Outside the Izaak Walton Inn near Essex http://www.izaakwaltoninn.com/ , near the boundary of Glacier National Park, guests can stay overnight in a locomotive converted to luxury lodging.
- Manure becomes pollutant as its volume grows unmanageable except at Huls Dairy in Corvallis, Montana - Montana Ambassadors 2010 Entrepreneurs of the Year
Crowded together at a new breed of megafarms, livestock produce three times as much waste as people, more than can be recycled as fertilizer for nearby fields.
- Montana's poor work safety record costs us millions every year. It shortens careers and steals lives. LET'S CHANGE IT! Work Safe Montana
WorkSafeMT Foundation is a nonprofit partnership that includes state and federal agencies, private business, labor unions, organizations and Montana citizens. Our goal is to raise awareness of Montana’s poor safety performance and engage employers and employees in changing it.
- How Safe is Your Workplace? - SafetyFestMT 2010, 3/30-4/2, Helena, Montana
Who’s Invited: Employers, Employees, anyone interested in improving workplace safety
- Huls Dairy of Corvallis, MT is one of seventy five (75) Blue Ribbon Small Business Award winners competing for the national U.S. Chamber of Commerce “Dream Big Award” in Washington, D.C.!!! VOTE for the ONLY Montana business to qualify and be recognized!
As you can see, we are very excited about this level of recognition for Huls Dairy, our community and our state. Help us achieve the national recognition Huls Dairy is so deserving of. It’s time to tell OUR “home-grown” business success story and give the State of Montana some overdue national attention!
Funding and Building your Business
- Great Falls Development Authority leaders forecast: City poised to prosper
Great Falls Development Authority leaders believe the community is in good shape to charge ahead when the national economy brightens.
- Missoula Mayor John Engen's economic development endeavor revving up. The Best Place Project
“We need to stop waiting. We need to start doing.” Mayor John Engen
- Tourism opportunities knocking: Motel, hotel owners should consider support for Missoula district
Hotel owners will have another opportunity to learn the facts about TBIDs and discuss their concerns at an upcoming meeting slated for March 11. It would be a good idea for both supporters and protesters to attend, and help bring this unnecessary impasse to an end.
- Louisiana cities blaze the trail for economic development
These Southern communities changed their fates after recognizing some hard truths. To stay vibrant they would have to reinvent how they attract and retain businesses, and to do that, they would need outside help.
Incubators and R&D
- What's Wrong with Venture Capital?
The old mechanism for funding the commercialization of new technologies is in trouble.
- Explaining Informal Investors
Finding so-called informal investors for a debt or equity financing in a small company isn't easy. It helps to understand who they are
- Forming a Sole Proprietorship
Whether you're starting a business from home or opening a large-scale operation, you'll need to decide on the best legal structure for your new company. Part one of a five-week series.
- Kauffman Foundation Launches Energy Innovation Network
The Energy Innovation Network http://www.energyinnovationnetwork.org/ accelerates energy innovation by connecting the dots between technology, entrepreneurship, finance, and policy, making the pathway for entrepreneurs more transparent.
- So you've been hacked, now what?
The statistics would seem to suggest that it is less a matter of if and more when your enterprise will fall victim to a hack attack of some kind. Once you've been hacked, then what?
Montana Education Excellence
- Lawmakers urge renewal of R&D tax credit left out of jobs bill
Many business groups, especially in the technology and manufacturing sectors, support the credit and urge its expansion to compete with R&D incentives offered by other countries.
- Tips on How Academic Scientists Can Make the Career Switch to Industry
Because of the need to collaborate, people skills are much more important in industry.
University TechTransfer
- University of Montana vice presidents detail planned spending cutbacks
Gov. Brian Schweitzer has ordered all state agencies to reduce general fund spending by 5 percent in the current biennium; thus UM's work toward that goal.
- Montana-wide effort improves college entrants’ writing skills
Looking for an example of significant and successful reform? The university system’s annual statewide writing assessment for high school students, a collaborative secondary-postsecondary project, is an innovation that has resulted in significantly greater student achievement. That’s the kind of reform that matters.
Developing an Angel Network in Montana
- To create jobs, streamline tech transfer, entrepreneurship policy
The report, "The Power of Innovation," offers 10 federal steps that can create jobs, technology companies and Communities of Innovation without creating new federal bureaucracies.
North Dakota Business and Economic Development
- The Seattle-based Alliance of Angels investors report record year, fund 29 companies
"We experienced our strongest year ever in terms of dollars flowing to entrepreneurs, even in the midst of a severe downturn," Alliance chairman, Dan Rosen, said in the release.
Wyoming Business
- A time of prosperity Governor highlights North Dakota’s economic success at area gathering
The prosperity North Dakota is now experiencing didn't happen by accident, but by the good decisions of state and local leaders.
Education
- Wyoming officials plan state-wide program to reduce dropout rate
The board plans to send out requests for proposals and will select a company to develop a Web site and other information, including a dropout prevention tool kit for communities.
Cool Stuff That's Coming
- Education cuts may lead to U.S. brain drain
While California and other states cut higher education budgets, many countries are spending to boost the number and quality of their graduates, setting the stage for brain drains and brain gains as the global economy emerges from the Great Recession.
- In Middle School, Charting Their Course to College and Beyond
These new learning plans will follow each sixth grader through high school, and are intended to help the students assess their own strengths and weaknesses as well as provide their parents and teachers with a more complete profile beyond grades and test scores.
- Gov. Jennifer Granholm says she will shut down government to preserve school funding
"I'm not going to cut public education again."
- How to build real ‘American Schools’
The future of our system of government depends on a public school system that graduates students who, now more than ever, understand the requirements of democratic citizenship and who have the sensibilities and skills to meet them.
Non-Profit News
- Perfect Insulator Could Eliminate Heating Bills
With this insulator, the body heat produced by one person would be enough to warm an entire home.
The Creative and Cultural Economy
- States Move to Revoke Charities’ Tax Exemptions
Revoking the nonprofit organizations’ exemptions from property taxes is also under scrutiny in several counties in Kansas, as well as in Pennsylvania.
- Cost of proposed Missoula events center cut by $21 million
The benefits to the community – from direct, indirect and induced spending to additional tax income to the more than 300 jobs the center could create – add up to $33 million a year, he said, not to mention the $4.3 million that local builders would make during the two-year construction period.
- The Crown Of The Continent Guitar Foundation Guitar Extravaganza with Pat Metheny, Scott Tennant and Alex De Grassi, 8/29-9/5, Bigfork, Montana
Your chance to learn from and play with some of the best guitarists in the world, including Pat Metheny, Scott Tennant, Alex DeGrassi, all of whom will be in residence for the week. We will be announcing additional guest artists in the next few weeks.
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