For the past 25-years, I've watched our economic development efforts swing for the fences. We've spent millions and millions incentivizing and luring the big fish. There are some legitimate success stories. There are also some spectacular failures.
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What does awarding a City contract have to do with Google and Facebook? At first glance, it’s hard to see a connection. But if we take a closer look, perhaps we can learn from the way the Internet giants process data and make decisions about the information they show us.
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Have you ever wondered how and why change happens? Perhaps more importantly, have you ever wondered how what looks like intentional change happens? The change ingredients are easy to see in when looked on with hindsight, and the driving factors are the topic of a new book called The Guardian by Duncan Green. Check out
Read & Share sourced from: GovLab
Grand Forks Mayor Mike Brown has taken up the general mission of ‘doing it better’, and one of the first places he’s starting is on the roads in Grand Forks. And an accidentally created litmus test is his newest tool. It’s one part of a larger commentary where Mayor Brown provides a little direct communication
Read & Share sourced from: Grand Forks Herald
The 2017 North Dakota State Fair is in the books, and at first blush, the numbers seem pretty good; attendance was up nearly six thousand visitors compared to last year. But in order to stay competitive, we should always be looking around at how others are doing the ‘fair’ game. One stark difference between Minnesota’s
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The challenges and methods for dealing with those challenges of cities across the region is strikingly similar. Job creation and economic growth are challenges that nearly every smaller community deals with, and in Crookston, MN, they’ve been managing those efforts from two different organizations. But a lack of resources and overlapping missions forced them into
Read & Share sourced from: Grand Forks HeraldThere’s little doubt those operating in the Bakken have gotten more efficient in the past few years. The low prices have forced operators to get costs under control and the end result is an oil play that’s more economically resilient. But what about the wells, are we getting better at getting more oil out of
Read & Share sourced from: Oil and Gas 360In our country and more and more in our state, we put people in jail. For a long time, we’ve viewed incarceration as the only solution to the problem of criminal activity and recidivism. But is it? More importantly, is there a better solution? A recent trip to Norway by our state’s top correction officers
Read & Share sourced from: Mother Jones
There’s a lot in flux right now in our country — our economy, our political spectrum, the technology that shapes our daily lives — all of it is changing. And so are our churches; those that are growing are finding new ways to connect with parishioners.
Read & Share sourced from: Dickinson Press
Back on July 16, the City of Minot threw itself a birthday party. You may not have known we just turned 130. It was a great event for many reasons, but perhaps most significantly for the way it made city officials and services public and accessible in a non-traditional setting. And shortly after that celebration,
Read & Share sourced from: Grand Forks Herald
For one city in Minnesota, the Mississippi River was just a water pathway that flowed through town. It was the place they dumped their sewage; it was the home of meat-packing plants that sent their environmental impacts downstream. They stopped the environmental damage they were doing a generation ago; now their eyes are opening to
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When it comes to resilience, it’s not just about being prepared. It’s about building stronger cities that deliver a higher quality of life and more economic diversity. Sound familiar? Minot is in the middle of an enormous resiliency effort made possible by $74.3 million federal grant. And we’re not the only city thinking in this language;
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In Winnipeg, The Forks Renewal Corporation, the city’s economic development agency, is looking to spur redevelopment in a neighborhood dominated by wide roads and parking lots. And how are they going about doing it? They’re holding a design competition. They’ve set basic goals of what they want to accomplish and the terms of what’s required
Read & Share sourced from: Winnipeg Free PressThe Roosevelt Park Zoo, the Magic City Discovery Center, and the Souris Valley Animal Shelter are three local organizations with capital campaigns either underway or soon to get started. The success of those campaigns and the projects they intend to deliver would no doubt be a boon to our community. So, this article from The
Read & Share sourced from: The CurrentThe challenges that come with delivering a high-quality education in a rural setting are real. Too often in our small towns, teachers and administrators are forced to continue delivering a high level of services amid a climate of declining resources. What’s the solution? In Alberta, Canada, one school administrator addressed the results by tearing down
Read & Share sourced from: EdSurge
One of the considerable by-products of oil production in North Dakota is the extremely salty wastewater we get back along with the oil. It’s not a new problem. And though modern practices inject wastewater deep underground, there are still a number of legacy era brine pits that continue to leach salt water contamination into nearby
Read & Share sourced from: Inside Energy