Coordination/Collaboration : Buzz

Minneapolis joins Hangzhou, China and Amsterdam as cities that could serve as models for better bicycling policies, believes a columnist for Valley Courier, a newspaper in Colorado.
 
The article notes that in addition to the extensive bikeway system in Minneapolis, the area is also home to the founders of Bike Fixtation (see previous coverage in The Line here), a new kind of vending machine that dispenses bike accessories and patch kits.
 
"We could learn something from these models," the article notes. "[W]e'd save a lot of money and a lot of gas, while dropping the pounds that weigh us down."

The Walker Art Center magazine features a story about the “Art of Placemaking,” as it pertains to Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis.

“Despite its status as a major, historic thoroughfare in Minneapolis--or maybe because of it--Hennepin Avenue has for decades been regarded as a problematic, contested public space,” it reads.

A project called Plan-It Hennepin aims to change that, by turning it into a “lively, compelling cultural corridor,” the story says.

The story touches on the Walker’s perspective on the process, in which it’s a participant:  It quotes the Walker’s Olga Viso, who says, “Along with our partners in Plan-It Hennepin, we thought that the Walker could help lead a different conversation in terms of creativity and envisioning possibilities, by bringing artists’ voices into the process.”

This story dovetails with The Line's feature this week on Candy Chang.

Venture Beat mentions the local CoCo coworking space and Project Skyway business accelerator in a story about the coworking trend.

Skyway is an example of the kind of collaborations that can come out of coworking, it expains.

For the vast majority of startups, coworking may be a better alternative than the traditional business incubator, it argues.

“Co-working shifts the startup mentality away from the tunnel-vision focus on getting funding, and onto the 'first-things-first' task of growing a company culture, developing ideas, and most importantly, nurturing support networks,” it states.

In a recent article on the benefits of mentoring programs, Minneapolis-based public relations professional Tameka Davis shared her insights on how a mentor helped her to succeed.
 
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Davis chose a mentor in the interactive and social media field, and found numerous benefits with the arrangement. She developed a five-year career plan, improved her networking skills, and learned to work better with clients, the article noted.
 
The story went on to include tips on maintaining an effective mentor-protégé relationship.
 
Davis says, "It's just good to be able to talk to someone who has been there and can help you navigate your career."

Growing fresh food in Minneapolis and selling those veggies will become easier, thanks to recent amendments to the city's zoning code.
 
Minneapolis already allows community gardens, and has rules that allow residents to keep chickens, but there has been a contentious debate over proposed changes to market gardens. Some members of the City Council weren't particularly supportive of measures to expand urban farming in the city, but the amendments ended up passing anyway.
 
A story from Minnesota Public Radio reports that Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak--a longtime supporter of urban farming proposals--signed the changes into law at the Dowling Community Garden at Dowling Urban Environmental School.

The New York Times recently featured Minnesota's statewide “museum month,” which is coming up in May.

It’s the first celebration of the sort to spring up nationally, according to the newspaper.

Several local museum administrators came up with the idea, the story states.

“The rich history of Minnesota’s museums invites such a focus,” says the Times, citing the 1849 founding of the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul.

The Walker Art Center’s chief of operations, Phillip Bahar, is quoted saying, “There are stories that we each try to tell individually, whenever a special exhibition is happening,” but “What we want to do is tell the stories that we don’t have the opportunity to tell very often, about the broader community of museums across the state.”

A local couple who were facing foreclosure got help from comedian and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres, according to a Star Tribune story.

DeGeneres presented them with a $25,000 check from Fujifilm Medical Systems on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” which aired last Friday.

Carrie Agnew had written to the show about the dire situation she and her partner, Rebecca Johnson, were facing.

When the show offered to fly them in to watch a taping, Agnew had no idea that the visit would involve financial help.

"It's such a relief," Agnew says in the story, adding, "Our lives are changing."

Publishing industry magazine Publishers Weekly recently highlighted the collaboration of three Twin Cities literary presses on a distinctive literacy promotion effort.
 
Coffee House Press, Milkweed Editions, and Graywolf Press are partnering with a Wisconsin literacy group called Little Free Library, and the Walker Art Center, to produce "little free libraries" of books that are ideal for coffee shops or restaurants, the magazine noted.
 
If the promotion is successful, the presses may make books more widely available. The non-profit literacy group estimates that there are between 200 to 300 of their little free libraries maintained around the world, with the majority in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The National Association of Town Watch ranked Minneapolis in first place for its National Night Out activities in 2011, according to city information.

National Night Out is a community-building celebration that encourages neighbors to get to know each other through block parties and other get-togethers. It’s been a tradition in Minneapolis for 28 years.  

This past summer, nearly 60,500 people showed up for 1,173 events.

“The impact of NNO lasts throughout the year. Neighbors who know and care about each other, do a better job of watching out for one another and reporting crime and suspicious behavior to police,” a prepared statement from the city reads.  

A recent Talking Tech column in USA Today highlighted the beneficial climate for tech startups in the Twin Cities.
 
The newspaper's columnist visited CoCo, the shared workspace with locations in St. Paul and Minneapolis, and talked with entrepreneurs at companies like Mobiata and QONQR.
 
The article also included comments from a tech analyst based in Minneapolis who noted that the Twin Cities are giving Chicago and other tech areas a good amount of competition. As driving factors, he nodded toward the schools, people, big companies, and history of innovative thinking in the local area.

A recent article in Kaiser Health News highlighted a distinctive program at the Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), in which patients are given food as well as immunizations and prescriptions.
 
HCMC's pediatric clinic offers a food pantry, one of only a few in the nation that's hospital-based. The pantry, now in its third year of operation, grew out of project that focused on encouraging families to include more fruits and vegetables in their diets.
 
Kaiser's article also noted that the pantry is able to serve more families by delivering food rather than running the pantry out of a single space at the facility.

A recent article in the national magazine GOOD  features Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.

The story by local writer Jeff Severns Guntzel, is titled, “The Partisans Will Never Find Us Here: Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and the Art of Getting Shit Done.”

It talks about the city’s recent accolades for everything from biking to literacy.

“For a city that lives in the imaginations of Americans as a culturally isolated outpost of extreme and permanent cold, they are small but significant triumphs—and evidence that something is going right in Minneapolis,” Guntzel writes.

Civic achievements are reflected in “a buzzing park, a painter turning a street corner utility box into art, block after block of thriving independent businesses, a festival for every obsession and persuasion, [and] its growing, engaged immigrant communities. Minneapolis is all of these things. It is not a utopia, not by any stretch. It’s just a city that works,” he says.  

In many ways, the success can be credited to the efforts of the Mayor, who’s been in office for a decade, Guntzel says.

Minneapolis-based Target Corp. prompted discussion about aquaculture practices by recently promising it will sell only sustainable, traceable fish by 2015.
 
As noted in the Los Angeles Times and other publications, the company stopped selling farmed salmon, Chilean sea bass and orange roughy in 2010, due to sustainability issues. It currently sells about 50 types of fish that are certified by either the Marine Stewardship Council or the Global Aquaculture Alliance.
 
To meet its 2015 goal, Target is partnering with nonprofit marine conservation group FishWise, which will assess all of the company's seafood products.
 
 

At the recent Innovations in Criminal Justice Summit in Chicago, Minneapolis’s Downtown 100 program was honored as one of the top 10 national criminal justice initiatives, according to MyFox9.com.

The collaboration between local government, businesses, nonprofits, and community members has a goal to “both reduce crime in the short term and develop solutions for maintaining law-abiding conduct in the long run,” the story states.  

Downtown 100, which started in April 2010, helped reduce crime from top offenders by 74 percent, according to MyFox9.com.

It also led to more offenders being placed on supervised probation and obtaining housing, the story states.