Coordination/Collaboration : Featured Stories

Smith Avenue between the High Bridge and Dodd Road is very Saint Paul: comfortable houses alternate with an eclectic mix of independent businesses with loads of local character. A plan's afoot to turn this under-the-radar neighborhood into a full-fledged retail destination--without letting it lose its soul.

"Environmental justice is the new civil rights movement," says a young woman in this video, created by the organization Green for All. The video, posted last month, highlights a number of green jobs efforts in the Twin Cities that marry sustainability and social justice.

When Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson got the idea of persuading businesses to give their employees a new kind of freedom--work where and when you like, as long as you get the job done--they hoped the idea would spread around the country and the world. That seems to be happening.

Where Raymond Avenue meets University, artists and innovators have been living and working for decades, lured by cheap rents and a friendly, funky vibe. What will happen to them as light rail comes through, bringing construction disruption now--and an unpredictable development pattern later? The newly formed South Saint Anthony Park Creative Enterprise Zone aims to keep the neighborhood weird--and welcoming.

Meet the quirky, inviting business district at 28th and Johnson in Northeast Minneapolis--an urban village that, at least for now, seems to have found an elusive middle ground: it's got enough enticing amenities to attract strollers, shoppers, and eaters, but it's not well enough known for there to be parking problems and half-hour waits for a table.

Colin Kloecker and Shanai Matteson recently got married--but the wedding was only one of the many connections they've been making as members of Works Progress, a wide-ranging, multi-project organization dedicated to bringing people, ideas, and new perspectives on culture together. Call it face-to-face Facebook, a sharing of real concepts and real skills in the real world, all done in the spirit of improvisation and artistic innovation.

Our intrepid, and maybe just a little lonesome, freelancer Elizabeth Millard decided to road-test Saint Paul's two coworking spaces--offices where people like her, who would normally toil at home or in coffee shops, gather for mutual support, idea swapping, and random chitchat in between bouts of work. This is office life without managers, a dress code, or water-cooler grousing. And there are pancakes.

It's four years before a single train is slated to set out on the tracks, but the Central Corridor light rail line between Minneapolis and Saint Paul has already created a powerful network of connections across the Twin Cities. In particular, ad-hoc collaboratives, instead of a single light-rail "czar" or bureaucracy, and Saint Paul's traditionally strong neighborhood political structure, have pushed planning for how the line will impact the city now and in years to come.

Garrio Harrison believes that social media like Facebook and Twitter aren't just the latest slick marketing strategy--they've fundamentally changed the way we do business by making everything, including buying and selling, more personal, more connected, and more human. And he's founded the all-social-media-all-the-time marketing firm Doublethink to prove his point.

What can we do to do leverage the abundant high-tech talent in Minnesota into more startups? At the MinneBar 2010 conference, geeks and investors gathered to grapple with that question--among others--and to assess the state of the tech biz in the Gopher State. The verdict: More risk-taking, more mentoring, more connectivity are needed here--but everybody can keep their cabins.

 What's the special sauce that makes so many bright people who come here stay here--and a lot people who go away, come back? (And what do we need to make that sauce even richer?) Some local creative types weigh in.