Creative Leadership : Buzz

“Beer Geeks,” a locally produced and nationally broadcast TV show about craft beer, recently featured two local breweries: Indeed Brewing Company in Northeast Minneapolis and Northbound Smokehouse & Brewpub in the city’s southern quadrant, according to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal. 

Both breweries are relatively new to the city. “The Minneapolis brewery episode is the 10th of the first national season,” the story states.  

The episode showcases the breweries’ specialty beers, including one made with jalapeno and Fresno peppers, and an imperial smoked porter, the story adds.


Source: Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal 

Recently, Flavorwire published a list of "45 Great American Indie Bookstores to Support This Holiday Season."  

“No matter how bleak the news about publishing gets, independently owned bookstores are surviving, and in some cases thriving,” the story reads. 

Flavorwire looked at bookstores all over the country, including Magers and Quinn, an independent bookstore in Minneapolis’ Uptown area. 

“You can pretty much get whatever you want at the Twin Cities’ biggest indie, including new, used, rare, and just about any other kind of book you’d need to get through the city’s cold winter,” the piece states. 


Source: Flavorwire

The Slingshot Guide named Sabes Jewish Community Center in Minneapolis one of 18 “leading Jewish organizations committed to fostering inclusion of people with disabilities,” a prepared statement reads. 

Slingshot sifted through hundreds of finalists, evaluating organizations based on innovation, impact, leadership, and efficacy. 

The Slingshot Guide is a resource to “volunteers, activists and donors looking for new opportunities and projects that, through their innovative nature, will ensure the Jewish community remains relevant and thriving,” a prepared statement reads. 

The community center’s inclusion department rose to the top for its “comprehensive range of programming options that meet the needs of persons with disabilities at all stages of their lives, as well as the way that Sabes JCC embraces the inclusive model as a central component of its organizational mission,” the statement adds. 

Source: SlingshotFund.org 


  

Franke+Fiorella, a brand identity design firm in Minneapolis, has received three awards from the international Creativity 43 Print & Packaging Awards, according to a prepared statement from the company.    

The firm, which focuses on Fortune 1000 companies, stood out for its work for clients such as Edmentum and The Mosaic Company.

Franke+Fiorella was awarded for design excellence in the Edmentum Corporate Identity Brandmark and Edmentum Brand Guidelines Brochure, and Mosaic GROW magazine from March 2013, according to company materials.  

Source: Franke+Forella 

A recent New York Times story gives a shout-out to Minneapolis dancer, Aparna Ramaswamy, who recently performed to critical acclaim in New York City, saying she "lit up Pace University's Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts.

The dance review titled, “Pleasing Deities, and the Eyes, With Storytelling Steps From India,” examines performances by  four classical Indian dancers.   

Ramaswamy, who is the co-artistic director, choreographer, and principal dancer of Ragamala Dance company in Minneapolis, “exuded a brisk, eager energy in her hourlong program, 'Sannidhi (Sacred Space),'" reviewer Siobhan Burke wrote. "Joined by four superb musicians, she gorgeously embodied the swooping violin; the plunking mridangam; the wailing, warbling vocals."  


Source: New York Times 

Investors.com recently reported on what some people describe as a “tech startup boom” in Minneapolis. 

In three years, Coco Coworking, which now has three Twin Cities coworking spaces where entrepreneurs can share resources and ideas, has grown to include 700 members, most of which are tech startups, the story states.  

CoCo has hosted over 4,000 people through its regular meet-ups just this year, according to the story. 

The nonprofit Minnestar, which is also dedicated to cultivating the local tech scene, has seen an increase of over 40 percent in attendance at its MinneDemo events since 2010. 

The story goes on to cite other examples of tech activity in the state. Jeff Pesek, co-founder of the Minneapolis-based website, tech.mn, which tracks the local tech scene, is quoted, saying, “There is a lot of activity here, a lot of signs that the market is evolving and blossoming.” 


Source: Investors.com 

“Michael Gaughan’s Visual Punchlines Bring Comedy To Art,” is the headline of a recent piece from the national art magazine, Beautiful Decay. 

Gaughan, a local artist, “represents a new breed of hyper-creative talents whose work spans an absurd amount of media,” the story states. 

His work is characterized by intense detail, which is tough to come execute, especially in watercolor, his medium of choice. His paintings are “painstakingly rendered for the sake of humor," the story reads. 

Whatever his subject matter, “Gaughan creates with an almost child-like glee. Despite the playfulness in the work, however, there is a sophistication and consistency that separates it from most. This is particularly evident in his highly-technical watercolor paintings,” the story adds.  

A poster series from local creative agency Replace highlights the ingenuity of Minnesota scientists and inventors through history, City Pages reports. 

Many people probably don’t realize that local creative types developed the first pop-up toaster, the first retractable seat belt, and the first commercial computer to use RAM, the story reads. 

That was the inspiration behind “MN Invents,” the brightly colored, informative poster series that can be viewed online here. 

Among the other inventions that originated with Minnesota thinkers, according to the story: handles on paper bags, a deep-sea submarine, and a remote-controlled helicopter. 

Advertising industry publication AdWeek recently selected one "top shop" per state, factoring in notable clients, legacy, reputation, and employee count, and Minneapolis-based Fallon got the nod for Minnesota.
 
In choosing the agencies, the magazine noted that each top shop is "the one you can't help but admire, or envy. The one where you'd like to work—or if you're lucky, where you do work...The one that, more often than not, just gets it right."
 
Contenders were limited to agencies that were actually founded in their respective states, giving homegrown shops an advantage over the satellite offices of the big networks.
 
First established in 1981, Fallon has been notable for high-profile campaigns, as well as for spawning several other agencies in the Twin Cities, as Fallon-trained entrepreneurs start their own firms.

In Minneapolis, biking or walking to work is becoming increasingly commonplace, according to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

The survey shows that 6.9 percent of Minneapolis residents walked to work in 2012, which was an uptick from 5.8 percent in 2011, according to city materials. Another 4.5 percent of residents biked to work, over 3.4 percent the year before.  

“While these estimates are within the margin of error, they show that pedestrian and bicycle commuting in Minneapolis is holding steady and likely growing,” a city web post reads. 

The city “has the second highest per capita bicycle commuting and ninth highest pedestrian commuting” of major US cities, it states. 

Metro Transit recently added a service for commuters on its Northstar Line, which takes people between downtown Minneapolis and Big Lake during rush hours: It debuted wi-fi access on Monday, the Star Tribune reports. 

The complimentary wi-fi will work on at least one train car for each trip, which will be labeled, according to the Star Tribune blog post. That will usually be the “cab car,” at the end of the train.

Metro Transit spokesperson Brian Lamb is quoted in the piece, saying, "Due to the longer distances traveled on commuter rail, Northstar service is a great match for wi-i.”

Besides wi-fi access, passengers can listen to Minnesota Public Radio’s “Sound Point,” which provides historical background about the areas the train traverses. 
  

Online technology publication InformationWeek recently released its annual list of 250 companies that excel at utilizing information technology, and four Minnesota-based businesses got a nod.
 
Eden Prairie-based Virtual Radiologic came in at no. 15 on the list, with Minnetonka-based Digital River at no. 129. Capella Education Company, headquartered in Minneapolis, is at 192nd, and Ramsey-based Vision-Ease Lens squeaked in at no. 233.
 
The magazine looked at U.S. companies that boasted a revenue of $250 million or more, and contenders were required to complete an application that articulated their business technology strategies. Applicants even had to do an essay submission, which must have left many CEOs recalling their college application days.
 
In unveiling the list, InformationWeek's Editor in Chief, Rob Preston, noted that every enterprise is now a digital business, or needs to become one fast. "The organizations in our ranking are leading the way," he stated.

RT Book Reviews, which shares information about forthcoming titles in a column called "Forewords," recently gave a shout-out to a local author in its nonfiction category. 

Margret Aldrich, who used to work for the Utne Reader magazine, “is ready to celebrate the new miniature library craze with The Little Free Library Book, a collection of stories, images, and tips,” the column reads. 

Her book is expected to come out next spring, it states.  

Forewords draws from the “web team’s most-anticipated upcoming releases across the genres,” just as projects are announced. 

Amy Thielen, a Minnesotan, is leading a new TV show on the Food Network, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reports.

The show, titled “Heartland Table,” will first air this Saturday. 

“Heartland Table” features Thielen cooking at her home in Two Inlets, a rural area north of Park Rapids. 

“The show gives viewers a look at the former Manhattan chef's recipes for Midwestern dishes like fried bologna, rhubarb spears and blueberry lemon pie,” the story reads. 

Thielen stopped cooking professionally when she and her husband relocated to their Minnesota cabin. She turned to food writing and she even snagged a James Beard Foundation Journalism award for coverage, the story states. 

The October print issue of Bicycling magazine pays tribute to Minneapolis’ Midtown Greenway, a 5.5-mile bike and pedestrian path, in photos and words. Alongside a photo of a solo rider journeying down the Greenway in the wee morning hours, the piece reads, “Well-loved and heavily trafficked, the Greenway is an expressway of sorts for pedestrians and cyclists.”  

The Greenway, a former railroad corridor, has a scenic trail that “bypasses streets and highways and leads to the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes to the west and the Mississippi River to the east,” it adds.