Creative Leadership : Buzz

For National Geographic Traveler, the St. Paul Winter Carnival takes fourth-place in the world when it comes to wintry festivals. 

Anchorage's  Fur Rendezvous topped the list.

The Traveler's writeup of the event explains how Winter Carnival began when a reporter wrote that St. Paul was "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation in the winter." Beginning in 1886, St. Paulites asserted their local pride with the winter festivities.

Minneapolis is among the top cities in the nation when it comes to charitable giving and volunteering, according to Scarborough Research.
 
The firm measures numerous trends throughout the year, including shopping patterns and media behaviors, and ranks the results by city.
 
For its charitable giving study, it tracked donations and volunteer work from the past year.
 
Minneapolis was ranked second, after Salt Lake City, in both charitable giving and volunteerism. In a previous Scarborough study, done in 2008, Minneapolis was ranked third in the nation for charitable donations.

The Huffington Post recently highlighted the historic election of Democrat Susan Allen, an openly lesbian Native American, to the Minnesota legislature.

While campaigning, Allen had publicly stated, "I reflect the great diversity of our district, as a Native American woman and a member of the LGBT community, and hope to bring this important voice to the state capital to offer more balanced, representative contributions and input," according to the story.

Tiffany Muller, who led political operations for Allen, is quoted, saying, ”This is our first win of 2012, and it’s a fantastic way to start off what will be a very exciting year for LGBT candidates.”
 

Downtown St. Paul’s Wells Fargo WinterSkate rink will serve as the backdrop for NBC's live coverage of “Hockey Day in America,” the Pioneer Press reports.

The broadcast features four National Hockey League games on Feb. 19, including the Minnesota Wild vs. the Boston Bruins at the Xcel Energy Center.

“With ice at many lakes too soft to skate on, and temperatures unseasonably pleasant, more than 20,000 skaters have headed to downtown St. Paul for free ice time,” the story states. 

The choice of the rink as a broadcast backdrop means that it will be open an extra two weeks this year. 

The Huffington Post recently featured a story by local writer Jay Walljasper titled, “How to Boost Biking and Walking in Your Town: Lessons From Minneapolis.”  

Walljasper cites numerous reports that show Minneapolis has become a top biking city.

He attributes it in part to various street improvements “including more bike lanes and special bicycle-and-pedestrian boulevards -- installed around town in the past year as part of the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Project.”

Joan Pasiuk, who heads Bike Walk Twin Cities, is quoted, saying, "The goal of this project from Congress was to shift some trips, and this data shows it is happening," adding, "The implications for overall health and transportation access are outcomes the community will realize from the numbers we're reporting."

Getting accurate bike and pedestrian counts is critical in terms of influencing transportation policies, according to Pasiuk.

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.

Northside Achievement Zone, a joint initiative of the public schools and social service agencies in North Minneapolis aimed at boosting the academic achievement of thousands of neighborhood kids, has received a $28 million implementation grant from the federal government, Minnesota Public Radio reports.

The money, from the Department of Education's Promise Neighborhood Program, will help the NAZ scale up its school-and-community work, which focuses on helping both students and families via "connectors"--mentor/coach/facilitators who assist students with schoolwork and families with issues like housing. The program is modeled on the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City.

According to NAZ CEO Sondra Samuels, who is quoted in the piece, the grant will allow the program, which currently serves 150 families, to grow exponentially. "We have about 2,000 families and about 5,500 children that make up the Northside Achievement Zone," she says, "and we want to get to as many families and kids as we possibly can."

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.  

The web-based Education News, which covers various national and international education topics, recently highlighted the comic degree that’s available through the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.  

It’s one of only three such programs around the country, the story states, citing information from MPR and the Star Tribune.

Local author Britt Aamodt, who profiled over 20 area artists in a book called, “Superheroes, Strip Artists & Talking Animals: Minnesota’s Contemporary Cartoonists,” is quoted saying that a “recent crop of artists is taking Minnesota’s scene to new heights.”

Aamodt goes on to say that the local comic artists have "really spread their wings,” and, “They can tell any kind of story. And they just don’t have to be about men in tights.”

 

A photo from Jen Ritt, who is a student at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, is featured in a gallery of fireworks images from the BBC.

Ritt’s dramatic picture shows a figure poised with a sparkler atop a boat. The sparkler illuminates the otherwise dimly-lit lake.

The BBC photo gallery, which exhibits photos weekly according to a theme, presents images from England, Scotland, France, Spain, and other places around the world.

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.

Technology site Lead411 has released its annual survey of the top 200 tech companies in the nation, and five Minnesota companies made the list.
 
Ranked sixth on the list is Minneapolis-based Code 42 Software, a development company that produces onsite, offsite, and cloud backup applications for consumers and enterprises.
 
The other four companies are iBuyOfficeSupply.com, MSpace, The Nerdery, and CaringBridge.
 
The Tech 200 is based on revenue percentage growth from 2008 to 2010, and companies had to be privately-held U.S. businesses that earned more than $1 million in the past year.

The trade journal Editor & Publisher recently named Star Tribune publisher Michael Klingensmith publisher of the year.

Under his leadership, the newspaper’s circulation has increased and it has experimented with digital products, according to a Star Tribune story.

The article cites the following statement from the magazine: "The Star Tribune is standing tall as one of the elite U.S. newspapers," and it calls Klingensmith is a "hometown hero."

Klingensmith, who grew up in the Twin Cities, has led the newspaper out of bankruptcy and back into  profitability, according to the story.

Auditions for a Hollywood movie with Tom Hanks as its star will be held in Minneapolis on Nov. 5, according to Minnesota Public Radio.

Hanks will portray Capt. Richard Phillips, “who was taken hostage by Somali pirates who hijacked his ship in 2009,” the MPR story states.

Sony Pictures, which is doing the casting, is looking for black actors, "preferably born in Africa ... Especially seeking SOMALIS," the story reads.

It’s what brings the company to the diverse Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, which has the highest population of Somali-Americans in the country, according to the story.

The auditions will happen at the Brian Coyle Center, a community gathering place.

The story quotes casting consultant Debbie DeLisi: “We just looked at where there's huge Somali populations," who adds, "It may be our only stop, depending on the turnout."