Entries by Bart Taylor

CAMA turns a corner

CAMA was developed and funded by OEDIT to do what CAMT wasn’t, leading to Confusion Around Manufacturing Acronyms that today is more a humorous sidebar to the evolution of Colorado’s official manufacturing trade association. (We could go on: CAMT, the erstwhile Colorado Association of Manufacturing Technology — now Manufacturer’s Edge — was neither an association […]

Gov. Hickenlooper’s cycling gambit falls just short. Here’s how to fix it.

There’s much to like about Gov. John Hickenlooper’s bold pronouncement at the Interbike conference last week to invest $100 million in Colorado cycling infrastructure — trails, bike lanes and interconnectivity. It’s practical and progressive and on the surface it’s a timely and well-aligned economic development strategy. Building on Colorado’s already strong national reputation as a […]

CompanyWeek at 2 years: what’s in store for Utah

Since CompanyWeek debuted two years this week, we’ve shined a light on 400 or so manufacturers, chronicled the policy efforts to support them (some good, some bad), and been an advocate for manufacturing even as business voices debate the so-called manufacturing renaissance. We’ve published a standalone version in Utah for just under a year now […]

Utah joins a growing national list of manufacturing hotspots

Today’s ‘Made in America’ renaissance is actually a dozen different iterations, driven by local economic realities, by regional trends and attributes. It’s a hundred distinct movements, some connected, some not, though it’s easy to find an important connection between a craft brewer and a medical products manufacturer. Companies that make stuff have things in common. […]

CAMA on SMART/FourFront: A Q&A with Tim Heaton and Karla Tartz

This past October, the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International trade was awarded a $6.6 million grant to help manufacturers impacted by defense-related budget cuts retrain employees and develop advanced capabilities to better compete in a fast-changing marketplace. CAMA, the Colorado Advanced Manufacturing Alliance, was tapped by OEDIT to administer the grant, described in […]

Colorado’s Top 5 manufacturing communities

Manufacturing’s rebound has even outspoken cynics taking note. Joel Kotkin from Forbes acknowledged as much in a useful take on the sector’s new boomtowns. The Cities Leading a U.S. Manufacturing Revival lists 10 communities experiencing measured growth, including Detroit’s eye-opening comeback: “Since 2009 the Detroit area has seen a remarkable 31.3% rebound to 89,300 industrial […]

On Finance: The M&A market is “frothy”—if you can get there.

Financing seems a universal challenge for business today, regardless of geography, and as a result we’re also featuring the recap today of last week’s Manufacturing Growth & Investor Conference held in Denver for the benefit of Utah readers. Trends shaping access to capital are more sector-specific than anything. Plus, we’re bringing the event to Utah […]

‘Heck yeah,’ it’s a tech company. Well, not really

It’s generally bad form for a small media brand like CompanyWeek to publish opinions critical of the Denver Post. Especially mine. If nothing else it sends the wrong message. I’m a fan of the paper, any newspaper for that matter. And its days in print are numbered, soon to follow the halcyon years that have […]