Minnesota Part of the North?

[cawacko]

Anyone here from Minnesota? Interesting rebranding attempt to embrace the cold and call itself part of the North.




Forget the Midwest. Minnesota Casts Itself as the North

It won’t help the Vikings but to solve its population problem, the state is branding itself as ‘the North’; ‘Sick of being this afterthought in this afterthought called the Midwest’


A growing movement in Minnesota aims to break free of its Midwest roots and embrace its bone-chilling winters with a new identity: the North.

Seeking to conjure up images of competitive winter sports, icy lakes and snuggling in front of a toasty fire, these northern evangelists are ready for their moment in the sun when Super Bowl LII comes to Minneapolis on Feb. 4.

Minnesotans are “sick of being this afterthought in this afterthought called the Midwest. We’re the star of the North and no one else can offer that,” said R.T. Rybak, who served as mayor of Minneapolis from 2002 until 2014.

The state is using the North to tackle an economic challenge: historically low unemployment and sluggish population growth.
Employers complain that they can’t find the workers they need to fill jobs. The unemployment rate in the Minneapolis region stood at 2.4% in November. The state has an unemployment rate of 3.1%, a full percentage point lower than the national average.

The state’s population inched up 0.68% in 2016, while the Midwest region had a mere 0.15% uptick. By contrast, the Western U.S. grew 1.08% in 2016 and the South grew 1.06%.

The Super Bowl host committee has embraced the slogan “Bold North.” Splashy stunts include a Bold North Zipline sending the courageous flying 100 feet in the air across the Mississippi River.

Convincing people to move to Minnesota is “the most important work we can do in terms of growing our economy and staying competitive for the future,” said Michael Langley, chief executive of the regional economic development group Greater MSP and an executive board member of the Super Bowl host committee.

Cities across the country are trying to figure out ways to attract millennials. Embracing its cold reputation, and casting off caricatures of Minnesotans like the heavy northern accents in the 1996 movie “Fargo,” is key to attracting young talent, North advocates say. Instead, they want to emphasize wintertime sports like cross-country skiing, skijoring, curling and ice fishing.

“Different cities are competing for talent and you’ve got to realize you’re in a competition and have a strategy and be in it to win it,” said Eric Dayton, co-founder and CEO of clothing company Askov Finlayson, which produces popular hats with ‘NORTH’ boldly emblazoned on them.

Mr. Dayton, who is also the son of Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, is largely credited with starting the movement when in 2015 he advocated in a TED talk that Minnesotans embrace the cold.

“What if just as the Scandinavian countries have their own identity...what if we had our own region as the northern U.S. or to be concise, the North,” said Mr. Dayton in his TED talk.

There’s a winter festival, called The Great Northern; a summer festival, Northern Spark; Grow North MN, a group connecting agricultural entrepreneurs and the tech community has started calling the Twin Cities the start-up capital of the North.

Mark Grindy, 29 years old, watched Mr. Dayton’s TED talk and said he found it compelling. From Duluth, Minn., Mr. Grindy moved to Washington, D.C., after college to work as a speechwriter. But he returned to his home state in 2015 and now lives in Minneapolis with his girlfriend.

“There’s a sense that if you can be optimistic in this weather, ain’t nothin gonna get you down,” he said.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/minneso...too-1516582494

[Minister of Truth]

I think for people out on the West Coast, we tend to think of Minnesota before we do Wisconsin, but that's likely inverted, elsewhere. Usually, people name Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and then pause to remember the rest. One would think that Captain Kirk's home state has it the worst.

[archives]

New York gets more snow, lot more snow