Although today we must report to the IRS, there are solid reasons to be optimistic about our future. Many people find the positive cultural and environmental qualities of our valley, and indeed our region, compellingly attractive. Despite obvious current setbacks, our situation is enviable on multiple dimensions. Most importantly, accomplished, highly successfully people find Bozeman attractive.

The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that many of America’s fastest growing cities are in our region. Since 2000, four of the top fastest growing metro areas lie in the Intermountain West. None of them, however, have Bozeman’s remarkable mix of qualities.

Much is obvious; MSU⎯a major research university, wild lands, excellent air service, close proximity to Yellowstone Park, four ski areas within an hour, a symphony and opera, and world renowned trout fishing. All of this is in a working agricultural and forestry landscape.

Bozeman is a genuine community where families build lives; it is emphatically not a theme park. Further, it maintains a strong residue of traditional American values, including respect for good work, independence, and honesty. Libertarian paternalism trumps the nanny state.

Local culture fosters respect and support for civic involvement in arts and science. It’s really quite remarkable. Some of these important features are unobtrusive and noticed by few.

We built America’s first Forest Service interpretive trail designed for the handicapped. Warriors and Quiet Waters, a program for severely injured military personnel, began here. These, and a host of other innovative organizations and projects, came from the social entrepreneurship that flourishes here.

A remarkable jewel of national, indeed international repute is the American Computer Museum (ACM). This non-profit truly is America’s information age museum. I enjoy and support this remarkable institution and urge you to check it out. With community support, it will soon be conveniently adjacent to the MSU campus that it so strongly complements.

The purpose of this museum is “to collect, preserve, interpret and display the artifacts and history of the information age.” Although its been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, USA Today, and on C-span, too few Bozemanites are involved in its mission. This is a great time to explore it, perhaps with children. Kids can experience the underpinnings of the electronic environment in which they effortlessly swim. If you explore the ACM, you are quite likely to support its expansion as it works to move near MSU. It’s really that good.

Here’s a telling digression. Forty years ago mentors told their promising graduate students that moving here would be a career-wrecking move. Were they to accept a position at MSU, they would be in an isolated backwater. They would never again work or consort with top ranked scholars.

Time has proven them wrong about Bozeman. Experience demonstrates that successful people from disparate academic, business, and professional careers love our area. This was obvious at the ACM’s Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Pioneer Award dinner on April 9. The Museum complements university programs and goals through highly creative endeavors free of the bureaucratic constraints inherent to state institutions.

This event exemplified how a social entrepreneur, in this case ACM’s founder, George Keremedjiev, can attract highly successful individuals to Bozeman. Once here, they subconsciously, or deliberately, compare the opportunities and problems in our hometown with theirs.

Many who taste our offerings want to come back for more. They share experiences here with colleagues and friends back home. Success breeds success and it is ever easier to attract excellence. The ACM E. O. Wilson Award dinner demonstrates successful cooperative ventures with the University, notably the colleges of Engineering and Letters and Science, and the Humanities Institute.

Harvard professor E. O. Wilson is surely one of the most highly respected biologists of our time. He received the ACM’s Stibitz Award in 2006 and last week the MSU Presidential Medal. The “father of biodiversity” and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Wilson promised to return to Bozeman each year. When he goes back to Massachusetts, praise for Bozeman’s culture and opportunities travel with him.

I hope when Wilson comes back to Bozeman the ACM will be in new facilities near MSU. Your contribution to this 501(c)(3) will be a welcome deduction when you compute next year’s taxes.