HD’s Totter Watch: SPARK

Conan Smith tottered with me the day after Christmas in 2005 and at the time he was the County Board of Commissioners’ representative to the Washtenaw Development Council, which was then merging with SPARK, another economic development entity. Because I figured Conan might have some clout on this issue, I suggested to him on the totter that the name SPARK could be changed to SPARQ. I think pretty much anything with a “K” or a “C” sound could be improved by replacement with a “Q”.

A couple of weeks ago, I took another shot at the name change while tottering with Elizabeth Parkinson, who is Managing Director of Marketing and Public Relations for SPARK. Long story short, that’s a name change that’s not going to happen. But we did talk a lot about names on the totter – nicknames, company names, event names. We covered everything from Kentucky Fried Chicken (Elizabeth Parkinson used to work on their account) to SPARK’s Entrepreneur Boot Camp.

Elizabeth seemed open to the possibility of re-naming the Boot Camp to something else. That’s where readers of Teeter Talk and The Chronicle can help. Come up with an alternative name for Boot Camp. Here, I’ll get things started: Entrepreneur Boot Qamp.