The problems with the SPARK are numerous, and primarily cultural. They’re embarrassing to have around.

They show an almost total inability to participate in modern online discourse. Their “blog” is ridiculous, this post about “Open Source Economic Development” would be an insult to anybody who’s ever done real open source work if it weren’t so laughably framed, the site is updated months late, the boot camps and facilities they run are fine (as you say) for people who are on the mainstream track. If an intellectual property lawyer ever actually looked at their “news items”, which they lift by cut and paste from other publications and present as if they were their own, they’d be up to their eyeballs in lawsuits; and I bet they don’t even know it.

And so on the whole they produce bog-standard marketing copy and Press Releases and businesses using tried-and-true old-school habits. Boring crap.

No offense to your own startup effort, but the SPARK claims to be able to foster the “next Google”, when in fact in my personal experience the organization is managed as if it were Henry Ford pumping out black Model T’s. No real innovation can ever happen there, as far as I can tell.

Of course they manage to do some good, at least for people that fit their mental models, their recognized business models. And before you assume, this isn’t some kind of sour grapes on my part.

My opinion is what comes from watching the premature fast-track vulture investment and lazy old boy network of “mentoring staff” grind useful, interesting young business people with great ideas into mealy, zombie startups.

Or do you want to hear what I really think?

I’m not sure what they issue with SPARK is. I haven’t been to any CofC events, but the SPARK events have been appropriate and helpful to me starting a business in the (bio/micro/nano) tech sector. They’re also quite affordable (doubly so if you work through the University).

Back to the reason I visited your blog… I think the DDA parking-structure-data-shakedown is just silly. There is no reason I can conceive which would lead the DDA or republic parking to benefit — in *ANY* way from cutting this data off. I think the only thing Susan Pollay can point to in support of wanting to cut off the data flow is the snarky response letter.

Arg. Is anyone else planning to go to the next DDA meeting to voice their objections to this unfortunate decision?

The brittleness of public data sources is a problem, not just for the technical reasons (though there are those) but because of the political reasons.

Great essay, thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I wish you well.