iRobot Corp. today announced that it has launched a new education initiative called SPARK (for "Starter Programs for the Advancement of Robotics Knowledge").

iRobot Corp. today announced that it has launched a new education initiative called SPARK (for "Starter Programs for the Advancement of Robotics Knowledge"). I used to work at iRobot. They have a disease, caused by working for the government, where names made from acronyms are given very high weight. Often, you'll think of the name close to what you're trying to do, and then come up with the acronym. This case is worse because the name already implies education, and the acronym is redundant. The best acronym I've ever seen came from http://cra.com http://cra.com where a particle filter project had the acronym P.A.R.T.I.C.L.E. - and it fit perfectly. The worst was one of my own. MISSR: Multi-spectral Image Stabilization and Super Resolution. Yeah, I named something that required image tracking "misser". I preferred to pronounce it miser. The next project was just a name: "Spartan". It worked much better. There has got to be a lesson in naming startups somewhere in here.