Mind Spring .. yes, I’m very proud to admit that I actually came up with that name! Originally, Marichu had suggested Cherry Blossom Montessori, which I really liked, but then I quickly found a couple of other schools with the same name though they weren’t in the same state of Washington. Legally, we could’ve used the name, but since Marichu has aspirations for expanding the school eventually into other parts of the country and even into Vancouver, BC, we decided that a unique name would be needed. In thinking about cherry blossoms, I had visions of spring, which is my favorite season of all. And it didn’t take long for my associate “mind” with school and kids. Of course, “Spring Mind” didn’t make much sense, so “Mind Spring” was it. Subliminally, I must’ve thought about MindSpring.net, which provides free PC-to-PC calling via the Internet. I also found a few other Montessori references associated with “Mind Spring,” but there were no direct hits.

   Next, getting the right Internet domain name for the Web site would be as important as coming up with the name itself. Fortunately, mindspringmontessori.com was available, so I registered it right away using my company’s Office Live service, which has a nifty feature of providing automatic redirection for associated domain names. Since mindspringmontessori.com has so many letters, I decided that msmont.com would be the ideal condensed form, and fortunately, it was also available, so I registered it and associated it with the primary domain name.

   Lastly, we needed an easy to recognize/remember logo, logotype, and tagline. I guess being a Product Manager at work has indeed taught me something about marketing. J Since I’m not much of an artist or creative designer, I left the logo to one of Marichu’s associates. For the logotype, a bold MSMS was an easy choice, and the tagline, well, Marichu and I both really liked the idea of things such curiosity, personality, learning issues, etc. “blossoming” within a child (because we constantly reminisce about having seen that happening in our own children), so it took just another day for me to come up with “helping young minds bloom” as the tagline. I briefly considered “helping you kids blossom,” but since the Montessori method of teaching focuses so much on a child’s mind, it made much more sense to have the tagline align with that concept.

   So, it really warmed my heart to see the name, logotype, and tagline all over the place at the open house yesterday.

   Wow! It’s been almost 3 months since my last blog entry here. I’ve been extremely busy at work and as busy as ever at home since Marichu started pursuing her business venture (Mind Spring Montessori School) a couple of months ago. It feels as though we’ve been busy practically non-stop since we moved into the new house!

   Today is a huge milestone for her – the first open house at the school. It still amazes me just how quickly things came together. She and her business partners have done at awesome job as you can see from the pictures below. They still have much work to be done (like enrolling their first batch of students), but given their passion and diligence, I’m confident that they’ll be successful. And I love being the “computer guy” and “handyman” for them. J I wish that I can do more to help them be successful.