Tag Archive

The Big Idea: More Spartanburg Video Blogs

By Steve Shanafelt

As the various members of the Spark team experiment with their own variations on video blogs, I thought it was high time to post a video blog about how Spartanburg could benefit from a few more voices in the local video blogging community. Which brings us to this week’s Big Idea: Spartanburg needs more... »

Big Idea: Your Local New Year’s Resolutions

By Steve Shanafelt

Friday morning, most of us will be looking bleary-eyed and slightly hungover at a the first day of a New Year, and the start of a new decade. (At least if most of us will be. Some will contend that it’s not really a new decade until 2011, but those people also won’t be... »

Big Idea: Spartanburg Christmas Wish List

By Steve Shanafelt

Sometimes, these weekly Big Idea columns can border on the abstract, asking for nuanced thoughts on some already vaguely defined topic. This week, however, we’re going to keep it short and sweet. It’s the holidays, that glorious time of the year when we all decide it’s a good idea to be nice to each... »

Big Idea: Giving Locally, Be It Time Or Money

By Steve Shanafelt

We are mere weeks away from the biggest holiday of the year. It also happens to be the most hyped, commercialized, stress-filled, travel-choked and all-around expensive one, something made only worse by a high national unemployment rate and a general financial malaise which is forcing people all over the country to scale back their... »

Big Idea: The Unified Spartanburg Calendar

By Steve Shanafelt

If you’ve been reading the Spark for more than a few months, odds are that you are more than aware of just how completely frustrated our attempt at creating an easy-to-use, easy-to-share calendar system has been. In fact, our in-house calendar system has never been very good, in spite of many, many attempts... »

Big Idea: A Very Civic Thanksgiving

By Steve Shanafelt

You know the Thanksgiving spiel: This is a time when we’re supposed to reflect on the things in our lives that we’re glad we have. Assuming you’ve not been under a rock, you also know the post-modern answer to that view: This is a time we willfully ignore the illegal land theft, genocide, utter... »

Big Idea: Local Vlog And Podcast Wish List

By Steve Shanafelt

Now that the Spark is finally video enabled, I think it’s high time we talked about what sort of local video and audio content we’d all actually like to see. While the basic reason for getting a camera was to create some kind of public record of City Council (and, eventually, County Council and... »

Big Idea: Fixing The County Schools

By Steve Shanafelt

With the Spartanburg school board elections over, and with many new faces elected specifically to make big changes in how local schools do their jobs, I thought it would be a good time to bring up the subject of what exactly it is those changes should be. After all, it’s easy to agree... »

Big Idea: Improving Local Elections

By Steve Shanafelt

As I mentioned yesterday, my first voting experience in Spartanburg was troubling for a couple of reasons, not the least of which being finding the polling station. But after spending last evening at the Spartanburg County Office of Registrations and Elections — and seeing the work they put in — I’m reluctant to point... »

Big Idea: Introducing HubCityHeadlines.com

By Steve Shanafelt

One of the best things about writing the Big Idea series is that it’s a fairly positive topic to think about: How can we make things better for people in Spartanburg? Who doesn’t like to scheme and daydream about improving their town, their community and their culture? And when you spend as much time... »

Big Idea: What’s Missing From Spartanburg?

By Steve Shanafelt

To look at the flood of comments and ideas generated by asking a simple question about what should replace Justin’s Steakhouse in downtown Spartanburg, it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that there’s a lot of people who hunger for more than a just a new downtown restaurant. That discussion made me start thinking... »

Big Idea: Whither WiFi

By Steve Shanafelt

During last week’s What’s Your Big Idea? column, reader Lucas presented a very cool concept. Here it is … What if there was a non-profit who wrote grants to get Wi-Fi set up covering entire textile towns and mill village areas (i.e. Woodruff, Beaumont)? After that, the group could work to get cheap computers... »

Big Idea: What’s Your Big Idea?

By Steve Shanafelt

Every Wednesday, I post a “Big Idea” blog, a kind of general “What If” post asking you to come along with me while I examine some locally concept — be it dog parks, free ads or the future of the city itself — and then ask you to help me brainstorm on expanding or... »

Big Idea: The Inevitable Return Of The Free Ad Initiative

By Steve Shanafelt

Several months ago, after reading a blog post on TechCrunch about why internet advertising is failing, I decided to try an experiment. What if, instead of charging local businesses for ads, I just gave them away? After all, the site wasn’t generating enough traffic at the time to justify charging anyone to advertise (it arguably... »

Big Idea: Forming The City Council Debate

By Steve Shanafelt

In talking with Christopher George about how the Spark could best cover the upcoming Nov. 3 municipal election, one consistent theme that has come up is the lack of many clearly defined issues to create debate and empower the citizens of Spartanburg to vote for the candidate who best represents their interests. Which... »