Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 36: Sprint Nextel consolidation, a big winner, and collies chasing geese

• After deciding to shutter its awesome Reston network operations center and consolidate those functions in Kansas, Sprint Nextel is looking at centralizing its accounting departments as well.

  Some key accounting functions, for example, are moving from Reston to Kansas, Fisher said. Some of these moves will not necessarily be completed by the end of March.
  
  “The transfer would happen in a way that we could insure the strongest financial controls and strongest financial continuity,” Fisher said. “There are some folks who were doing accounting functions in Reston who will remain until later this spring.”

  Time to kick off those Sunday shoes.
  
  
• Paul Villella, chief executive of Reston-based executive recruiting firm HireStrategy, was the big winner in the Washington Post's "guess how badly the local economy will tank" contest (probably not the contest's exact name). Yay! How'd he do it?

  It was his broad-based pessimism that made him the winner. Overall, Villella was second-most pessimistic of the 23 local business leaders who ventured a guess on how 11 key economic indicators would perform in the Post's Local Economy Challenge 2008.

  Oh. Maybe not so much "yay."
  
  
• How well is Reston-based homebuilder NVR doing? So well that its founder and chairman, Dwight Schar, sold all but a fraction of his stock holdings last month, as did other execs.
  
  
• Despite all this hippie socialist talk about "stimulus packages," good old defense contracting is still here to stay. Reston-based Northrop Grumman won a $574 million contract from the U.S. Army to provide "situational awareness" systems, which may or may not involve strapping bombs to dolphins.
  
  
• Tysons may get that awesome Silver Line monorail before we do, but financial firm Clark & Associates relocated from the traffic-clogged hellhole "Fairfax County's downtown" to Reston. Yay! What changes do they expect from the 8-mile move?

  As most of the current clients who come to Clark & Associates for financial advice possess older money and are looking for secure investments with reasonable returns rather than risky investments with chance for great returns, the move to Reston will likely mean more clients with newer money who may be less concerned with their long-term financial future.

  We're a perfect example of that hip, Internet-earned "newer money." We'll be funneling that $6.06 in Google AdSense revenue into our retirement funds any day now. Targetville, here we come!
  
  
• Reston-based Turiss LLC, which makes cyberfraud prevention software, will be spotlighted at this year's Grubstake Breakfast, which is where tech firms used to seek funding back in those nostalgic days of "funding" and "money."
  
  
• Our new BFFs at Washingtonian profiled Megan Gay in their Sidewalk Style feature. But we were less intrigued by her Nine West Boots than her gig at her brother's Reston-based company, which is called "Geese Police" and "trains border collies to control Canada geese on client properties." Awww.... cute! We've said it before, and we'll say it again: Everybody loves puppies.