--- Luke wrote:
I'm now wondering how many active contra dance callers are out there... I'm guessing
somewhere between 100 and 1000 (for an order of magnitude).
--- end of quote ---
The higher end of your range is probably correct. The Dance Gypsy lists 534 individuals
as leaders of contra dance. Charlie Seelig's dance pages shows just under 500
callers, though that list includes some who are not in the US and some who are
callers of squares or English country dance but not contras.
As an interesting pint of comparison, to illustrate how excited the Danes have
been about contras and traditional squares, in that country of about 5.5. million
people, over the last 30 years about 500 people have been trained as callers.
In any given year, there are about 60-75 active callers.
David Millstone
Lebanon, NH
Hello all,
I was wondering what fraction of callers have called for festivals? It seems
like nice information to have for folks as the develop as callers, and
Shared-Weight seemed a good place to do a quick informal poll.
To prevent flooding the list with lots of responses, please respond directly
to me at
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
I'll compile all the answers I get and send a summary to the list once the
responses peter out.
I'm going to arbitrarily define a festival as six or more hours of dancing,
and I'm interested in folks who have called for at least an hour (as opposed
to open mics and such, which are great, but different).
If this information has already been compiled, please respond with that
information.
Thanks!
--
Luke Donev
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
Perhaps if someone is curious enough to dance in virtual reality then they
might be curious enough to try it in real life. I guess the challenge is
to get them to step away from their computer. Uummm, I'll step away in
just another minute...
Donna Hunt
"Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should
dance." -unknown
In a message dated 9/19/2011 5:36:01 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
cmbaker(a)tiac.net writes:
On Sep 16, 2011, at 12:51 PM, Chip Hedler wrote:
> (Bizarre aside: anyone remember Second Life? Wouldn't it be cool if you
> could program avatars to do dance moves and have a virtual contra dance,
or
> test dance sequences? Actually, forget that! It's totally against what I
> value about real dancing! )
I sent the following e-mail to the MWSD caller's list on April 1, 2010...
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Clark Baker <cmbaker(a)tiac.net>
> Date: April 1, 2010 12:37:41 AM EDT
> To: sd-callers(a)all8.com
> Subject: Square Dancing in Second Life
>
> With the box office success of Avatar, you may be interested in my
experiences taking square dancing to Second Life. In this virtual world, users
(residents) can interact with each other through avatars. Residents can
explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and
group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one
another, or travel throughout the world.
>
> Second Life has an internal currency, the Linden dollar (L$). L$ can be
used to buy, sell, rent or trade land or goods and services with other
users. L$ can be purchased using US Dollars and other currencies on the
LindeX exchange provided by Linden Lab, independent brokers or other resident
users.
>
> I put two and two together and created a square dance hall and offer
square dance lessons. People pay in L$ but I have made enough to make more
teaching dancing in Second Life than at some dances in the real world! I
know that some of you are going to say that teaching square dancing in virtual
reality doesn't count, and that the computer users should meet and
interact with real people. However, I believe that they are square dancing, and
any kind of square dancing is better than nothing.
>
> Let us know what you think.
--
Clark Baker, Belmont, MA
cmbaker(a)tiac.net
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)sharedweight.net
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
7 years ago, I sent out the first invitation e-mails asking people to
join a new discussion group called SharedWeight. Since then, the site
has become about much more than helping new callers. We've added lists
dedicated to helping organizers and musicians. And yesterday we added
the WebContent list that already has 40 members in the last 26 hours.
Seth and I are beyond pleased that so many of you have found the lists
to be valuable resources and have built a supportive community dedicated
to sharing information. Thank you all for your participation (even if
it's just lurking!).
So, Happy Birthday to all of us! With many more to come.
Chris Weiler and Seth Seeger
SharedWeight admins
Wow!
The level of response is amazing! Guess I'll jump on the bandwagon,
too--done a fair amount of content management setup from scratch using perl
and javascript to cobble together tools for non-techies to use for site
maintenance, so there might be times when I could pass along easily-bolted
on stuff other could use or just help with problem-solving. And I'm hoping
there are some experts with various well-developed systems like Drupal and
Joomla that have tips to share as well...
(Bizarre aside: anyone remember Second Life? Wouldn't it be cool if you
could program avatars to do dance moves and have a virtual contra dance, or
test dance sequences? Actually, forget that! It's totally against what I
value about real dancing! )
Chip Hedler
Hello everyone!
Your responses have been overwhelming! Chris and I have set up the new email list: webcontent(a)sharedweight.net. Head on over to this page to sign up:
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/webcontent
Here are our guidelines for this list:
> This mailing list is for developers of websites for traditional dance organizations. This is a place where developers and website maintainers can support each other by:
>
> • Sharing information
> • Discussing issues related to hosting and content
> • Discussing topics from utilizing social media to different software options
>
> Members are encouraged to send questions to the group and learn from those with more experience.
>
Please move the current WordPress/hosting discussion over to this new list.
Enjoy!
Seth & Chris
>
> I appreciate hearing about the differences among WordPress, Joomla, &
> Drupal. I created my website in iWeb which will not be supported after this
> year, and I've been trying to figure out what to do. I think I need
> something more than WordPress, but I'm not really a techie. I kind of
> learned what I needed for each step of what I did/do, and then crossed my
> fingers that it would work (and also got help with some of it at the Apple
> store). I'm not too happy to think that I'll probably have to start from
> scratch (though there were limitations to iWeb that I didn't know until I
> had spent a few months creating the site), and I'm not really interested in
> learning any complex web design (like Dream Weaver, etc.). I see things like
> Site Builder and Ruby on Rails on my hosting service - but I have no idea
> how easy any of them are to use. Joomla sounds like it might be what I
> should look into.
> Thanks, Patricia
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Martha Edwards <meedwards(a)westendweb.com>
> To: "Caller's discussion list" <callers(a)sharedweight.net>
> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:08:13 -0500
> Subject: Re: [Callers] contra dance webmasters unite!
> Chip - I've been using *Joomla *for our site here in St Louis (
> http://childgrove.org) for about a year. For myself, it's the perfect
> blend
> of front-end ease-of-use for content updaters and back-end flexibility for
> the designer-techie who wants to make the site jump through a few hoops. I
> love it. I can do things I always needed to hire a programmer to do before
> -
> like make online registration forms that send you an email with the
> registration info AND send the registrant on to PayPal (thank you,
> Chronoforms!).
>
> However, since it looks as if, in the big Content Management Systems
> shakeout, there are three popular survivors, *WordPress, Joomla,* and *
> Drupal*, I've done some investigation into the other two as well.
>
> If the folks making the web site don't have a bunch of tech experience as a
> web designer or programmer, I'd probably recommend *WordPress*. It's a lot
> easier for non-techies to set up, and I've seen some spiffy sites done with
> it. On the other hand, I also hear it's a lot less flexible for web
> designer/programmers. In other words, if you want to do what IT wants you
> to
> do, it's GREAT, but if you want to do something slightly different, you may
> be out of luck. That makes sense, though. I figure you get extreme
> ease-of-use OR extreme flexibility, but not both. Don't know if you could
> do
> an online registration form with it, for example. Anyone have experience
> with this?
>
> I can't imagine a contra dance group ever needing something like *Drupal*,
> which (I hear) falls squarely in the techie (extreme flexibility) camp. But
> hey, if you've got someone who knows it, rumor has it that it can do
> amazing
> things.
>
> Uh-oh, just realized that we're not already on the contradance web-stuff
> discussion list. My apologies.
>
> So, in penance, and to keep the discussion about dance, I will include here
> a link to my cute little double grand square Flash
> movies<http://www.westendweb.com/doublegrandsquare/>
> .
>
> M
> E
>
>
>
>
Hi - It was mentioned that Wordpress, Joomla, etc are limiting to those that
are "real" web designers. It really isn't. I work for the University of
Florida and we are taking our entire web presence - several hundred pages -
into Wordpress. Our army of web designers are in agreement that this is a
good move and they can do everything they've been doing, but easier and more
well organized. I am not one of those web designers so I can't answer
anyone's technical questions, but I know that you are not limited to the
templates provided.
--
JoLaine Jones-Pokorney
"We are as gods and might as well get good at it!"
- Stewart Brand
Hi everyone,
Wow! That's an overwhelming response! Chris and I will have a chance to
talk this evening, and then we'll let everyone know what the plan is.
Seth
I've been wondering if there would be enough interest (and traffic) to form an email list for contra dance website webmasters and other content creators (e.g., people posting videos to youtube) and people maintaining contra dance related "pages" on Facebook to discuss some of the issues and ideas and share links, etc.
I created the website http://southfloridacontradance.com/ and I'm always looking for good videos to share (see the "Announcements" page) and links about contra dancing (see the "What is Contra Dance?" and "Dance Links" pages). I also help maintain the "South Florida Contradance" page on Facebook.
In particular, I think that finding, generating, and sharing fresh content is the kind of thing that will keep our web sites looking current and vibrant and will spark interest. I also think it's important to design for both the current dancer (when and where is tonight's dance or next month's festival?) and be informative and welcoming to the uninitiated. Sharing relevant, high quality links will also help make sure that search results yield the best information about our beloved activity.
As for folks posting to YouTube... as a caller, I often want to know the name and author of the dance being done!
Respond to this thread and if there's enough interest, perhaps we can convince the kind folks who run SharedWeight.net to start a new mailing list for this.
Let me know what you think!
/Andy Shore
http://andyshore.com/http://facebook.com/AndyShore.Caller << like me on Facebook!
