[Callers] Intro and Callers Database

Hi everyone, I joined SharedWeight a few weeks ago but have not had time to introduce myself. My name is Will Loving - though some who met me many years ago may remember me as Will McNaughten - and I live in Amherst, MA. I've been contra dancing for about half my life - 26+ years I think - initially in Seattle, NH/VT (Lyme, Etna, Norwich, Putney), and DC/MD/VA, but mostly in the Pioneer Valley/Western Mass area for the last 20+ years. I got interested in calling early on and started collecting dances and teaching my students (small Quaker High School in Maryland) and anyone else who was interested. Ken Haltenhoff (Bluemont dance), Steve Schnur, David Kaynor and Larry Jennings book ³Zesty Contras² were early influences. After I moved to Western Mass I called the Montague dance once or twice when David was away but didn¹t do much beyond that. My wife, Kate, and I also taught East Coast swing for five years here in the valley and my interest in calling is very much related to my joy in teaching dance. For the last 12+ years, parenting and running my business have taken precedence over many personal interests including dancing and calling, but I'm finally beginning to move in those directions again. Though my time is still limited, I'm actively looking for opportunities to learn more about calling and to talk with and observe people calling and teaching. I¹m driving to Belfast, Maine this weekend to do the Intro Callers workshop with Chrissy Fowler and will hopefully be going to the followup weekend with Lisa in September. I really appreciate Chris Weiler¹s recent post about his experiences as a new caller, it¹s inspiring and gives me hope for how things can open up as you go along. I know I bring certain skills to the table because of my background in movement and teaching, but I¹m pretty clueless at the moment about the music side of things and how to interact with the musicians. Lots to learn and I very much appreciate the encouragement of the caller community (esp. David Kaynor, Rick Mohr, Lisa Greenleaf, Linda Leslie, George Marshall, et al.) as I figure out what next steps to take. Finally, for my work, I do database programming in FileMaker Pro, mostly for community arts organizations and other non-profits. I created a small dance database some years ago for my own use, but now that I actually might start using it actively I wanted something that was much more functional and nicer to look at. I¹ve been working on something for several weeks that I think might be of interest to the caller community, particularly because it has the ability to create and preserve sets of dances for a particular date and location. At some point in the next few weeks I¹ll post a link to a downloadable beta (both Mac and Win) for people to play with, but in the short term here ( http://dedicationtechnologies.com/CC/ ) are some screen shots to show you where I¹m going with it. There is a lot of functionality already built in which you can¹t really see but which will be apparent when you actually get a chance to play with it. I also have lots of questions for you all because I would like this to be versatile enough for contras, square and English, so I¹ll be soliciting your input on that. Thanks for listening and for the encouragement I¹ve already received from many of you. Thanks, Will -- William M. Loving Dedication Technologies, Inc. 7 Coach Lane Amherst, MA 01002-3304 USA will(a)dedicationtechnologies.com Tel: +1 413 253-7223 (GMT ­5) Fax: +1 206 202-0476