If we were creating a doc for attendance and opening it up to the "world of contra dances organizers" to comment why not add some other categories that we've been discussing? 

Linda Leslie suggested the Organizers group might have stats.  I'm wondering if CDSS keeps any?

When Jeff replied to my query about LGBTQ dances and groups using non-gender terminology I wasn't at all surprised to see the list (since I know most of those groups), but I was surprised to realize that there were no groups in other major cities throughout the country.

Topics that might be on the Doc:
Dance Organizations that use non-gender terminology
Dance Organizations that have considered but decided not to use non-gender terminology
Dance Organizations that have decided to use a non "gypsy" terminology
Dance Organizations that have considered but decided not to use non "gypsy" terminology

There could be a write in section where Dance Organizations could state which terms they use.

I would request that the attendance be under 25, 26-50, 51-75, 76-100, etc.  Or even increments of 20.  There are several small groups in this country that survive with under 20 attendance and other groups where a drop in 25 dancers means serious financial hardship. 

Dave is concerned that groups might be wary about posting such information.  Are there groups represented on this list that might NOT participate in this information gathering?  Seems useless to even create the Doc unless folks are willing to post the data.

Donna Hunt





-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Casserly via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net>
To: Jeff Kaufman <jeff@alum.swarthmore.edu>
Cc: callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net>
Sent: Mon, Jan 30, 2017 4:12 pm
Subject: Re: [Callers] Another vote for "jets" and "rubies"

What if we made a Google doc with more vague categories where dances could self-report their attendance?  Something like, a column for the state where the dance is located, a column for 2015 average attendance, all done in ranges of 1-50, 51-100, etc, and another column for 2017 attendance, with the same ranges?  I think that would be useful for purposes of knowing how many dances are suffering declining attendance, and where those dances are, but wouldn't give out enough specific information to make organizers queasy about publicly releasing data.

On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 1:35 PM, Jeff Kaufman via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
For attendance, what I would love to see is dances making their
attendance numbers fully public.  Something like a googledocs
spreadsheet that anyone can view where you put in attendance numbers.

(I've advocated for this, internally to BIDA, for years
(unsuccessfully).  We do have a sheet like this, but it's not public.)

On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 1:07 PM, Linda Leslie via Callers
<callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> It may be that the Organizers’ List for Shared Weight may have this kind of
> data.
> Linda
>
> On Jan 30, 2017, at 12:51 PM, Ron Blechner via Callers
> <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
>
> No, I haven't seen statistical analysis of this. Maybe it's worthwhile for
> this to be polled out to various dances.
>
> Best regards,
> Ron
>
> On Jan 30, 2017 10:54 AM, "Donna Hunt" <dhuntdancer@aol.com> wrote:
>
> Just getting back to this thread, lots to catch up on.
>
> Jeff and Ron:  You both seem like the statisticians here.  Is there any data
> that reflects where in the country the LGBTQ gender-free dances are and
> where the communities that use gender-free terminology are?
>
> Just curious.
>
> Ron:  When you say that local dances attendance is down is there data about
> that compared to dances where attendance is not down?  Again, looking for
> information country wide or even geographic area.
>
> Thanks
> Donna Hunt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Callers mailing list
> Callers@lists.sharedweight.net
> http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Callers mailing list
> Callers@lists.sharedweight.net
> http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net
>
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers@lists.sharedweight.net
http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net



--
David Casserly
(cell) 781 258-2761
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers@lists.sharedweight.net
http://lists.sharedweight.net/listinfo.cgi/callers-sharedweight.net