I'm forwarding the following note about an initiative being discussed at the yahoo group called "danceambassadors." It's a model for encouraging and retaining new dancers by finding out what they like (and don't like) about their first experiences at a contra dance. --Jerome Grisanti ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Coffman &lt;johndcoffman(a)yahoo.com&gt; Date: Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 9:32 PM Subject: Fwd: Fw: [danceambassadors] Dance Attendance Project To: Jill Allen &lt;jallen3(a)sunflower.com&gt;om>, Jerome Grisanti < jerome.grisanti(a)gmail.com&gt; Note: forwarded message attached. ------------------------------ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51734/*http://tools.search.yahoo.com/… ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Jane Ewing" &lt;contradance(a)charter.net&gt; To: "Dale & Susan" &lt;shoer51(a)yahoo.com&gt;om>, "John & Kathy Coffman" < johndcoffman(a)yahoo.com&gt;gt;, "Larry Teich" &lt;Larry.Teich(a)dep.state.fl.us&gt;us>, "Steve Herndon" &lt;busman71(a)catt.com&gt;om>, "Barry Gibbons" &lt;barry(a)afn.org&gt;rg>, "Richard Hopkins" &lt;hopkinsrs(a)comcast.net&gt;et>, "Stan & Linda Prince" < sprince2(a)tampabay.rr.com&gt;gt;, "Joey Norton" &lt;jnor1(a)juno.com&gt;om>, "Tom Hogan" < Bocawoodworks(a)aol.com&gt;gt;, "Alice Milmoe" &lt;Contradans(a)aol.com&gt;om>, "Rod Edens" < pull-by(a)triad.rr.com&gt; Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:01:57 -0600 Subject: Fw: [danceambassadors] Dance Attendance Project *Hi gang - You are getting this because I have either spoken to you face to face about this idea, you have been in an email discussion about it or I just think it might help your group out.* ** *In Huntsville we use most of the ideas noted in the outline. We have reworded the paper we give to newcomers to complete to suit us better. We find it is helping.* ** *If you are concerned about the overall health of your group I would like you to consider taking this on.* ** *As Ridge says - please feel free to contact him (or myself) with questions or comments.* ** *Jane Ewing* ----- Original Message ----- *From:* Ridge Kennedy &lt;ridgek(a)j-appleseed.org&gt; *To:* danceambassadors(a)yahoogroups.com *Sent:* Monday, February 18, 2008 7:54 AM *Subject:* [danceambassadors] Dance Attendance Project Dear Friends in the Dance Community, This is an announcement about something which is, if not about a breakthrough, then is at least a significant incremental step in the effort to encourage/increase attendance at dance events. Notice to Disinterested Parties This is a fairly long message. If you are from the school of thought that says people would either "get it" or they don't with regard to participatory dance, if you think that efforts to understand the needs, wants, and behaviors of newcomers to dance events are irrelevant, or if you are not at all interested in the challenges of organizing and encouraging attendance at dance events, please press "delete" and ignore this message. Overview If you are still reading, here is what this message covers. -- A brief statement about the genesis of this project – an effort to communicate with newcomers at participatory dance events using online communication tools -- A description of test that is being conducted -- A description of the superficial results -- Links to the survey form and to the results -- A request for people any individuals/group that might be interested in participating in the next stage of development for this project to contact me A "J. Appleseed" Principle I am an advocate the idea of using technology to assist organizers -- to make their lives easier, and to try to help make their efforts more effective. For the last three or four months, Jane Ewing (a dance organizer and dance caller from Huntsville, Alabama), and I have been prototyping the use of web based survey software to solicit responses from newcomers to dance events. Here's the good news. It works. The process that we've worked out requires very little effort on the part of dance organizers. There's no cost. And over our test., we have found that dancers will participate by providing organizers with e-mail addresses, and they will respond to the solicitations we send to them via e-mail and complete the survey. Disclaimer: The information that we are sharing at this point is really in the "beta" stage of development. The survey was developed very quickly and the questions that we have asked are not as good as they should be. There are surely some other, more salient questions that we could ask and the structure of the survey can undoubtedly be improved. I am hopeful that some of you out there in the dance world will join us now in this effort and help us make this process work better. Results For now, what we are finding is that a fairly substantial number of newcomers will accept our invitation to participate in the survey and then about 50 percent of the people who agreed to participate will actually follow through and complete the survey. Following is a link to the survey. You can click on this link and see the survey that people are completing. This is a test copy of the survey and if you want to, you can go ahead and put in some data and seeing what the survey experience is like. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=e7vy3ALyBmPhZUgBaNDEdg_3d_3d Now, here is a link to the results of the survey that we have been conducting. The results can be "filtered" so that you can see responses based on specific venues, the gender of participants, the age range of participants, whether they are "experienced" dancers attending a different dance for the first time or whether they are "complete newcomers." Results can be viewed in summary form (all results tabulated and ranked) or results can be viewed on a "survey by survey" basis. http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=MxsWM6VOhosNjXZUwqgnHSe8DoFKo6TQfmuE… One caveat about the results -- some survey results include e-mail addresses. That was unintentional. At this point I can't remove them from the results, but I did find where the setting was that included them and they will not be included in future results. One of our promises to participants is that we will not use their e-mail addresses for anything other than the survey, unless they give us permission. Benefits to organizers -- "what's in it for me?" First, there's the benefit of getting real information about concerns that newcomers may have every dance. It's simply a way of getting objective opinions from people who've never been there before about the convenience, friendliness, sociability, -- whatever conditions you want to ask about. In short, it's a way to find out if there are problems, and it gives us an opportunity to address them. Second -- from bigger perspective -- it gives us information about the new dancer experience. Frankly, I was hoping to get responses from people who were disappointed with the experience -- frustrated and unhappy. Eventually, I'm sure that some responses like that will come through, but in our testing so far. We have not received many negative responses. Which leads to the third point. Number three -- participation in the survey does provide reinforcement about the idea of coming back. A review of which survey results shows that a high proportion of people who have completed the survey have said they are positively or at least likely to come back again. Finally -- the survey process can integrate with the group's effort to build attendance using an announcement e-mail list, and/or a "come back for the next time free" pass that many groups are using these days. As noted, this is really a test version of a process; it has lots of flaws and has lots of room for improvement. I do believe, however, that we have shown that this process does have potential for certain groups well and can play a positive role in increasing dance attendance. If you have any questions about all of this, I'd like to share them in the context of an online discussion group that is focused on the issues dance organizers face. My goal is to find a few more organizers, who might be interested in participating in this survey effort and help us take it into a "production" mode. Additionally, we are interested in developing a second step to our research – a process that reaches out to the current dancers for feedback. If you are interested in discussing this further, please contact me directly at mail to mailto:ridgek@j-appleseed.org <ridgek%40j-appleseed.org>. Thank You very much for your time and consideration. 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