Hi Fellow Organizers, As many of you know (because I've already posted on this!), Ottawa Contra is trying to improve our talent info/contracts. I've been working with versions from your various dance communities as well as ideas that came up at the Puttin On The Dance session re talent. I've attached our draft as it is now and would love to get your thoughts on a few aspects. See below for five questions. :) Emily 1. *Does our cancellation policy look fair? Anything we should do different?* *If Ottawa Contra has to cancel a gig within three months of the event, we will compensate the talent for the full agreed upon amount. If the caller or band needs to cancel the gig, please let us know ASAP. Bands can substitute a member if agreed with Ottawa Contra (no additional pay). If you don't perform, we don't compensate. Please note that cancellation is difficult for us as we promote all bands/callers over the whole season.* 2. *I'm trying to open up channels for us to give feedback to the occasional caller/band when things don't go well. Does our wording on 'feedback both ways' seem good in terms of being able to approach post-gig to provide comments if there are particular issues (in addition to the emails we send when it goes really well!).* *Callers & Bands - Feedback both ways:* *We would like to foster an open dialogue of feedback from you to us and from us to you! If you are uncomfortable with feedback, please let us know ahead of time. And, if you have any feedback for us regarding any aspect of your experience with Ottawa Contra, please begin the dialogue!* 3. *Sit Ins/sharing mic... ... we'd like to (if talent willing) have options for a caller and 1-2 local musicians to get a bit of experience in order to build capacity. See what you think of how we suggest that. **BAND: · 'Sit ins'* *: If you are willing, 1-2 of our local contra musicians would love to 'sit in' with you for 1-2 sets. This is a purposeful attempt on our part to build capacity in our dance musician community – having locals get to feel your amazing energy will help them a lot! This is only if you are willing and we'll confirm with you ahead of time. (These sit ins could be mic'd or not.) CallErs: If you are willing, we would like to arrange a time of your choice during the evening where one of our local callers could call one dance. We would love for you to take a few notes and provide them with some constructive feedback on what they did well and what they could tweak (i.e., stop-start-continue). Our local callers would really benefit from calling with varied professional bands and from your tips! * 4. *Caller archiving: This is an idea from Belfast and Concord. What do you think?* *Archiving:* We have started an archive that lists past programs which you may refer to before/during the dance. Please record your called program there – name of dance, composer/author, comments, etc. This is shared with other visiting callers to get a sense of pacing, types of dances called, and challenges they come across . 5. *Gender-mixer dance... ... this is something some people on our committee want to try to help women especially who are scared about learning the gents role (it's true - we have many and 1 workshop a year isn't doing it). Also other reasons as some folks like to play with gender roles. However, we aren't interested in becoming a gender free dance and we have a lot of beginners every time who get confused when people change roles too much (it already happens a bit). What do you think?* *Gender-mixer dance:* (Optional ) In the second half, we would like you to announce (a full dance ahead) that there will be a gender-mixer for those who want it. Randomly choose a line for folks who want to play opposite gender roles, swap roles throughout the dance, etc. A few dancers do this regularly but some folks who are learning the opposite gender role want a more safe time to experiment where they won't be embarrassed if they make mistakes, etc.