Sep. 27th, 2008

bjarvis: (Cosmo)
We're about to hop in the car for a leisurely drive up to New Brunswick, NJ, to attend The 2008 Gathering of the Northern New Jersey Square Dance Association. It's a day-long mini-convention of square dance & round dance callers & cuers. The schedule of events looked interesting and it's a great networking opportunity.
bjarvis: (Cosmo)
We're about to hop in the car for a leisurely drive up to New Brunswick, NJ, to attend The 2008 Gathering of the Northern New Jersey Square Dance Association. It's a day-long mini-convention of square dance & round dance callers & cuers. The schedule of events looked interesting and it's a great networking opportunity.
bjarvis: (white hat)
This year’s “The Gathering,” a one-day mini-convention of square & round dance club leaders, callers & cuers sponsored by the North New Jersey Square Dance Assocation has come and gone. In all, it was fun.

Tim Marriner gave the keynote address at 1 PM, emphasizing what we can do for stabilizing, organizing and recruiting for our clubs. After a 15 minute break, we went into the first of two blocks of presentations.

We had our choice of five different session topics in the first block. I attended Roy & Betsy Gotta’s presentation on a brief history of square dancing, how square dance programs are sometimes misinterpreted as status symbols and methods for easing dancers from classes into regular club nights. In all, I didn’t see much I didn’t already know from CALLERLAB conventions but it was a fun refresher. [livejournal.com profile] kent4str attended a session on finding halls, caller vs membership run clubs, tips for hiring callers, ins & outs of BMI/ASCAP licensing and such.

In the next session block, I attended a session on approaches to business: the image of square dancing, opportunities to sell the product, ABC dancing and dancer retention. There was good material here, some of which I’m going to post later. [livejournal.com profile] kent4str attended the session on organizing special cub activities & fundraising, including special themed events (eg. murder mystery night), making themes work, etc..

The United Dancers of America presentation at the closing wrap-up was pretty dry but Mike Jacobs’ presentation from ARTS was lively and enthusiastic: his presentation about adopt-a-library and other promotions by a Texas club association was fascinating.

Alas, we didn’t win the 50/50 draw share-the-pot draw and we had to hit the road around 6 PM so we could get home at a decent hour.
bjarvis: (white hat)
This year’s “The Gathering,” a one-day mini-convention of square & round dance club leaders, callers & cuers sponsored by the North New Jersey Square Dance Assocation has come and gone. In all, it was fun.

Tim Marriner gave the keynote address at 1 PM, emphasizing what we can do for stabilizing, organizing and recruiting for our clubs. After a 15 minute break, we went into the first of two blocks of presentations.

We had our choice of five different session topics in the first block. I attended Roy & Betsy Gotta’s presentation on a brief history of square dancing, how square dance programs are sometimes misinterpreted as status symbols and methods for easing dancers from classes into regular club nights. In all, I didn’t see much I didn’t already know from CALLERLAB conventions but it was a fun refresher. [livejournal.com profile] kent4str attended a session on finding halls, caller vs membership run clubs, tips for hiring callers, ins & outs of BMI/ASCAP licensing and such.

In the next session block, I attended a session on approaches to business: the image of square dancing, opportunities to sell the product, ABC dancing and dancer retention. There was good material here, some of which I’m going to post later. [livejournal.com profile] kent4str attended the session on organizing special cub activities & fundraising, including special themed events (eg. murder mystery night), making themes work, etc..

The United Dancers of America presentation at the closing wrap-up was pretty dry but Mike Jacobs’ presentation from ARTS was lively and enthusiastic: his presentation about adopt-a-library and other promotions by a Texas club association was fascinating.

Alas, we didn’t win the 50/50 draw share-the-pot draw and we had to hit the road around 6 PM so we could get home at a decent hour.
bjarvis: (Default)
Congrats on your birthday! Hope you're celebrating it in style with yer man!
bjarvis: (Default)
Congrats on your birthday! Hope you're celebrating it in style with yer man!

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