Are We Having Fun Yet?

Growth

2013-09-23T01:28:39Z

I've been calling square dances for about nine years now. Well, more precisely, I was permitted to hold a microphone on stage about nine years ago: it was nearly a year before I was allowed to go on-stage solo. I remember being scared as hell and feeling utterly unprepared. I also remember thinking that I was utterly the wrong person for the role, that I should simply drop out and admit I wasn't up to the task.

This past week, I had three gigs which tested my skills in different ways.

Last Tuesday, attendance at Chesapeake Squares' club night was sparse so I called from the floor while dancing as the 8th dancer to complete a square. I have done this before, but it was mentally draining and it wasn't exactly what one might call a polished performance. This time, however, it was no more tiring than simply calling or simply dancing. I could think ahead 2-3 calls while my feet continued to execute the current call. And I didn't shame my ancestors while doing it.

This Thursday was the Chesapeake Squares' first Mainstream class night of the new fall series. There was a time such a gig would have filled me with terror: how to I teach these calls? How do I make them interesting? How do I fill a two hour dance with only a handful of easy calls? This night, however, I wasn't nervous or fearful. It was actually kinda fun. We covered the calls I had planned and not one more (hard though it is to resist that urge sometimes), we danced them repeatedly in a variety of formations and we built new sequences out the calls on hand. In short, it worked pretty well.

This Saturday, I called a combo dance for the Times Squares in New York City. The first 2.5 hours were Advanced & Challenge, then latter 2.5 hours Mainstream & Plus. Times Squares doesn't take breaks between tips: the only rest time is the minute or so required to change music and set up news squares for the next tip. I had been asked explicitly not to dumb down the choreo or speed to the weakest dancer, and I soon understood what they meant: the Advanced floor had one dancer who was a new Advanced graduate but was having extreme difficulty with the Mainstream & Plus calls --"column circulate" shouldn't crash an A2 square. Later in the evening, there was a longtime dancer who joined for the Mainstream tips who clearly couldn't remember or execute half of the calls on the list, but also had no concept of looking at his opposite for clues or even looking around for an empty spot on in the formation to fill. Instead, he just stood there, staring at a random wall waiting for someone to move to physically to an available spot. I noticed several dancers taking incorrect spots --effectively taking a hit for the team-- just so he could be placed in the nearest available position.

In all, it was a calling challenge but I did as instructed, letting go the weak square in favor of the stronger ones. I limited walk-throughs to those sequences or calls which clearly caused the bulk of the floor heartburn (eg. peel the top, remake the thar). I used a lot of written choreo for the A&C stuff so I could repeat it on demand, but went with sight-calling frequently to fix squares or just for fun (the MS & Plus part was entirely sight-called).

In all though, I think the evening was successful and I had a fun time. It's rare that I call extended sets like these: I've only done it three times before, including our own Harvest Festival Hoedown in 2010. I have proven to my own satisfaction that I have sufficient choreography, workshop material, choreographic variety and a musical palette for such extended dances and sufficient mental & physical stamina to keep focussed beginning to end. Times Squares is a good club and I hope to work with them again some time soon. If nothing else, I'll see many of their dancers at upcoming square dance festivals across the next few months.

To make a long story short ("Too late!"), I've survived a compressed work schedule, a series of demanding calling scenarios, extended travel and much more this past week without significant angst or last-minute panic attacks. I entered into each event as prepared as I believed I needed to be, along with some safety margin just in case. I left each without the sense of explosive decompression I knew only too well several few years ago. I hesistate to say this has become routine, but it has become --finally-- familiar enough that it doesn't trigger excess anxiety or stress. I'm going to call that "maturity" and "experienced."

There is, naturally, still so much more to learn and experience. I'm happy however that I've finally reached my personal goal: a of stable performance of several challenging calling situations without excessive strain. From here on it, it's dessert time!

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Friendly Takeover in Progress

2013-09-16T00:13:19Z

All of our operators are busy with other palace coups and takeovers... please stay on the line for our next available operator.

The Mid-Atlantic Challenge Association (MACA) has been a bit adrift lately. For many years, the same folks have been on the board, and the focus of that board has been limited to running two dances per year and running the Zip Coder magazine. The magazine however has been transferred to a private company so the organization agenda is dramatically reduced. Many of the current board wish to retire from it, and some have begun making noises about winding down the organization.

cuyahogarvr, kent4str and I have other ideas. :-)

The current by-laws include a statement of purpose which clearly outlines several other MACA functions, many of which have been ignored for some time either by benign neglect, lack of interest or lack of human resources to implement them. These include:

coordinating & promoting Challenge square dancing in the DC-Baltimore area;
assist in establishing a systematic procedure for teaching the Challenge programs, possibly even sponsoring classes;
sponsoring at least one open dance per year;
promote a positive image of Challenge dancing;
foster interaction between Challenge dancers and the rest of the square dance community;
foster cooperation between Challenge callers in the area; and,
promote special events.

In short, we've done the dance-per-year thing pretty well, but the rest of have been left unattended.

We're looking to run for board positions this coming November 2 with our own agenda:

sponsor at least four dances per year with both local & out-of-town callers;
plan our quarterly dances three years out, with a variety of callers and dance locations;
partner with multi-level clubs, not just Challenge-only clubs;
coordinate with non-MACA clubs to ensure a full booking schedule for travelling callers (and possibly sharing expenses);
sponsor Advanced and Intro-to-C1 sessions at some of our regular events as a feeder to our Challenge program;
modify the mission statement to expand our Baltimore-DC description to truly cover the Mid-Atlantic region;
promote the hell out of MACA and its events with every means at our disposal, including paper flyers, Facebook, Twitter, an updated web site, email, eVite and more.

There are a few other things we'd like to do, but these will do for the first year. With $20k in the bank, the organization has resources to do a lot if we can get the personnel and energy involved and directed into a new action plan.

kent4str will run for a delegate-at-large position while cuyahogarvr and I will run jointly for the vice-president position --the VP does most of the dance planning & coordination. We still need two other people to run for positions which will likely be vacated by retirements: I have a list of people we're approaching for those spots.

This is a mid-range plan covering the next 15 months, but I think we can do good things for the organization. Fresh meat is a good thing from time to time.

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Catching Up, September 1-15, 2013

2013-09-15T23:28:40Z

The past half-month has been a bit of a blur, but it's been good for the most part.

We spent Labour Day as planned at the trailer in West Virginia. All five of us were there, kent4str, cuyhogarvr and me, along with co-trailer trash Jerry & David. It makes for a crowded trailer and not a great deal of isolated rest, but it was fun nonetheless.

cuyahogarvr and I stayed at the trailer for the rest of Labour Day week. Outside of some moments of stress because of a dead car battery --it had a charge but was just shy of its 7th birthday so it didn't retain enough juice to start the car-- I caught up on some rest and reading. More precisely, I caught up on some self-study, working towards my eventual Cisco network certification later this year. Still, I could have used a few extra days to fully recharge.

Work has been active. Our team has been distracted from large outstanding projects by a surge in daily problems-of-the-moment. Not realizing the wave of minor things would run on for days, we didn't prioritize our tasks properly and it cost us some time, but this week we'll be more aggressive about it: a couple of our team will be dedicated to simply addressing the daily minor things while the rest of us attack the outstanding big projects.

That said, I did get two major projects off my plate and a third nearly completed by this past Friday. I'm confident our team overall will be back in a very good position again with in a week.

Spare time will be at a premium this coming week: the Mainstream class with DC Lambda Squares continues for another two Wednesdays, even as a new Mainstream class for Chesapeake Squares starts this Thursday. I have a club night with Chesapeake Squares this Tuesday, then a six hour calling marathon, Mainstream through Challenge-1, with the Times Squares in New York City this coming Saturday. I also have a board meeting with the Mid-Atlantic Challenge Association Sunday afternoon.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to all of these projects but it will require some heavy lifting for the next two weeks.

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Recent Square Dancing

2013-08-18T21:38:26Z

I have almost literally nothing to report.

I called a gig for the Chesapeake Squares in July and am scheduled for another next Tuesday. That's it. On the one hand, I'm grateful for the break as I've been a bit overextended lately. On the other hand, I fear getting a bit rusty.

We were supposed to go to a C2 workshop & dance this past Saturday but it was cancelled for lack of dancers. I had two C1 gigs in July and early August which were similarly cancelled. It's the summer: everyone is off traveling, has schedule conflicts or such. Bummer, but we knew it would happen.

The DC Lambda Squares' Mainstream class is chugging along very well. John Marshall is the instructor but he had both kent4str and I do guest teaches of assigned calls so John could evaluate and offer tips & recommendations. I need more work on vocal metering, but otherwise my session went pretty well: good rapport with the floor, clear diction, etc.. Calling for new Mainstream dancers is the hardest gig I've ever had simply because we have to work with such a limited square dance vocabularly. More than once I wanted to call "wheel & deal" or "tag the line" but they didn't have those calls yet. Imagine writing "Hamlet" with a vocabulary of 500 words instead of the standard 25,000.

This Mainstream class technically winds up in September, but we know from the call list that there will be another dozen calls which need to be taught. These will be covered in upcoming club nights with that week's club caller, whether caller_dayle, kent4str, myself or someone else.

The Chesapeake Squares is hosting an open house August 27 and hopefully will have a Mainstream class starting in mid/late-September. More news as it develops.

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Square Dance July

2013-08-03T17:47:58Z

A few weeks ago, I was in San Francisco for a couple of weeks of work, along with attending the IAGSDC convention. Work was kinda wierd: it was the first time I visited our new company location in downtown SF, which was very cramped as there were renovations still in progress.

The square dance convention itself was an adventure. As vice-president for the Gay Callers Association, it was my responsibility to coordinate the annual caller school, this year with coaches Barry Clasper & billeyler. It was a lot of fun and I consider it to be a complete success. Beyond all of the preparation work in advance, I had to emcee the graduation dance, prepare flyers for next year's caller school, arrange official GCA name badges and back-orders of school materials, make file reports & make presentations with both the GCA board and the IAGSDC delegates and a stack of other minor tasks. billeyeler was kind enough (and not yet sick of me) to invite me to join him as a paenlist for the "Intro to Calling" discussion. I think we were all delighted with the excellent turn-out for that session.

In all, I danced only about 90 minutes out of 90 minutes out of four days. Still, that was enough to satisfy me, especially since I Have so many dance opportunitites at home: I like to the convention for the opportunity to mix & mingle, to catch up with people between sets and generally keep my ear to the ground to see what's going on in the broader community.

I can't say enough good things about the San Francisco convention. I know from back-room discussion with various coordinators that not everything was smooth as silk, but they managed through it, found solutions and kept ugly reality hidden from everyone --and that's what good organizing professionals do. Great location, great facility, great staff and great volunteers: what's not to love?

Since the convention, I've hardly called much. John Marshall is teaching the Mainstream class for DC Lambda Squares on Wednesdays, while Kent & I are assisting periodically and are given test teaching assignments. Last week, I was assigned teaching "grand square". Good news: that call is astonishingly easy to teach and gives the students a huge sense of accomplishment because it is a large call. My regular patter otherwise wasn't the greatest, largely because we had only a dozen or so calls to use and I was exhausted from overtime at work over the last few days. Still, no one died so I'm calling it a success.

There's talk of having us teach a Mainstream class for Chesapeake Squares beginning in mid-September too.

I haven't danced a great deal lately either, largely because my schedule has been very full. Again, I'm OK with this: I'm dancing enough for enjoyment and using the remaining time productively.

Tonight, DC Lambda Squares is hosting caller Bill Harrison for a DBD Plus workshop in the afternoon, a potluck dinner and then a Mainstream thru Challenge-1 dance in the evening. I predict a good time will be had by all.

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This Week in Square Dancing

2013-06-29T16:58:09Z

We're in the home stretch for the 2013 GCA caller school and the San Francisco IAGSDC square dance convention.

As vice-president of the GCA, I have direct responsibility for the caller school. Most of the advance preparations have been completed but there were some minor outstanding issues which needed to be addressed in the last week or so.
1. I have reservations made for a business dinner with my caller coaches for Sunday, June 30.
2. I have made a tonne of photocopies for the documents to be distributed to our course registrants.
3. I've made some required confirmations with the local convention staff --who have been a dream to work with, BTW.
4. I have a caller coach booked for the 2014 caller school and a funding proposal submited to All Join Hands for their consideration at their meeting next week during the convention.
5. I have flyers ready for next year's convention.

I'll be checking in bodies for the caller school as they arrive, staffing a help desk for them Monday-Wednesday, offering small advice & suggestions to the newbies, and emcee'ing the GCA dance Thursday morning 10am-1pm. I'd be happy to co-call with the newbies too if they'd be more comfortable with a second, or to allow them to concentrate on their patter or singer.

I still need to collect various packages which were shipped to San Francisco rather than to me in Maryland but I'm feeling otherwise very prepared for this caller school.

There are some other items which I need to finalize unrelated to the caller school, however...
1. I have a report on the recent CALLERLAB convention to report at the IAGSDC delegatse meeting.
2. I may also be reporting to the same delegates meeting on the GCA's recent activities, especially the caller school. The primary delegate is heavily loaded with 2015 convention planning & reporting activities so the alternate delegate, kent4str and I can duke it out for this reporting function.
3. I still need some detailed preparation for my singular convention calling gig, the leather tip.

Barry Clasper has invited me to share the stage with him for the leather tip, an hour-long square dance in full (or minimal) leather Friday evening. It's Mainstream which I sight-call 99% of the time, but short of the opening & closing ceremonies, this is the single most attended square dance hour with potentially over 1,000 dancers. In short, I don't want to screw this up, and ideally, I don't even want to stumble. Thus, I'm composing and printing all of my square dance cards in advance to guard against any potential issue. I'm 100% confident I can do this easily, but this is such a good opportunity for visibility which may not come again for a while that I want to take every step to make it flawless.

I still need to print these cards but I'm sure I can do that at the hotel or just run up the street to my conveniently-located office.

I had also planned to lose 10lbs of fat around the waistline before going up on stage in leather but that didn't happen. Stupid sugar addiction.

And after Friday evening, it's all rest & relaxation for me until the closing ceremonies.

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Three Months

2013-05-06T21:38:42Z

Three months back, my schedule went straight to hell.

I knew it was going to happen: my work team was losing two people and my boss was taking extended leave to handle his father's funeral arrangements, leaving us with only a 50% staffing level. Spring is also the season of square dance fly-ins, another round of square dance teaching evenings and a tonne of other events. The calendar was a swirling mess of color listing all of the commitments and appointments until May 5.

Today, mercifully, is May 6, and it feels like the weight of the entire freaking planet has been lifted from my shoulders.

Yes, my team is short-staffed still but I'm interviewing a potential hire tomorrow afternoon. Further, a number of major projects and our annual audit have all been completed succesfully. Even our annual performance evaluations have finished and I was informed today I'm getting a 4.8% raise. Go team!

This past weekend was the last of the square dance fly-ins on my calendar before the upcoming IAGSDC convention in July. It was great fun as always, but I'm happy to have a chunk of my life back again.

The trailer is de-winterized. While that's a luxury issue for us, we had the de-winterizing tools and equipment: our co-trailer owners in Columbus, OH, couldn't use the trailer until we did our part to prepare it for use. The pressure is now off: Jerry & David can enjoy it at their convenience.

Even the family stuff is largely done. kent4str's parents are back from wintering in Floriday, cuyahogarvr's kids birthdays & visits have come & gone, and my clan have finally locked down dates for the parents' upcoming 50th wedding anniversary in 2014. Alas, that date is opposite the 2014 IAGSDC convention but I've already sold our registrations so that's off our books as well.

And extended break from all social media helped immensely. It's amazing how much time one can get back when one ignores Facebook, LiveJournal, Twitter and such. I missed keeping current with various friends' travails, but I needed to focus elsewhere until the storm had passed.

Yeah, there are still appointments on the books but it's all a tiny fraction of what I had up until last night. Life is good.

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And Back Again

2013-04-07T21:53:21Z

Friday afternoon, we headed to Wilmington, DE, for the Independence Squares' annual weekend festival. It's a nice two hour drive --if I95 North is flowing nicely-- and the hotel itself is very cozy and friendly (and I adore the free chocolate chip cookies they give to guests at check-in).

Despite all of the conveniences and dancing opportunities of the weeekend, I wasn't really feeling into the experience this year. On the way home this afternoon, I think I figured it out: I'm tired. No, I'm exhausted, not so much physically but mentally & emotionally. The toll of the past few weeks and the anticipation of the next two months has been subtly catching up with me.

It was naturally very nice to see so many old friends together and the few tips I did dance were fun. I'd like to think the tips I personally called (Advanced) were pretty good but the dancers have to be the final judges on that. But on the whole, I was content to sit on the sidelines in the lobby and read, indulging my introverted self and resting my psyche.

Next weekend, we're going to York, PA, for a C2 weekend with John Marshall. Alas, there won't be a lot of rest between now and then as I have one (and possibly a second) calling gig this week, a must-attend dance Wednesday and a potential night shift for work on Tuesday evening. At least the coming weekend is largely structured and has fewer dancing hours overall than the just-past IS fly-in.

My only goal for this evening was repairing my netbook (done!), catching up on email and relaxing at home. So far, so good!

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Still Alive

2013-04-05T16:10:05Z

I haven't had much time to read or post lately... life has been busy and will continue to be so for another couple of months. This lack of spare time has been keeping me away from LJ, FB and Twitter, among other things; on the flip side, it's amazing how much spare time one can recoup by staying away from LJ, FB and Twitter.

In the past couple of weeks, I've:

finished my employer's performance evaluation;
attended the CALLERLAB convention in Cary, NC, where I was a panelist & moderator and representative for the GCA;
worked several night shifts, racking up new servers, retiring old ones, and upgrading existing ones, as well as preparing equipment to be shipped out as we've sold one of our divisions to an outside firm;
attempted to de-winterize our trailer at Roseland Resort (the campground water hadn't been turned on yet so we couldn't flush the antifreeze from the water system & tanks, and we ran out of propane for the furnace at 3am Sunday morning);
worked more extended shifts (did I mention we're a bit short-handed and hiring two more staffers for my team?);
had my old netbook die on me;
helped a friend assemble some furniture;
collected a dresser from another friend;
and prepped to head to Wilmington, DE, for the Independence Squares' fly-in this weekend.

In short, I'm up to my ears in a lot of projects. The good news, at least, is that I've completed a lot of smaller projects in the past 48 hours so I'm at least experiencing a significant degree of satisfaction and progress.

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DC Lambda Squares Update

2013-03-22T04:37:54Z

Tonight, we held the annual membership meeting and board elections for the DC Lambda Squares.

For the most part, there wasn't any dramatic news. We're making a bit of money off our fly-in festivals, losing a bit on our community dances and club nights, and losing a great deal off our classes. On the whole, we had a financial deficit but there's more than enough cash in the bank and certificates of deposit to handle that.

We've created a committee to re-evaluate how we do our community dances. I proposed the board offer a list of items or projects and ask the members to consider sponsoring these special expenses; to demonstrate how it could work, I also committed to covering 50% of the caller's fees for our next dance (another dancer volunteered to cover the other 50% after the meeting).

Four of the five board positions up for election were all re-elected by acclamation. I think it speaks volumes that the folks who are staffing the presidency, membership chair, secretary and one of the two at-large positions were willing to continue for a second term and are comfortable working with each other. They are, as a certain upcoming movie would say, an effective team.

I kept out of the volunteering trenches, for the most part. I've already spent some years on the board and on the 2009 IAGSDC convention executive; further, I have a lot of duties related to my square dance calling for several clubs and my vice-president's role with the Gay Callers Association. I'm not getting burnt out, but I stretching just a wee bit past my comfort level at the moment so some restraint is a good thing.

There were lots of good ideas for recruitment and fundraising offered at the meeting: I'm looking forward to seeing many of these put into operation, as well as whatever we can learn from the upcoming CALLERLAB convention this weekend.

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Sorry, Been Busy

2013-03-22T04:29:40Z

God, the past two weeks...

My team at the office is still effectively down to 50% of its normal headcount thanks to departures and a family emergency of my manager. He's doing what he can remotely, but he's had bigger things to worry about than office stuff so we're all doing double-time and I've been stepping into the management role.

While we've had no major crises, I've been busy every hour of every business day with (a) my own project list as the sole engineer for the production data center, (b) various team projects we have in already in progress, (c) company projects such as our annual payment card audit and (d) misc issues as they come up in our production & non-production environments. Being nibbled by ducks is a good comparison: not life-threatening, but annoying/frustrating in a thousand little ways.

At least my part of the performance evaluations are completed and submitted. I still need to do my list of goals for 2013, but I need some information about the enterprise and operations goals first so I can align my wishlist with the official program.

In the interim, I still have my regular square dance calling gigs and personal appointments. We were supposed to de-winterize the trailer last weekend but we decided all of us had too many work commitments to spare time away from the office; we'll try again March 29-31. I've also cancelled some discretionary appointments and projects to make room for work hours.

This weekend & early next week, we're going to North Carolina for the annual CALLERLAB convention, a conference of square dance callers. The timing isn't great work-wise, but I'm ready for the escape. I'm not getting away scott-free, however: I'm a ~~panelist~~ moderator for an hour session on marketing dancing using social media with Kris Jensen, and I'm representing the GCA at the inter-organizational roundtable meeting and the business meeting. And I'll be reporting back to the GCA in July with the stuff we cover at this conference.

As I type this, I've packed my suitcase. I still need to pack my personal items into my backpack (camera, tripod, laptop, tablet, etc.), but that takes only 30 minutes in the morning. I also want to make copies of the GCA's "The Call Sheet" journal and registration forms for the GCA's caller school to offer on the promo table. I also need to ship two hard drives back to our New Jersey office tomorrow morning before I depart.

I really need a lot of sleep right now, but I'm doing better than I feared.

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ACDC 2013 Wrap-Up

2013-02-18T16:49:59Z

DC Lambda Squares' Advanced & Challenge square dance fly-in weekend has come & gone for another year. In all, we had just under 100 attendees, slightly less than last year. While we heard from some who needed to cancel at the last minute, there were at least five people who had registrations who neither cancelled, rolled-over their registration to next year or gave us instructions of any kind.

This was the first time we had used the Four Points Sheraton Hotel, just 1.5 blocks from our past dance location at the Almas Temple. It's so nice to have the hotel rooms and dance spaces in the same building. Sadly, the only room kent4str, cuyhogarvr and I could get was at the Embassy Suites hotel another two short blocks away. The Embassy Suites was a very nice hotel, BTW --I'd stay there again-- and the weather was very nice so the walk wasn't a bother.

A high school girls volleyball competition also has been descending on down DC this weekend the past couple of years. The kids are fine, but wow, they chatter a lot and the high-pitched giggling in every public space was beginning to make my ears bleed. Perhaps it's just my personal bias, but I can't help but think having the same number of boys in the same space would have been much louder and even more obnoxious so I'm choosing to count my blessings.

The dance spaces at the hotel were adequate. As much as I'd like to say they were flawless, there's no denying that the load-bearing pillars were badly position two of the smaller halls. We worked around them: the caller's table was placed at the opposite end to provide the best possible sight-lines, and the rooms were (largely) allocated according to dance population (Advanced got the largest hall, C3B the smallest). It worked out but I wish those pillars weren't there.

kent4str hosted an hour of GCA C1 guest spots, while I handled the Advanced. To provide padding in the middle of my A2 hour for the guest callers to scamper from Kent's to my hall, I called a brief tip which I thought was so-so: it was half sighted, half-read and while it was OK, I scored lower than I would have liked. Fortunately, there was a brief 10 minute block at the end of the hour in which I called a final set which was damn near perfect (sight-called the entire thing) so I believe I redeemed myself. Yay for second chances!

Half of the GCA board was present so we had a mini-meeting, just to catch up on the status of the caller school and convention planning for the upcoming IAGSDC convention. One board member who shall remain nameless continues to be as clueless as ever: he can't figure out why some people aren't responding to his email requests. I wanted to scream, It's because you never ask, you order, instruct, insult & belittle, but never ask! but decided it wasn't a battle I wanted to fight.

I'm interested in seeing what the surveys say about our ACDC event. We asked for input on the selection of callers and the hotel facilities, among other things. My gut feeling is that one particular caller isn't going to be receiving big accolades: one dancer who didn't know the caller previous asked me "Is that caller new? Seemed inexperienced and not really altogether here." Ouch. I also suspect the room layouts may get some comments --we may need to reevaluate the possibility of booking the same hotel again for next year.

I did get one good idea from a caller though: we should put clocks on each of the caller tables. I didn't realize it, but true, each room lacked its own clock so something to help the callers know how much time is left in their block would help. I'll see if I can find something suitable in time for our next fly-in.

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Baseline

2013-02-15T17:57:54Z

I've been slowly getting myself psyched up for this weekend's square dance festival, ACDC 2013, which DC Lambda Squares hosts every Presidents' Day weekend.

Last night, I assembled all of the audio systems in our basement, confirming we have an amp, speakers & appropriate cables for three halls and a spare set as an emergency backup.

I also printed out some in-house docs, such as the volunteer instructions for our registration/check-in desk, a sign-up sheet for the after party, a sign-up sheet for the guest caller spots and such, as well as final proofs for items which will be mass-copied. The DCLS Travelling Bin of Stationery has been prepped and is ready to go.

Today is payday. Money was transferred to various house accounts and some bills were paid. Yay for paydays!

This morning, I walked down to Staples for a tonne o' photocopying: copies of the current year's registration form for walk-ins, next year's registration form for early-bird registrations, the dance schedule, a quality control survey, a restaurant & dining guide and so on.

My bags are packed. kent4str and cuyahogarvr's bags are also packed and are in the living room. In a few minutes, I'll be loading the entire lot into the minivan in a last-in-first-out order since we'll be dropping the equipment off at the dance location first, then checking into our hotel later.

I wish we were able to stay at the same host hotel as everyone else but nearly all DC hotels refuse to have three adults in a room, quoting fire regulations. The Embassy Suites however doesn't have a problem, we presume because of the size & configuration of the room.

At the moment, I'm feeling a little out of touch with things. This is our first time using the Four Points Sheraton Hotel so I'm not sure how best at the moment to unload the equipment, which rooms we're using and where to set up the audio systems within those rooms. I'm also unclear where the registration desk is going to be located. This wouldn't be a problem except that 100 people are going to descend on the hotel in a few hours and for reasons I don't understand everyone --hotel staff, guests, club members and the rest of the host committee-- will be waiting for me to make the call. I don't know why, but that's typically how it turns out.

In all, we have about 100 registrations. It's a shame rfrench isn't able to join us this year as hoped because of recent knee surgery, but glad John Marshall was available to substitute. We'll have Anne Uebelacker, Dayle Hodge and Linda Kendall on staff as well this year. We're looking forward to having Rob next year, with Sandie Bryant, Lynette Bellini and Betsy Gotta.

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OMG.

2013-01-30T22:58:20Z

The past 24 hours have been a whirlwind.

Tuesday was a fairly regular work day but I went to a geek user group in the evening, the DC chapter of LOPSA, for a talk on using wireshark to decipher TCP protocol failures. It was interesting, not in a huge amount of depth but I learned some new things nonetheless. The February meeting will be a combined meeting of five different geek groups in the greater DC area.

In the middle of last night's meeting, I received an email from my team's new manager. My prior boss resigned effective Feb 1 (this coming Friday) but the new guy has been given the reins of power early. Alas, said new guy also had a two week Hawaiian vacation planned already and departed today. In his last act before heading out of the door, he made me the manager pro tem for our team. Yay.

I was up late last night addressing a number of minor alerts from that evening's code release but finally made my way to bed around 2:30am.

This morning, I woke up with nasal congestion, temperature sensitivity and a mild headache. This is what I look forward to on my birthday while simultaneously being on-call for work and interim manager. Such fun.

I tackled a number of work tickets today, approving many, executing some and delegating others. A firmware upgrade on one of our new small storage arrays bricked the whole damn thing: I'll head to the data center tonight to power-cycle it and see if I can resurrect it.

I have a new laptop! Yay! Alas, it has Windows 8. If you haven't seen Win8 yet, here's a quick description: it's Windows 7 with Metro popping up at ill-advised times to prevent you from doing anything useful. Remember Clippy, that damned paperclip animation which would spontaneously appear in Word when you were trying to get work done? Imagine your entire screen vanishing and replaced with various animated tiles. I've heard there's a means of blocking Metro from popping up... I'll look for that later tonight. I like the new hardware but am not overly fond of the new OS.

Tonight, I'm off to dance C2 before dashing to the data center to reboot the wayward storage array. And I a dental appointment for 9am tomorrow morning. Whee.

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This Week in Square Dancing

2013-01-11T15:22:02Z

Last night, I taught the last class for Chesapeake Squares' latest Mainstream square dance course. It's been a long slog --we had a somewhat stumbling start as we had new people joining 2-3 weeks after the course formally began-- but we ended only two weeks later than originally planned.

As with many prior classes, I've been a bit surprised which calls cause heartburn and which ones are snapped up instantly. Yes, 'cast off 3/4' traditionally causes problems as new dancers frequently can't/won't trust their own ability count walls. 'Scoot back' is an issue because it causes dancers to repeat the use of hands, something which runs counter-intuitive to everything they've learned up to that point.

That said, this is the first class I've ever seen where 'partner trade' caused heartburn for a few dancers for weeks. Indeed, there's at least two dancers for whom I suspect they still don't quite get it. We workshop it, I give them extra help during breaks and yet it all vanishes from their synapses within seconds. But those same dancers can do 'spin the top' without a hitch.

This class had a wide variety of skills. At least three are solid dancers and with a little more floor time will likely be eager to absorb more. Three more seem to be a bit slower to pick things up (or at least their memory maxes out sooner) but they have determination which serves them well. A few others, well, it's too early to say. They seem to be strongly oriented to dance-by-feel rather than definition so perhaps their epiphany will happen after more floor time.

The official graduation is set for club night, Tuesday, January 22, 8-10pm.

In other news, I've been contacted by the San Francisco IAGSDC convention committee to see if I'd be interested in co-calling the leather tip with Barry Clasper. OMG, yes! To be asked to call any specialty tip is an honor; to be asked by a convention committee on another coast is a bigger honor; to be asked to call at either the bear or leather tip is an incredible honor and opportunity! Now to think about music...

The 2013 caller school continues to chug along in slow motion. I'd love to be able to market it a bit more extensively but I've been having a lot of difficulty getting the GCA web site updated. Emails and phone calls since August haven't been returned but we had a useful telephone call this week so I'm we can get the online stuff ready within the next week or so. Once we have that, I can finally market the hell out of this thing.

Looking ahead to the 2014 IAGSDC convention, I may have a problem. My parents 50th wedding anniversary lands on July 4, 2014, overlapping with the convention. I thought we had a plan to have the parents' anniversary celebrations on the weekend prior so it would be tight, but I'd be able to get from Ontario to Utah in time to fulfill my obligations to the caller school. It appears that the parental plans have changed however so I may not be able to get to Utah at all.

If that is indeed the case, I can at least set up the majority of the caller school for 2014 --booking the coaches, negotiating a curriculum, doing the marketing, etc.-- but we'd need someone else to sit & coordinate events on the ground for June 30-July 2, 2014. I hope for clarity on this before we get to the 2013 GCA membership & board meetings so we can plan appropriately.

Back to composing more C2 choreo for next Wednesday's workshop...

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Vacation Agenda --The Results

2012-12-26T05:36:14Z

I had a number of things I wanted to do these past four days. Here's the score:

Shop for new square dance music. Done.
Shop for a new laptop. Done: it arrives Friday (hopefully).
Read four books. Done I got through
- What I Didn't Learn in Business School
- About the Size of It
- Stock Trader's Almanac 2011
- The Most Important Thing
- Harold: The Last Anglo-Saxon King
I didn't get to:
- The Little Book of Valuation
- Technical Analysis for Dummies
- Winning with Futures
Work on a C1 square dance class. Not a single thing. *sigh*
Update my calendar. Done.
Square dance demo team research. Not a single thing.
Square dance flyers to the IAGSDC. In progress.
Web site for cuyahogarvr, www.getoutexcursions.com Mostly done. Need additional content but worst of the structure is in place.

I really wish I had an extra vacation day to catch up on some domestic stuff, as well as complete my list. With any luck the next couple of days will be light work-wise: outside of teaching a square dance class on Thursday, I have no commitments.

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Vacation Agenda

2012-12-22T05:28:06Z

Today is Friday. Despite being promoted by many as the date of the Mayan apocalypse, the worst thing to happen was a server reboot 8am this morning, an event I used as a convenient excuse to upgrade the machine from 24GB to 48GB of RAM. Take that, Mayans!

Tuesdays is xmas; the Monday prior is a company holiday. Taken with the weekend, I have four days of vacation time. Here's how I'm going to use it:

Shop for some new music to add to my square dance selections. I've finally broken open an iTunes gift card for $25 which has been sitting on my desk for damn near three years. It's time to put it to use.
Shop for a new laptop. I may not buy one, but there is a computer show & sale locally this weekend and I'm planning a visit on Sunday close to closing time when vendors are more willing to make a sale. My current netbook has been delightful for three years but it's showing its age and has already been expanded to its limit. I have a need for a faster machine with more RAM.
I'm going to read at least four books, one per day. I have a large inventory to choose from, but I've decided this weekend's focus will be business/financial.
I'm going to get off my ass and begin serious planning for a fast-track C1 square dance class. No dancer should have illusions about what they'll accomplish: I've been through enough boot camps to know that a single weekend can't do more than give a flavor of the program. Unless one has local follow-up workshops, it won't stick. I've also been around long enough to know that many dancers (esp. lapsed dancers who need a refresh) don't need a 50+ week long course for a program. I'm inclined to 3-4 six hour sessions on consecutive weekends. More planning & design is required, as well as a survey of the potential market.
I need to update my calendar for 2013.
- I need to insert all of the 2013 office holidays.
- I need to plan my San Francisco IAGSDC convention schedule along with work-related visits to the mothership in late June & July.
- Our trailer weekends to Roseland Resort are already in the calendar but I need to update my team's vacation schedule to ensure I can get those vacation days.
- I'm also planning to attend the LISA conference in DC next November. My office won't pay for it so I'll need to have some money saved, but they should at least give me the time off work if I request it early enough.
- Our square dance calendar is largely filled in, but I do need to alert the office to my pending absence for the CALLERLAB convention in Raleigh, NC, in the spring.
I'm still working on a square dance demo team for DC Lambda Squares. This weekend, I should be able to do at least research calls & formations we're going to teach/incorporate, as well as check YouTube for ideas & research.
I need to check with the DC Lambda Squares and Chesapeake Squares boards to see if we have flyers going to the IAGSDC for distribution in their restored bimonthly mailings. The deadline is Jan 6.
I'm going to work on a web site for user. I've had some aborted attempts over the past number of months but since he's lining up business contacts in Europe as I write this, we need to get this component together and done asap.

That should do it for now. I may add more as time allows.

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Still More Square Dance Stuff

2012-11-06T05:03:55Z

Tonight was the last class for DC Lambda Squares' newest mainstream square dance class. kent4str and I began teaching it July 9, Mondays 7:30-9pm. We've missed a few Mondays because of holidays and hurricanes, but we have indeed finished prior to our club's Harvest Festival Hoedown this coming weekend. Yay, new dancers!

This Thursday, I'm teaching Chesapeake Squares' Mainstream class, 7:30-9pm. We're still in the early weeks of this course; I currently anticipate it wrapping up some time in January.

On Friday, we head to York, PA, for the aforementioned Harvest Festival Hoedown. I have guest caller hosting duties on Friday and Saturday evenings, as well as an hour of Mainstream calling Saturday afternoon (kent4str is calling Mainstream and Advanced hours). We're also responsible for assembling & setting up the audio systems for three halls, among other things.

Next week, I'm calling:

Challenge-1 for the Ettseteras on Monday;
Challenge-2 for our workshop group on Wednesday;
class-level Mainstream for the Chesapeake Squares on Thursday; and,
Advanced for the Zig Zaggers on Friday.

The past couple of months have been the busiest calling schedule I've had for some time. It's a Good Thing^TM!

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The Unexpected Weekend

2012-10-22T04:29:59Z

We had big plans for the weekend. Lots of preparation was made for them. We eagerly looked forward to our scheduled events. And then we totally did something else.

The original plan was to go to the trailer at Roseland Resort for the weekend and spend three days relaxing, napping, reading, exercising a little (well, me), and writing some square dance choreography (well, me). Clothes & food were packed, preparations were made and everything was set to go.

We then collectively woke up Friday morning and decided to bag the whole thing and just spend the three days relaxing at home, perhaps catching up on some minor household projects. Not that we wasted our preparations: most of the food items became lunch & dinner at home instead of at the trailer. I dressed using the clothes from my travel bag instead the closet or dresser.

kent4str took his minivan for an oil change and its every-other-year emissions check Friday morning. I slept a lot, catching up with an enormous sleep deficit from the prior several days, and generally kept abreast of work developments. cuyahogarvr worked on a miniature Victoria dollhouse renovation project.

Saturday, we slept in very late and decided to pop out for a couple of trivial errands. Those "trivial errands" actually ballooned into visiting no fewer than eight stores and five hours. It was one of those, oh-I-just-remembered-X-can-we-make-a-slight-detour? kind of drives about the county. We did however stock up on some items for cuyahogarvr's dollhouse project, some food items, some clothing shopping, some hardware parts and such. Very productive.

Our happiest discovery however was entirely accidental. As we were departing Home Depot (one of the stores which we almost never visit), we passed two Home Depot employees who were promoting the store's contractor services. Since we need some roofing gutter repairs and we'd very much like to have more insulation installed in our attic before winter, this caught our eye and we paused to make inquiries. One of the guys immediately asked when we'd like a contractor to come by to make an estimate, proposing noon Sunday. Sure!

I spent most of Saturday evening catching up on some square dance projects, reading, writing some additional notes and thinking through some fragments of choreography. It was relatively late when I went to bed, but no worse than if we were at the trailer.

Sunday morning, we slept in slight but we were fully scrubbed by the time the Home Depot guy came by to talk to us about the projects we have. In a nutshell, we're having all of the gutters replaced on the exterior and having 30R of fibreglass fluff blown into the unfinished attic on top of the bats of fibreglass insulation already in place. Total price (less a 10% discount): $3600. Putting it on kent4str's Home Depot card even got us 0% interest for two years. Total score!

We'll be getting a telephone call in the next couple of business days to schedule the actual work, but in preparation, we spent the balance of the daylight hours removing all of the stuff stored in the attic. The height of the insulating fluff will prevent us from using it as a storage space except in an area immediately around the attic ladder which we're reserving for the xmas tree & decorations. All of the boxes of ceramics, keep-sakes, china, paper archives, camping gear, empty boxes from recent purchases (for shipping in case of warranty work) and some theater & lighting stuff all had to come down. It took hours with three of us working.

kent4str and I took a large number of items to Goodwill. The crude floor boards used as a storage platform in the unfinished attic had to be taken up as well. Some were nailed down, some were just laying there, all were filthy. They're now piled up curbside for garbage pick-up. Everything else is stacked in the basement or dining room.

After dinner, I finally returned to the only project I had actually planned on doing this weekend: writing more C2 square dance choreography for a gig coming up this Wednesday. I've knocked out an additional two dozen sequences, not bad for a few hours but about four dozen short of where I thought I'd be by this time Sunday. I'll have to squeeze in more writing time Monday, Tuesday and early Wednesday.

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In Praise of Large Disks

2012-10-20T00:15:23Z

I've been participating in a CALLERLAB project this month. Every year, CALLERLAB has been hosting a large conference of square dance callers, and most of the regular sessions (as opposed to committee meetings) have been recorded. In recent years, the recordings have been distributed on CD, but earlier years are on cassette tapes. We're now digitizing the cassettes into MP3 files for archiving and distribution.

I'm using an old cassette Walkman to play back each side of thirty-one 45 minute cassettes from the 1998 convention. The analog audio is piped into the sound card of a desktop workstation running WindowsXP and Audacity, sampling the data at 32,000 Hz. Last night, I finished digitizing the audio. The raw data on this first pass has chewed up 20GB of hard drive space.

Each side of each cassette was recorded into a single file. Today, I'm stitching the A & B data files into a single file, editing out the producer's comment "This is the end of side A. Please flip the tape over, rewind it and press play to hear the B side" and taking out any button click noise, then saving the resulting combo file, typically 600MB in size.

Once I have a single Audacity project file for each cassette, I convert the data into an MP3, typically about 70MB in size.

I'm keeping all of the intermediate files along the way so that if I find I've made a catastrophic mistake, I can pick up from part way through the pipeline instead of starting from scratch. And needless to say, I'm making a full backup of everything to an external drive every few hours, just in case I accidentally overwrite or corrupt any of my intermediate steps.

In all, I have 56GB of disk space tied up in this project right now. This isn't enormous, but it's enough that this work would have impractical if not impossible only a few years ago. A faster workstation with more RAM would have helped some of the editing and MP3 conversions but I was mostly constrained by the speed of the analog cassette playback anyway.

Now to package up the MP3 files and send them back to the home office...

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This Week's Square Dance Update

2012-10-19T04:45:39Z

I had only two square dance calling gigs this week: Monday's mainstream class with the DC Lambda Squares (only three more to go!) and tonight's mainstream class with the Chesapeake Squares (fourth week out of about 20).

Both are going incredibly well. The Monday class is ramping up for a big finish as we have only another nine calls or so left on the list. Everything they've been shown thus far has been snapped up and internalized very quickly: it's been a long time since I've seen a class 'get it' so fast.

The Thursday class is slower getting off the ground, largely because we keep getting new people joining each Thursday. I and the Chesapeake Squares' board agree that we aren't so swamped with people clambering to square dance that we can afford to turn away anyone. Here we are in week #4 however and we're barely past my usual open house material.

That said, I'm getting really good with open house/party nights. Such events used to frighten the bewjesus out of me: a good party night is hard, and there's the omnipresent pressure that you're the dancers' first entrée into square dancing. If you blow it after the club has done all that marketing, you'll probably not get them back, ever. An open house has to rock from the first moment to the last, and you want everyone to leave excited about the next one.

I had an English teacher in high school who told me, "Any idiot can write a novel. Writing a short story, now that's hard." Open houses are the square dance equivalent of short stories: you have to hook the novice participants with a very small working vocabulary and keep them entertained from the first word to the last with no room for asides, trivia or false leads.

Having done such weekly for nearly a month now, however, I've found my mojo for this. Tonight, I pushed further and more creatively than I have previously with very simple calls, using circles, stars and simple formations to easily build more complicated ones and still resolve them cleanly & with good body flow. Repetition helps newbies, but too much gets boring: I think I've handled the past few dances with a good balance.

I like teaching a great deal. I think I demonstrate good energy & enthusiasm, I like the challenge of describing a move multiple different ways on the fly to suit the needs of the moment, I try to be as clear as possible and, thanks to experience, I have a much better feel for times when I can simply talk people through a new call and when I should use other means such as a demo of the move with an assistant or a prop. Workshops are especially fun since the floor already knows the basic calls & vocabulary: it gives us all the space to explore nuances of the definitions or explore non-standard applications. It all takes more prep work than just a regular club night, but I love that part too: evil plots don't just hatch themselves, ya know.

The Chesapeake Squares class was initially to wrap up around xmas, but we may extend it into January if there is a need. I'm delighted the club's board is being so flexible: I'm sure it will pay dividends in an increased membership. The club's good health is definitely in my best interest as one of their staff callers.

The next two weeks are gonna be a doozy: I'm calling four nights next week and three the following, everything from class-level Mainstream (which itself varies depending on the class in question) up to C2. I hope to get a jump on some choreo writing projects this weekend.

DCLS' Harvest Festival Hoedown comes up in three weeks. I have flyers going up to New York for their 'Peel the Pumpkin' event this weekend, as well as flyers for our ACDC and GCA caller school events. I'm still trying to get the GCA webmaster to update the online registration form to cover the master class; I'll telephone him again before this week is out. I also need to write a more detailed article about the caller school and master class for the next GCA newsletter.

In other news, I'm working on a minor project for CALLERLAB: digitizing cassette tapes of recordings from previous conventions. Currently, I have the 31 cassettes of the 1998 CALLERLAB convention. An old walkman is playing them into the 'audio in' port of the workstation beside me, Audacity digitizing the lot onto the hard drive.

This weekend, I'll do some editing to splice files of the A side and B side of the cassettes into a single MP3 and try to normalize the recording levels. With a little luck, I should be able to ship the lot back to the home office early next week --at which time they'll likely send me a new batch. :-)

And that, more or less, is the state of my square dancing life. Not much dancing, plenty of administrivia and enormous amounts of calling. After the DCLS class wraps up in three weeks, I'll get back to more dancing again.

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Is It Friday Yet? It Is? Thank $deity.

2012-09-29T02:29:17Z

This has been a long & brutal week on all fronts. I'm incredibly grateful that I've only been running at 100% since Sunday instead of something even more demanding.

We have a hardware refresh going on at the production data center where I work. One of my team has flown in from California to work with me on this project. We've made good progress over the past number of days, trying to make the Oct 6 deadline, but these 10-12 hour days are very draining.

Even while this mega-project is in process, I'm on-call this week so I'm getting badgered with a tonne of minor but really annoying issues which have broken my concentration and flow several times per day. And there are still various other routine tasks which have come up periodically that I need to do as part of my regular duties. Ugh.

In the middle of all of this, we were keeping up with all of our square dance gigs: teaching DC Lambda Squares mainstream class on Monday, calling a Chesapeake Squares club nights on Tuesday, calling a C2 workshop on Wednesday, calling a Chesapeake Squares open house & mainstream class on Thursday. Fortunately, the Wednesday C2 gig was cancelled at the last minute: we needed the rest.

I had a dental cleaning Thursday morning. I figure when you start your day at the dentist, things can only improve from there. My teeth are fine and shiny. I recommend sunglasses.

Last Friday, one of our C2 dancers, Jack Frickey, passed away from complications of malignant melanoma. This morning, I worked a few hours at the data center, skipped over to Herndon for Jack's memorial service, and returned to the data center again for the balance of the day. I'll miss Jack and I'm glad I was able to attend the service, but--

I'm really getting to hate Baptist ministers. Jack wasn't a Baptist but a longtime friend of the family was a Baptist minister and was asked to officiate. He went on at great length about how he was sure Jack was in heaven and how that should be a great comfort for his family, but also that he had great reservations about the rest of us at the service unless we accepted his version of $deity asap. It was less a memorial service than a fear-mongering recruitment drive, IMHO. Tasteless.

Still, it's better than the Baptist funeral service for kent4str's grandmother some years ago: YOU'RE ALL GOING TO HELL! TO HELL, I SAY! REPENT NOW! Oh, and by the way, we'll miss whatsername... HELL, I SAY!

I have been enjoying some audio books via my mobile phone on the drive to/from the data center, kinda. My old car has a cassette deck --remember those?-- and I use an adapter to plug my mobile phone into it so I can listen over the car speakers. The adapter is an ancient one though and the wires are breaking & fraying, yielding a frustratingly intermittent audio performance.

Looking on eBay last Saturday, I found a replacement for only $2.15 and ordered it immediately. (The joys of smartphones: I looking for the adapter, located one, purchased it and submitted payment all in three minutes while on a break at a square dance workshop. Yay, technology!) The replacement unit arrived in yesterday's mail, just in time for me to listen to my current audio book while I drove to Baltimore to call the open house.

I had to unplug my phone to take an emergency call --did I mention I'm on-call for work?-- just as I was pulling into the parking lot and the adapter cable got wound around my steering wheel. As I turned the wheel sharply one way and then another as I jockeyed my car into the last parking space, the cable torn off the cassette adapter. My shiny new toy lasted precisely 45 minutes. Dammit.

I suppose I could try soldering the wires back on but it's a pain in the ass and the adapters are dirt cheap so I've just ordered two replacement adapters. With luck, I'll have a new car at some future time that has wireless functions before I need another replacement adapter.

And our microwave died Thursday evening. Just what I needed right now.

There's been 1001 other things going on this week, but I'm too tired at this point to discuss much more. I need sleep. I also need to work out since I haven't done much since Tuesday but that's going to have to wait as well. We have some shopping to do and some domestic chores on which to catch up, among many other things. Sleep first though.

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Summer is Over

2012-09-08T17:31:26Z

I'm not a big fan of summer: I have no love of extreme heat, deathly humidity, scalding sunlight or biting insects. On the good side, it does allow me a small space in which to forget how busy my fall is every year.

This week, the full nightmare will descend up on me:

I've been away from work for a week so I have a couple of huge projects which must be caught up and finished as quickly as possible. I expect to work a night shift on Tuesday.

I need to get signatures on paper for the GCA caller school contracts as soon as possible. I'm checking currently if I need a proper board vote before issuing them or if the simple email "voice" approvals before Labor Day are sufficient. Either way, marketing is stalled until I get signatures and I really want to have something to send to the Denver A&C event next weekend.

I need to get the teaching assistants lined up for the same caller school. I sent emails of inquiry to two people this past week and have heard nothing back. I'll check with them again Monday.

I'm scheduled to give John Marshall a visit on Wednesday to help move some furniture and work on the GCA's master class format while cuyahogarvr gets more information about the December square dance event in Germany.

We continue teaching a Monday evening Mainstream square dance class for the DC Lambda Squares until early November. The new dancers are learning very quickly so we'll be done the entire Mainstream list well before then with extra floor time and practice before the Harvest Festival Hoedown comes up.

I'm calling a C2 workshop on Wednesday.

On Thursday, we begin a new Mainstream class for the Chesapeake Squares. Originally, it was going to be shared between kent4str, caller_dayle and myself, but Dayle now has some enormous work projects so he's giving it over to us. At this moment, I have no clue how many people may be signed up but I do have a teaching order ready to cover the 16 classes. We'll wrap up around xmas.

Next Saturday, kent4str is calling a square dance demo at the Hillwood Estate & Museum in DC; cuyahogarvr and I are going as dancers.

Some time before the end of this calendar year, I want to get the caller coaches lined up for the 2014 Salt Lake City caller school. I want the marketing ready to roll the moment the 2013 caller school wraps up.

There's a handful of square dance weekends also coming up in the next four weeks, but this is enough for now. I'm going to need another weekend at the trailer just to recover from this upcoming month.

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Good News, Everybody!

2012-08-27T02:03:08Z

The All Join Hands Foundation has approved funding for the GCA's caller school, July 1-3, 2013, in conjunction with the San Francisco IAGSDC convention! Yay!

My draft caller coach contracts are being checked by the board for any typos or omission; if they look good, I'll send those asap to the caller coaches, all of whom have verbally assured me they're interested & available. I've finished creating a first draft of the promotion flyer and am circulating it now to the GCA board for a quick check before full publication. When I have signatures on paper, these flyers can be distributed.

I'm about to contact the GCA's webmaster to make the updates to our site concerning the caller school. I hope to have the content prepared but not yet released pending the signing of the coach contracts.

I still need to get the teaching assistants lined up. I have names to contact, but wanted to get these other items out of the way before proceeding.

As more details of master class get worked out, the flyer & promotional material will be revised. I hope to have that entirely ironed out within the next 1-2 months.

I hope that within 60 days, the school operations for 2013 will be in autopilot mode until next June when the active details kick in. In the interim, I want to start planning as much as is feasible for the 2014 Salt Lake City caller school; in particular I need to think about what to do with the third class at that school.

I'm thinking of surveying the GCA membership for their input. Is there enough interest to re-run another master class? By 2014, it will have been several years since we've had an Advanced class so perhaps there will be sufficient demand for that option. Maybe we should consider an alternative track, like party night/one night stand training. Maybe something else I haven't thought of yet. The sooner we begin debating & discussing, the more time I'll have to perform the prerequisite miracles to make it happen.

So far, so good...!

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GCA Caller School Progress

2012-08-17T18:38:00Z

So far, I've managed push through:

a proposal for revamping the format of the caller school;
a budget;
a list of proposed callers & TAs.

Now to contact the proposed callers & TAs to see if they're interested & available, and putting together a formal propose to All Join Hands for the funding.

And once that's done, I need to get working my ass off on marketing the offerings, including getting updates on the web site, creating a brochure to send to IAGSDC clubs and making announcements online wherever I can and as frequently as I can get away with.

And also submit space, audio requirements and such to the San Francisco convention folks so they have it on their agenda for next summer.

This morning in the shower, I was mulling over putting together a survey of the membership to see what else we should do with the 2014 caller school in Salt Lake City. Is there enough demand to run the master class again --indeed, is there enough for this year? Is there interest in a dance party track in lieu of an Advanced class? Just a regular Advanced class? Something else entirely I haven't considered yet?

Really, though, it feels like the hard work is already done.

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