Dance Weekend

I apologize for my AWOL-ness, lately.  But see, that’s the problem with free stuff: you get what you pay for.  All of December was pretty insane for me.  I had some big projects going on at T-Mobile, then a new position materialized that I interviewed for (and got!), and then, well everyone knows Lindy Focus is the place to be for the last week of the year.  Then this last week has been hectic trying to make sure I give a good pass-down to all the peeps at the big pink T before I turn in my security badge today.

But now, I am back on the job for you, my fellow dance freaks and geeks!  I just finished approving a ton of new event submissions.  Thanks, y’all for adding your events!  Sorry some of them sat in the queue for a while but it looks like the earliest new event is in March so it’s not too bad. This weekend I hope to knock out some issues that have cropped up and also add some new things.

Then on Monday, I start my new gig and will be spending a lot of time getting up and running there, reaquainting myself with a mac, etc… So whatever I’m able to roll out this weekend will probably be the last update for a couple of weeks.  Wish me luck and I’ll see y’all on the dance flo’! Or, as Solomon Douglas would say, the dance floor. (That’s a little inside joke from Enter the Blues, which is coming up again on May 21, in Atlanta!  Don’t miss it, ’cause it’s always the jam.)

I finally fixed the profile publisher of DanceWeekend so I can show events in user’s profile boxes.  It’s ugly as home-made sin right now and I need to strucutre it so it’s easy to tell which events the user is definitely attending vs maybe attending.  I also plan on using smaller pictures for events that have occured in the past.  But that’s all cosmetic junk.  The main thing was re-figuring out all of the different hoops the app has to jump through to publish to a user’s profile.

And on that note, I’m contemplating calling it a night.  but I’m not really tired so I might go ahead and clean some things up tonight.  I guess you’ll find out when you check it out!

Users (you!) can now submit your events to the DanceWeekend app on Facebook.  I wanted to make the process as easy as possible so all you need is the link to th event’s Facebook page and the app pulls the rest of the information directly from the Facebook page.  Well, most of it.  After submitting the link, you’ll be taken to a page where you can enter a few more things such as dance-styles, whether there are workshops or comps, etc… but there’s no need to type anything.  Even the event graphic/banner is automatically pulled from Facebook.

I also added some search capabilities to filter through the tons and tons of events you’re all going to submit as soon as you finish reading this!  (Hey, one can dream, right?)  As you would expect, you can search by dance styles (Lindy Hop, Balboa, Blues, and West Coast Swing) and also whether the events have social dancing, workshops, and competitions.

I also added an option for separating single-day and multi-day events.  I figure some people might submit smaller one-day events and I don’t want to be all snooty and reject events just because it’s not a full-weekend event.  So what I’m deciding to do is not show those events by default but make them available to users via search.

I’ve also stubbed-in the capability to search by distance from a zip code.  I should have this finished by the end of the week (which means in about three weeks).  So, I don’t know why you’re still here.  Go submit an event!

Oh, man, I’m really getting excited!  Today I hammered out the code for listing a pass for sale on DanceWeekend and I’m really excited because the more I worked on it, the more I realized that this is actually going to help people sell their passes!  In fact, although I’m a bit partial, I really think DanceWeekend is going to be THE way place turn to to sell their passes.  Why’s that?  I’m glad you asked, so let me break it down for you.

When a user lists their pass for an event up for sale on DanceWeekend, the app can automatically scan the list of Facebook users who’ve indicated an interest in the event by RSVP’ing as “attending” or “maybe”.  Of those people, DanceWeekend can choose to send notifications directly to a limited number of those people (currently 20) per day that your pass is available for sale, whether they’re FB friends with you or not!  So unlike just posting a status message, which only your FB friends can see, that you’re looking to sell your pass, this allows DanceWeekend to directly reach out to people who aren’t even in your network but are interested in attending the event.

So far, the notification I’ve settled on is, “Hi, I’m selling my pass to {Event_name} for {asking_price}.  Please message me if you’d like to buy it or know someone who might. Thanks!”

I’ve gotten everything working up to that point, including sending the notifications, but there are more plumbing bits to workout before I roll it out, such as modiying the price, listing all the for_sale passes for an event, etc.  But I think this is going to be awesome and I’m bangin’ away to get it finished by the end of the weekend.

Stay tuned!

But not much to show for it.  But that’s not such a bad thing.  It’s been a long, slow week of behind-the-scenes coding on the DanceWeekend app on Facebook.  I realized I’d made a false step due to Facebook’s data access and storage restrictions and the way they handle displaying data on tabs and profile pages.  I didn’t realize, until I tried it, that when you access a tab on someone’s page, that tab doesn’t have access to Facebook’s API data such as that user’s friends and events.  For many apps, that wouldn’t be a problem but since DanceWeekend relies heavily on Facebook’s “social graph”, it’s a bit of a problem.  And I’m not allowed to store any information about the relationships between users and events or users and other users.  Argh!

Oh well, it wouldn’t be fun if it were easy, I guess.  I was hoping to get the tabs and profile boxes sorted out before moving on to other functionality like passes and housing and such because that visibility is needed to spread the word about DanceWeekend and help it reach the “tipping point” of usage among dancers.  But I’m going to have to let this one sit for a bit and subconsciously workout a solution to the problem while I work on other things.  And there are already over 800 dancers who’ve added the app from it’s LindyWeekend days so spreading the word isn’t a huge deal, I guess.

The next feature on the to-do list for DanceWeekend is the buy/sell passes functionality.  I’m not sure how much use it’ll see but it’s an important feature if for no other reason than it’ll help me solidify how I want to build the user-to-user interaction model for the housing functionality.  Keep an eye out for it as I hope to have it rolled out by the end of the weekend.

Keep the leather-side down.

Advertising your Lindy Hop or West Coast Swing event by posting messages on internet forums is so five years ago.  Sure, there are some must-hit forums like Yehoodi, and even posting on the smaller scene-centric forums is never a bad thing, per se, other than the time commitment.  But it’s time for organizers to start taking better advantage of the free advertising opportunities presented by the so-called “social media”.  Social media, Web 2.0, social networking, my-twit-friend-space-face-ster-bookr, whatever you want to call it.  It’s a gold-mine of free word-of-mouth advertising and information distribution that has yet to even begun to be effectively tapped by the swing dance community.

In this series of posts, I’m going talk about some of the different social media sites and tools available and give some ideas for how you might want to use them to help promote your event.  Today, I’m going to tell you about Twitter.  If you’re like a lot of people, the whole concept of twitter doesn’t make much sense.  It’s a silly little toy site with a silly toy name and it’s hard to imagine any real utility to be gained from the site.  And you’re absolutely right!

You’re right, that is, if you think Twitter is a social networking site.  But it’s not!  Twitter CEO Evan Williams said recently that Twitter isn’t a social network, it’s an information network.  Indeed, twitter is a fantastic opportunity for organizers to quickly and efficiently push out information to a self-selected audience that has explicitly indicated an interest in hearing what you have to say about your event.  When a dancer follows your event on twitter, it’s like they’ve set-up a “red phone” directly from you to them and are saying, “Send me all the important details, right here!”

Think of the opportunities for “tweeting” out information: “Early bird registration is now up!”, “Sign up soon, only 5 early-bird spots left”. “We’ve picked the dates for MOJO-LX 2011.  Going to be on May 1.  Mark your calendars!”, “Housing is full but we have a waiting list. Go sign up if still homeless.”, “Just booked an awesome band!! Can’t mention their name yet but you will enjoy!”  The opportunities for building buzz and keeping your event in people’s minds is endless.

And the beauty of twitter is that once a dancer has opened the communication channel by following you on twitter, you can dissemenate information at will.  For an annual event, there really is no excuse to not have a twitter account specifically for your event.  Your “follow Foobar Lindy Exchange on Twitter” link should be on every page on your site and at the bottom of every email/forum post about your event.  Even if your event is still in the infancy of it’s planning stages and you don’t have your site built, you should at least have a page that says “Website coming soon.  Follow us on Twitter.”

People want to dance and want to know what dance events are happening.  But they don’t want to have to go hunting for information.  They don’t want to have to remember that your event is in about 7 months so they can remember to check the forum to find out when registration opens so they can remember to actually go signup and snag a cheap pass.  Make it easy on them by allowing them to open a channel of communication where you can unintrusively give them exactly what information they need, exactly when they need it.

So if your event doesn’t have a twitter page, go signup for one now!  And be sure to follow @danceweekend so I can follow your event and keep track of the important details.

Oops, I forgot to mention that for an example of an event that is already using twitter, check out DCLX on twitter. DCLX obviously “gets it” when it comes to everything Lindy Exchange and it’s no wonder they’re one of the best swing dance events around.  Emulate the best!

I was at a party several months ago with some dancer friends and the topic of Lindy Weekend came up.  (I didn’t bring it up, I swear!)  One of the dancers who’d never heard of it asked me what it was…and I really didn’t have a good answer.  Sure, I had plenty that I could say but I wasn’t sure whether to tell her all of the neat things I wanted it to do or manage expectations and just mention the rather boring things it actually did.

Now mind you, none of it is boring to me because I wrote it and am intimately familiar with all of the little widgets and assorted behind-the-scenes magic that all comes together to make the app work.  And well, geek that I am, that’s sort of “my thing”.  But to an outsider, my users and friends who want a tool to help them get the most out of their dance opportunities, it just looked like yet another list of events on a webpage somewhere.  Big deal.

But rest assured, my plans for the Dance Weekend App are much grander than a simple static calendar of events and I want to share some of ideas with you now:

• Dance with your friends – OK, this one’s pretty obvious.  In addition to a list of events, Dance Weekend will alow you to share and see which dance events you and your friends are planning on attending.
• Find and share housing – Dance Weekend is going to allow hosts and guests to take the reigns of their own housing arrangements.  Hosts will be able to post availability in their homes and share that info with all attendees or just their friends.  For hotel events, dancers will be able to arrange room-shares with other dancers.
• Buy and sell passes – It’s the worst when you’ve paid for a pass and suddenly find out you can’t attend shortly before the event.  Then it’s a mad scramble to try and find a buyer.  The sad thing is there are always last-minute attendees who would love to get a little discount on a pass before paying the “gotcha!” at-the-door price.  If only there were a way to bring these people together in one place.  Enter..(wait for it…)  Dance Weekend.

So that’s just a taste of what I’ve got in store for you all.  There’s even more cool stuff I want to do but dare not mention lest you all think I’ve lost it.

I’m having a blast re-writing the Facebok App and am improving it all the time so keep checking it out.  pretty soon you’ll be telling everyone how awesome it is.

See you on the dance-floor!

I put out a call for help among my graphic designer friends and a good friend from my years in San Diego totally stepped up for me!  The logo she designed is perfect or Dance Weekend.  First, it’s distinctive and scales niceley to the little 75 – 90 pixel square boxes social networking sites put us in.  Gah, so so so much better than that horrible thing I made for Lindy Weekend.  Thanks again, Kat, you rock!

The new Dance Weekend logo!

Gah, and I’m not sure what’s up with that funky border that wordpress is putting around/through the image.  Just ignore that

Last night, I was feeling a little guilty that, there I was starting a blog about major dance weekends around the country and The Atlanta Varsity Showdown was wrapping up and I hadn’t managed to get to a single dance, workshop, or competition.  So I hopped in the truck and headed over to the venue where the final dance of the weekend was taking place.  I wasn’t planning on dancing, just socializing a bit to get a feel for how AVS had gone. (And it seems to have gone pretty well by most accounts!  Good job to Dean Robert and his ASEDA faculty.)

I had a good time socializing with both local and out-of-town dancers and noted that everyone looked good and whipped, which is usually a good sign in the waning hours of a workshop weekend.  Everyone, that is, except Javier Johnson, who never seems to get tired.  Ever.  It was a pleasant surprise to see him back in town for AVS.

But I’m most excited about setting up an interview with a young lady I’ll be interviewing tonight at Hot-Jam.  She’s a relatively new Atlanta dancer who I’d never met but she seems to definitely have the dancing bug.  In addition to AVS, she’s signed up to attend the Eastern Balboa Championships in Raleigh-Durham at the end of this month.

This will be my first interview and I’m a little nervous.  But you all love me, so it’s all good, right?  She’s new to Balboa so I plan to have both a before and after interview to hear her expectations for an out-of-town event and also how well the event lived up to those expectations.  She was the housing coordinator for AVS so we’ll see how well she likes the hotel events.

I’m not sure yet whether I’ll post the interviews separately or if I should wait and put them together after the event.  Either way, the interviews will eventually be posted right here on DanceWeekend.  So subscribe, add, follow, friend me up, beam me up, whatever.

And I’ll see you on the dance-floor!

Lindy Weekend is being reborn, rewritten, and re-branded as Dance Weekend!  I really enjoyed writing the original Lindy Weekend site and application on Facebook for the Lindy Hop community.  Unfortunately, due to my hectic schedule and the sheer number of dance events that happen every weekend, I just couldn’t keep up with entering information about upcoming events.  Eventually, I got so behind on entering event info that I definitely never had time to add any cool features. Eventually, I got so overwhelmed, LindyWeekend sat dormant for about a year.

Although I gave up on entering new events, I never gave up on the idea of a social dance calendar.  If only I could figure out how to deal with the data-entry side of things.  At one point, I even considered farming out the work the some off-shore workers through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service.  Then one day, after I got a Facebook Event invitation from about the 1000th dance event that I, sadly, couldn’t attend, it hit me:  Why should I be entering event information in the first place when the organizers are already entering it?!  After all, every event worth it’s salt has a Facebook events page and the Facebook API makes this information freely available to Facebook Apps through its API.  All I had to do was ask for it.  To make things even better, Facebook will even tell me who’s going or not.  I had one of those, “duh, why didn’t I think of this sooner?” moments, for sure.

A long time ago, Alan Anicella had asked me about the possibility of making a “Westie Weekend” (What an awesome name!).  So with the data entry problem solved, I dug out the old code for Lindy Weekend and started looking at what it would take to break the app into multiple genres.  After about five minutes of poking around, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to refactor the code (due to layers upon layers of poor design decisions the first time around) and decided to start over from scratch.

And that’s pretty much where we are today.  I renamed lindy Weekend app and uploaded the new bare-ones code.  It doesn’t do much yet but I’m very excited out where it’s headed because now that I won’t be spending all of my spare time re-typing event information, I can work on adding the types of features i originally had in mind when I first began the Lindy Weekend project.

Be on the lookout for cool new features coming to Dance Weekend.  In fact, make it easy on yourself and add DanceWeekend on twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

See you on the dance-floor!