Taken by: Tania
Present: Tania, Alice, Steve Olin, Tanna, Greg, Lynn, Sally, Can, Steve Ryan, Brian, RoseAnn, Salwa, Ilona, Andy
1. Old Business
General Report -- Tania noted that $240.13 insurance and $75.53 ASCAP licensing bills are due this month. SSDS did not receive funding for the project grant it submitted to the CRC. Tania will submit a grant proposal to the Updowntowners grant lottery, which is due January 31. We agreed to make a $50 donation to the Leukemia Society in memory of Kim McLaughlin's mother. Tania will make the donation and write the letter. We will contact the owner of Ballybay and ask if he has any use for the runners we formerly used in Hudson Hall. Weekly dance status report, including check on available lesson slots: Steve & Tracie will teach a 7 or 8 week session starting Jan. 17. Hops have seen good crowds, successful snowball dances. Lynn taught during an extra slot on Dec. 27 but no students came.
Financial Report -- Steve reported that we started 2001 with $8,076.79 and ended the year with $10,029.39. Our total hop revenue (at three different venues) was $3,540 and total rent was $1,987. We are doing better financially at Ballybay and lost money while the hops were at the Locker Room. We bought 39 CDs during the year for $352, spent $190 on flyers, had income from equipment rental of $470. Our revenue for 2001 workshops (Kyle & Sara, Skye & Sarah, Nardone) was $8,042, but he didn't have the expense figure for a net. Steve said that he and Tracie plan to refine the bookkeeping system he currently uses.
Holiday party -- We had about 75 people to dinner and about 80 to 100 people at the dance. We had far too many rolls but just enough meat (two turkey breasts and one ham). Everyone liked the Knights of Columbus venue and want to use it next year. K of C had a great kitchen for set-up. The dance card contest that Maria put together went well. We discussed the idea of doing more of these pot-luck dances but decided to keep it to the current two -- summer picnic and winter holiday party. Some people only come out for these SSDS events. If we had more events, they might lose their draw. We lost $97 on the dinner overall. Rent to K of C was $175, food was about $150.
New Year's Eve party -- About 66 people attended, 40 prepaid and 26 paid $20 at the door. Event took in $1220, $825 went to Ballybay for venue and food ($12.50 per person), other expenses were $40 for copies and decorations. Net gain was $355, split evenly between SSDS and USABDA. Illona paid SSDS its share of $177.50. The place was full with 66 people and we agreed to limit the numbers at 70 to 75 people next year instead of 90 as it was this year. Illona reported that Ballybay operator Paul seemed happy with the turnout and he would not have had any NYE business but for our dance. People liked the food, not too many leftovers. There were a lot of meat dishes, and we will need to have more hot vegetable dishes next year. The music mix worked out fine, may have been slanted a little to swing because the swing dancers were more aggressive, but the ballroom dancers did not make any complaints. Andy, Illona and Can did a super job organizing the event. Only positive comments from the two groups working together; both dances would have been diluted if SSDS and USABDA did two separate dances. Next year may need to consider Bruce Heffron's group and possible overlap if he does a NYE dance in 2002; he didn't do one this year. Kallet had a NYE dance with 200 people in 2001. Greg noted that there always will be a market for people who don't want to travel on NYE.
Dance venue list -- Tracie to divide into quadrants to ease volunteer recruiting. Not discussed because Tracie not present.
2. New Business
Progress on upcoming events.
Proposed events -- Brian proposed several events, which we discussed and deferred decision on until future meetings. (1) Salsa workshop with Nedim as instructor like we did in 2001. Greg noted that the one-day format works well for SSDS. Brian & RoseAnn are teaching with Nedim. (2) Community outreach to Latino community. Coordinate event with Latino community using contacts such as Spanish Action League. Have a Latino dinner in conjunction with workshops, band dance and even after-dance dance. Venue would be important, possibly St. Lucy's. If we do a Latin event, it should be exclusively Latin, don't try to mix in some other styles of dance/music. Look into getting Latin band that played in Hanover Square in 2001. Brian will make exploratory calls to people involved in the Latino community, such as university clubs and Spanish Action League. We will have to keep lines of communication open because Latino contacts are the experts on their community. We agreed to probably go with a one-day salsa workshop with Nedim in the spring/late summer regardless of further action on bigger Latino event. But we can use smaller workshop to help build toward larger event in the fall, utilize contacts such as Coconut Joe's. (3) Lindy Hop proposal. Brian expressed his view that we need top-flight teachers to grow the Lindy community in Syracuse. He would like to bring Caitlin George of Ithaca (one of the original Minnie's Moochers) to teach weekly lessons in Syracuse. We discussed whether to target SU students with the lessons or other parts of the dance community. Steve Olin noted that Lindy dancers need to help out with the grunt volunteer work at all SSDS events.
Better quality workshops -- We distributed Tania's draft of workshop organization checklist, Can's workshop evaluation form. The checklist is a summary of SSDS policies and philosophy. We are not going to re-open decided policies. Tania will revise checklist per comments received, but organizers still can use the checklist as a planning document for 2002 workshops. Evaluation form will be distributed to students upon registration/check-in and collected at close of weekend. If we want feedback from beginners, we need to remind them about the forms at the end of beginner classes. Tania suggested that Can add a spot for students' hometowns. Brian suggested distributing the form via email. Greg noted that people will fill out the forms during workshop weekends but not at the end. Lynn suggested that we tailor the form to the particular workshop weekend. We might add instruction that people circle which workshops they took; we need to differentiate which workshops are being rated.
Marketing/publicity policy -- We discussed Can's proposal to give out SSDS weekly dance admissions ($3) or workshop admissions to established dance groups as door prizes. Example: Boogie in Dallas event June 2002 sent SSDS tickets to uses as prizes. Locally there are a lot of raffles and door prizes at dance events, and donating SSDS tickets gets SSDS "air time" to publicize its events. Local groups to be considered for prize donations are USABDA, Cynthia Harkness dances, Friday country dances. Andy & Illona said that Ballroom dancers would be more interested in workshop tickets than hop tickets. Can and Tracie will work on a strategy for giveaway tickets, such as what groups to target and what prizes to give away. We renewed our commitment to the existing policy of giving free hop tickets to teachers to give to their beginning students so that they can get involved in the hops and local dance community. Greg will print up more hop tickets and distribute them to local teachers.
Next meeting: Sunday February 3rd at Greg's House 11 a.m.