Minutes of SSDS Meeting February 2, 2003

Present: Tania, Can, Michael, Lynn, Sally, Alice, Dave, Maria, Greg

Minutes by: Tania

Old Business
- General Report
  1. Weekly dance status report. Dave said things were status quo.
  2. Review of January 25, 2003, dance. About 60 people attended. Comments received were that the music mix was still very heavy on country after 9 p.m, but the crowd was 80 percent country dancers.
  3. Revised email traffic policy. Can circulated a proposed policy of guidelines for those who post messages regularly: Lesson notices once per session, no more than once a month; notice for weekly and monthly events no more than once a month; workshops and other special events two postings (initial and reminder); dance calendars no more than once per week; important updates such as cancelations, change of venue or time always welcome. There were no objections to the policy. Can will post it on the web so that we have something in place for enforcement purposes, but we do not intend to police the email traffic in the absence of abuse. Can will set up a second list for the weekly SSDS schedule only for those who want to limit email received.
  4. Updowntowners grant lottery. Tania reported that she submitted a grant proposal on 1/29/03.
  5. Catalogue Lindy collection. Tania reported that Michael generously agreed to catalogue the SSDS Lindy music collection.
  6. Purchase of storage cabinet. Greg is still working on this purchase, which will be about $200. Greg will get permission from Paul at Ballybay for the deeper cabinet.
  7. Facility reserved for summer picnic July 10, 2003. Tania reported that she reserved Camp Brockway for our annual picnic. The rental cost doubled to $150, plus we had to pay an extra $50 to pay for park staff so that we could use the park until 10 p.m.
  8. Carry-over of discussion of impact of Thursday Lindy lessons on weekly dance. Dan and Caitlin are locked on Thursday nights due to their school schedules, and they may be moving out of the area soon. D&C classes have about 4 students, and the impact on our Thursday dance is probably minimal. Lynn Miller & Co. now are teaching Thursday at Damon's from 6 to 7:45 and then practice dancing. He said he didn't know how large his classes would be. Can and Tania expressed their concern that scheduling lessons on Thursday night, the long established night for the SSDS dance, will fragment and hurt the dance community. Moonlight ballroom also may be doing swing dancing on Thursdays.
  9. We adopted a three-month pilot project in which any swing dance student of a Syracuse area instructor who took a dance class in the past week gets into the SSDS dance for $1 that week. Can will design a log book in which the students sign their name, instructor's name and day they took the dance lesson that week. This is meant to be a good will gesture to include all segments of the community.
- Consent agenda - No items.
- Financial Report - Greg reported that our net gain for January was about $117. We paid about $443 for liability insurance and two music licenses.
- Committee Reports
  1. Dance venues. No report.
  2. Workshop review classes. Kim sent in a comment that attendance was very low (an average of 1.5 students) for the Nardone review classes. Based on Kim's recommendation, we won't schedule review classes after the next Nardone workshop. We will keep the Mario review classes on the calendar but may revisit the decision to sponsor them.
- Marketing Report. We discussed the possible need to divide up this job because Tracie is overwhelmed with work and other responsibilities. Tania will ask Tracie to bring some shirts to Ballybay for storage in our cabinet for possible sales on Thursday nights.
- Progress on upcoming events.
  1. Winterfest dances February 14 and 21. Tania and Can met with the events coordinator at the Hotel Syracuse and settled the dance floor size and layout. Can and Tania will teach the survival jitterbug lesson on 2/14, and Kim will teach the survival WCS lesson on 2/21.
  2. Saturday DJ'd dances March 29 and April 26. We decided to have a 50/50 mix of country and WCS from 9 to 10 p.m. even if there are a lot of country dancers present due to truth in advertising and the fact that there is considerable cross-over in the country and WCS music.
  3. Assign responsibility for Nardone, WCS workshops. Kim McLaughlin is handling the Nardone workshop, and Steve Ryan will work on a fall WCS workshop.
New Business
- Hanover Square 2003. Tania reported that she received a band list from the organizers, which Can has looked over, and we gave our feedback on band selection. Updowntowners may do a dance event in Armory Square on the Fridays opposite Hanover Square, but they will be booking rock bands and we won't be involved because that music is not suited to our dances.
- Other business. Marcus and Barbl of Germany have offered to teach a primarily Lindy workshop in Syracuse in 2003. They charge $1,000 per day for two teachers and five hours of workshops, which is a fair rate. Based on reports of the quality of these teachers and the formerly expressed desire to support Lindy workshops in Syracuse, SSDS would like to book them. Can will make sure no one else in the region is booking them, and we will try to get some dates scheduled.

Next Business Meeting: Sunday March 2 at 7 p.m. at Tania and Mark's house.

Back to SSDS Business Page