Minutes of SSDS Meeting November 3, 2002

Present: Lynn, Sally, Greg, Stacey, Can, Mary Ellen, Tania, Dave, Maria

Minutes by: Tania

General Report –

(1) Weekly dance status report. Everything is OK. We agreed that Dave’s weekly solicitations for volunteers are outstanding, funny and clever. Can received Dave’s permission to publish the notices on the web page.

(2) Review of demo on October 12 for Eldercare Foundation. Lynn reported that about 100 people, mostly clients of Home Health Aides, attended the event at Hooligan’s at Green Lakes. He did his senior swing program, playing music from the 30s and 40s and engaging the seniors. About eight volunteer SSDS dancers participated. Lynn said he wasn’t able to get SSDS flyers from Tracie before the event, but SSDS was listed on the program. There was no honorarium.

(3) Donation to October 20 fundraiser. Tania reported that Abby Phalen, a friend of Paul at Ballybay, organized a fundraiser to benefit Kym Bisnett-Denmark, who has terminal cancer. At Paul’s request, SSDS donated as door prizes four certificates, each good for a six-week series of dance lessons. Lynn donated two of the certificates himself; SSDS donated the other two, which are valid for any area swing instructor. SSDS will reimburse the instructor when the certificate is redeemed.

(4) Review of Halloween Dance. Can reported that he liked the format of alternating band sets with DJ’s because it balances the music and pleases the audience. Stroke was great and played songs that he Lindy’d to. More than 100 people attended. Income was $852 and total expenses were $1,048.89, for a loss of $196.89. Mary Ellen presented a comprehensive survey, noting that many people said the hall was too hot; some of the electrical outlets (particularly in the balcony where people sought to use video cameras) did not work; someone turned off the main breaker, which affects the kitchen and the refrigerator with our bottled water in it. We agreed that the costume contest format (volunteers distributed ballots while people danced, we tallied the votes, did the parade and announced winners) went very well because it was smooth and quick. Ideas for next year include a carved pumpkin contest with prizes. Greg noted that the last time we did two bands it was a disaster in his opinion and that one band with DJ’d sets is much better and simpler. We agreed that there are enough bands out there with cross-over music that we don’t need to hire two bands for a single dance in the future.

Lessons learned: In the future when we hire bands we will require that the band not play at another regional dance event within three weeks before our dance. We will point out this requirement in our verbal contract and first contact with the band and determine the exact length of the "blackout" period based on those discussions. We will ask the band to contact SSDS if it is approached by anyone else to play a dance/swing event close in time to our event. Seaway Swing played at Lynn’s Frankie Manning weekend the Friday before our dance, and this gig came up after we had hired Seaway Swing.

We had a long discussion about the problem with Seaway Swing, which pulled out of the gig the day before the Halloween dance. We universally regarded the band’s method of pulling out – indirectly via an email to Steve Olin rather than contacting SSDS (Can) directly – to be unprofessional. While we can speculate on the band’s reasons for pulling out, this is without foundation because the band never communicated with SSDS. After a lengthy discussion and vote in which we decided against more absolute measures, we agreed that, given Seaway Swing’s unprofessional behavior, SSDS will not be inclined to hire them again. In the future, we need to identify a specific contact person for a band to communicate with and instruct our members that they should refer all communication to that contact person.

(5) Status of Mario video notebooks. Maria reported that all but five of the notebooks are distributed. She is mailing four out and delivering one. She still is figuring out the final cost tally.

Financial Report – Greg distributed the report for October 2002. We had a net loss of $196.89 on the Halloween dance, net income of $564.00 on the hops, our net income for the month was $423.81.

(1) Workshop documents. No one had any corrections to the documents distributed and approved at the October 2002 meeting.

(2) Dance venues. Maria reported that her committee (Dave, Tracie, Tania & Steve) will meet this month.

(3) Workshop review classes. Tracie. No report.

Marketing Report. Tania noted that the October mailing went out with stamps due to a mix-up regarding where we can use the postal permit we purchased previously. Tracie is working on clarifying the rules and obtaining a refund.

(1) Diane Nardone Nov. 15-17. Can reported in Kim’s absence that we have 10 pre-registrations so far. Tracie is doing billeting, Mary Ellen is coordinating the DJ’s, Mary Ellen and Steve are doing set-up and clean-up. Kim still needed volunteers for registration and refreshments. Tania subsequently agreed to do both jobs.

(2) Holiday party Dec. 19. The Knights of Columbus hall is booked. Alice and Tania will coordinate buying the food (meats, rolls, condiments) and paper goods. Tania, Alice and Sally will take care of set-up. Maria will coordinate a dance card contest again this year as a mixer, and we approved purchase of two $20 CD gift certificates as prizes.

(3) New Years Eve party. Can reported that Ilona had not yet met with Paul about the food costs. Therefore, we declined to set prices. Greg proposed that we go $5 over cost. We discussed the attendance cap for the dance, noting that per 1/6/02 SSDS meeting minutes last year we had 66 people and agreed to cap attendance at 70 or 75 people in the future. The NYE dance last year had a cap of 90 people. We agreed that a cap of 80 people would be reasonable for this year’s dance and will run that by Ilona. We would like to finalize information so we can have flyers at the Diane Nardone weekend. In recognition of our co-op with USABDA, we agreed that SSDS will publicize USABDA events at our hops.

Proposal for monthly Saturday DJ’d dances. Mary Ellen reported that dates for the dances would be January 25, March 29, April 26 because these dates do not conflict with known SSDS or regional events. We tabled until next meeting our continued discussion from October regarding purpose and audience of dance as it relates to music mix.

E-mail traffic policy. Can circulated a proposal (attached) to help regulate the email traffic on our list as a response to complaints he has received about the volume of postings. Can said people have pulled out of our list. He said the proposal differentiates between Syracuse and non-Syracuse people such that the farther away an event is, the less frequency is allowed for advertising it on our list. The proposal does not limit the "general public" from discussing things such as where to go out dancing over the weekend. Can said he does not cross-post messages from the ISDN list; Ithaca organizers post on our list directly. Regarding enforcement of the policy, Can said he would monitor postings, talk to violators and remove them from the list after three violations. If someone is not a subscriber to the list, he or she cannot post on the list. We had a long discussion about the proposal and agreed we would like to characterize anything we adopt as guidelines rather than a "policy." We do not want to offend our dance community. Greg and Lynn expressed a preference for Can monitoring email use and speaking to offenders on an individual basis and asking them to refrain from over-use of the list. We agreed that Can will soften the language of the proposal and re-circulate it among meeting regulars. We will adopt some set of guidelines so that Can has an express rationale when he speaks to offenders.

Winterfest 2003 dances. Tania received a proposal from Bill Cooper of the Updowntowners for SSDS’s participation in swing dances Friday February 14 and Friday February 21 at Hotel Syracuse in conjunction with Winterfest. The arrangement will be similar to Swinging in the Square in that we receive a $125 donation for each event in exchange for teaching a survival lesson, publicizing the dances to our members, and delivering a critical mass of dancers. Tania with Can’s help already emailed Bill a list of possible bands, and she asked anyone else to email her additional suggestions. Bill told Tania that the dances most likely will take place at the Hotel Syracuse Imperial Ballroom and will charge $5 admission. We agreed to propose that one dance have a theme of R&B and the other rock and roll/oldies. Tania will work with Bill as much as possible on logistics so that the dance floor is large enough and away from the band and bar (to keep non-dancers off the floor).

Hanover Square Series 2003. Tania reported that she, Lynn and Maria are meeting on November 5 with Bill Cooper of the Updowntowners to discuss ways of improving this event for dancers. Our primary issues concern greater influence in band selection and possibly improving the dance surface.

Other business Lynn requested some sort of a grievance procedure through SSDS to address an email sent to the SSDS list about Seaway Swing’s cancellation. Lynn viewed the email as a personal attack on him. After a lengthy discussion, we agreed that the SSDS board will communicate with the author of the email to convey that sending the message to the list instead of directly affected parties was wrong and actually hurt the reputation of SSDS. Without making any judgment whether this particular email was a personal attack, the board will consider sending an email to the SSDS list about proper use of the list and our intolerance of personal attacks in any form on the list.