Hi there,
So, in the past year, I think things have gone rather smoothly with the calendar, blog, and daily digests. Congratulations to everyone for doing their best to keep the Dance Community and audiences informed.
Still, there are no perfect systems, only opportunities for improvement.
- Unlisted events don't receive adequate promotion.
- Cancelled events that still appear in the calendar or digests can mislead and frustrate audiences.
- Last-minute edits or additions frustrate Dance Queens managers.
- Future events may be off by an hour due to Daylight Savings Time in your region.
One of my personal heroes says often that if you can't have agreement, at least try for clarity. (Maybe that's why I bought a Honda Clarity?)
I'd like to take a moment to address a few things:
1) Dance Queens receives its information from troupe leaders or their representatives. We provide a
notecard template and
mailbox for them to use, and that mailbox alerts the group managers. We only accept event listings from this method, period. We do not harvest information from social media, nor do we accept direct messages or invitations to an individual Dance Queens manager because might be wrong, lost, or forgotten. If a Dance Queens manager receives one of those and it does not appear in the calendar, they may send a notecard as a reminder to get it added. This is done as a courtesy,and they've gone above and beyond and should be commended for such. (yay)
(Even if your troupe leader or representative is a member of Dance Queens management, and they do this process for you, they will drop a notecard in that mailbox and pick it up themselves. It provides an audit trail for quality checking.)
1a) If you do not include a poster, your event might not be listed on the blog. I personally will not hunt you down for textures. I do not maintain an archive of them. If others do, they've gone above and beyond and should be commended for such. (yay)
1b) If there are obvious inconsistencies or errors in the text (dates vs. day of week, etc.), a Dance Queens manager will attempt to contact for that group to ask for corrections.
2) Dance Queens management asks for at least
48 hours advance notice of events to list in blog, calendar, and/or daily digests. All of the Dance Queens managers are members of dance troupes, and to expect them to leave a show, rehearsal, or routine building for a last-minute notice or correction is not fair to them. If others do, they've gone above and beyond and should be commended for such. (yay)
3) Dance Queens management asks that you
limit advance notice of events to 3 months. This is to reduce the number of updates and edits and cancellations.
4) If you have updates, edits, and cancellations, please submit a notecard for them. For the same reasons as 1 and 2.
5) You are welcome to make an announcement for your event in Dance Queens group chat.
One announcement per event, please, in the hour before the event only.
5a) If you forgot to submit a notecard for an event,
you're still welcome to announce it in Dance Queens group chat. Do not be surprised if you are politely given a notecard template from a Dance Queens manager to notify us of future events. This is an invitation, not an admonishment.
5b) Yes, you are also welcome to
yay these announcements. That's what makes it fun. (You can also yay this blog post.)
6) Dance Queens migrated to
Google Calendar to simplify management of the event calendar. The old platform was more error-prone and unreliable that Google Calendar. I personally worked up a form, spreadsheet, and script solution that uses Google APIs to simplify additions to the calendar. It even marks who posted your event and when, which provides yet another audit trail. Management of existing events is as simple as drag-and-drop, duplicate, doubleclick-edit, and click-delete. But...
6a)
Daylight Savings Time ruins everything. In the 2-3 week window where early adopters (United States) are out of sync with the rest of the world, errors happen. The script in the Google API is... well... blech. This is why we try to list everything in SLT as well as include the full text from notecards in the calendar and blog. It allows us to double-check entries after we post them as well as check before we make the digest announcements. Worst-case scenario is a simple drag-and-drop correction.
Personally, the blog, calendar, and daily digests allow me to plan out my entertainment choices and reduce the number of groups I need to personally join for announcements. Well, that, and promote the group that I am in... duh, right?
VENERATE MEEEEEEEEEEE! (yay)
But it also can promote the groups that you perform with, photograph, video, or attend.
And that's a Good Thing, but together we can make that Thingness even Better.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for improvement, please put them in the comments of this post.
Thank you,
-R, Dance Queens Manager <- one of the rare times I will use this title and not "I help Web with stuff."
PS: Yes, we still accept stuff for help wanted, new dance troupes, and all of that for the blog. Just put the information in a notecard and drop it in the mailbox, and we'll give it a look-see, okay?
