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Wednesday, March 10, 1999
One year ago: The Opposite
I'm now a member of two yahoo clubs: "I Hate Glassdog," since October, and "Blackbook margin" since today. Add in all of the email stuff, and sixdegrees.com (better, since the "group" feature was added) and I'm interacting all over the place!
The yahoo clubs aren't too engaging, as yet, but at least the message board pages load quickly. I liked putting cacophony events on the calendar at "I Hate Glassdog," but I don't know if that would be good at Ceej's thing. All of these, like other discussion formats, depend on input from the founder or owner to keep things going, I think! Or else you need a large enough membership to achieve critical mass. The larger numbers increase the odds of having enough posters among the lurkers, so the traffic will keep going of its own accord. I think Ceej has a large enough readership to make that happen. And doesn't Willa have a mailing list that has a life of its own? Or is it a chat room?
I also heard about a national-scope mailing list on swing dancing. A post was forwarded to another list I was already subscribed to, so of course I had to join this new list as well. So far it seems like it's high-traffic. There are some local Seattle dancers who are members, so when I saw them posting I wrote to tell them I was lurking. The website that hosts the list seems to be languishing after a good start, but the list is lively, so far.
My favorite of the interactive things I've done recently: the discussion boards at Yehoodi.com. The site is mainly about the New York swing scene, is updated often, and has lots of good features, news and op-ed style pieces. The discussions load quickly and it's easy to find where the new posts are. I like getting a picture of what the dance environment is like in other places. The descriptions make me appreciate Seattle. It seems like every night in New York is just like Monday night at the Fenix here: jam-packed with people who can't dance, filled with smoke, and expensive! Here we have a lot of fun places to go.
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Speaking of fun places to go, I was at the Century Ballroom tonight, for my beginning lindy hop class (where I'm learning to lead) and the dance afterwards. The class is going well. It's interesting to see the changes that Hallie and Loviça have made in how they teach in the past year. Benjamin was the DJ, under the name "King Solomon" which is better than "DJ Bootray" which he used a few weeks ago. (His last name is Solomon.) He taught the free beginners' lesson and asked me to help, so I scurried to the bathroom to change into a skirt. I'd been wearing pants in honor of leading. He did a good job with the lesson, but I did giggle a few times when he counted the beginner dancers in, and he was counting nowhere near the beat of the music.
My dance buddy Adam was there tonight. I don't think I've seen him for several months! I thought that he had given up on lindy, and was either not going out at all, or sticking to ballroom stuff. He was between assignments at Microsoft, too, so I didn't hear from him or see him. It was fun dancing with him again, though he's always unhappy with his dancing when he dances with me. Presumably he doesn't express this when he dances with other folks!
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