May 20, 2009

Great Dance Meetup Wrap-Up

Much thanks to our presenters, participants and host at the first Great Dance Meetup this past Monday at Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet.

I thought the event was fun and informative. And it was great to see a lot of interest and discussion about how the Internet, video and social media can be used to promote and share dance with online audiences.

Thoughts About Meetup

(Here's the program guide and presenter bios.)

The main point I took from Monday's presentations and discussions is that there are a lot of great online resources for building audiences, networking and sharing dance content. But the real challenge is figuring out the best way to use your precious time and resources to take advantage of these online tools and technologies.

Should you stick with one main social media application such as Facebook, or should you use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, video sharing sites and other tools. And if you do use a number of web applications, what is the best way to learn each one and how much time does it really take to update your content on a regular basis? The answers are, in the end, personal and depend upon what makes the most sense for each individual artist or organization, and what specific goals you would like to achieve.

For the first presentation, Malinda Ray Allen (@MalindaRayAllen) demonstrated the Ustream video application. Ustream allows you to set-up a live video broadcast. Using a consumer video camcorder and Cedar Lake's Wi-Fi connection, we set-up a live video feed so we could see how this application functioned. It worked very well. Malinda discussed how she used Ustream for a broadcast of a 24-hour dance performance that she participated in. I'm curious to learn how others have used Ustream and similar services such as Mogulus (which must have just changed its name to Livestream). These video applications are very versatile and I'm going to write about different applications for them in the near future.

Catherine Paull (@cpmomcat) demonstrated and discussed the popular and inexpensive Flip video cameras. Cathy showed examples of videos she shot and edited for the Logrea Dance Academy. It's surprising how good the video quality is that is generated by these small video cameras. And her presentation really made the point that there are no barriers to shooting and uploading video of any type of dance programs. Cathy brought a regular and the new HD flip cameras. The video she has shot so far has been with the regular Flip cameras. So it will be interesting to see the Flip's HD videos as well.

Jody Sperling (Facebook Page) demonstrated how she uses Facebook to communicate with both her friends and fans. And she highlighted the differences between the new Fan pages and the older group pages. Jody made the point that the status updates and other real-time content serve as an important news source that acts as a connective glue for keeping people informed and interested in what their Facebook friends are up to. And that we've transitioned away from more static content often found on websites to more participatory online communities.

I gave an introduction to Twitterand TweetDeck. I highlighted how Twitter works and the advantages of using applications such as TweetDeck to more efficiently manage groups and focus in on the audiences that you really want to communicate with through this popular social networking site.

And Caleb Custer, the director of marketing for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet gave a presentation that highlighted how their website serves as an integrated platform for tying together their use of video and social networking sites to communicate with their different audiences and share their creative work. We asked Caleb to speak at the last moment. And his presentation ended-up being an excellent synthesis of the video applications and social media sites that we discussed earlier in the program.

Suggested Topics for Upcoming Programs

With a few minutes remaining, I asked what topics participants would like to see covered at upcoming meetups. Among the suggestions were:

- How to create dance websites

- How dance is being integrated with fashion, art and other fields in the context of the Internet and technology, and

- How dance content, such as dance classes, is being shared and sold online

And for upcoming Meetups, we'll definitely put aside a good chunk of time for networking.

Thanks to Cedar Lake

Much thanks to Cedar Lake for hosting the first Great Dance Meetup in their wonderful theater and providing us with audiovisual equipment and support for this event!

Upcoming Meetup and Feedback

I'll post the details about the next Meetup soon. If you have thoughts and recommendations about last Monday's program or upcoming programs, please comment or email me.

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