you’ve found your way here, either through some prodding on my part or some random cruise of the net, and now you need to know what’s going on here and what you can do….
this is the latest evolution of my attempt to build a technological foundation for the dance community. it’s hardly an original idea, but i’m trying to leverage what i have available to do some good and make a difference.
reading is, and always will be, open to the public, so if you’re just here to browse, welcome. if you’d like to contribute and participate in this little community adventure, there are four major features here that you should be aware of: the calendar, the blogs, the “content management system” and the aggregated links from around the web. to participate, you’ll have to create an account (which basically involves verifying your email address).
1) the event calendar. the calendar is something i’m still trying to make effective. it’s been through several versions, and it’s still not everything i’d like it to be, but the motivation is to provide a single place where many people can help keep things up-to-date and accurate, and make it available in multiple formats so the information is useful for more than just this site. this particular calendar is still not very useful for recurring events, but it’s a major improvement from the last version. still a work in progress, but there is progress.
2) personal blogs and profiles. if you’re familiar with online journals (like livejournal) or blogs, then you already know what this is about. if you’re not, it’s a simple way to share your thoughts (or other things) with the world online. click on a few links, bang out some text and the world can come find you. you’ll probably notice the little blue “b” boxes scattered around so many of the links here. those are one-click “blog about this” links for you.
3) stories, polls, forum topics and such. i’m not sure how these will be used in this context, but they are available. got a story that you want to share with the world? you can “publish” here. got a question you want to ask? set up a poll. want to start a conversation? we have the forum topics. a lot of these things overlap, so please feel free to experiment and see what feels right.
4) aggregation from other resources. finally, i’m using this platform to pull content from around the web and make it available in one place – livejournal communities, yahoo groups, tribe.net tribes – these are all published in a computer-readable format. to save you some time in your around-the-web surfing, and to give you the opportunity to discover new things that you might be missing, i’m pulling all this stuff together her you’ll notice little “b” blocks next to the syndicated content – clicking on those will let you create a personal blog entry related to that material.
so there’s a brief introduction to the major features here. there is more (and will be more), but hopefully that’s enough to get you started. comments, suggestions and your thoughts are always welcome. this is your space, please make it useful…
once you’ve signed up, don’t forget to throw some information into your personal profile (go to “my account” and “edit account”) – particularly if you’ve got a personal web page you’d like people to find. you can also decide how much stuff you’d like to see on the “home page” here when you show up (you can turn sections on and off, depending on what you are interested in).
a special note to new users: until we get to know you a little better, your comments and other material may go through a “moderation queue” before they’re visible to the public. please don’t take it personally – we’re just not hosting for spammers here. once you’ve been around a while and become part of the community, we’ll make sure you get faster response time.