February 28, 2010:

On Sunday night, I got a class schedule for classes that starts Monday (about 20 hours from the time I'm typing this). Ignoring the slap in the face with regard to the appreciation for the time I spend on this website, dance teachers need to understand that potential students don't necessarily check this website every Monday morning, not to mention the fact that they might already have plans that night. Give your students some time to find out about your classes and to plan their schedule accordingly.

I also got a call on Saturday from a friend who told me that a dance/milonga was being held that night and it wasn't listed on this website. I would like to take a moment to remind all dance promoters that it's not my job to get their information to put on this website. It's the *dance promoter's* job to make sure their information is correctly listed on this website (after all, they're the ones who want the paying customers).

A lot of dance promoters just send me their generic newsletters and expect me to take the time to read it and figure out what needs to go on the website. Guess what? The newsletters all look alike. Most of the information in these newsletters is just repeat information from the previous week anyway. Do not assume I read your newsletters! It's a total waste of my time to have to look up on the calendar just to find out that I already have your event listed already. Save yourself the grief: assume I don't read anything that's longer than a paragraph. If you want something listed on this website, add the line "Benson, please list this in the calendar" at the top of the message. Then I'll know it's not a form letter and that maybe I should pay attention to it. And leave out the propaganda; just send me what you *know* I'm going to allow on this website.

Some people have figured it out. They get their information to me months in advance so there's no chance of forgetting to let me know.

This is the time of year that I go through all the links on this website to see if any websites have disappeared or if any venues went out of business.

This would be a good time to remind all of you that I get a lot of information in email for this website so I really don't have the time to be looking on individual websites for any new information. Trying to compare what I have to what's on the websites would leave me with no time to sleep. As I often say, "it's not my job". Those who stand to make money off dancing or want paying customers are the ones who have the responsibility of getting their information to me. Of equal importance is organizing that information so it takes a very short time to type it into these webpages.

If you're a dance organizer, remember that it costs nothing to list your event on this website and that this website reaches *a lot* of people, including people who might not be your regular customers. (I would have gone to the recent Black & White dance at Providence Swing except that...I found out about it only a few hours before the dance).

If you're a dance customer, talk to the people who run your favorite dance event or dance studio and tell them to get listed on this website. When I started this website, it was small enough so that it was worth looking around to see who else had websites. Nowadays, there just isn't enough time.

Those who take the time to send me information are those who will have access to the thousands of people who pass through this website every month. (21592 unique visitors on Havetodance.com in November, plus 1408 on the Tango side and 636 from tap dancers)

PS: The same applies to long newsletters. It takes up a lot of my time to read them and I tend to want to use only a tiny part of the information I get there. Just send me only the information I'm going to use anyway and I'll get around to typing your information into the website sooner.

Just wanted to let you know how I enter information into the various calendars.

First of all, I add all the entries manually and I update the calendars for the *next* month around the beginning of a month. I normally just make assumptions about a regular event from the current month and paste it into the appropriate date slot. I'm usually pretty comfortable with the accuracy of any given regular event that way. If I get a list of dates for a venue, that means the dance promoter is committing to those dates and I'll cut & paste the entry for every instance of a venue's event into the calendar. If I get a list of dates for the next six months, that event will get listed for every instance that I get for the next six months. If I don't get any advance notice, they'll only get listed in the current month and the next month.

For example, look at Thursday nights:

The weekly MIT milonga/practica pretty much happens every Thursday; however, they almost always never send me information about that event except to cancel it. Therefore, I'll only add them to the calendar for the next month. Now there's La Pituca on first Thursdays of the month. Who gets listed first? Whomever is already listed before I update the calendar for the next month. Supposing that on December 1st, 2009, I update the month of January, 2010. If there were no venues listed for January 7, 2010, the first Thursday of the month, I would just copy the December 3, 2009 listing and paste it into January 7: MIT's practica, La Pituca, and the worcester practica, in that order. However, if La Pituca had already given me their January date before December 1, I would have already typed in the information for them for January 7. When updating January, I would have then put the MIT practica 2nd followed by the Worcester practica.

Beyond the obvious benefit of dancers being able to plan their nights out dancing ahead of time, it's also of benefit to the dance organizers to send their information to me as soon as possible because they're more likely to get the higher spot on any calendar date. And I like to think that the dance organizers are more considerate of my time contribution because I wouldn't have to look up a calendar for the dates of their next events.