Wednesday 15 April 2009

Dance Database - How can we build a network?

Dance Interactive's online presence now includes what marketing departments love to call Web2.0. But how can we build a network of dance teachers that use technology, and what can we do to make that network really work in the interests of dance educators..?

1. Early days but we hope Facebook will become the hub of communication between our contacts across the world. The Wall for leaving messages and the Discussion Board can be used like a Forum so people can exchange ideas and make new contacts, as well as ask us questions. We have yet to determine how many of our contacts use Facebook, and what level of interest they would have in joining the group.

2. The ability to find out who uses Bedford Interactive's resources in your local area could have many benefits. You can ask us and we can query our database for you, but we will not release any information without the owner's permission.

3. Arranging demonstration workshops in areas where there are groups of users already talking to each other becomes much more viable.

4. We will soon be using the networks to invite interested users to participate in our FORMotion project, where your own dance video materials can be inserted into our new software toolkit. Phase 1 software will be free to those willing to donate their video and a bit of time towards our research period enabling us to perfect a general purpose version for Do-It-Yourself authoring of interactive dance resources.

5. Now we can have a turnover of contact information. As people move house, move jobs, change email address or even get married they can fall off our database. If you have lost contact with us and wish to be re-added, send us an email here
Our total list of hard contacts (people who have bought our products) is well over 4,000, so there may be many who we can no longer reach with our missives.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Twitter is another network you may want to investigate. Technologically minded dance teachers are using this growing social hub. It is also pretty easy to use - updating your status there is very similar to updating a page status on Facebook.

I blog about dance education at DanceAdvantage.net and have connected with teachers there. You can connect with me @danceadvantage.