Forums, bulletin boards, and message boards are basically public discussions and postings. On an e-mail list, the postings come directly to you. On a forum or board, you go to the web site in order to read the postings. It's just another way of meeting new people or keeping in touch with friends.
Forums
- The SquareDancing.com web site has many dance-related forums. Forums such as square dancing, round dancing, clogging, and contra, are open to the public while the callers discussion forum and the various choreography forums are open only to callers or cuers.
- Yahoo! Clubs has quite a few dance forums. (Search on "square dance" or "round dance".) The most active is the Singles Square Dancing forum. Yahoo! forums have the option to receive forum postings by e-mail. A chat room, link section, membership list, and a calendar is also provided for each forum. You can also start your own forum.
- America Online has a Dance Message Board (keyword: Dance) with a Square Dancing topic.
Classified Ads
- SquareDancing.com has a classified ads section for selling dance items, such as clothing and sound equipment.
- Square Dance Classifieds is exclusively devoted to square dance ads.
Creating an E-Mail List
People always ask me "Why?" Yes, there are quite a few e-mail lists out there but nothing beats an e-mail list consisting of a small and intimate group of people. The smaller the group, the better, especially when first starting up.
Ideas?
Here are a few possibilities:
- Your students
- Your dance club
- Single members of your club
- Couples in your club
- Group of your friends
- People you met at a convention
How?
The easiest way I have found to create an e-mail list is through eGroups. (It's free.) You have lots of options through eGroups. You can keep your list private or make it a public list. You can choose to archive all your messages, making it easy for someone to catch up if they've been gone a while. You can choose to moderate your list (approve postings before they actually post) or keep it unmoderated and let everyone on the list post. You can make it an announcement list and post your newsletters and bulletins to list members. You can send an invitation to join or just sign up your participants, providing you have their e-mail addresses.
Your e-mail list also gets its own web site. At the web site, you will find a calendar, polling place, chat room, link, file and database sections. Use the calendar for listing your upcoming events or lesson schedule. The link section can be used to list your club's URL address or other related web sites. You can upload files and photographs in the file section. The database section can be used to create and maintain an address database or any other type of database that you can think of and it's easy to use.
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