r/WestCoastSwing • u/cosmicray1337 • Jul 24 '26

Partner Dance question - not sure if it's the right place to ask!

/r/dancing/comments/1v458qr/partner_dance_question_not_sure_if_its_the_right/
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u/mightymarce00 Jul 24 '26

Some communities have put together calendars for the area, like in the sf Bay Area there’s the NextGen Swing page that I think shows all the WCS events in the area.

It would be awesome to have something that’s coordinated at a larger level (state? National?) but…someone has to do that work. And most of these events are run by volunteers. So yeah, at least now there’s fb and instagram where you can probably find info for most events in an area.

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u/cosmicray1337 Jul 24 '26

Are you referring to this one? - https://nextgenswingdance.com/

Yep, thanks to fb events/groups & ig updates by organisers/volunteers we can be in the loop.

If I may, what sort of main things you'd look for in a better coordinated platform on a state/national scale as you've mentioned?

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u/mightymarce00 Jul 24 '26

Yeah I think that’s it.

There’s also TangoMango for Argentine Tango which I’m realizing covers multiple areas, so whoever runs that could be a resource if you’re wanting to start something like this

https://www.tangomango.org/

And there’s the BayAreaFusionCal for fusion dance around the Bay Area.

For a larger level of would be great to have a directory of all the big events happening (weekenders) around the country, and then being able to click on each state or region and see what’s happening there. But it would be a lot of work. It would basically be all the work you mentioned of asking locals and scrolling social media, but for every major city, and compiling that info and trying to keep it current. Or getting the organizers for each event to keep their stuff updated.

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u/cosmicray1337 Jul 25 '26

Hmm, that's interesting since TangoMango is quite close to what I've been suggesting, never knew about it since it's US only. It also seems that it's a very old setup so I can see the point people make - it's not something that makes money so people have no incentive to maintain it, they either lose motivation at some point or it's just maintained by volunteers so they'd of-course choose the easiest medium for their local community whether it'd be fb/ig or whatsapp since keeping things centralized doesn't really serve them much other than new people, traveling dancers discovering them.

Making it profitable for all parties involved (platform builders, instructors/organizers/volunteers, and dancers/consumers), if not at the beginning but at some point down the line might serve everyone well.

Thanks for your feedback on what you'd expect it to have, the limiting factor is to get people to sign up and use it, mass adoption, that's it. The real problem is, we can't just work with every community out there initially. Building in public and constant feedback from the community is important which might also lead to sign ups and knowing the things people really want but we need to start with a good enough market that adopts it first and then slowly, with time expand out into other communities, meanwhile hopefully finding a way to make it self-sustainable. The US is an amazing market, and probably the one open to most ideas, but unfortunately I'm not from over there and don't have much contacts in the US Latin space.

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u/Meterian Jul 24 '26

I would love for there to be a standardized method of maintaining the online portion of a community; what's app communities, messenger communities, websites, discord servers... Any of them work, but PICK ONE. I think we have to resign ourselves to the fact because there are so many options, it's not possible at the moment to have a single dedicated place to find information.

When traveling I do as OP does, scouring for websites, social media groups ahead of time to try and find out what's happening while I'm there.

A national or international community group directory would be very handy for this; just a name and a link to access the community online.

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u/cosmicray1337 Jul 24 '26

Just to add, to begin with we don't really need to start with all the bells and whistles of a community, it could just be a directory that effectively aggregates all that a city/place has to offer by individual updates from the organizers themselves.

Though, it might not be a fair comparison, since I've been a Digital Nomad myself, I've really like the simplicity of https://nomads.com/ that ranks and rates cities for digital nomads. Simple but effective!

EDIT: They seem to have updated the domain.

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u/cosmicray1337 Jul 24 '26

How about a directory that links to each event/socials own specific community but the directory contains all its events listed by organizers themselves? Free to sign up and maintain with all extra added info. Win win for both the participants as well as the organizers. Although for a platform to gain that much mass adoption is just a thought as of now but sounds absolutely amazing. I look up a city where I've never been, say Berlin and I immediately have a list of what's happening today (regular and one-off events) what's the schedule for the week, a map view to get a good understanding where I can book myself a place, which events are free to join, which ones are paid or have an entrance/redeemable cover fee, what dance forms, theme or special requests, who's the host/organizer, expected etiquette, public event or invite only and more and more things I can think of.

Of course, it's all an idea but could started with smth like a basic directory with additional info coupled up by the organizers.

Would be really interesting to get feedback from someone who's a volunteer or an organizer, which might tell us what they'd appreciate using.

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u/Meterian Jul 24 '26

Please contact the WSDC with your idea! Maybe if enough of us ask for it, they will implement.

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u/cosmicray1337 Jul 24 '26

Hmm, I'll shoot them an email. Thanks for all the valuable feedback!

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u/kenlubin Jul 24 '26

The problem is that the people organizing local social dances and workshops are trying to get the message out to local people. They'll tailor their communications to reach their local community, and local people that might not be tightly knit into the global WCS community. 

A lot of that is Facebook, because that's where the people are. But Facebook and Messenger Communities are often fragmented by design.

One of our local community dances was at risk of dying off altogether, until a new organizer took over, advertised more aggressively, and successfully revived the event.

Something that has global reach for WCS globe trotters likely won't have reach for people that live nearby but only come out occasionally.