We all have a wealth of knowledge, libraries of music and videos, and plenty of ideas we use in our studios. What do we need conventions for, when we have each other?

So this is my idea.... A group of us decide to exchange stuff with each other by mail every two weeks. I put in the mail a CD of my edited versions of some awesome songs, a recital video and program from last year, and a one page paper summing up the great ideas I got from a convention. I send to person A. Person A sends a CD of her favorite baby music, an instruction DVD that is her favorite, and a copy of her ballet curriculum to Person B. Person B sends a copy of her favorite ballet music, and a personally taken DVD of her showing us around her studio, what processes she has in the front office, etc, to Person C. And so on and so forth until Person G sends to me.

Make copies, etc, of what you received, and every two weeks we would mail the packet we got to the next person. So if we had 8 people, in 16 weeks you would receive your stuff back! So basically, for a short amount of time and resources from one person, 7 others would benefit from it. For what you put in, you would receive 7 fold. And all for the cost of mailing a small packet every two weeks.

Now here is the kicker... 1. You would have to be willing to have the others in the group (not publicly on DDN) know who you are, what studio you are and where you are located. 2. You would have to be on the ball! One weak link and the process becomes messy. Once you commit, you would have to stick to it until it came full circle. After a full circle happened, then you could bow out and we could bring others in.

If you are interested, just post below that you would like to be included. Once I have some interested parties I will send everyone a PM.

I'm in! Just need to give me a little time to pull any resources to send.

Sounds great to me

I am totally interested! This is a great idea!

Count me in! Great idea; thanks for sharing it with us ;~)

This sounds like a great idea! I'm in!

Me too

I am very interested in this!

I think I will stop it here so the first round will be a manageable amount of people. After I get it going, work out the kinks, I'm sure we can add some more people.

To those who already responded: Why don't y'all PM me your email address, then I can send out a mass email to everyone all at once.

I would love to do this as well.
Let me know when you are ready for another person!

This sounds awesome!

We did this before, or something rather similar, several years ago. I don't remember who headed it up. If they see this post, maybe they can offer some tips

I'm super interested!

You can also upload music and notes to a site, on a page that is password protected. Just share the password that week. Change it, each week, if you want to.

You can leave it up there and add to it or change it. Most of us can download music from a site and notes. It may be easier, and less expensive than mailing.

I use Weebly.com, and it's free. Go to this page. allaboutpointe.weebly.com . . . I did a test and uploaded a music file and a pdf file. You can load most types of files. You click on it to download.

The password is my DDN screen name, with the underscore _.

By the way, if you go to my "teachers" page on there, I had some things to share.

I'd love to be a part of this somehow ...when you open it up again.

Is there any way we can do a password protected YouTube page? Then we can upload videos of favorite combinations, or tips and tricks, warm ups, across the floors...? All kinds of stuff and we can all upload and add to it? That's kinda fun...:)

dancerasa wrote:

Is there any way we can do a password protected YouTube page? Then we can upload videos of favorite combinations, or tips and tricks, warm ups, across the floors...? All kinds of stuff and we can all upload and add to it? That's kinda fun...:)

No, you cannot password protect. You can change the broadcast privacy option to private. Then your "specific users" will need YouTube accounts and will need to "friend" you (or vice versa).
You then edit the broadcast privacy option of the video to add the friends (up to 25) to the video. They will automatically be sent a "shared with you message". They sign into their YouTube account and they are able to watch the video.

That is an option, too, but then it limits to 25, who can view it. I don't put anything on Youtube, ever. Only Facebook, shared with friends, or my Flickr account, private, just for me to keep as a back up copy. I never share choreography, family anything, etc. I am shocked at what people put out there to the public.

There are also sites, that you pay to belong to (4shared and others) where you can upload files to share, but then again, there is a fee. That's why I do it on the free website. It's the same amount of effort but I have full control over who sees it and can change the PW at any time.

Great idea, more limited then what I am wanting. Someone else is welcome to head that up and I will contribute.

I will wait until tomorrow to see who's emails I get. Still waiting on a few of them.

I agree with dream chaser, use a website and manage users with passwords, mailing can get annoying, I never have stamps for bigger pieces.

Google sites works well too. It has ways to collaborate that make sharing easy regardless of format.

I changed my PW to DDN. Some were having issues.

Any shared information is great! A website where we can share stuff sounds very useful, if someone wants to head that up (dreamchaser ). I will happily participate.

I will still go ahead with the mailing for those who are interested, as I would like to trade entire albums of music, training DVDs, recital DVDs, programs, etc, which would be very difficult on a website.

Just sent an email to first round participators! Don't let my email go to spam or junk....title is "DDN sharing experiment".

I love love love the shared website idea! Count me in for something like this!

I'm totally in, or I would be willing to start a second group. Let me know how you do it and I can get a group going and then maybe the 2 groups can swap info?!?

We can do it one of two ways, have ONE website, that we all share, or each have our own where we control the site, and just share the password, but change it often, which I feel is better.

If anyone has trouble with it, I have no issue of putting your information on my for you to share.