At the core DanceMinder is a collection of dances. That may not sound like much and it would be understandable if you were thinking that if you wanted a collection of dances, you could buy a book. DanceMinder is actually much more than just a collection of dances.
DanceMinder was started because I (Michael) wanted a more dynamic way to display the dances and I wanted to be able to easily carry around all the dances I like without that being a small stack of reference cards like this:
or a large stack of books like well, imagine a large stack of books.
Over the course of several years we had built up a stack of laminated reference cards with just enough information that we could call or participate in a dance we didn’t know cold. Unfortunately as the stack grew it took more time to flip through it, looking for a specific dance. Alphabetizing helped but the sets seem to center around the letters ‘c’ and ‘s’ and on the dance floor it takes a while to page through them. Especially when Michael doesn’t put them back in order after an event. 🙂
We only ever had one copy of the cards so on the occasions where we weren’t in the same set or one of us was calling and the other dancing, one person was just out of luck unless we had the time beforehand to print out another copy.
It’s also not that unusual to reach into your pocket and take out your notes only to have them scatter across the floor after they slip out of your hand.
I wanted to be able to share these notes more easily with friends and students, so I started coding up the database and presentation and DanceMinder was born.