Our theme for this year's convention is MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN! Certainly a catchy slogan – but it raises the obvious question – WHAT, exactly, should we make happen? Where, exactly, are we trying to go? We have become increasingly dismayed by the obvious decline in our activity, and we are casting about – some might say frantically casting about – to find the path to better things. We want to take steps – the right steps along the right path. But what is that path? The thing about a path is it has a beginning and an end, and you follow it putting one foot in front of the other, moving from the beginning to the end. Finding the beginning of our path is easy. We are where we are. Wherever we're going, we're starting from here and from now. But where is the end? Do we even know, collectively, where we would like to get to? There are many who would like to go back to better times – the good old days. They believe our goal should be a return to the way things were when we had a convention with 40,000 dancers. But – realistically - that will never happen. The world has changed – transformed really – since those days. We are starting from a different place, and even if we are wildly successful in reinvigorating square dancing, it will assuredly look much different in the future than it did in the past. It will be shaped by many factors, some within our control, but many not. In fact, it will undoubtedly be strongly influenced by things that do not even exist now, and which we cannot even imagine. How then, can we determine the path to start down – the first steps we should take? My feeling is that the idea of a “path” is the wrong metaphor. As a community, we have collectively some fuzzy ideas about what “better” means and we know we would like to go there. But “fuzzy” means we do not have a strong consensus on details – details being the steps and milestones we would use to follow a “path”. And, as I said earlier, even if we had a clear idea of exactly where we wanted to go, it is unlikely we would get there. As the saying goes – stuff happens. So, let's rethink how we look at making plans to move forward. I think a more apt metaphor for what we need to do at this point is planting a garden. The thing about gardens is that we prepare some ground, sow some seeds, do some watering and weeding, but much of what happens is beyond our control. We can set some things in motion, but we can't be entirely sure how they develop, and it's not uncommon to be surprised – sometimes in a good way, sometimes not so much. Other factors such as the amount of rain, sun, bugs, rabbits, and many more will have a huge impact on what turns out. But thinking along these lines gives us some guidance on how to make a start on our task. The first step is to decide what kind of garden we're trying to create: flower garden?, vegetable garden?, Chinese garden?, herb garden? For us, this translates into ensuring we have a clear understanding of what our purpose as an organization actually is. Last year we had a professionally facilitated focus session to review and update the CALLERLAB mission. That session did indeed result in a new mission statement and it was approved by the Board Of Governors during the Wednesday afternoon meeting. The new mission statement is really an affirmation of the existing mission, but it is much abbreviated Page 1 of 4

– only 12 words vs the previous 117. Do you know what the new mission statement is? Can you recite it? Have you been reading DIRECTION for the past year?? To foster the art of square dance calling, and improve caller skills. The purpose of having a concise statement of our organizational mission is so that we can measure every decision we make against it and decide whether it supports the mission or not. When initiating something new, be it a committee or a project or a document, whatever, we should be able to describe how it supports that mission. Those of you who have read any editions of DIRECTION this year will already know that we have identified a current top organizational priority based on our mission statement. Since it is hard for square dance calling to flourish without dancers, our top priority for the foreseeable future is to recruit and retain more new dancers. With a crisp and clear mission statement we have decided on the nature of our garden, and we have turned over some soil. Now it's time to start planting seeds. For the past year the EC and the BOG have been planting seeds based on how well they support our mission and current top priority: 1. The Lesson Grant program allows clubs that have graduated new dancers to claim a $250 grant. This year the EC has allocated $5000 towards supporting this program. The application form and rules are available on our website. 2. The Club Development Grant is aimed at helping new square dance groups get launched. Thus far, grants have been awarded to the Twin City Spinners, a new group starting up at Central Maine Community College, and another group starting up at University of California, Berkeley. The differing circumstances new groups encounter make it hard for us to create a hard-and-fast set of rules for this program, so for now the EC is evaluating applications on a case-by-case basis. To apply send a request to the HO. 3. The CL website has been slowly evolving to become more central to the everyday operations of our organization. The EC has decided to accelerate that process and enhance the website to take on functions such as online voting, merchandise purchase, and membership renewal. An outside company, Kansas Website Services, has been engaged to support that effort and also provide computer maintenance services to the Home Office. 4. The New Initiatives program is being reinvigorated to collect more data and organize it into a searchable form. New incentives for contributing are being considered – for example, a contest with a prize for the best submission in a given period. If you have ideas please come and talk to us. All of this is just the very earliest steps – we haven't even planted a whole row of seeds yet. Which ones will grow and which ones wither? Who knows? The future won't be like the past – the world has changed. Wherever we're going, we have to start from where we are. And where we arrive will be the result of our collective actions or inactions. Page 2 of 4

One of the fun things about a garden is looking at it after all the planting is done and imagining what it might look like when things start to grow. We have lots more seeds to plant, but let's pause for a moment and take a fanciful journey into the future. What might our garden turn into? How might our garden grow over the next few years? Imagine with me …. The realization dawns widely that MWSD, as we conceive it today, is actually more complicated than we admit. It requires more training and experience than most people are willing to invest in a casual recreation. We return to our roots and start to offer more “big tent” dances that allow anyone to walk in off the street and have a fun evening. They could be patterned on the ABC idea or the Community Dance program, perhaps the Nest experiment presented at last year's convention, or maybe something entirely new. These dances are run on a weekly basis but do not require regular attendance. There is no emphasis or pressure to move on to taking a “class” and learning more complicated stuff. Many callers call nothing else, but are nevertheless viewed as full-fledged and respected members of the community of square dance callers. People who attend these dances are considered to be full-fledged square dancers. The re-establishment of “big tent” dances serves to build a growing population of people who have experienced and enjoyed something called “square dancing”. Most of these people have no idea that square dancing might have additional elements, although a few will, of course, be curious. And we do indeed have something for the curious and the restless. Maybe we call it “Mainstream” - or maybe we come up with a more engaging name for it. We gain deeper insight into what skills and abilities are needed to be a successful Mainstream dancer. Our message in the past has been that anyone can do it, which is demonstrably untrue. True, we can bring non-dancers in off the street and give them a fun evening, but the nature of the dance changes dramatically as we move through the Basic and Mainstream programs. To be a successful Mainstream dancer, a person needs to have several essential skills, for most of which we provide no explicit training. We expect people to pick them up “on the fly”, or to have innate talent. For example, they need to know left from right. We regard that as a trivial skill possessed by almost everyone, but in reality a significant portion of the population struggles with it. They have to think about it, which is a problem when making decisions at 125 beats per minute. They also have to be able to visualize formations and their position in them. They have to be able to identify sub-formations: people in pairs, groups of 4, groups of 6, etc. They have to be able to find centers of rotation: between two adjacent dancers, between pairs of dancers, or groups of 4. There are more, but you get the idea. These sorts of skills underlie the ability to Circulate, Trade, Run, and Cast Off, which are the keystones to the choreography we use at Mainstream and beyond. This deeper academic understanding informs future caller training, and through those callers, future dancer training. We realize that the people who want something “more” than what they find in the “big tent” square dances are relatively scarce and we become more insightful about sifting them out of the general population. We realize that MWSD (as we currently practice it) requires a certain degree of fanaticism – a willingness to commit to regular weekly lessons over a period of several months, then a willingness to attend as many dances and festivals as possible to hone the skills imparted during lessons. We get better at recruiting the ones who will do well without making the rest feel that enjoying “big tent” dances represents some sort of failure. Page 3 of 4

We start to develop objective measures of dance competence that can be used to test whether an individual has the foundation skills necessary to succeed at a given set of lessons. We develop methods for applying those measures in our classes. Our graduation certificates start to mean more than “paid all their fees”. Square dance competitions start to become more common. While only a small percentage of MWSDers are interested in doing it competitively, the performance levels observed during competitions serve to calibrate standards for what is possible and what can be expected of people at various levels of expertise. This understanding feeds back into our objective performance measures and makes them more effective. Since dancers in each program have had their skills objectively measured they can feel confident they belong there. Since the range of variation of skills for any given program is much narrower, callers can much more effectively “call to the floor” and provide an experience that is neither boring nor overwhelming, yet interesting for all dancers. The dance experience becomes more enjoyable for all dancers. Of course, there will always be a small group of especially enthusiastic and talented dancers who stand out. They get identified as the club's team for the local square dance competition. They train extensively. Competitions become common at the local, regional, and national levels. Eventually, an annual World Square Dance Championship comes into being. People come from many countries to compete. The spectacle attracts a large audience. Bookies start to take bets on who will win. Broadcast rights are sold. Eventually, a professional International Square Dance League is formed. A new TV show is launched: Square Dancing With The Stars. The Olympics realizes it is missing out on something and installs Square Dance events at both the summer and winter games. Dancers with their “ice worm” dangle compete at the Winter Games and dancers with their “beach bunny” dangle compete at the Summer Games. I'm not sure what year it is now, but some time a fair distance into the future. There are millions of square dancers of one sort or another all around the world. Most use it as a casual recreation, like going to a movie or the theater. They dance every once in a while. There are millions more who don't dance at all, but have seen it and know what it is. They know about it because competitive dancing has become a spectator sport (if golf can be a spectator sport, don't tell me square dancing can't). There are hundreds of thousands who dance competitively and many local, regional, and national leagues. There are professional leagues. People start to kvetch about the obscene amount of money professional Square Dancers make, but they continue to pay outrageous prices for tickets anyway. Some will say this tongue-in-cheek projection is a fantasy, others a nightmare. It doesn't really matter because far more likely than not, the seeds we plant today will grow into something entirely different. But, if we plant no seeds at all, what is most likely is that square dancing will continue on its current course. There won't be millions of dancers in the future, maybe there will be none. If we stir ourselves to make changes we can't be sure what will happen. But if we do nothing the current trend doesn't look pretty. So – everyone – start thinking about what seeds you can plant. Hopefully, you heard some ideas during your time here: try some of them out when you go home. Or maybe run for the BOG. Or indicate interest in serving as a committee officer. Get more involved in committee projects. In other words: MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN. Page 4 of 4