How to get more involved in Shuffling, Meetups, etc?

I was just wondering how to get more involved, I'd like to start getting out there more and getting some really unique merchandise like suspenders, etc. and at least hopefully go to a meet-up and meet some really cool people! But I don't really see people planning meet-ups and I don't exactly meet many shufflers often.

Time to get something organised then I reckon

How about we start a campaign to get some meet-ups happening in the USA ?

No time like now; I'm game.

Plus having the Global Shuffle name behind it would be nicer than ''organized by some random guy''

haha, yes you're right Czarina.

How about I set up a new section in the meet-up area, like Find A Meetup In Your Area, or something, so forum members can post threads for their area.

The threads can be that you are 'planning' to hold a meetup, so you can recruit more people to help get it going.

I'll set up a meet-up tips section too, I'll post some behind the scenes stories from events we've done and pass on some secrets to drawing the type of crowd you want - ie devoid of dickheads.

To start straight away just let your trusted friends know about it, to think about likely meetup sites, and give the sites code names. This is to guard against sabotage from the word go.

Let them know we're setting up the forum section and we'll send the links or they can check back or even become forum members if they want.

To start promoting, you can do compilation vids of Global Shuffle meetups, the 4MR vids, I'm sure the other forum meetups would be happy to include them to show what a 'meetup' is, to people who have never seen real shuffling before.

If you come across meetup vids of any forum members online, please feel free to post the vid in their forum studio, to make it easier to find.

When you are ready, we can set up your own forum studio to do the same thing and post details etc of upcoming meetups, your own vids/art etc.

You also get a home page, which can be the spot to put your meetup flyer artwork contact links etc.

https://mso1.forumotion.com/f17-shuffle-studios

Here's the new Meetup section. These are for MSO approved meetups, so basically any forum member in good standing Pro, Studio Owner and members level 1 and higher, can post their meetup details or start a thread for planning a meetup.

Any questions about it, I'm sure there'll be some please post in this new section so we can keep it all together.

New Section: Find Meetup In Your Area
https://mso1.forumotion.com/f18-find-meetups-in-your-area

RULES
https://mso1.forumotion.com/t1757-meetup-listing-rules

awesome thank you so much Garry! I'm glad I could contribute to some new things in Mso1!!

No Probs, and when you're talking to adults or local authorities and they want to know who I am, send them to www.globalshuffle.com

and my home page, which has all the bio info that they generally want know about and my contact details etc.

https://mso1.forumotion.com/t1298-garry-shepherd-home-page

Also, am I allowed to film in malls and stuff? From what I know a mall is private property and they can kick you out, etc. And I was wondering if I can film myself having a good time for documenting purposes, whether it's documenting or dancing, more information about this would help.

yeah you need to check with local laws, and malls and their carparks are usually private property.

So if you approach the mall management first, let them know what you're doing, they'll let you know about filming. Generally they'll let you film if you don't interupt their normal day-to-day business and you get a shot of the malls name and give them a thanks in the credits, which we're happy to do to promote malls that like shufflers.

While you have the mall managements attention for a few moments, you could also ask if they'd be interested in hosting the local competition for the very first American Melbourne Shuffle Championships. Which we're hoping to tour and film in 2013, and I'm planning on coming to America by boat for it. I can't fly because of DVT issues, but I can travel by sea and train.

So I'm planning on filming shuffling on ships decks around the world, just like the Welsh mariners did 800+ years ago, because that's the very first shuffle dance floor, an ocean going floating dance floor, under the star lit sky on a balmy evening. So I'm arranging events when in town so locals can shuffle on the ships deck and see screenings of our latest filming on the ship for GS2 in the ships cinema.

So if the mall is interested in hosting a local comp/meetup in the Mall entertainment stage area, we'd love to include them in GS2

Check out this mall in JB Malaysia 2008

Wow that's amazinggg!! I think if I get up to speed more with my events then I could really organize these cool events.

I think if I participated in the first American Melbourne Shuffle Championships I would be so honored, really.

In these competitions though, how much dance time do you get? From what I understand if you keep going too long you get tired, etc.

While we are on the subject of malls, do you want a good number of people watching or just a mall to host? Because I live near some big malls and there is a smaller mall where my grandma lives that I visit weekly, just wanted to get an idea of the environment you wanted. The malls where I live are HUGE, and there's tons of shoppers daily, but that also makes me question about the difficulty of people getting there or people who don't live near there.

With the malls you can do both, say have a smaller local league that meets more frequently and do bigger regional special events at a bigger centre, one that can accomodate a bigger crowd. It's the sort of thing that would slot into their inhouse entertainment schedules, so it could be during school holidays for instance. There could be half a dozen smaller leagues meeting up at the bigger event and make a day of it. And you could move the bigger event around to different malls too, have a different theme or just social meetups with say a screening of GS1 at one of the mall cinema's as part of the day.

It's best to adapt the event to local customs and culture, so you're relevant to the local audience. Melbourne can be a bit of a culture shock to most people

Dancing times, usually you get say 2 minutes from start to finish per round, and crews might get 3-5 mins so they can include solos. You'd have as many rounds as needed according to your comp enrolment. There is usually an enrolment audition where you are rated for appropriate ranking. Beginners Intermediate Pro etc. Depending on your local area, so the Championship can accomodate all levels of shufflers.

We'll have a standardised format for the National comp, which will be based on the local competitions input when we set it up. We'll be including live online screening and voting in the MSO ARENA as well. So there'll be different categories and we want to make them fun too.