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Re: [ProgSoc] PDDR



John Elliot wrote:
p.s. Just got back from dancing. I'm looking forward to this project.
Figure I might as well debrief.

Matt's in partnership with a dance instructor (Dane) and they're managing a franchised venue. The franchise owner co-ordinates similar arrangements with seven other dance venues. The franchise provides various promotional material, and is typically involved in providing venues with a float and other booking-keeping material.
Matt operates his venue one night a week, from 7pm 'til 11pm. They're in 
the process of a trial of the sale of snacks and beverages to see what 
sells (e.g. lolly bags, chips, chocolates, soft drinks, etc.). They are 
also working on marketing material and on improving venue fixtures 
(sound system, lighting, etc.) They seem to be called upon to 
co-ordinate the sale of tickets to ad-hoc dance events from time to 
time. Oh, and all the typical he-said-she-said niche-community 
small-business politics, chit-chat and activity are clearly present. :)
For managing their take, they've recently migrated from a paper-based 
system to an Excel spreadsheet that Dane knocked together a few weeks 
ago. The floor staff use a Mac laptop to record information about all 
cash transactions as they make them. IIRC there is some form of off-site 
backup system provided by Apple that secures the data. The spreadsheet 
is very simple with two worksheets, one for recording transactions, and 
another for consolidating the till.
The dance company has a 'loyalty card' programme, and the floor staff 
stamp members' cards every time they turn up for a lesson. Once a 
member's card is full of stamps they are entitled to a free lesson.
There are five coloured raffle ticket booklets used, and the colour 
codes correspond to the amount of money taken at the door. So, when 
money goes into the till, the customer gets a receipt in the form of a 
raffle-ticket chit, and the stubs in the booklet can be reconciled with 
the till at the end of the evening.
Matt would like to have the capacity to issue membership cards for his 
venue that can be adjoined to the franchised loyalty card, and such 
membership cards could then be scanned on entry, thus recording 
attendance and verifying active membership status.
The graduation of dancers is informal and the graduations are, loosely 
speaking: beginner, intermediate, intermediate-advanced, advanced. 
People tend to spend about 8 weeks as a beginner, a year or two as 
intermediate, and then the 'career' dancers peter out through the last 
two stages, the former (intermediate-advanced) tending to be the 
socialites, and the later (advanced) tending to be the competitive dancers.
The activity is as much social as it is anything else. A lot of people 
turn up just to have a good time and do some dancing. There are "free 
style" sessions during the night, and a part of Matt's strategy is to 
foster and promote this aspect, rather than solely emphasising lessons 
(which will continue to be present). The "beginner" lessons can be a bit 
of a bore for the more experienced dancers, and the more advanced 
dancing can be a little intimidating for the beginners -- so there's 
tension there. The typical format of an evening appears to be a 
beginners' lesson from one instructor, followed by a free-style session, 
followed by an intermediate lesson from another instructor -- or 
something generally along those lines.
Basically, it all seems quite do-able. The good news is that it's 
practical to develop the 'stand-alone' version of the application first, 
with a view to expanding it to be distributed down the track. That is, 
there would be considerable practical value in them having a stand-alone 
version ASAP.
Oh, and Matt owes me a copy of the Excel spreadsheet template they use 
every dance night.









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