LindyShock 2010

Early bird finishes, other things starts

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:12:41 +0000

In a few hours the early bird registration period finishes. As we understand it will finish when it’s midnight in … London. So one extra hours for you guys

What will happen with all the registrations? Please give us 3-5 days to evaluate all of them as we have received many and also many levels are close to finish so it won’t be an easy task.
No matter when we accept your registration – if you have registered before 1st September you will get the early bird price.

There are many important topics. We would like to focus on the hosting now. Until now no one got feedback about hosting request. Now we will work on collecting offers of the Hungarian dancers and match them with your needs. Hopefully in 2 weeks we already create bunch of pairs!

In the background

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:26:41 +0000

We are started to work on the sets, camp booklet, and many other things. In order to provide a good reception we have bought some office stuff recently.

Over 7000 e-mails

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:20:26 +0000

Yes, we have produced over 7000 e-mail for Lindy Shock this year. And we will have more
Why do we have so many? We generate e-mail when you register for the camp, book accommodation, you pay, you cancel, you have a question. We also have ’some’ mails with the teachers, among organizers, service providers, …
And when you have so many e-mail we just can’t avoid making some errors. So sometimes it happens that you get an e-mail with a meaningless or wrong content. We estimate that we have ~1-1,5% rate of wrong e-mail. That is a really low percentages – still around 100 e-mails.
Who to blame? As the signature says ‘Lindy Shock team’. Actually we still cannot finance a separate back office for registrations. So all e-mails are generated or written by Marcell. He might make some mistake. Sorry about it.
What we are doing to avoid errors? We automate more and more functions in the registration system – like doing small development every weeks. Also we generate an e-mail every time something happen with your account so we can recover from error.
And sometime we add some more functions so Marcell can make some new errors

One more thing: we have a strange database error that make the Lindy Shock web page inaccessible for 10-15 minutes sometimes. We are working on it. So if you cannot reach or web page or the registration interface please try it a bit later. Sorry about any inconvenience.

Updates and news

admin — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:21:52 +0000

We did some updates on the Classes & on the Parties pages. One important thing can be:
- we announced some basic information about competitions.
- we might do a Showcase competition – in case we have enough participants. If you are interested, contact us.

We have added a new function we have promised: you can ask a friend for paying your fee. It is a usefu one if you do not have a credit card. How it works?
- Go to your account.
- Chose payment.
- At the and of the page you will find a new function! More details there

This week we reach and pass the deadline for many participants. We will start canceling registrations without payment this week – unless you have informed us a reason and we agreed about late payment. Sorry, we have to take it seriously.

Also early bird price is valid for one more week! It is time to register to get lower price. Tell your friend as well!

Levels:
- Unless we have some cancellations the intermediate-advanced level is full.
- We have some spots left at intermediate & advanced levels
- We are working on the invited-only level where we have already ~10 couples in.

Also in the next week we will work on the following new topics & functions
- hosting
- lunch & dinner on the boat(s)
- volunteer DJs

Home Plus Hostel problem

admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 09:29:58 +0000

We have realized that Home Plus Hostel is double booking its rooms. We had a conversation with Home Plus Hostel today. They are ignoring our written contract.
So we cannot provide you these rooms. We are really sorry about it. And we definitely cannot advise you this hostel any more.

More accommodation

admin — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:21:17 +0000

We have sold out the Fortuna boat Hotel pretty fast – the hotel next to the party hotel. So now we are working to book an other Hotel Boat! So more people can walk to the party and back in 30 seconds!

One more teacher couple to annonuce

admin — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:15:24 +0000

We are happy to announce that Hasse & Marie will participate Lindy Shock 2010. They have joined our teachers’ list. We are really happy!

Back from Herrang

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:56:32 +0000

We are back from Herrang. Was good to see many of you!
We had lots of talk about the camp with many dancers around the world. Many dancers told us that they plan to register in the future. About registering:
- we have some places on Intermediate. We will have 2 levels
- we have few places on Intermediate-Advanced. We will have 3 levels
- We have 3 full levels of Advances. We are still thinking about starting a fourth one. One thing is sure: for a while we cannot accept followers to this level to make it even. We accept couples however for a while we cannot accept single advanced followers from teams and advanced followers with partner on a different level.
- we will have one invited only levels.
- we have really long waiting queues for follower on all levels.
- we do not plan to stop accepting dancers for parties. However if we receive as much registration as in the previous month, we have to think about stop selling party tickets.

Previously we were thinking about a ladies jazz class. Our Herrang experiences are so awful (having way more followers at parties) that we have decided to not have such classes. Sorry guys. We would like to ensure great parties for everyone.

We receive payments every day. We have administrated all payment we received in Herrang, by Paypal, by bank transfer and be internet card payment. If you haven’t got any feedback please contact us. We also would like to state that we cannot advise bank transfer payment as most of the time our bank deduct lots of money that you have to pay again when you arrive. Sorry about it. We advise internet card payment that works for most of you fine.

We almost forgot! We mentioned that we will have at least 5 levels of Lindy hop! So now we are looking for one more teacher couple. Hopefully we can soon announce them! Also we are working on some more bands, taster teachers, …

In the last days we have work hard on our backlog. Again we believe that we have answered most of the e-mail we have got. Please contact us if we forgot you! Actually we are over 5000 e-mail by now. CRAZY!

Payment and other news

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:26:48 +0000

We have initiated new the payment methods on the registration interface. You can select from 4 different payment METHODs:
- Paying by credit card
- Paying in Herrang by cash during weeks 4 & 5
- Paying by bank transfer
- Paying by paypal will be available in a few day also
- We also plan to give you the possibility to ask a friend of you to pay your fee by credit card. It will start in some weeks. However a friend of you already can pay your fee by bank transfer.
Before initiating your payment please read everything related carefully.

Currently we have long waiting list for followers at all levels. If you or any of your friends would like to get in a partner or a team membership is required.
We have so many registrations (thanks!) that it is possible that in some weeks some levels will be full.

We have asked the followers on waiting list whether they are interested. We have received a very positive feedback about it.
Currently we are contacting teachers for this class.
However we do not want to ruin anyone’s parties. We are carefully evaluating the number of leaders and followers who will be at the parties. Based on that we might not start this class(es) – in case it threatens the leader-follower evenness of parties.
We will make the decision around mid August based on all the registrations we receive.

Payment is coming

admin — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 22:05:42 +0000

Today we have received the good news from our bank that they accept our request. So we can accept credit card payment now on. It will take a week? to integrate the new solution to our web page.
However the payment will start earlier. Why? Because of the Herrang payment option. It is getting too close. So this week we enable the payment page (you will see it at your account). The options:
- paying in Herrang by cash – there is a limited number of dancers who can pay like this. First come first served. It is limited as we do not want to handle too much money. Actually what we collect there we immediately give to our teacher who will be in Herrang, so no money will stay at us.
- paying by credit card – it will be probably the cheapest payment option. When you chose this we will direct you to the web page of K&H – one of the biggest local bank. There you can initiate the payment. Means that we won’t have access to your card’s data.
- paying by paypal – probably the most expensive payment option. Why? Because we can withdrawn our money only in Hungarian Forint – and Paypal has a ridiculous exchange rate. So we do not advise you this.
- paying by transfering to our bank account – we just can’t estimate the cost of the transfer. The basic rule – if we receive less you have to pay the difference by cash when you arrive. Last year many cases our bank was deducting 10 euros from the transfer – however not all the times.

Is it urgent? We will provide you enough time for paying. And we start to count when the page is on-line. Also we inform all registered dancers when it is on-line.