Not all the BIDA Board members can make it to all the dances, but it's good for everyone to know what's going on with the dance. After each BIDA dance one of the board members will write up a short dance report to fill in the rest. An example:

Last night we had Dave Eisenstadter calling to Party of Three: Neil Pearlman (piano), Jenna Moynihan (fiddle), Joe DiPaulo (drums). I was running sound, Ben S-H hall managed.

Another Mason, Jeff, was there for the hall instead of Fred or Chuck. He was nice, but this was his first time and he didn't know a few things like how to unlock the front door (so we left it propped).

A reporter from WBUR came. They're doing something where once an hour they have a short (~1min) piece about something in the local area, and they wanted to do one on us.

I bought popsicles before the dance; enough for this time and next time. We ran out of cups just before the break so I ran out and got a very large number. We should be ok for the next ~3-4 months.

This cold weather is really nice for ventilation: one window open with a pair of fans was enough to keep the hall feeling good.

I talked to Ben S-H about being on the board and he's interested.

Attendance was very good at 143, we made $115, and we got six email signups. Many of the additional people were first-time dancers, and Dave handled that quite well.

I have the cash box and will bring it to the next dance.

There's a lot you get from being at the dance in person, however, that's hard to capture in writing. The distribution of faces you recognize, the feeling in the hall, feedback from dancers about how the series is going. These dance reports seem to help, but I do wonder whether a smaller board that consistently came to dances would be better. BIDA does (and especially, intends to do) many things other than dances, so a dance committee, a subset of the board who are at most of the dances, might be healthy.