Swing News

WhatStep – Your Dance Move Assistant App: The Story

28.03.2016 by Chris

This is a guest post by my friend Roger Schmidlin. He created a dance move assistant app for your mobile called WhatStep. So, let's jump into it.

How It Began

My name is Roger Schmidlin and I have been Lindy Hoppin’ for over 20 years.

I even ran my own dancing school in Perth, Australia. On my path, I have been to lots of workshops and dancing classes.

But I had one big problem: I could not retain all these new learned moves in my head. I tried to write them down, but after a while I had no clue anymore what these notes meant.

I took videos, but they ended up in a big mess on my computer. I know that many dancers share the same problem.

So, I finally wanted to solve this. My mobile app WhatStep was born.

The Making Of

I started the development in March 2015. I was pretty naive then to think it would only take me a few weeks to get it done. There is so much that goes into an app.

My background is software engineering but I have never done any mobile apps. It was all new and exciting for me. My goal was to develop it for Android and iOS, so I used the development platform Xamarin.

The most effort went into the development platform itself (which was in a beta state and had many bugs on its own), dealing with the new technology and publishing it to the stores.

After 6 months I had my first versions in the app stores. It was still buggy and in its very basic form. Because of user’s feedback, I was able to improve my app quite a bit and tailor it to the dance market.

At the moment I have about 600 installs on Android and just over 400 on iOS. Out of these are about 7% that actually purchase the app. 30% of my sales goes to the stores. And you have to use quite a bit of paid advertising in order for your app to be seen.

My demo video (see below) was totally seen about 30.000 times (Facebook and Youtube together).

Some people think you become rich with writing apps. The above numbers are for one year's work. You do the maths. The apps are available on Android and iOS.

Here Is How WhatStep Works

Take your mobile phone to your classes and video at the end with WhatStep
Add personal notes to the video and give it a tag (Lindy Hop, Workshop, Frankie Manning)
Some schools do this already for you and will send you the complete recap collection via their newsletter
Watch your videos in slow motion or even frame by frame
You can also import video clips from Youtube. You can slow them down too
Once you have a cool video playlist, share your cloud videos with your friends
Check out my demo video to get a quick overview on how it works

Demo Video

The Future Of WhatStep

I put my heart and soul in this app to make it the best dance assistant app on this planet.

Many of you have already given me lots of feedback and ideas for more features.

I want the community to be part of this. Make it your app. I like WhatStep to move towards social interaction.

Features like endorsing friends, nominating moves and even having a move dictionary are on my list.

Get involved and join our Facebook Group.

Herrang Dance Camp 2012 – Promotional Video

28.12.2011 by Chris

30 Years Herräng Dance Camp

Herrang Dance Camp (HDC) will celebrate the 30th anniversary in 2012.

Just today, the promotional video was released.

The video was produced by ReelMacoy

Herrang Dance Camp 2012 will happen from 30th June – 4th August.
The registration will start today, register at http://herrang.com.

I can't wait to be back in Herräng and I'm sure this anniversary edition will be especially unique!

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Staff DJ at Herräng Dance Camp 2011

Shim Sham Flash Mobs in Bern

17.10.2011 by Chris

Last Saturday, 15. October 2011, the Lindy Hop association Swing Machine in Bern Switzerland organized two flash mobs at the train station in the middle of the city. Here are the two clips:

Shim Sham No. 1

Shim Sham No. 2

I especially like Shim Sham No. 1 because of the location. The destination board in the background is quite impressive.

Which one is your favourite?

Actually, we should also organize swing flash mobs in Zürich!

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The Savoy King – Feature Documentary Is Finished!

25.08.2011 by Chris

As announced today on the Facebook Page, “THE SAVOY KING: Chick Webb and the Music That Changed America” is finally finished!

THE SAVOY KING is a feature documentary about the Swing-era drummer-bandleader Chick Webb, Ella Fitzgerald, and Harlem's Savoy Ballroom.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this documentary!

CLIP: “Ella Fitzgerald Vignette”

This is a clip from the new feature film.
Interviews with Norma Miller, Frankie Manning and Van Alexander, among others!

Produced by Jeff Kaufman of Floating World Pictures
Edited by Jamal El-Amin
Graphics Wizard: Patrick Connelly
Post-production Supervisor: Alita Renée Holly

Link: Website The Savoy King

Swing Elite – A New Social Network for Swing Dance & Music Addicts

21.07.2011 by Chris

Three days ago, I read the first time about Swing Elite – The Social Network:
Silvia Palazzolo was spreading the word on Facebook.

Curious as I am, I promptly joined the network – as number 43 🙂 – and checked it out.

Three questions appeared to me pretty soon. So I thought, I'm going to ask them Silvia directly.

Interview with Silvia Palazzolo

Silvia, who exactly is behind Swing Elite?

Once upon a time Bruno Rossi and Vincenzo Buldrini were smoking a cigarette and Bruno told Vinz: why dont' we make a swing social network? And Vinz was like… Mmmmm.. don't know! Maybe, why not?

Then days went by and suddently Vinz texted me telling me he was ready. Ready for what – I asked. Ready to start our project. I was so excited and brought some amazing ideas under Bruno's supervision, and Vinz challenge after challenge brought them to reality. And today the network is open and new functions are added everyday thanks to your enthusiasm.

Now what? Now its your turn.

Who is the swing elite?
It's you.

What is your main goal with Swing Elite? Everybody is using Facebook, why should one change to Swing Elite?

Of course we don't even think to compete with Facebook! 🙂

We don't think people should choose between SE and FB; both networks should be used in a complementary way. Swing Elite will complete FB and vice versa! For this reason, we're going to complement SE with FB more and more in the future, so that they can be used together.

The big difference and the reason for which a swing dancer, musician, teacher or addict should use Swing Elite, is that it allows you to find swing events, swing related websites, new friends with exactly the same interest as yours, while facebook is for everybody, and has every kind of events and groups.

Swing Elite is not a boring platform where people can just read and watch what's going on, its users are the most important part of it! They can join events, add their comments and their opinion, rate them, and maybe in the future they might be able to take advantage of special offers on these events, thought and dedicated to them exclusively!

At the same time they can find out about new events they didn't know about – it's not so easy to find specific events on Facebook, if you are not a friend to all the organizers and the dancers in the world… on Facebook, at the end, one gets to know about the most advertised and popular events. Here on SE, all the events are advertised in the same way, you can see them day by day as they are getting closer, and you can interact with them whilst having fun.

So, our goal is to put together all the features of a portal/platform with those of a social network, giving the users' opinions and interests the importance they deserve!

We aim to bring together people with the same interests and to entertain them with the typical social network features, whilst providing interesting and easy to find information!

For now we provide events and websites, besides pictures and videos, but we're just at the beginning and a lot of new things and interesting tools are on their way! For example, we're already working on a mobile version of the website, so that people can keep in touch through their cell phones, or find things to do in every corner of the world, just having a look at their telephone.

“Swing Elite” indicates only a certain group of swing dancers resp. only the better ones. Why was this name chosen?

We posted an explanation of the name on our forum here on the website. But, maybe what follows is easier to understand.

Yeah, this point has been controversial and we didn't expect it. Maybe our concept of elite has been missunderstood: we are a group of people with the same interest: swing. And we are here to have fun together.

The main idea is: yes, its an elite (because not everybody all over the world is interested in swing!) but its also open for everyone who wants to be a part of it! its not like we're examinating subscriptions or doing selections: everyone is welcome! You wanna be part of the swing elite? Simply press the join button and you're in! You don't wanna be in the swing elite? Well, you don't know what you're missing 🙂

Elite has not a negative meaning: we are not talking just to the best swing dancers or musicians or whatever. That has been misunderstood. We're talking to everybody who's part of the swing world. Which is itself an elite, because not all the world is part of it. Do you understand what I mean?

If you allow me too, I would like to use this little interview to explain better who we are and what we do also to other people.

We have great ideas to develope this social network: new languages, new tools, and a lot more. We think that everyone should really join it.

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The interview was held in writing.

Now my question to my readers: Is it necessary to have another social network? Are you joining Swing Elite? Leave a comment!

UPDATE
It seems that Swing Elite couldn't attract enough dancers to keep the service up. The website is not available anymore.