Salsa Star Date
We’re into the middle of week 3, of having gone live, and publishing our first post about the Portland Salsa Congress. Lately, we”ve been scouring the internet trying to amass even more sites and information on anything having to do with Salsa in the Portland area- ultimately hoping that something would flip the switch for the next big idea on what we need to cover.
Most of PdxSalsa’s effort up until now has been focused on compiling the lists of all the major players in the Salsa community. So far this is what we have:
- 11 Venues
- 27 Instructors
- 11 Bands
- 12 Performance Groups
- 6 DeeJays
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Hmm...who could this be?
After having amassed the above resources, alas have we run out of steam? With these numbers as Daryle Rico, likes to say, “…There’s a Little Salsa for Everyone” in his blog. Our thought is that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface here. We have yet to go through the yellow pages and for the most part we’ve only really covered Portland based sources. As we all know, the Metro area includes towns and cities that fall within at least 3-4 counties.
Having said that though, the question that begs to be asked is, ‘is there a value to compiling a comprehensive listing of all the Salsa Instructors, Performers, Bands, etc.?’ This is really what we would like to know….Ultimately do you, as the consumer of this site, find value in this?
Or are there other directions/ efforts that we should be better spending our time on? Although, we are a volunteer effort, and enjoy doing this we’d rather produce outcomes that are useful and that the community finds value in. What’s your take? Do you have any suggestions? We would love to hear them… Please let us know if you do by responding to this post or by emailing mikocmedia@gmail.com….
Hi Miko.
From my perspective, I think your website has great value for most salseros – regardless of their skill level. I believe most experienced salseros want to be informed with what is going on in the local salsa community, and those with less experience can appreciate the “one-stop shopping” quality of your website, by finding and information about clubs, performers, lessons, and all other salsa related topics all in one place.
Unfortunately, I also believe that not everyone in the Portland salsa scene understands the concept of building unity within our community. They would rather criticize other dancers, clubs, and instructors and create their own salsa cliques. This is so sad.
We have all seen – through events like the Haitian Relief fund raisers and other events that the Portland Salsa community can achieve great things when we act as one and combine our talents and resources. It’s so pitiful that we aren’t applying that same talent and energy to expanding the size of the salsa community. If that could/would happen, everyone would benefit: the clubs would be busier, the instructors would have more students, the performance teams would have a higher talent pool to draw from, and so on and so on.
For now, I’m afraid, your effort to build community and camaraderie among Portland salseros may be somewhat unappreciated or misunderstood. But I, for one, would like to commend you for your passion and effort. If I can be of any assistance to you, I hope you will ask.
Best of luck, amigo.
Daryle
Just keep a positive attitude and be professional at all times Miko. It will payoff. Let the music and the dance bring everyone together.