San Francisco Salsa Congress 2011

Yupuhuh - you can tear him down or be constructive. You are being a bully, I think inadvertently and unintentionally. Putting yourself out there and having the guts to create a generalization or analysis and asking for feedback on a public forum requires a lot of courage. Perhaps we and the salsa subculture would be better served by op-eds like these, but with constructive support. If you think you know better, then try to coach instead of telling someone they suck (metaphorically).
 
My 2c - SFO Congress was underwhelming. For those of us who were there for the love of dancing, about 3 hours or less per night was abysmal. The overall event coordination and schedule management made me feel like I was back in a third world country with no regard for timeliness. Social dancing didn't start till 1am (per schedule it was supposed to go at midnight - which IMO is a bad idea anyway).

They would be served well by taking a leaf from NYC congress' playbook. Or even Vancouver salsa festival which is fast becoming known as a great event, and has impeccable logistics.

Willie Colon was great - and it was a great choice. As usual, they did some things right - wonderfully right. Cafe with food, early am breakfast, choice of ballroom come to mind.
 
quixotedlm said:
Yupuhuh - you can tear him down or be constructive. You are being a bully, I think inadvertently and unintentionally. Putting yourself out there and having the guts to create a generalization or analysis and asking for feedback on a public forum requires a lot of courage. Perhaps we and the salsa subculture would be better served by op-eds like these, but with constructive support. If you think you know better, then try to coach instead of telling someone they suck (metaphorically).
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Of course I am, look at this history of the poster, thanks, quix
 
quixotedlm said:
Yupuhuh - you can tear him down or be constructive. You are being a bully, I think inadvertently and unintentionally. Putting yourself out there and having the guts to create a generalization or analysis and asking for feedback on a public forum requires a lot of courage. Perhaps we and the salsa subculture would be better served by op-eds like these, but with constructive support. If you think you know better, then try to coach instead of telling someone they suck (metaphorically).
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Quix, you overrate me, I am being a bully very much intentionally. Please look at the post history... You come on this forum and ask for feedback without willingness to respond? That's not asking for critique... I'm intimately familiar with these reviews posted by the poster of this same name from other, older forums. Again I want to say that I do agree, but if you want to come here and post a synopsis with a link instead of an educated summary then to be honest, you are just shennaginizing... You want something, come back and post something. Don't worry Quix, this isn't aimed at you at all... Also I mostly agree with your observations about this congress but, again, I will get to that later.
 
Yupuhhuh said:
Quix, you overrate me, I am being a bully very much intentionally. Please look at the post history... You come on this forum and ask for feedback without willingness to respond? That's not asking for critique... I'm intimately familiar with these reviews posted by the poster of this same name from other, older forums. Again I want to say that I do agree, but if you want to come here and post a synopsis with a link instead of an educated summary then to be honest, you are just shennaginizing... You want something, come back and post something. Don't worry Quix, this isn't aimed at you at all... Also I mostly agree with your observations about this congress but, again, I will get to that later.
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Like.
 
I pretty much enjoyed this years SF Salsa Congress. I decided to volunteer for the first time and worked two security shifts, one on Friday afternoon and one on Sunday morning. It was pretty easy enjoyable work and I got a discount on a full Congress pass. I'll probably do it again next year.

I had a cold earlier in the week so I skipped Cocomo's. In past years most regulars avoided Cocomo's on Congress Pre-party nights so that isn't unusual.

I have to agree that this year's Congress did not get much advanced promotion.

I saw a lot of regulars there both Friday and Saturday. There were a few people I didn't see but not everyone can go every year.

On Sunday morning the staff at the registration desk said that Saturday night was a huge success thanks to Willie Colon. They were still selling tickets up to 2am. I'm not a late night person so I was a little bummed that Willie Colon only played after the second set of performances. Didn't the big name guest artists play two sets starting earlier after the first set of performances in past years?

Yes the amount of social dancing between 8pm - midnight is pretty short but that is the traditional format for this conference. Once a year I don't mind watching performances.

I did not go to any workshops this year which is OK with me since I don't get much out of them though I do usually like David Stein's workshops. Missed his because I was working security.

For me, the second year in a row, the most entertaining events of the Congress are the Open and Pro Jack & Jill contests. These alone are worth the price of admission.
 
Here are some brief thoughts on the 2011 SF Congress

- I don’t know if they always did a ‘meet the teachers’ thing on Friday but it seemed to work in getting a lot of the teachers out dancing Friday night, which was probably the best night for dancing. Saturday there was like 2000 people and things were totally crowded. Sunday there seemed to be very few people, fewer than I ever remembered and it was actually a bit difficult sometime to secure a dance.

- Pacific Mambo Orchestra on Friday was very good, Lucky 7 later on Friday was alright but nothing great. Saturday Pepe and his Orchestra were alright while Willie Colon played really well I thought.

- To follow up on that note it seems that (probably financial) reasons the musical card isn’t as star-studded as it has been in the past. Two (three if you count Thursday) were local while one was from LA with only one international performer. Another interesting difference was this year I don’t believe there were any out of town DJ’s. I do like our DJ’s, but it WAS cool to have a few out of towners ‘mix it up’ so to speak.

- One annoying thing was I was going to get a ticket for 90 bucks, however I attended event that was supposed to get me 15 more dollars off. Of course when I tried to contact the people at the congress, or PB&G (congress organizers) I got no response, after waiting for a response pre registration was closed down and I ended up having to pay the full 105 price. Very annoying, if you have a website with a contact us, please learn how to get back a person quickly.

- Another annoying thing: and I’m sure they do this everywhere. Please, in the brochure have set times for the performers coming up on stage. I understand not doing this on the website before and yeah I know you want to hold everyone hostage for the entire set but the fact is that most people will watch everything or nothing. Trying to scour out the small percentage of people that will actually show up for a certain show and then leave is minimal. The first thing having a set time for each performer does is create a professional aura, every show I’ve ever been to gives you a very clear timetable and arrangement of performances. The second thing this will do will help keep them on time. I felt on Sunday things went really poorly and ran way over.

- Kudos to them actually having comfortable chairs, man those chairs were nice.

- I saw (momentarily) a dance circle with Marco Ferrigno in it, and I wondered “What the hell has this guy done, really?” but it was cool to see that the person he was leading was local ‘celeb’ rather than some other ‘brand’ name.

- As for me I was able to dance pretty much entirely with people from out of town which was my main goal. I had a couple of near-perfect ultra amazing dances, one with this girl from Texas (houston?) and one with Alien. Then there there were a few really good dances with some Japanese followers and also Isabel from the Cobo Brothers. I sort've lamed out asking her to dance on saturday, then never saw her again. Watching her and James Cobo throwdown to a live mambo was very entertaining. Mostly I ended up dancing with mostly average to good dancers. Overall, not very inspiring but I hardly expect that, but at least they were mostly technicaly sound dancers. It seemed like I was dancing with mostly performers… I don’t know about that though.

- The Bachata room was cool, nearly dead on Friday night but cool enough to be interesting on Saturday and Sunday, definitely think advertising it helped it out.

- I don’t really expect much from this congresses anymore as it seems that a) the musical talent has diminished slightly b) I’ve long given up on the idea that all these celeb dancers will come out and actually dance for more than a single hour. Quite a few did this weekend and I was glad for it. So it was about what I expected and if I had paid the price of 90 I would have been solidly content. I think I'll give this a 2 out of four star rating, i thought about adding 1/2 a star but that would mostly be based on me being local and it being more affordable and easy to get there.
 
salsamarty said:
I have to agree that this year's Congress did not get much advanced promotion.
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Ah yeah you hit on something I meant to mention, for me it's almost disrespectful how late this website always goes up and I only knew Willie Colon would be there, what a month ago? Seriously, start setting things up, start posting updates more, show some customer service, it's almost as if they know they'll get a halfway decent draw so they don't bother to really promote. This one aspect really bothers me and points to the idea of just being interested in the cash flow of it.


salsamarty said:
On Sunday morning the staff at the registration desk said that Saturday night was a huge success thanks to Willie Colon. They were still selling tickets up to 2am. I'm not a late night person so I was a little bummed that Willie Colon only played after the second set of performances. Didn't the big name guest artists play two sets starting earlier after the first set of performances in past years?
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I do want to commend Willie Colon, even though he only played one set it lasted for like two hours (until 3 am in the morning) by far the longest live set I've ever seen. But I do agree with you, it would have been better I think for two sets.

salsamarty said:
For me, the second year in a row, the most entertaining events of the Congress are the Open and Pro Jack & Jill contests. These alone are worth the price of admission.
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I don't know the one year I went it was over-the-top but at that point people were living in the shadow of Milton and Masha, I thought last years first place win was a pretty nice display. Also props to all the bay area dancers who came out on top in the Amateur Jack and Jill.
 
Yupuhhuh said:
lol, most especially sunday was an on2 festival.
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Which was a pleasant surprise!

I noticed something both weird and interesting with several followers. I usually pick a timing based on how a follower carries herself - let's say a guess of sorts based on her demeanor. If she looks very confident, is wearing something sexy and carries herself like a dancer, I'll start off on2. At SFO congress, I had to change back to on1 about 50% of the times. They certainly could follow on2, but their confidence far exceeded their competence and it was clear within a phrase that the dance would be nice if I switched timing. Ironically, there were a few times when we started off on1, and something about the way they come in and out of free shines suggested that I should switch to on2 - and that worked very nicely too. Trying to adapt to a way of dancing that best fits my follower's natural frequency is fun, and always leads to interesting side observations ;-) There was even one follow whom I started off with on2, but she was naturally a cuban dancers and switching to cuban made her obviously happy :)
 
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