Threads tagged #ija

Orinoco - 2012-08-01 18:01:25 UTC - Parent #

From the link I was hoping for a Ronnie Corbett sketch.

Interesting indeed. In the past I've seen the #IJA as an organisation for the sake of an organisation, this piece seems to signal a shift to a more business like model, with a focus on providing customers with value for money. Aside from the annual festival the organisation is almost becoming a paid subscription content service. This sort of service hasn't set the world on fire among the big news organisations but I think they are making money (or at least losing less). I do think that a paid content provider for a small niche like juggling could work (although I can't think of any others off the top of my head right now).

I still find it difficult to define what I expect the IJA (or any juggling organisation) to do.

dpawson - 2012-08-02 16:27:16 UTC - Parent #

The main thing I took away from that article is that the author is really brilliant. And extremely sexy, too.

Okay. It was me. You hit on some of the real challenges for us (the #IJA) these days. I don't have any doubt what we want to do; we have lots of good programs underway to help the juggling community, and other ideas we haven't been able to pursue due to lack of human resources or funding. The trick is that most of these "for the good of the community" projects cost money. When you say to the world at large, "I'm a nonprofit, and I'm trying to cure cancer. Would you like to give me money?", then there is no shortage of people saying, "I'm not ashamed to say I'm AGAINST cancer! I'd be happy to donate to your cause." But when you are a juggling organization, and many of your potential donor base are jugglers, it is a bit tougher to get donations to serve the greater good. So our challenge becomes how to encourage membership in a way that will actually make us money that we can then use to fund these greater-good type programs. My sense is that our potential members don't even necessarily need to view this like going to a store where they are making a strict purchase; there is some amount of wiggle room for supporting juggling projects. But there is definitely a "what is in it for me" component that we have to address. And as you note, if you ask those same people, "Okay, what can I do for you?", the answer is often, "Hmm. Good question. I don't know."

So this is where we find ourselves. Trying to find ways to make membership attractive enough that jugglers are willing to join us, and in doing so support programs that don't fund themselves. And it is an interesting see-saw we find ourselves on; these days, almost all our expenses are static and don't scale upwards with the number of members. So as we succeed and the membership goes up, it is almost all "profit". And as we're not looking to make a "profit" per se', if we find ourselves with a surplus, then two things are likely to happen. The first is that some of these programs get some love and become more successful. The second is that we can afford to lower membership further. Which then hopefully encourages more people to join, and so on.

I'm pretty proud of what we've done in the last year. I'm hoping we can build on that momentum and keep doing good work. If our efforts speak to people (both the programs and the attempts to improve the value proposition of membership), then the next year could be really fun...

Dave

Orinoco - 2012-08-02 19:55:30 UTC - Parent #

You do realise it is your fault that juggling chat on the internet has plummeted now that it is harder to bash the IJA? :)

I think it is difficult for me to say what an organisation should do because I don't really need any help in sustaining my addiction. I am a juggler & barring death I can't think of anything that would ever change that. I am aware that this is a selfish way of looking at the issue but I find it a little uncomfortable thinking about what an organisation should do to other people. Sounds a bit creepily cultish. Which is why I like the content provider role, if I or anyone wants what you have, I have to go & knock on your door to get it.

Orinoco - 2012-08-03 11:34:52 UTC - Parent #

I'd be interested in this too, something like Kickstarter for juggling projects.

Little Paul - 2012-08-03 14:56:44 UTC - Parent #

I like that idea. Kickupstarter perhaps?

I wonder why there aren't more jugglers making use of kickstarter to fund shows/performances/videos/festivals/other projects.

Or are there people doing it, but it's just that no one has told me?

Orinoco - 2012-08-03 17:49:21 UTC - Parent #

A quick & dirty search shows there have been 1 2 3 4 juggling projects, 2 were successful, 2 were not. Looks to me that the right projects received funding.

Little Paul - 2012-08-03 12:56:04 UTC - Parent #

The MMCC sounds like the sort of approach I'm thinking of (thanks, I'll bookmark that for the next time I'm swimming in it ;-) but I can only donate to other projects if I'm a member?

That sounds a bit daft to me as an outsider (but probably makes a lot of sense to someone somewhere!)

david - 2012-08-03 14:04:03 UTC - Parent #

You don't have to join to use the store. It is world-readable. To make a purchase or donation you'll have to create on account, put the item(s) in your cart, checkout, and then interact with Paypal. The MMCC gets you to Paypal with a single click. https://www.juggle.org/store/

Little Paul - 2012-08-03 14:54:55 UTC - Parent #

ahh - that makes much more sense. Thanks!

Dylan - 2012-04-22 09:00:09 UTC - Parent #

I would also love to hear more if the judges are willing to say more =].
Also, I'd love some critism bad or good, as long as it's constructive, on my tutorial =].
I won the peoples choice, but that doesn't come with any comments =P so it's be great to hear comments, even from non judges. Just to help me for future tutorials and such.

Also, I'll have to talk to Thom, but I'm wondering if anyone else would exchange a prize if they would prefer the IJA festival package? Cause I won't be able to make it this year, and it'd be a waste not to use it. I'm extremely happy with my win though! =].

Thankyou to everyone who voted!

Back to that original topic, well done to everyone! I definitely think most of the tutorials deserve the places they got, #1 was also my personal favorite.

Orinoco - 2012-04-22 13:42:38 UTC - Parent #

Also, I'd love some critism bad or good, as long as it's constructive

You spelled criticism incorrectly.

...on my tutorial

Oh, right.

I'm not going to list the good points, because there were A LOT. So well done on that front.

My few gripes though:

Keep focused. I found your wiggling amusing but a beginner may think that you are not taking the trick seriously, & could be interpreted as a little patronising? I understand that when teaching it is hard to remain interested because you will be demonstrating something that you find really easy. But to the person being taught it will generally be really hard. It is also important to remain focused to ensure that you are demonstrating good technique, for example at 3:56 - 3:58 - those drops were rather diagonal! As the greatest juggling tutorial site on the net¹ says: "When you make the horizontal carry stop completely before you drop the ball otherwise the momentum of the carry will throw the ball to the side rather than drop it straight down."

Don't film in front of reflective surfaces, you didn't suffer the problem of the visible camera but why run the risk?

Make sure everything is in shot. There are points where your hand & the balls disappear off the top of the screen.

Smile!


Congratulations on the win. Have an award!


¹ What?

The Void - 2012-04-22 11:09:29 UTC - Parent #

Heh, clever Edge removed some of my pointy-bracket comments on The Factory tutorial:
[entering grumpy old juggler mode] Dammit, the 3-beat version of this trick is called The Machine, and the 1-beat version is The Factory. Does no-one remember Fliktriks? [/gojm]

Dylan - 2012-04-22 11:25:12 UTC - Parent #

Haha well I'll remember that for the future!
I called it the machine to begin with and was going to say machine/factory/robot in the video but after searching around I noticed the factory was the name most commonly used so that's why I went with that! =].
I'm glad to see I was picked in your top ten void :) makes me feel good =D.

noslowerdna - 2014-03-22 05:05:13 UTC - Parent #

Sorry, that was an apparently poor attempt to sprinkle in some humor. There is no such "flying octopus variation of Luke's Loop" pattern. :)

The Void - 2014-03-22 08:56:27 UTC - Parent #

Ooh, is this the first thread resurrection on the Edge?

Little Paul - 2014-03-22 09:08:32 UTC - Parent #

I don't think it's the first, but I think it's the largest time differential I've seen so far.

Orinoco - 2014-03-22 10:18:21 UTC - Parent #

Indeed, at 696 days this is by far the greatest resurrection, beating the previous best by 223 days. This has been the fifth post made a year after the parent.

Pointless data mining FTW!

Little Paul - 2012-01-19 19:39:25 UTC - Parent #

Personally I think the #IJA e-zine is the most exciting thing I've seen from the IJA in the 17 years I've been aware of its existance (I just wish I had the time to write for it!)

The free content has been pretty good so far, and some of the paid for content looks attractive too - not quite attractive enough to make me spring for membership yet, but it's early days.

Have you considered scanning in your collection of #TWJC newsletters and slapping them up somewhere as PDFs? Several people have discussed doing that with The Catch, and I think Mini said he's got a reasonably complete collection of 2-Ply Press which I'd also love to read.

Even if you don't know the people mentioned in the newsletters, this sort of thing is good fun to read from a historical point of view.

Orinoco - 2012-01-20 13:19:34 UTC - Parent #

Coo they don't make staples like they used to.

I've just finished scanning in all our old newsletters that include some horrendous abuse of Word art! I'll put them online tonight.

Little Paul - 2012-01-20 14:26:22 UTC - Parent #

Yay! Weekend reading!

Little Paul - 2012-01-20 10:06:54 UTC - Parent #

Somehow I thought you might have a completely unbiased opinion to offer on the subject... ;-)

Orinoco - 2012-01-20 13:13:37 UTC - Parent #

I loved the video round up. I read that 26 times!

The Void - 2012-01-20 13:15:28 UTC - Parent #

Hurrah! _{Get a life!}