A flash of lightning .... London Lightning

Where does the time go?  It is December already and almost 2014 to boot!  In the dance world we are gearing up to dance in the half time show at the London Lightning game on December 8^th.  When I say ‘we’ I truly mean that as I am also dancing along aside my son and 28 other dancers from our studio Élan Dance Arts.  We are the largest group ever to perform during the half time show at a London Lightning game.  During the first practice my son kindly (haha) referred to me as an elder.  

A little background on why we dance.  We sell tickets for $15 each and $5 from each ticket goes back to our competitive team.  Kian sold 15 tickets so that means $75 goes back to him to help cover his entry fees to the 5 competitions.  Yes, that money is due on Friday and will hit me just over $1K eeks.  Nice timing too right before Christmas :(

The London Lightning Dance Team is actually run by the owner of our studio Shawna Kwan and features a few of our dancers and a couple of teachers too!

If you are going to the game Sunday have a look and see if you can spot me.  My son is dancing right behind me … totally a family show :)

This morning I handed in my final assignment for my Digicomm 3209F class.  I feel like a giant weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  As I mentioned before, I switched my online class for next term to an in class night course.  Life is so busy these days.  As a final blog for my course, our assigned reading was on virtual worlds which as it happens is the topic of my class next session.  I used to play a game called the SIMS where you could go online in your ‘world’ and interact with other ‘worlds’ all over the real world as part of the game.  I enjoyed playing it as a step outside of, at the time, my world as a university student.  I have heard about virtual worlds often since then but haven’t really interacted much with them myself.  My kids play a game called Animal Jam where they can meet up with other kids (or adults pretending to be kids) and you have an animal avatar you can create and accessorize.  You then play games with your ‘friends’ and learn more about the animals you are playing.  The kids like it because it is fun, I enjoy that they are testing their reading skills and learning about animals they likely wouldn’t find in the real world.  My son also plays something called Minecraft which I admit I don’t know much about but he creates worlds to play in and then interacts with others.  I would assume this is like a virtual world but I admit I haven’t really paid as much attention to this one as it doesn’t seem very educational ;)

Green with ... jealousy or envy?

With dance can come amazing opportunities.

Three dancers from our studio were invited to dance in Europe next summer. The choreographer Jacques Monfiston not only choreographed their trio but he also picked them to join his troupe in Europe.  These are 3 of our top girls.  They are all very grounded dancers and the nicest of girls.  Why am I mentioning this in a blog about being a dance mom?  With the good usually comes the bad.  One would have thought such a close knit studio would all rejoice in the good fortune of fellow members.  Well the memo didn't make it to the senior classes apparently.  While the junior members of the team congratulated the girls on being chosen ... their peers did nothing of the sort.  They did however talk amongst themselves about the chance they would be picked at a later date.  I had to explain to my 9 year old when he came home with these stories, that unfortunately for the others, it didn't work that way.  This brought to light the divide in the team.

When there is a divide in a team ... the next thing you need is to remove that divide and build your team strength.  Last Saturday the studio brought in a motivational speaker named Saidat to try to break down that divide.  I had been to one of shows before and loved it.  I found her even better for the kids.  I think she really hit home with some of her messages.  I am not sure anyone filled her in on the tension among the members of the team.  None the less I think it was a great idea to have something like this. 

Here is Saidat with her Flava Crew which includes 3 Elan dancers.

Now for the part of my blog where I talk about my Digicomm course.  Let me tell you how excited I was to check course registration in another Digicomm class for Winter term today only to find there was 1 spot.  So a swapping I did go!  I swapped a distance studies course I had registered in for a Wednesday night on campus class.  This will be my last required course and then I just have optional courses to get my diploma.

In my current class this weeks reading was about mobile usage.  At Western we are currently working on a mobile app that will allow students to view their timetable on their smart phone.  We are also going to make it work on tablets but are still sorting out the sizing issues with the larger screen.  Our first attempt at a mobile app came this past spring that allowed applicants to create their own WesternOne card and upload their photo to get on their real WesternOne card when they accept their offer.


Hopefully we will be bringing the new mobile app live in time for Fall/Winter 2014 registration.  Mobile devices really are the way of the future. UPDATE: We are now live with our mobile app. 

On the topic of businesses using the scan icons to promote their sites I recently came across a business using it and thought what a marvelous idea!  We were shopping in the states and wanted to eat at the Olive Garden but 2 of us are gluten free.  When we stopped in we were given a menu and under gluten free was the QR code we were so excited to try it out.  Unfortunately for them, their QR went to a dead page :( We still ended up eating there and asking for the gluten free menu but what a great way to use it!

Pink on a boy ... oh my!

Fundraiser #1 down.  We don't have the official total yet but the estimate was about $4000.  Yay us!  There are 42 kids on the team and that money gets split amongst the families that participated to help cover the competitive fees. 

I found it a really great exercise to setup the legion on Saturday before the fundraiser with some of the other dance moms.  I learned a lot of their names and who they belonged to.  Meeting everyone and chatting I got caught up on a lot of the gossip as well.  I guess when you look at a group of women you have to know there will be some gossip.  I really tried my best to float between all the little groups until my friends arrived.  We played 3 games of bingo and I didn't get close to winning any of them. 

Sunday Kian had his first all day dance workshop at the 4 Points Sheraton Dance Attack Workshop.  I dropped him off for 9am and picked him up at 4.  I didn't think he would be into the swag because it was blue and pink.  Well ... I was wrong.  When we picked him up his first question was 'Can I get sweat pants?'  He can always use a pair for warmup so we picked him up a pair.  After wearing them for the night he decided he wanted to wear them to school the next day.  I was concerned that he might be made fun of since they are blue and pink.  He said that you can't be made fun of for wearing pink and that ended that conversation.  So the next day he wore the sweatpants (which by the way he says are the most comfortable pants ever) to school.  When I picked him up at the end of the day he had his beanie hat on, pockets pulled out of the sweatpants and walked with a ton of swagga.    I asked how his day went and he said one person started to make fun of him so he put on the hat, pulled out the pockets and told them it was a look.  My kid makes me so proud just being him.  This day however, I was beyond proud at how he handled himself.  *sniff* he is growing up :(

On to Social Media ... at work my area hasn't created a social media policy yet.  We have two main accounts one for The Office of the Registrar and one for Student Services.  We are currently looking into setting guidelines for our social media accounts and deciding which account is responsible for covering what topics.  Right now @westernuReg covers anything that Student Central handles (Admission, Fees, Financial Aid, Records, Exams).  Once the higher level makes the decision then we will develop an official policy.

Something that came up this week was when a student Instagramed a screen capture from a PoliSci lecture.  We were then set to question if the student had violated the Student Code of Conduct or if the Professor had done something out of line.  In the end we passed the situation on to the appropriate office and took a step back.  Interesting how these new forms of communication now bring an added level of complication to what we do. 

Bring a friend to dance class ... ah ya about that

This last week Kian has brought home 4 'bring a friend to dance' passes.  He will likely get 2 more tomorrow as well.  The problem I am finding is that he never has just one recreation class (except Tuesday).  For him to bring a friend, their parents have to agree to drive them and pick them up from Lambeth.  That is a 30 minute drive from the very north of the city to the very south. 

Most of Kian's friends would not be caught dead in ballet or jazz class (Mon & Tues class).  The one they are likely to want to attend is breakdance or hip hop on Thursday.  Kian starts dance at 4pm so his recreation classes (the ones with 'bring a friend') are from 6-7 & 7-8.  I then dance from 8-10 so my husband has to shuttle Kian and my daughter home to bed.  Is it wrong to allow Kian to invite a friend if they can find a ride?

I am having trouble with this.  I would hate to say no when he really wanted to bring a friend to see what he does but it is really asking another parent to inconvenience themselves.  Same thing for Niamh though.  She wants to bring a friend to her 9am Saturday morning acro class.  She has gymnastics right after so if the friend came with us she would have to wait through that class or have her parents pick her up at 10. 

I also had to say no to the first school event Kian will have to miss thanks to dance.  The school Christmas concert is scheduled for a Thursday night at 6pm.  He has already missed Thursday classes thanks to Halloween (I had to let him skip) so he can't miss any more.  So I signed the consent form back saying that he wouldn't be participating nor in attendance.  He didn't seem heartbroken so hopefully it will be ok.

On the class front this week our readings were about tags.  For me personally I tag people in photos on Instagram and Facebook but I tend mostly to use hashtags on twitter.  I haven't gotten used to the hashtag feature on Facebook yet.  When I use a hashtag on twitter it is either one that I am using to allow others to find my tweet such as when watching Sons of Anarchy I will hashtag with #SOAFX but when I am just typing a general tweet I tend to use a hashtag such as #justsaying when I want to emphasize my point.


At work I use hashtags to reach certain groups of people on both Facebook and Twitter.  One hashtag I used a lot recently was #WesternU2013.  I was trying to reach the graduating class on Friday when the 401 was closed due to an accident.  The Helpline was getting a lot of calls from panicked students who were stuck.  We wanted to convey the information that they should proceed straight to Alumni Hall when they reached campus and we would have their regalia waiting for them.  We also use #WesternU when we want a broad group to see our tweet.  This also prompts @westernu to see our tweet and retweet it for us.

Over the last few weeks I have been trying to grow our followers and two things have provided us growth.  We tweeted the preliminary exam schedule October 11th and then on Nov 4th we tweeted about refund cheques being available.  Both of those updates along with adding our twitter to the bottom of official emails has encouraged followers.

Today I asked my student-staff why they use tags.  Their overwhelming response was just to make a point and to share their thoughts.  They don't do it to make searching easier but simply because they like the way it looks.  

First Dance Mom 'fight'

Well I did say I had never experienced anything like on that Abby Lee Dance show ... I swear I totally jinxed myself by saying that.  Sure enough on Monday it happened to me.  Listen to my link below to hear what happened:

Listen to my podcast

So what do you think ... do you feel that all kids under the age of 12 should always have direct adult supervision or do you have other views on the topic.  As I am sure you can tell I am pretty open and feel that each parent should decide for themselves in a situation like what I experienced.

On the topic of dance we are in the throws of fundraising and are now raffling off 2 season tickets to the London Lightning basketball.

On the topic of microblogging if you follow either my personal twitter @courtincanada or my work account @westernureg you will notice I tend to post quite a bit.  I like to engage and love responding to people.  One of my favourite things to do is watch my klout score ... it usually goes up or down one point each week.  The highest I have gotten would be 63 last year during So You Think You Can Dance.  I normally live tweet and even got a follow a few years ago thanks to the show from @TheEllenShow ... my claim to fame lol!

What is your favourite microblogging site?

Money, money, money

Dance is expensive ... ok I said it. Today we are going to talk about money. The costume deposits are due soon ... cue the music. With my son dancing 7 numbers each competition my deposit total is $525. On top of that they just convinced him to join the competitive jazz class on Friday nights bringing my monthly total to $400 to the studio for his classes and comp fees. Yup being a dance mom is quite expensive. I often marvel at how my mom managed to pay these fees for me. My husband and I are much better off than my parents ever were. I know that things cost more now but still back then there was a standard living too.

With money comes fundraising. The more we raise the less our fees for the competitions are in the Spring. Our first adventure is called Blue Jean Bingo Bash on November 9th at the Lambeth Legion. Single tickets are $25/ couples $45. We figure if all parents come and then bring one other couple we will hit our target. I am hoping to convince my girlfriends to all come for a fun night out.

Work is crazy frustrating right now. The campus paper is continuously printing incorrect information and it is killing me. Due to the nature of our business I can’t correct them outright and have to go through the proper channels which usually end up getting so complicated they don’t correct the problem. First the paper ran a story on the new Opt Out process ... oops they misquoted and flooded the Helpline, Counter and email with poor misguided students. Next they ran a story on how the big bad University over charges students. I fully understand why they are upset however they ran all the wrong information. The tuition due date was wrong, amount of a late fee wrong, reason a student would be charged a deferral fee wrong, they even got the request for deferral wrong. When students contact our office to complain about this and we correct them they get super annoyed. If the information was correctly reported initially we wouldn’t be in this situation.

With my social media class I am working on analytics. I was super excited to find that my sprout social actually kept all these stats. I learned that 32% of our twitter followers are between 18 & 20 and 33% 21 & 24. Recently our biggest engagement on Facebook has been our message about the preliminary exam schedule from Friday.

Bring It On ... no really

We are on the run to Thanksgiving weekend and a much needed break from the studio life we’ve been living. My son has now picked up an extra 2 classes a week out of pure interest. He has decided he wants to try his hand at Acro (mix of dance and gymnastics) and then another jazz class just for the kids on the competitive team. Means my leaving work by 4pm on Friday and then bring him along to his sister’s dance on Saturday so that he is at the studio in time for his new class.

'Spirit Fingers'

I almost forgot my ‘Bring It On’ moment! So if you have seen the old movie about the cheerleading team who go to a competition only to find many other teams using ‘spirit fingers’. I’ll give you some background. My niece is on the precompetitive dance team at another London dance studio. Each Saturday her mom and I meet at my grandmother’s for tea while we bide time as both our kids dance. We were sitting there having a good chat when my sister in law remembered she hadn’t mentioned that my niece was going to be doing an Extended Musical Theatre number. That reminded me I forgot to tell her about Kian dancing in his Extended Musical Theatre number to a song from Mary Poppins. My sister in law LOVES Mary Poppins so I was excited to tell her. That was when she announced my niece was ALSO doing a number from Mary Poppins. I pulled the song up on my Dropbox and it was the same song! Wow ... I swear it was like living Bring It On lol!!!

After the dance day was done and we were all back home I posted this same story on my personal facebook. Very quickly the owner of our studio saw my message and commented on it. I was glad to be able to give her the heads up prior to meeting this other studio at a competition in May. When I was dancing this would have taken ages to communicate and many telephone games to get to the owner.

At work this week one of my employees came to me to ask why a student who attended Western in 1994 did not have a campus email address. I had to explain that before 2000 we didn’t have a need for a userid and that only since 2007 have we stored Western Identity information beyond graduation. He was floored. When I mentioned that I didn’t have an email when I attended Western he couldn’t get his mind around it. He was born in 1994 so his entire life email has been a main tool for communication. Thinking on this it is no wonder that students have an expectation for the university to be on social media. The idea that transcripts aren’t available electronic ally just doesn’t make sense to current students.

This leads me into our new assignment on analytics. My manager and I were just talking about this in relation to our budget proposal and accomplishments. This was the first year that we included social media in our accomplishments. For this assignment I will use the work accounts that I manage for the Office of the Registrar at Western University. We haven’t officially created a social media campaign or set goals yet. I think this exercise will benefit me at work and help quantify how we are doing in our current efforts.

One month down ...

So now that we are a month into the dance year let’s reflect on dance life. 9 hours of class work, 7 hours of competitive practice, 5 hours of driving to the studio and home ... my son’s smile when he dances = priceless.

It may seem crazy but honestly it is just normal to me. I also take 5 hours of dance myself and my daughter has an hour of dance and an hour of gymnastics a week.

I feel a little lost without any dance shows this week. I couldn’t find Dance Kids ATL this week and I missed Dance Moms last night.

On a non dance mom topic last weekend I ran in the ‘Fear the Purple Colour Run’ up at Western during homecoming. We were raising money for MADD Canada. This weekend I am running in the 5K ‘Run for the Cure’ to fight breast cancer. My husband’s Aunt is currently fighting breast cancer so this run means a lot to me.

At work we recently switched to a software called Sprout Social for managing our social media accounts. We used to use Hootesuite but found it was lacking as it only allowed an account to be associated with one userid so if you have multiple users it was hard to tell who had done what. We have a main 3 we use Facebook mainly to reach out to the parents of our students so they are aware what deadlines are happening, Twitter to reach our students and YouTube for instruction that can help both students and their parents.

An interesting test on how effective our Twitter is happened for us in June. First year registration opened on June 20th at 9:30am. We tweeted this and had @westernu retweet for us so that our reach was as broad as we could make it. There were some students sitting over in SAO who were texting with friends back home who saw our twitter feed and alerted them to the fact registration had already opened. They thought it was opening at 2pm when their schedule indicated they had class scheduling with SAO. Their parents left SAO to come over to Student Central to demand their students get into all the courses they want then and there instead of waiting for their appointment at 2pm. It was quite eye opening for those in management who for years had downplayed the significance of social media.

Two of my favourite brands that use social media are Lululemon and Apple. This week it was announced that the Apple brand is the most valuable brand in the world. You would think that the fact they are such a valuable brand they would have a great social media presence but Apple doesn’t. As it stands they operate a few different Twitter and Facebook accounts for things like @AppStore , @iTunes , @iBooks. They don’t engage their followers but spend the time pushing out messages to their followers. On the other hand Lululemon spends most of their time engaging and encouraging followers and fans to share experiences and things in their life with the company. They have @lululemon, @lululemonlive, and @lululemonteams. While Apple does a very good job of getting their products out there and sought after I feel Lululemon uses social media to their advantage. They engage their clients and make them feel special all the while also getting their products out there and sought.

Joining the Social Media Dance Moms

As I am sure you can tell from my post last week I watch dance shows. I can barely make it through a Dance Mom show with the Abby Lee Dance Company crew simply because I can't imagine other parents being that horrible to one another. I grew up in this environment and never once did I see any mom take out another. I am sure there were stage moms of course but they only skimmed my world.

At my son's studio there are over involved moms who complain a lot but I see those same moms at work so nothing new. Why am I talking about this? Well let me tell you I stumbled upon a dance show last night called Dance Kids ATL. I started watching and the fact this studio did hip hop and breakdance primarily really caught my attention. On top of that I loved the moms. They were supportive, not divaish and understood when the choreographer spoke to their kids. I even took to my twitter (@CourtinCanada)to mention this.

I woke up this morning to tweets back from some of the Dance Kids ATL moms! How encouraging is that!

This demonstrated to me exactly what I read in The Cluetrain Manifesto Chapter 3 - Talk Is Cheap chapter which I have to say I throughly enjoyed reading. This would be like a wired conversation. By responding to my tweet not only will I continue to watch this show, I will tell people about it and if I lived in the Atlanta area I would likely check out the studio. They brought a human voice to the show and helped to create a community around it. Twitter is allowing these conversations that would never have been possible before social media.

Of the 95 Theses the one that I identify with the most is #3 Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice. In January I took a new position at Western where I not only supervise the front line staff but I also manage the social media for The Registrar's Office. When I took it over they had another area of Student Services running the day to day messaging. They were just using prescheduled messages pulled from an important dates section in the schools Academic Calendar. This meant there was no human voice to their tweets. The same information was being posted to Twitter & Facebook. I really enjoy talking to applicants, students and alumni on social media. When they have questions they can just ask and receive answers. I also enjoy finding out things that students are finding hard to navigate or confusing. It helps me to create new YouTube videos and update step by step instructions. Right now I manage @westernuReg , https://www.facebook.com/UWOSCentral , Western University Student Central YouTube and we will be contributing to the Reddit account that Western currently has. We haven't decided if we will host our own for the Registrar or just answer Western's.

I think the more ways a student can get answers to their questions the more enjoyable their university experience will be.

Week One for dance done and blog post for class

Dance week one ... summary ... tired :) My week was spent driving from the North end to Lambeth Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It just occurred to me that I might not have explained the type of dance my son does. Kian does ballet, jazz, hip hop and break dancing at Elan Dance Arts.




 I accomplished something I was proud of I dropped my son at dance at 4pm and left him til 8pm. In the past I have generally hung around the studio in case he needs anything. He is getting close to 10 years old and now that he is on the comp team I am determined to teach him to fend for himself. He needs to become more independent and responsible for himself. Yes, I am saying that to myself more than to him lol. On Saturday he had an hour break between classes so we bought him a gift card so that he could purchase lunch at Subway by himself. When I picked him up he admitted he was scared at first when he went to buy lunch but I think he was proud of himself for doing it alone. I was proud too ... crazy the things that make you proud.

The one thing I really want to be sure to avoid this first year of competitive dance is that I NEVER want to be a dance mom. Those ladies on that TLC show are nuts. Even the cheer moms are crazy. I don’t want to live through my son ... I grew up dancing professionally so I have already lived the life he is starting. I just want him to be happy and do something he enjoys. I still remember what it was like to grow up in a dance studio ... I wouldn’t change that for anything.


For my class this week’s blog needs to touch on the impact structure has on the marketing function and how structure impacts the culture and operations. I feel like I am in a Greek class and I don’t speak the language. Please bear with me as I work through the assignment.

I have worked at Western University since I graduated with my degree in 1997. During that time I moved from Administration to a Faculty and then back to Administration where I am now. Each area of the university is unique. Some operate under a hierarchy, others more of a matrix. It also varies depending on the level of job you do within the same area. Managers have a different structure than staff. We have Faculties, Departments, Schools and Administration.

The culture of the office you work in really does determine what you can accomplish in your role. In my current position I have a lot of autonomy but must ultimately report to my manager. When placed on a project team I then also have a project manager to report to. This I find very liberating as you can complete tasks and feel like you have accomplished something. If I think we can make a difference to even one student I now have the ability to try to make that change. In a previous faculty position it was completely different. We all reported to the dean of the faculty. We couldn’t make decisions on our own just make recommendations to the dean. This was very constraining and made day to day work frustrating. I understand why faculties are different from administration each has a reason for the structure they operate under.

Marketing has become something that all areas of the university are involved in. From our viewbooks to our twitter, facebook & reddit accounts we have all become involved in getting Western University out there to potential new students.

Welcome to my world

Welcome to the competitive dance team! Yep ... that is my reality. My son auditioned for his studio dance team in June. I warned him with the first audition that he might not make it. After the call back I again suggested he not get too attached to the idea. Low and behold he made the team. Now he has 6 recreation classes and 7 competitive rehearsals a week. Crazy right ... don't forget to add into it that I also dance 5 hrs a week and my daughter dances too! Yay right. Well add to that a full time job and taking courses for my diploma yep that is my life. So this blog will be for my class and at at the same time I will tell you about my first year being a Dance Mom!