Signup sheet
People are better at typing their names and emails on a computer than you are at reading their handwriting. Bring a couple laptops (and a power strip for them; power sources at the Midway exist, but there's only about one outlet per group) and have a google form with name and email. (This way people won't see other people's responses). At the end of the event, make sure the list goes to someone to get the addresses added to the tech-squares-interest mailing list.
Use modern music
I suspect that students will be more enthusiastic if they hear us dancing to modern music / music they know and like. This probably means refreshing the tips every few years.
Some possible songs:
- Jonathan Coulton song (patter?)
- Moves like Jagger (patter)
- Rolling in the Deep, by Adele (singer; Ted has done it and there's already a good recording of Paul
calling it) - Lady Gaga song (singer?)
- Dazzling Blue (singer by Guy)
- Gangnam Style?
Consider your audience
When figuring out the details of the performance, keep in mind the audience. Anybody who already knows how to square dance and enjoys it will probably show up at Tech Squares unless we massively screw up our midway presence, so we shouldn't be targeting them. This means that easy tips are probably better than hard (we sometimes get rusty dancers to help, and mistakes are easy-ish to notice, whereas a flawless challenging dance looks much like a flawless easy dance (and the latter is much more likely)). Similarly, the audience won't know the difference between Ted and other callers, so typical Ted music or recordings of Ted is less important than having music students like or a good recording quality.
Other things that might help
- Think about how to balance the virtues of "strong dancers", and "looks like MIT students"
- Email out (a link to) the tip that will be used to all students or all club members or something, so that people who feel shaky can listen to it first and figure it out