I come from a background with a strong culture of "thinking in public". This means openly sharing learning experiences and insights - working with the garage door up. I believe this practice is crucial for promoting growth and making knowledge more accessible to newcomers. In contrast, the West Coast Swing community largely lacks this culture of collaborative inquiry. I believe that adopting aspects of “Thinking in Public” would greatly benefit our community. Photo by Ahmad Odeh What would "thinking in public" look like in the context of WCS? From Oral Tradition to Written Record: Upgrading WCS Knowledge Production A sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour who studied how knowledge is produced has a theory on how tools like the printing press changed the way we produce and share knowledge. Before the printing press, knowledge was scattered, relying on oral traditions or handwritten manuscripts, which were often error-prone and hard to spread. The printing press made knowledge stable, consistent, and easy to share. This stability made ideas clearer and allowed people to discuss and improve them together. Printed texts gave everyone the same foundation, making it easier to compare ideas and foster debate. Leading to a more rapid intellectual progress. The current state of knowledge in WCS feels very much like an 'oral tradition,' where information is passed on informally, often in inconsistent ways. My goal is  to create a platform that encourages Thinking in Public. A place where foundational dance concepts are shared and refined over time, serving as a foundation for better teaching experience and further improvements in our understanding of dance. Learn in Public   The aspect of thinking in public that I believe would be most immediately relevant for the majority of readers is "Learning in Public". You can think of it as tracing the trail of learning. After you've learned or understood something - share your understanding - in a format that your pa

I collected stats on how long it takes for dancers to move between WSDC divisions in their primary role. The shortest time between someone's first novice point and first all-star point is 8 months (Jesse Vos). The next fastest is 12 months (Melissa Rutz, Samir Zutshi, JT Anderson). (There's actually someone with 5 months, but it looks like a clerical error—before and after their supposed all-star points, they compete in several novice competitions.) Below is a plot of the distribution of times between first novice point and first all-star point. The dashed line is the median time, and the dotted lines are the 5th, 25th, 75th, and 95th percentile times. Below is a table of summary statistics for the plot, where "25%" means "25th percentile". StatMeanStd. dev.1%5%10%25%50%75%90%95%99%Time (years)5.162.641.331.932.423.254.676.448.5010.2514.03 Though the median time between first novice point and first all-star point is 4.67 years, this does not mean that the typical person can expect to reach all-star 4.67 years after their first novice point: * People who reach all-star are a self-selected group of people who probably devote a lot of energy into dance and who progressed through earlier ranks faster, e.g., their median time between first novice point and first intermediate point is 50% faster than among all people who have reached at least intermediate. * Most people never reach all-star, which isn't captured in the above plot. * People who will reach all-star in the future aren't captured in the plot, which skews the stats downwards (e.g., suppose person A and person B both received their first novice point in 2019 and person A got their first all-star point in 2023 whereas person B will get their first all-star point in 2030—then person A shows up in the above plot but person B does not). * There have been and will continue to be WSDC rule changes (e.g., modifications of the qualifications for each division) and changes in the competition scene—historical d