I kicked off my 2018 Taurus season shenanigans and celebrations in Dearborn, Michigan at Jeffrey Clark’s I Love Steppin’ 10th Anniversary event. The next weekend I coasted off to Dallas, Texas to the fourth Annual Black and Bling Steppers Ball Weekend. It was a magnificent start to my birthday business. After a great time in both cities, I determined both events should stay on Sonji’s Steppin’ Birthday Tour for next year. At the announcement of the Black & Bling fire sale, I learned that I Love Steppin’ 11th Anniversary and the fifth Annual Black and Bling are scheduled for the same dates – April 25-28, 2019. I approached Devin Smith about the conflict and our conversation ended with “Next year, steppers are just going to have to make a choice.”
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I have encountered event weekend date conflicts before. As I visit more new cities, I have to make more decisions like this. I really enjoyed I Love Steppin’ and Black and Bling, and they were different. Which do I choose? How many of my stepper compadres will I miss seeing regardless of which event I choose to go to next year? Will the events cannibalize each other, splitting the crowd, especially steppers from Chicago who showed up and showed out in big numbers at both events for 2018? I consider my five primary goals for any given steppers’ weekend event.
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I haven’t made any decision. I have an entire year to ponder on this one. The message here is that promoters and planners give steppers a lot of choices to make and all things considered, possibly at the expense of the success of an event. Unfortunately, I don’t see the market changing soon to make this less of a problem. If anything, I see more and more opportunities for all steppers to “have to make a choice.” I meet more and more new steppers that travel “everywhere” and you better believe that now steppers look to leave their home coast to meet new people. Well, I do! There isn’t too much weight on relying on events being miles apart on different coasts to say setting conflicting dates doesn’t matter due to the distance apart. I know planning is real “work” so we ought to work together to make your efforts a great experience for you and steppers coming together to have a good time.
