Michele Lefevre in her recent blog here called Dance 2.0 dicusses some of the tools available online and weighs the pros and cons. It's a great article and I thought it was thoughtful and smart. Doug Fox in his Great Dance Weblog responded with an article called How to Embrace Web 2.0. I found myself responding to it twice and so ... here I am typing about it. These are very interesting times. I do know several choreographers who post on MySpace videos of recent performances, use the powerful 'bulletin' button and call for feedback and comments. Of course, this is after the fact and Doug is absolutely right that it could be used as a tool for part of the process. I wonder how many artists are secure enough to open up a forum to see their work in process? As a lighting designer, I've often envied the choreographer and the costume and set designers and even the composers who get to finish their work in the studio or lab before showing it to others. Lighting Designers discover if their ideas work right there in the hot seat with everyone watching the birthing of an idea. Some choreographers are almost picky about when I stop in to watch a rehearsal -- and others want me there every step of the way! That being said, dancers work in front of a mirror, choreographers use an 'electonic mirror' - the video camera to note progress and show the dancers feedback. I think it'd be one small step to post online. Uploading to YouTube then posting on one's blog with a call for comments makes perfect sense to me. I can see a Yahoo Group formed or a MySpace group formed that supports each other with feedback. What seems missing is the support group availability -- someone has to come to the blog to see it, that call for submissions goes unheeded. There is no 'alert' process for immediate feedback. Being too dependent on needing to be a very popular blog -- it quickly can fail. So, a blending of the tools is key to quality use. A clever artist may use wikipedia to 'define' their company. Use YouTube and their Blog in tandem to post videos or mission statements or goals for the piece or for art. Take advantage of MySpace and Yahoo to build Groups of like-minded people. Build into their "interests" key words that will be linked to others. The real key is the "support group", I think. The advantages of MySpace and Yahoo's 360 and their groups is the build up of a contact base for immediate response. The current tools don't have quality filtering devices to zero in on what you want to do whether it's to make an announcement to a region or key on/off certain people. We do have e-mail, but I think it's still clumsy - at least that is my experience. The effort, I think, is no worse than any other kind of promotion and can mostly be done in your pajamas. By the way, for a heavy duty description of Web 2.0, read O'Reilly's article here.