How Swing Patrol stopped balancing leads and follows by hand

Swing Patrol runs weekly Lindy Hop and Blues classes and socials across London, with a community of more than 1,500 dancers. Sibhe Lynch has been organising dance events since 2012 and looks after events that run from 40 to 300 people, with 100 to 150 dancers a month coming through the larger ones.

Like us, she shares a passion for getting new people dancing. "I love the music, and I really love seeing new people find their dancing feet."

What was life like before using DanceCloud?

Running balanced classes on a general-purpose ticketing platform meant managing the balance by hand. "We had to create separate tickets for leads, follows and couples, and then two more for the lead and follow waitlists," Sibhe says. Five ticket types for one class, with the platform not understanding the difference between them.

The work didn't stop once the tickets were live. "It was a pain to keep checking the balance of leads and follows, then having to release tickets manually from the waiting lists and wait for that person to respond."

Mostly that consumed time; sometimes it also cost sign-ups. "There were instances where someone who might have signed up was never notified of a space, because it took too long to go through the waiting list."

There was a cashflow problem too. Payouts didn't land until after the event had run, which made life tricky when some costs had to be paid prior to the event.

Why did you switch?

DanceCloud was built around the kind of classes and events Swing Patrol runs. Chris, the founder of DanceCloud, taught for Swing Patrol during his years in London. The lead/follow balance problem the platform solves is one he encountered during his time with Swing Patrol, and they were one of the first organisations to try it out.

Sibhe had no reservations, in part because the platform fit the way they work. DanceCloud was "very easy to set up, and very easy to use."

Recently, she also saw the alternative of using generic-platforms up close. "Watching a colleague wrestle with a generic platform for Birmingham classes before converting to DanceCloud reminded me of the annoyance of setting up individual tickets for everything."

What features do you find most useful?

Two things Sibhe wouldn't give up: the lead/follow waitlist, and class admin.

The waitlist automates exactly what she used to do by hand. It watches the balance, and offers a place to the right person the moment one opens up. Class admin handles the weekly teaching side, the part general ticketing tools don't attempt at all.

What she keeps coming back to is that the platform speaks the language. "I really love that it's designed for dancers and created by a dancer who understands the terminology, and also the wider dancing scenes."

What happens when you need help?

Swing Patrol's questions don't go into a support queue. They go to the person who built the platform, which usually means an answer the same day and no explaining what a follow is first.

"Best support ever," Sibhe says. "Quick to reply, and very, very patient when I'm asking questions I should already know the answer to."

The bigger test came when Swing Patrol moved their weekly classes across. That meant building out what recurring classes needed, and getting the teacher payment calculations right. "Chris always goes above and beyond. He did all the hard maths for me when we switched to using DanceCloud for our weekly classes."

Would you recommend DanceCloud?

"I always recommend it to all the dancing people I meet. It's the only platform that understands partnered dancing, and the need for a balance between leads and follows."

And to an organiser still weighing it up? "What's the worst that could happen? It's only dancing!"

Photo credit: photo by photographypav and provided by Swing Patrol.