Threads tagged #1

Search posts
Forum index

Viewing all threads tagged #1.

View older threads

momo -

Quality time.

I recognized that I have spent more than a year of my life (> 400 days) on circus conventions. That is a lot, but it has been a great year!

So thank you to all organizers and participants who made this a time I appreciate.

Scott Seltzer - - Parent

Impressive. I've been to around 250 days of conventions: 9 EJCs (9 days), 26 IJCs (mostly 5 days each), a few other international conventions, and a handful of local weekend events.

momo - - Parent

I always wanted to attend an IJC, but never made it. The stories of those people who attended the event and the videos (Let Them Come - Neta Oren, Toss Up And Sides Again - Ori Roth) made me want to be at this special location.

The Void - - Parent

You have 104 attended events in your JE profile. I'm at 209, so I'd guess I've been somewhere around 2 years in Juggleland. Roll on the next one.

Marvin, could you pick up this piece of p— sorry, I mean, add up all our event-days for us please?

momo - - Parent

Happy 2 year conventionversary!

209 Events is impressive. I think I met you at EJC 2011 Munich and BJC 2018 Canterbury.

I have been to 8 EJCs and many 4 days events. What impresses me also that almost a third of the events (not days) I took part where abroad. So I am also happy that I could travel to foreign countries.

Orinoco - - Parent

Your profile will now tell you how many days you've spent at juggling festivals.

& because we are all curious here is the full Festival attendance Leaderboard.

If you haven't updated which festivals you've attended for a while remember you can view the events list in Update attendance mode which adds a column of links to quickly add yourself to lots of festivals.

#NewFeature

Orinoco - - Parent

It would appear regular Bungay attendees have a distinct advantage in this aspect!

Little Paul - - Parent

Woohoo! Top 10 baby!

Not bad considering it’s been 5 years since I turned up in person at anything at all

The Void - - Parent

Thanks Orinoco! I suspect me being on top is more due to full record-keeping, 3 virtual BBUs (which, clearly, "don't count"), and a few kendama and yo-yo events being in there too. Plus there are some events I wasn't at for the whole duration, but also a few early ones that aren't on the list, so I reckon I can still claim a full 2 years-worth. But someone younger and keener could easily close the gap with a consistent 5-10 years work. :-)

Maria - - Parent

I guess place 42 isn't bad (nice number at least), considering I have also been to 14 week-long juggling events that aren't even on JugglingEdge. (Because invite only and mailing list.)
Does cancelled events count?

Orinoco - - Parent

Ah yes, I forgot about that!

It now does not include cancelled events.

Richard Loxley - - Parent

Wooo - #1 at 837 days! For now, until other people update theirs and overtake me 😉

4% of my life at juggling conventions. Or 7.6% of my life since I discovered conventions at age 25. Not bad going.

Joshua Clifton -

The Complete Homemade Juggling Beanbag Guide
A comprehensive instructional guide and technical treatise on designing and making spherical, paneled beanbags for juggling and footbagging

My website with free download links: https://www.joshuaclifton.com/juggle/

Reddit posts:
2nd Edition: https://www.reddit.com/r/juggling/comments/k669a7/the_complete_homemade_juggling_beanbag_guide/
3rd Edition (latest): https://www.reddit.com/r/juggling/comments/wrt8nx/new_3rd_edition_of_the_complete_homemade_juggling/

Montage of my beanbag designs: https://www.joshuaclifton.com/juggle/Decor/beanbags.png

Hello, jugglers! I am posting here because I have written a document that might interest some of you. It is an extensive guide and technical treatise on how to design and make spherical beanbags for juggling and footbagging. It has been my pet project off and on for many years (it began in the 1990s). The guide documents and other files are free (donation requested) and you can read more about the project and download the files at my website: https://www.joshuaclifton.com/juggle/. I would greatly appreciate any input and advice on this project.

I believe my patterns to be superior to all others I have encountered, including Marylis Ramos' patterns, except for her orange peel and 8-panel octahedron designs, which are almost identical to mine. There are comparison illustrations and discussions in the respective chapter documents.

For those who only want the patterns without all the instructions and other information, I added a compilation of just the patterns. That document is in the "Other Files" category of the Downloads section, and is called "Juggling Beanbag Patterns by Joshua Clifton.pdf".

The following information is excerpted from my web page.

I have tried to make this work accessible to readers lacking technical knowledge, making it easy for them to simply print the patterns and sew the beanbags without having to wade through technical information, yet also include all the information that will enable those with a mathematical background and interest in the geometry and design theories to delve deeper and satisfy their curiosity and understand how these designs are created. The boldfacing I use throughout the documents are an attempt to enable readers to scan the documents quickly and glean the most important information.

The original motivation behind this guide is that nobody (that I know of) provides definitions of the pattern shapes of spherical beanbags so they can be drawn in any size or improved upon. In the case of the typical 32-panel design used for footbags, which is composed of pentagons and semi-regular hexagons, nobody seems to have a good answer to the question of how to size the patterns to produce a desired finished size.

My guide answers that. Each beanbag design document not only includes ready-to-print patterns in six sizes, and instructions for scaling them for other ball diameters, but also formulas to calculate the pattern dimensions for any ball size, and illustrated instructions for drawing the patterns (by hand and with a CAD program). Each design also includes mathematical definitions and structural analyses of the pattern shapes (including four variations of the 32-panel structure), and explanations of how I developed the designs. In Chapter 2 there is a section on figuring out how much you need to adjust the pattern sizes to account for things like gather applied to the seams, or your material choices.

With the exception of the regular polygons, I designed all of the panel shapes myself using math and extensive experimentation. All designs up to the 14-panel use curved edges to produce better spheres, and most of the polyhedral designs have modified face shapes that produce better spheres. I discuss the mathematics and techniques I used to create the designs so that someone with the aptitude for it could follow my process to create new designs, or improve mine.

Examples of my color arrangement diagrams: https://www.joshuaclifton.com/juggle/Decor/colorArrSample.png

My guide documents include the following:

  • Information and advice on fabrics, thread, template material, filler, beanbag weight and size, fabric markers, stitching and knotting techniques, and finishing techniques. (Chapter 2.)

  • Ready-to-print patterns in six sizes for each design with instructions for scaling the printout for other sizes, formulas for calculating pattern dimensions and step-by-step directions for drawing them (by hand and with SketchUp), illustrated instructions for assembling the beanbags, and 249 illustrated color arrangement ideas including the balls and the assembly layouts (examples above), with 84 arrangements for the 32-panel structures. (In their respective design chapter documents.)

  • A list of other people's online tutorials for making juggling beanbags, footbags, and other fabric balls. (In the Introduction.)

  • Fabric ball project ideas with photos (Christmas ornaments, decorative centerpieces, baby toys, etc.). (Appendix I.)

  • Full, illustrated explanations of how I developed each design and the mathematics behind them, and comparisons to alternate patterns in some cases, including Marylis Ramos' patterns. (In their respective design chapter documents.)

  • Examples of other designs and variations. (Chapter 4.)

  • A chapter on the theories and mathematics I use to modify polyhedral face angles and to design curves for polygonal panels to produce optimal spheres. It includes tutorials on how to calculate "Isovertex" face angles and on how use the Tangent Chord Angle Theorem to calculate arc radii that produce specified tangent angles at their intersections. Accompanying the latter are explanations and examples of why circular curves do not necessarily work best, and how to design non-circular/Bézier curves that work better (particularly for the orange peel ball). (Chapter 5)

  • Step-by-step instructions for drawing spherical polyhedra in SketchUp. (Appendix II.)

  • An appendix illustrating how I create the HDR photos of my beanbags. (Appendix III.)

  • A list of the juggling beanbag manufacturers whose websites I used as resources for this work. (Appendix IV.)

7b_wizard - - Parent

Hi Joshua,
the first four shapes in the first picture, I have sewn them too. I now prefer sewing 2-panel balls - they've the least longest seam, thus less & faster work to do; but also no meeting points of seams ('T' or 'X').
Those patterns with sizing instructions of yours for the standard 4-panel beanbag might become really useful to me, as I have to go by trial and error for a differently sized ball.
I am, though, sceptical about the efficiency of using ever smaller and smaller upto 32 panels - so much precious lifetime goes into sewing panel by panel bay panel ... a.s.o. (x32) - while of course these then look absolutely greedily ornamental ;o)
Thanks for sharing.

Joshua Clifton - - Parent

Thanks for replying!

That's true. For pure stitching efficiency, the 2-panel ball is the best. I find it difficult to assemble, though, because I have to continually align concave curves with convex curves. So for optimal efficiency, I prefer the 4-panel orange peel ball, for which I can just lay the panels flat together and sew along the lines (it requires only 13% more stitching). My overall favorite, though, is the octahedron (8 panels, 59% more stitching), because it is still pretty easy and quick to make, and is very round and elegant. The 2-panel and orange peel designs, and even the cube, are a bit squarish with the fabrics I use, and I like a perfect sphere.

I'm guessing the lack of seam intersections is why the 2-panel structure is used for baseballs. It has no weak points and also has the least amount of stitching that could burst.

The designs with more panels are great for their beauty, and some people like to make them because they enjoy the process. But they certainly aren't necessary for juggling, and for me they are very tedious. I might make them if I really wanted an elegant set to juggle with or to impress others, but otherwise I'd stick with the octahedron.

The 32-panel structures (hexagon or triangle versions) are the ones typically used for footbags (Hacky Sacks). My understanding is that people use them because the dense seam structure forms a skeleton that keeps the ball round when half-filled and makes it springy and more responsive to kicks. It's not important for juggling except for those with a passion for beautiful and creative designs. I love the latest one I made, which is the one in the photo, but I sure wouldn't want to make a full set of those!

If you use my patterns, let me know if they produce the sizes I specify. I haven't had the motivation to test the sizing with other fabrics, so I don't know how accurate they will be for whatever you're using. I size them for corduroy, and I've been wondering if other fabrics will size the same way.

7b_wizard - - Parent

Oh yeah, right, sewn folded flat together makes it much easier!.

Have you ever made any out of genuine leather - there different thicknesses available - I had used between 0.7 and 1.4 mm thin\thick - they feel great to touch, to juggle, and just to know they will really last!

In matters of the outcome of the sizing for different fabrics, I think with the same sewing line, the outcome should pretty much be the same, unless maybe for really thick fabric or leather that doesn't easily bend when newly sewn, but should adapt with use.

Joshua Clifton - - Parent

I've never used real leather, but I made a couple balls with a material called marine vinyl that is 1mm thick and has the surface texture and general properties of moderately stiff leather. I made them for games of catch. We don't have baseball gloves, so I wanted a ball that had the feel and roughly the size of a baseball, but would be softer and a little lighter so we could catch it with bare hands (they're tightly packed with plastic pellets). They work great and are fun to throw, are very durable, and do have a great feel in the hand as you said!

Since the material is thick and stiff, I did not use a seam allowance on the panels, but assembled them edge-to-edge, right side out (I used a single-needle baseball stitch and very strong upholstery thread). Marine vinyl is not as tough as leather, and the stitches need a good bite into the edge so as not to tear through (I made that mistake on a few stitches).

The first three photos are of my 2-panel, baseball-style ball, and the fourth is of my dodecahedron. That was my first one and I don't care for it as much.

https://www.joshuaclifton.com/juggle/forumpics/jugglingedge/Marine%20Vinyl%20Baseball%20Photos%201.jpg
https://www.joshuaclifton.com/juggle/forumpics/jugglingedge/Marine%20Vinyl%20Baseball%20Photos%202.jpg
https://www.joshuaclifton.com/juggle/forumpics/jugglingedge/Marine%20Vinyl%20Baseball%20Photos%203.jpg
https://www.joshuaclifton.com/juggle/forumpics/jugglingedge/Marine%20Vinyl%20Dodecahedron.jpg

For future visitors to this thread, if the above photos are no longer available, you can see the first three in my 2-Panel Baseball Chapter document near the end of the "How I Developed This Design" section (currently page 25), and the fourth, the dodecahedron, in the 1 - Homemade Juggling Beanbag Guide... document, Chapter 2 - General Information and Techniques, "Fabric" section and "Stitching Techniques" section.

7b_wizard - - Parent

• for artificial leather - (of a good kind that doesn't easily rip) - I also found it pretty good and well apt for beanbags; just one property needs being careful about, which is that it melts on contact with fire or embers; which also goes for polyamid sewing thread.
• for sewing concave to convexe &v.v., I mark the four middles of the panels soas to keep adjusting these together while sewing. Or even in case do angled stitches.
• look great, your baseball style balls above. I think, with the middle somewhat thinner, they would become even rounder - the concave part then needs adjusted, though, for the circumference to remain same.

Joshua Clifton - - Parent

Oh, also, what patterns have you been using? I like to research alternate patterns and see how they compare to mine. Are they available on the web?

7b_wizard - - Parent

No, just private cardboard (lol).
For my patterns, I mainly went by cm of circumference needed, then trial & error for rounding the edges more or less well.
The oldest, classical beanbag's 1 of 4 spindle panels, I got by copying it from a worn off one cut open.
For the 2-panel patterns, there's no strict dimensions, but some variation possible (e.g. for how thin the middle). For the corners, I even optimized with a little 'S'-curve in each round corner of both panels; or call it a little mould. [ alas, I've long not made any and currently have no access to where they might be ] Roughly from memory: https://filebin.net/tecw8b1p1mbq1eej/IMG_20230720_013321_1_3.jpg two-panel panel with moulds [80 KB]

Joshua Clifton - - Parent

LOL, I like the caption above the pattern! The S-curves are an interesting design idea. Does that make a rounder ball, or make the "corners" a little less pronounced?

7b_wizard - - Parent

hehe^^ yes. corners less pronounced (thus rounder ball). but it's experimental and maybe not necessary with well shaped or even mathematically calculated roundings of the pattern.

Joshua Clifton - - Parent

Try my patterns if you feel up to it and tell me how the resulting ball compares to yours. I'm not fully satisfied with the nature of the ball my pattern produces, particularly where you put those notches, and I want to improve the shape, using Bezier curves instead of circular. But I don't know how to design the curves. Maybe your little notches will be a clue to what I need to improve.

I've done some research on the panel shape and even unwrapped a baseball to see what I could learn from that, but I have not yet figured out what an optimal shape would be. I've found very little information on this shape, and there is a lot of variation between different patterns and between those and the real baseball panels. I think different baseballs also use different shapes.

barnesy - - Parent

That’s a lot of words! (He says, while probably launching into a lot of words). I’ve only dipped into bits for the moment but it looks like great work. I’ve never understood or explored the mathematical side of beanbag patterns, so it’s good to see an approach coming from the other end of that scale. Though I think a lot of the corner cutting decisions I’ve made make it a little incompatible with my approach.

I used to be known as a beanbag manufacturer. That was 20-odd years ago when the juggling shops didn’t sell underfilled juggling balls. That market has changed a lot! I was using a 4 panel beachball style pattern. It was never particularly round but that was mostly OK because of the fill level. I was probably too reluctant to share my patterns but it never felt like that was the important information for me to share.

These days, I wouldn’t consider anything other than 8 panels. My patterns have been through various size manipulations but IIRC they started out as Marylis’ pattern. I just have a load of pieces of cardboard with cryptic squiggles on them. I sew that pattern by sewing pairs of panels and then continuing with the 4 panel beachball style following the method I put on the web (more on that below). I once had an interesting chat with Gregory from GBallz: his 8 panel approach is quicker than mine. He sews pairs of panels, then sews two twos together to get half balls. He then turns one inside out inside the other (or was that the other way round?) and finishes the inside out ball by sewing those together as one seam. Sorcery! One day I’ll try that, but it doesn’t fit so well with my preferred sewing machine: a hand cranked Singer. The other thing that interested me from that chat is that he said he can make a good six panel ball quicker than an eight panel. Good for him: that’s not how my attempts worked out. I tried six panel rounded squares for one set. I like the result but I had to deal with eight vertices per ball. I found that a lot more difficult than (what felt like) two vertices for my 4 or 8 panel approach. The shape can be good with 6 but 8 works better for less effort. More than eight panels looks great but I’ve never tried it. Partly because of the increased time and difficulty but mainly because of the increased number of reasons for two balls to not be identical.

I see you offer sewing and (optional?) cutting patterns. When I started, I was using a cutting template but I felt that it took too much time for the extra marking, and that the precise positioning of the sewing template within that shape introduced possible error. So I switched to marking one shape and using the sewing machine foot edge as a guide for the seam position. I’m sure that there are issues with that, both mathematically and from an information sharing point of view. But it’s quicker, so for me it wins. Any spherical imperfection seems very slight at this size.

I see that you linked to my old guide on the 2diabolo site. That site is long dead and is now being squatted by people who think it’s fine to throw porn videos at whoever wanders in, so you may want to change that link! I found that out on my phone while sitting between my two small children who fortunately were engrossed in the TV. Thank heavens for Bluey! The best reproduction I can quickly find is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20110810193406/http://2diabolo.net/index.html%3Fpage=14.html

Joshua Clifton - - Parent

Wow, Dave Barnes of Barnesy Bags! What an honor to meet you here! Your tutorial has been part of the backdrop of this project since near the beginning around 2012! Nice work!

I updated the Barnesy Bags link to the archived version, and updated a few others in the list that were offline. The new version of the document is now on my website. I never saw porn at the old URL, though. Right now I just get a few brief error page redirects and then a blank page. I guess somebody evicted the squatters. Thanks for alerting me to that, though!

Yes, LOL, I have always been very verbose in everything I write. I enjoy meeting others who are the same. I know that it will repel many potential readers, but that's just who I am. However, it might serve a purpose:

I have been a bit concerned that my documents will to a small degree hurt the sales of footbags and juggling bags by the many professional makers, and possibly create new competitors. This may not be a bad thing, but I don't like to hurt small businesses making excellent products, or upset anyone. So perhaps the intense and lengthy nature of my post and my documents will at least filter out the casuals, who will instead continue buying their beanbags. Only the truely dedicated with time on their hands, or the empty of pocket, will make use of it, and those types ought to have a good resource to help them pursue and enjoy this craft, I think.

It's funny that you got started in your hobby/business the same way I did, by being short on cash as a teenager in the 1990s (my timeframe, anyway) and deciding to figure out how to make the 4-panel balls myself instead of buying them! (My origin story is in the 4 & 6-Panel Orange Peel Ball PDF, "How I Developed This Design" section.)

One advantage of the 8-panel over the cube, or any structure with 4-way seam intersections rather than 3-way, is that you can continue the same thread (if long enough) through the entire ball without re-stitching any seams. My assembly methods try to take advantage of that when possible. Tying off threads and starting new ones slows down the process. I don't know how it is with a machine, though.

That's cool that you got to interact with the (I assume) founder of Gballz! That's another long-standing side character in this project. His balls look beautiful ;-) I like his assembly methodology. That would work pretty well. It's very similar to how I assemble some of my panel structures.

As for stitching and cutting templates, I know what you mean. The additional alignment and tracing is tedious and time-consuming. But, at least for hand stitching, and especially for high panel count structures, the combo template idea I developed eliminates the alignment issue and even makes the tracing quicker. It's a stencil on the inside and an exterior template on the outside, all one piece, with tabs around the outer edge to hold it down with (the #1 root PDF, chapter 2, "Making Templates" section has a discussion of the three template types).

http://joshuaclifton.com/juggle/forumpics/jugglingedge/Template%20Types.gif

The interior tracing for the stitching pattern is easier and faster than tracing around the outside of a template, and the exterior/cutting pattern just needs a few sketched lines around the corners between the tabs. The template takes patience and care to cut out (requires an X-Acto knife, and I haven't even tried to make one for a curved-edge pattern), but with a durable plastic it lasts pretty much forever, and it's a great way to draw lots of accurate panels quickly.

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

Hello, first of all thank you for this monumental work on making homemade beanbags.

I haven't read it yet, but seeing the size of the PDF and the date you started, as well as all the constant updates you've made, you can tell how much time and inventiveness you've invested in all of this.

I therefore wanted to ask you:
- if you think that even now, with all the numerous models on the market, even quite similar to the homemade ones in terms of shapes, partial fillings and type of fabrics, it makes sense to produce them yourself
- and if you have ever compared your creations with those of the most used brands (Flying clipper, GBallz and all the others).

Thanks again

barnesy - - Parent

It may be pride but I like the ones I make more than any others I've tried, and I'm free to experiment. People seem to rave about ultraleather but I don't like it so much. Back when I started making beanbags I think I had a bit of a niche in the market. These days it's completely different: I imagine I could be happy with quite a few of the available options. They'd all be good at gathering dust!

Little Paul - - Parent

Learning to sew and making your own juggling balls can be as engrossing and enjoyable as learning to juggle in the first place.

It’s not for everyone, but there is absolutely lots of value in making your own props, way beyond the end product.

7b_wizard - - Parent

shipping is expensive.
numerous, but different and very distinct models with other properties than what you need or like.
you want the fill like you want it and the weight that you prefer - and that's where the weight per volume per ball size come in play.

7b_wizard - - Parent

...and also the sizes are standardized. near to no room for own preferences of endless possible combinations of size + material +weight + density + surface + squishyness. always a pain to have to buy balls.

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

How many balls do you make yourself? Because to know which size, material, weight, density, surface and squishyness are perfect for you too many attempts you have to make…

7b_wizard - - Parent

I'm not sure, I understood this right.
My best selfmade are of leather, just the cherry pips inside broke, so they are now way too flabby - I'd have to refill them.

"knowing what is perfect for me" - I need 6.0 cm, 80 g, but standard is 6.2 cm, 110 g (Play in Italy online offers to fill e.g. mmx according to your wish).

I saw a Drop Props ball, pretty much my preferences (strong fabric, slightly underfilled, plastic beads filling) and not expensive, but that's US with if at all, expensive shipping to europe.

I bought cheap 6.0 cm beanbags, but they are actually really 6.2 :(

"many attempts" - .. ahm ... yes, I do.

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

So you could try the Infinities, size XS (61mm), filled with plastic if you want balls at least 75% filled up or plastic and iron if you want them less than 75% filled. And you decide the exact filling percentage.

Look at this graph: https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5ea0717f2eb3e04ba29e7916/64c179017a576a1bd44253ec_61mm.png

Obviously this level of customization means that they cost significantly more than other beanbags on the market.

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

Let it be clear that they are not the only ones which allow you to choose the exact weight of the balls. I have indicated these only because they are the ones with the highest degree of customization, but I have never used them: I currently juggle some GBallz I bought years ago.

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

you want the fill like you want it and the weight that you prefer
This is currently possible with several manufacturers.

7b_wizard - - Parent

Yes, it's pretty new service. But it works mainly for hybrids only and with notably less filling makes them 'russian'.

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

Take a look for example at these Infinity beanbags:
https://www.jugglequip.com/post/infinities-custom-a-complete-guide

You can choose:
- color of the panels
- thread color for stitching
- thread thickness
- size, between 7 diameters
- weight
- filling material (they use two different types of plastic and iron: they avoided millet because it can give allergies), with filling tables that give indications on the weight based on the percentages of fillers chosen.

7b_wizard - - Parent

Thanks for taking the time.
New information for me - I didn't know about Infinities yet.
So, what I see is 18.90 € for one custom ball; seen handmade and guarantee and all that goes into it, service, know-how, --> a fair price, but still luxury; advanced jugglers might need more than one set of upto many balls which makes it a little fortune or call it investment.

For the first selfsewn ball ( after a longer time not making any ), I need 2h or more. A few balls later I have sped the process up to like 75 minutes. Sacrificing a few evenings, I'll have a new super set within less than a week. Assuming, my time were worth 20-30 €, the value of my balls would be roughly the same as bought customs.

Joshua Clifton - - Parent

Thank you very much for your kind words :-) Your appreciation means a lot.

1) There are three reasons I can see for making one's own juggling bags (the others have mentioned some aspects of these): A) You're poor and don't want to spend the money on a good set, but are adept at crafting (that's why Barnesy and I started). B) You want to customize them in some way that the manufacturers aren't doing. C) You love to make things yourself, and, as Little Paul said, you enjoy the process, creativity, or zen of it, and the satisfaction, pride, and bragging rights of having made a beautiful set of beanbags yourself (especially the high panel count designs!).

2) I have never owned any pro beanbags apart from the original, cheap, Jugglebug cube bags I got when I was very young. They were being sold at a shop where I attended a few juggling lessons. So I do not know how the pro bags compare to mine except for what I can judge from photos and descriptions.

The one exception was many years ago when I attended a juggling function and tried a set of pro bags somebody had. I don't know who made them, but I remember them being single-color corduroy, 14-panel. They were superior to mine in weight, which is how I learned the importance of weight, and started adding metal BBs to the plastic pellets I use. It really improves them. I also preferred the corduroy to the denim I was using and switched.

I have no doubt that many of those companies make products that are at least as good as mine. The only reason mine might be a little better is that I can take the time, if I care to, to perfect the stitching, knotting, and other assembly so that the bags are very durable and elegant. Most mass producers probably cannot take that kind of time - it would make the bags too expensive. (I guess that's a minor 4th reason to make them one's self.)

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

Thanks for the reply. As far as I'm concerned, I believe that reasons A and C are clearly the main ones, given the fair level of customization achieved by some manufacturers.

7b_wizard - - Parent

The only customization I ever met is weight of the millet filling by italian manufacturer Play for hybrids only. It's still millet thus a different volume then. The ball size also stays the same.

You can customize e v e r y t h i n g when making them yourself!

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

No, currently there are several manufacturers that allow you not only to choose the weight (and not only filling with millet, but with plastic granules or metal microspheres or a combination of these, in order to ensure every possible weight and every desired subfill), but also the fabric used.
Ball sizes are usually only 3 or 4, rarely more.

7b_wizard - - Parent

...yet another example: I bought seven of such smaller 5.sth cm 4-panel beanbags in a toy shop; I even tried them out. Now, what happened: of the green, blue, red, white and yellow panels, the yellow ones soon lost their coating leaving the bare fabric. Now the balls are eggshaped :(

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

Of course, as in any market there are bad products, medium quality products and good products.

RegularJugular - - Parent

I am glad such comprehensive documentation on making beanbags exists. The next time I try to make beanbags I will refer to this.

Thank you

momo -

Hello, I am momo.

I do juggle since 2009 and attended several circus conventions and organized Hamburg conventions.

Spending time with other circus people, exchanging ideas, playing games and having a good time together gives me a lot of joy. I like club passing, watching people being creative in whatever way and playing diabolo.

I will be travelling to Gothenburg and Stockholm from 19th to 28th of September and would like to meet with other circus people there. So please contact me if you have advice what to do, where to go or if you would like to meet: juggling <at> bjoernb.org

Greetings,
momo.

p.s. some passing workshops I held at EJC Brunico and other circus conventions:
- https://momo.ninja/passing/workshops/

Maria - - Parent

Welcome to Sweden! I wrote you an email.

The Void - - Parent

Welcome aboard.

CameronFord - - Parent

Hi momo,
Welcome! It's cool that you have resources aimed at beginners. My favourite way of teaching beginners is using this method: http://www.passingpedagogy.com/
Hope to see you again soon - I think I last saw you at the Newark EJC?
Cameron

momo - - Parent

Hi Cameron,

yes we met in Newark at EJC, in Canterbury at BJC and in Berlin. Iirc we only passed in Berlin.

I might try your method teaching passing, when newcomers want to learn it. It is very similar to the version I got taught from Aidan that is in the pdf passing for beginners #1.

Plans are trying to get to Berlin Juggling Convention next year and to EJC. Would be great to see you again. I won't make it to pass-out.

Greetings,
momo.

Mïark -

Jay Gilligan is proposing creating a new on-line centralised juggling focussed hub, he posted his ideas on facebook and agreed they could be shared here (he also compliments the Juggling Edge events listings):

due to some different chattering on various parts of the internet, i’ve finally been inspired enough to write this all down for public consumption. erik aberg has been my partner in crime on this, helping in all the ways possible (even though he warned me against writing this here). we also need to thank emil dahl and cal courtney for helping with some first steps towards making any of this happen!

ever since erik started his work surrounding the definition of juggling, that got me started on some thoughts surrounding the culture of juggling. even as i write this, i already know i have no place to share these ideas. and as such this stops me from writing and sharing many many things that i would like to. i could post this as a facebook status… but then only my friends on facebook (who the algorithm chooses) will see it. i can also cross post it to jugglingrock, juggling home, etc. etc. but as well anything posted there will be buried by tomorrow and if not then, it will certainly be long gone in a few weeks. facebook is also unsearchable in any practical sense of the term. so putting this up on facebook (which i already know i will do, and it feels slightly hopeless) is almost the same as throwing all these thoughts away in the long run. i might do better to have a few personal phone calls with friends. but the juggling community is larger than that!

from looking around i see all these great new things happening in juggling. the juggling world is growing in scope and spreading out into many new locations. lots of new things are happening- new ideas, new structures, new groups. instagram is a good platform to witness some of this growth. i wish to have a central place to discuss juggling with everyone from around the world. i want to have a place where i can share my ideas and hear the ideas of other. i’d like this place to be accessible to as many jugglers as possible, and i’d also like this place to be around for a long, long time. this place should be a resource for juggling information and knowledge for us interested in juggling now, and for future generations who would like to continue that journey. that place does not exist right now and i hope it could be possible to make it.

i thought back to the last time there was a “central hub” for the discussion of juggling in the world. i know it was not perfect for any number of reasons, but for me i think that was rec.juggling as accessed through the internet juggling database (IJDb). rec.juggling still exists, but since the IJDb closed in 2012, rec.juggling stopped having any sort of relevance to the juggling scene at large. there have been several attempts since 2012 to fill in that gap, but there is nothing that even comes close to what we need today. and like i said, rec.juggling as accessed through the portal on IJDb wasn’t all that great, or even close to being ubiquitous so there’s not much of a point in mentioning it anymore, except as a historical foot note in this story.

facebook has a couple of really strong things going for it. in fact, one of those things is the most important factor in any of this: it has the most people there right now! it is without a doubt a community. in fact in regards to juggling it is many hundreds of communities with various degrees of localization and agendas. another nice feature facebook currently provides is the ability to have built in language translation services. i have had several valuable discussions with jugglers from all around the world in japanese, russian, spanish, french, and english… all at the same time! that is pretty incredible to me. after those two points though, facebook is a terrible terrible place to try and archive knowledge. most of the conversations we have on facebook (good or bad) are lost all too quickly, only to surface again in a few months and be repeated all over again. there’s no real continuity, nothing is being built other than a growth in numbers and perhaps enthusiasm? those are not trivial nor bad things, but maybe its time to do something with a vision for all those jugglers who love juggling?

i keep coming back to this in my personal life but i feel like there’s all these people all over the world who are working on lots of the same things with juggling. but everyone is alone with their struggles. or that its very cyclical- one conversation may be sparked which leads somewhere but that conversation never gets shared or saved so that it can be referred to and so the next juggler who comes along has to start from zero. i know there has been some work to counteract this- for example some great guides on reddit by Mike Moore which can be pointed to whenever those topics surface from a new arrival. and for sure there has been other great work by many people here and there. but that’s just the point… its still piecemeal. you can pick apart any of these thoughts here and give counterexamples to the problems or issues. but that’s not the goal. it doesn’t work if all the solutions are just working fragments of other, larger systems which are not ideal. mike is making reddit a better place for juggling. but reddit (as it is now) is not the solution we are looking for. i don’t generally participate on reddit because i don’t feel the payback in the long term is enough in relation to the investment of my time. that goes the same for any of the other number of alternatives, including facebook.

i realized one of the things i want most is a sustainable online place to discuss juggling with other jugglers. there are several other features that an online juggling hub could provide, which i’ll get to later. but having a healthy discussion forum is #1 on my list. that’s why i did a small test with the object episodes forum a couple of years ago. i’m part of an online music community called lines (llllllll.co) which is built on a really nice forum software called discourse. discourse has lots of great features which make it instantly more useful to have a conversation there rather than facebook. of course the problem is that we are all digitally destroyed for time- no one wants more screen time in their lives. so we all go to facebook and no one really wants to have yet another place to visit, yet another place to have to go spend more time online.

my thought with the object episodes forum was that it would be one small part of a larger picture. obviously i put it out without the rest of the picture and while there were definitely some worthwhile discussions there, i realized pretty quickly that its days were numbered in the grand scheme of things. i don’t think the success of a discussion forum relies upon sheer numbers. i think it can sustain on a small but passionate amount of people who regularly contribute. i stopped participating because i knew that investing more time, money, and energy into that forum was a dead end since it was not the complete plan i wished it to eventually be. that’s why i took it offline and chose to try and focus the resources i have for things like this on the real idea. object episodes was a good test, but it was not going to spur the growth of the rest of the infrastructure needed to keep it going.

my idea with erik is to have an online centralized location for juggling which provides enough value that its worth people’s time to visit it outside of facebook (and whatever other online necessities people have). one small example of this could be daily content which isn’t found anywhere else- a picture of the day (culled from erik’s exhaustive historical juggling picture archive), and/or a historical juggling fact of the day. would a bunch of these things be compelling enough to make you think a couple of times a week “huh, i wonder what cool juggling photo is up on the site today, i think i’ll go check it out”? then the front page of the website could have the top 3 most recent subject lines posted on the forum, and maybe the top 3 most discussed subject lines from the forum. if you check out the photo of the day, or check the upcoming festival calendar, maybe one of those subjects from the forum catches your eye. maybe you go to the forum and start to participate in the discussion. does this sound like it might be realistic?

obviously everyone will have different ideas about the details of such a website. i’ll write down the ones we thought of here. to be clear, i’m not proposing that we have a discussion which turns into a contest about what features such a website could have. this is our carefully curated list of ideas which we refined over many too many hours of conversation about what we think might be the most useful to both us and the community at large:

- working title: Juggling Portal (or “the” Juggling Portal), could be JP for short

- the main page easily features all main activities without the need to click through links to reach the start of any of the main areas. i know if i go to a website and sometimes even have to click more than once to find the start of something i’m done and just leave. again, i’m online too much, i have too many other distractions online. i don’t have time to menu dive.

- the front page has: a photo of the day. this photo is sourced from a folder which erik fills once a year with enough photos to last the entire year. this is a sustainable practice. he’s not going online every day to post a photo. i mean he has terabytes of photos. he could fill the folder with 10 years worth of photos tonight. the folder should be accessible to the admin with a simple online interface to drag and drop photos after a login and with some simple dialogue boxes to enter in a caption or other meta information about the photos.

- the front page has: an event calendar link, but it also displays on the front page the title link to next upcoming event (or multiple events if they are on the same nearest day) and a countdown clock to that event. right now juggling edge has the most useful event calendar i know of, is this just a link to them?

- the front page has: a historical juggling fact of the day, again pulled from a database of facts that erik has entered previously. and to sustain that, the juggling portal should also have a publicly searchable database of juggling information. i believe Olivier Caignart mentioned he is working on something like this? as well the interface for making this happen could be an admin login page with a dialogue box which connects to the database both for the fact of the day feed but also for the larger searchable database

- the front page has: a link to the forum with the top 3 most recent subject lines, and the top 3 most discussed posts

- the front page has: a link to the records part of the website. but not just the link, also some curation for the top numbers records. like maybe solo balls, rings, and clubs records for example are listed right there. i mean even a silly thing like this i could use monthly!!! i’m at a show and someone afterwards comes up to me and asks if i can juggle chainsaws and then asks how many balls i can juggle. i could just point them to the JP right away and see that someone from the UK just flashed 17 balls. i’m not personally so into the records thing in terms of posting or logging personal records but 99% of the people i have talked to so far are into it, including erik, so it seems to be something that people are really passionate about and is important to them. then it might be really beneficial to the community if that was a feature of this website.

- the front page has: juggling vendors list link. does it also have a small advertisement there that could rotate through participating sponsoring vendors? maybe. i mean i don’t mind seeing advertisements from juggling manufacturers because i want to know what’s the new stuff i can buy!! and maybe the money helps with the site. i have no idea. how will the website be paid for, i don’t know. so far i was able to pay for all my random projects out of my pocket. probably not the most sustainable if we’re talking about longevity as a goal here.

- the front page has: an online juggling resource list link. this could click through to show juggling club listings (i loved the style of this from the IJDb where juggling clubs were listed with red, yellow, or green traffic lights. a red light meant something like no one from the club had logged in and updated the information in 5 years, a yellow light meant 2 years, and a green light meant that entry was updated that year. or something like that. but i have to tell you, i have many times used “red light” juggling club listings to eventually track down certain jugglers to lots of benefits in the past!), a collection of links to juggling blogs (and here, like everything else on the site- juggling clubs, juggling vendors, etc. this can all be user generated. you get a login when you register for JP. then you can make an entry on this if you have a juggling blog. we have to deal with how to monitor spam and all of that. but its 2020, that’s a thing website people know how to do?), a list of jugglers’ websites both personal and professional (again i used this all the time on IJDb), a list of juggling related resources (for example could have links to external lists like circus schools with FEDEC or whatever, unicycling hub, kendama party, i don’t know what’s out there but we could have a resource of links with descriptions so again its both a place of discovery and a place for reference. and its all searchable. so if i type in “yo-yo” to the JP, then one of the things which pops up is the yo-yo group party link under the online juggling resource link section)

- the front page has: yearly community reading list. i need to explain this- look, here’s the thing. one of the biggest things in the juggling community these days is luke burrage’s top 40 jugglers of the year. its practically an institution at this point. he has been so generous to run it for all these years and it seems to be something that lots of people in the community find to be both valuable and inspiring. though also the criteria of the top 40 voting is generally very open ended, and i can totally respect luke for that. as far as i understand his whole point is that you should just vote for whoever you think is most deserving for whatever reason in that year. but in reality lots of times it turns into a contest of who posted the best youtube video that year. or maybe even from the year before? so maybe it could be fun and drive traffic to the JP to just have a yearly top 3 video contest. that could be part of the community reading list. so on the JP you have the top 3 juggling videos of 2020, and you also have the top 3 juggling videos of all time. each year the top 3 juggling videos of all time is up for grabs, and same for juggling videos made in the current year. as with all of the community reading list content, perhaps the selection is done by nomination along with a jury of peers, and maybe partial popular voting or something. but in addition to the top videos of the year and of all time, there could be a selection of links, books, forum posts, other online content, podcasts, or just anything that would give some valuable content and insight into what juggling is right now. almost like a statement that represents the current state of juggling in the world if at all possible. basically i want something i can refer back to in my own work and also direct others to all the time, be it producers, normal people, or students when i’m teaching. i mean i always thought a great idea would be that in circus school, the graduating jugglers would get to refresh or add to a public website. because back when i used to work at DOCH, the administration did ask me to provide a reading list for every year. as far as i could tell that impetus came from administrative technicalities rather than an actual functioning need for such a list (since it was never put into actual real world use on a day to day level). but having a reading list for juggling resources is a very real and possible thing. so every year that the jugglers would graduate, they could choose which videos they thought were most important to them in their lives, and they could share the links to content which helped them the most. then this website could be a living and breathing documentation of what is happening in the DOCH circus school each year with the jugglers. everyone would ask me what’s going on over at DOCH these days… well, check out this website! you can totally see what the jugglers were thinking about from last year at least. i think that would have been a really cool and useful idea to do. so let’s have it here on the JP. it could be useful to so many jugglers around the world who are trying to interact with other genres in various capacities. i know the IJA sometimes tries to get funding for various things or invites certain celebrities to participate in events. and if they don’t know what juggling is, or what juggling is about today… well, easy- send them a link to the community reading list over on the JP, they can immediately see 6 completely insane juggling videos and there is the surrounding context should that be useful.

- the front page has: the trick database link. the trick database allows users to upload video with hashtags. each user would be linked to this by their own JP account like on instagram for example. you make a new trick, you upload the video and then can categorize it, hashtag it, and it becomes a searchable resource. this part of the portal would be especially important on mobile devices. in fact the trick database part of JP should probably just have its own app. the interface could be very much like instagram but with a bit more editing features in terms of collections of videos. i get it that i’m here writing about making instagram with different features. i know its not very realistic. but maybe some of these ideas would spark something in somebody, and since i’m getting all the ideas out here, i’m not going to stop now while talking about the trick database. on the TDb app from JP, you can shoot video straight on your phone, do basic trimming like on instagram, and upload it straight to the app. it would change the way i juggle in both my personal and professional life. for example, if i make a new 3 ball box trick, i could go to the TDb and search “3 balls, box” and instantly get all the 3 ball box videos (and perhaps with even more search criteria for a narrower selection, like maybe also add “cross-arm” and “box with lid”). i could see that the variation i just made up was actually done in 2019 by ameron. and i could also see 30 other variations from everyone all over the world. and that could inspire me to make a variation from one of the ones i saw and upload it to the TDb. which starts the whole process over again. if someone didn’t want their tricks public, i guess you could also have a private TDb account. like for example let’s say you’re making a new show with 2 friends and you want to have a database of video content which you can organize and search during the creation process. you could share that private content with your 2 friends only if you like. personally, if this existed, i’d keep all my content public all the time. having this resource of technique to search and reference would literally change my entire life. so i’d also want to contribute to the process as much as i personally can.

- eventually daily content could be generated by corespondents from around the world. photo of the day takeovers could be from different countries each week or month. there just needs to be the interface to upload the content in a reliable and manageable way.

- throughout the JP site there could be some “talking heads.” erik had this idea as a fun feature, again as a way to drive traffic to the site. the talking heads could be the picture of a juggler’s head with a dialogue box. that juggler could have an exclusive login to that box to write whatever they want which would then be seen publicly until they changed it. would you go to JP if emil dahl had a talking head there? or lewis kennedy? what if you knew that over on the JP anthony gatto actually had a talking head that he was actively updating… wouldn’t you visit the website then?

- the JP would also have other forms of social media to promote its content. but it would not share that exact content on other platforms! what i mean is, JP should have a twitter, facebook, and instagram account. but the instagram account isn’t going to just show the photo of the day from JP every day! then you have no reason to go to JP. but maybe its 1 post a week on the JP instagram account which sums up an interesting forum post from that week. or gives a shout out to an upcoming festival. or shares a link that was uploaded that week. just as a taste of what is offered over on the site. but again, not as just another copy of the same information. hopefully as a way to drive traffic to the site and keep it alive among all the other digital platforms begging for your attention.

- the website should be in english, spanish, french, german, italian, and japanese at least. sounds like crazy work. but worth mentioning that one of the reasons forums or other websites fail today is because not everyone uses the same language.

- a dream feature of the forum would be to have embedded translation service options like from facebook. i don’t know of any forum software which offers this as an option. but for sure it would really unite all the jugglers of the world if they could all talk to each other in some way without language being a barrier!

- another nice feature for the forum would be to have a siteswap highlighter and embedded animator.

- another nice feature for the forum would be to have a scheduling option for when to post a discussion comment. that way i if i find myself having 5 hours in one day, i can write a bunch of forum posts, and set them to be released at intervals over the next weeks. this can help rhythm of keeping discussion going over on the forum. first of all i won’t flood the forum all at once and overwhelm with too many posts, and make people skip content. obviously this feature isn’t just for my account but everyone’s as well. if i know of something coming up i can prepare content ahead of time and release it when its most relevant. this was actually erik’s #1 request.

the whole point of the juggling portal would be to unite everyone together, not fragment them more. for sure the portal would not need everything i listed above to work or survive. and as i have been talking about this privately for a few years now, i know there are people around the world doing parts of these things as i speak. still, the point is that i think the strength of these things is that they would be integrated all together. a central place where we can all meet, discuss, learn, share, archive, and discover juggling.

Kelhoon - - Parent

  • needs to be well secured
  • all components need constant security updates
  • would be nice if it accepted auth from google and/or facebook

Daniel Simu - - Parent

Why authenticating from google or facebook? I find that it hardly makes access easier to sites (maybe this changed, I haven't signed up on a website through fb or google in the last 2 years), and I am worried that I give them unnecessary power to track behaviour of users and sites, when a new platform could be contributing to a more diverse, less centralised web!

Mike Moore - - Parent

Especially for services I don't care about with lots of alternatives, I much prefer options that can connect to my existing accounts (I have a garbage Google account I use for exactly this).

While I /do/ care about talking about juggling, I can imagine that others would be on the edge (no pun intended) of interest for this kind of thing.

Little Paul - - Parent

My main reason would be that handing off authentication to a 3rd party nearly avoids you having to do all the terribly boring stuff of making sure you're storing passwords securely.

But sure, I can see how people would prefer have it self contained.

Orinoco - - Parent

Storing passwords is nowhere near as difficult as it used to be, with the 'new' password functions introduced in PHP7 it's just a case of keeping PHP up to date (which Dreamhost & most hosts will do for you automatically) & changing the hashing algorithm as they come available. For the Edge I just need to change one line of code.

I don't like using 3rd party authentication because using the same account to log in everywhere is effectively the same as using the same password everywhere.

Cedric Lackpot - - Parent

Relevant xkcd - this being the Edge half of you will know which one without even opening it ;-)

Jay, I wish you well and I hope you smash it. I too sorely miss the glory days of recdot via IJDb, but that's very much in the realm of history now.

Richard Loxley - - Parent

Yup. Communication happens naturally where the people are.

rec.juggling succeeded because it was on Usenet, which was where the people were.

Then everyone moved onto the web when that was invented. The IJDb portal succeeded because it was a transition between Usenet and the web, and linked those two communities as they gradually transitioned.

Now the majority of people are on Facebook, so that's where the communication happens. You can't really fight it, although you can still have communication in smaller groups outside if you try hard enough.

What's next? Instagram? Discord? WhatsApp? I dunno, I'm not a teenager, so I don't have visibility of the upcoming communication trends.

But to try to get everyone to move back onto the web is pissing into the wind. "Build it and they will come" doesn't work. "Build it where they already are" is much more likely to succeed.

(Incidentally, I did an internet marketing course years ago, the output of which developed into a successful business. This was the surprising basis of the course: don't build something and then try to attract people to it - instead find the people, ask them what they want but don't have, and then build that product where they already are. It works.)

Mïark - - Parent

I wonder if part of the problem is our perverse relation to a forums popularity, sometimes we post on facebook because we want the maximum audience, then we hate the fact our post gets lost in all the other people's postings. We want to see all the posts that we want to see, but it is unlikely any algorithm will be able to 100% second-guess which posts we might have wanted to see today and which not. Facebook is rubbish in many ways, but perhaps also our expectations are unreasonable.

An analogy might be a juggling convention with 1000s of attendees, loads of shows and many many workshops sounds amazing. Then you realise you have to queue hours for shows, everything is so scheduled you are chasing the clock and workshops are full up and opportunities to rendezvous with friends are fewer.

Orinoco - - Parent

You beat me to it! That comic was my first choice, so I'll settle for my second.

Julien_H - - Parent

I'd love to see this idea come to fruition!

Even though i only witnessed the last few years of rec.juggling, i found it the best ressource for relevant content. There are many conversations that happened there that were really thourough, and well written, and still to this day, those conversation are relevant and need to be accessible in some way!

Every medium right now has some good and bad stuff, but overall, nearly everyone of them gives me a lukewarm feeling. Facebook and instagram are great to quickly share something, but if you're not logged at the right moment, it gets buried and you'll never know it existed.

Anyway, i'd love to see such website, mainly for discussions and archives, and also for events listing and club listings. Usually, if an event is not listed on the juggling edge, i don't even know it exists because it's lost in somewhere i don't even know of..

Good luck with the project!

Orinoco - - Parent

To address a few quick points:

The irony that Jay & most of the world probably won't see this because it is not on Facebook is not lost on me.


the main page easily features all main activities without the need to click through links to reach the start of any of the main areas
a link to the forum with the top 3 most recent subject lines
an event calendar link, but it also displays on the front page the title link to next upcoming event


Edit settings > Change home page layout

More sections can be made available on request.

In case anyone doesn't already know you can add events listings using Edge data extremely easily or not quite so easily (give me a shout if you need help).

a photo of the day
a historical juggling fact of the day


Post to the forum use #PhotoOfTheDay, #HistoricalJugglingFactOfTheDay, creating the ability to display the latest post with a hash tag on the front page wouldn't be too difficult.


a link to the records part of the website
juggling club listings (i loved the style of this from the IJDb where juggling clubs were listed with red, yellow, or green traffic lights
the website should be in english, spanish, french, german, italian, and japanese at least
a siteswap highlighter and embedded animator


All already in place except Japanese but I can add that very easily if anyone is interested in translating. Dutch & Russian are also available.


another nice feature for the forum would be to have a scheduling option

If you come back here tomorrow at sometime after 08:00 UTC you will see either:

  1. The first scheduled post on the Edge
  2. A few posts calling me a moron because it didn't work



a dream feature of the forum would be to have embedded translation service options like from facebook

To get this embedded in forum software would breach free usage limits of existing online translation services pretty quickly & get too expensive for the juggling community to afford very quickly. There are many browser extensions available that can do this if the user wants this feature. As for creating my own translation service I am both not smart enough to build it & not stupid enough to try.


It's disheartening just how much functionality of Jay's ideal portal is already available at the Edge.


If you believe that Facebook is a poor platform for discussion, don't use it for discussion.


Everyone believes that rec.juggling was the greatest thing in existence. Everything since has been rubbish.

I question whether anyone really remembers what rec.juggling was. No one is missing rec.juggling. What everyone is missing is the community that used rec.juggling.

rec.juggling was simply a small corner of usenet. The only thing usenet did was distribute text files (or binaries if you didn't mind being shouted at) from you to anyone that wanted to download them. That was it. & it was rubbish, service was patchy, not all messages got through, it was full of spam & MLM scams, archiving relied on the whims of a multitude of service providers, retrieval sometimes involved emailing your mates to see if they still had a cached copy of a post, & there was a constant influx of newbies who had no idea how the system functioned & were trying to work it out. Every newsgroup in existence could have legitimately been filed under the alt.test hierarchy. & for the love of God will someone please tell me if the rare wine red Mugen kendama IS STILL FOR SALE?!

But behind all that were people. People who had ideas. People who wanted to help. People who wanted to make you laugh. & without any fancy software to animate patterns, create causal diagrams, automated polls, competitions, categorised, searchable databases with automated data sanitisation people created STUFF just through swapping small text files.

Long before convenient free to use video streaming sites with infinite storage & bandwidth, & online editing tools existed. People worked together to navigate the minefield of competing file formats that only worked on half the computers, the numerous impossible to use video editing packages, negotiating the sharing of precious bandwidth & storage to host files for everyone to download. Yet we still had the glorious WJVF (anyone know what Arron Gregg is up to these days?) & the Juggletween project for example.

The top 40 jugglers of the year poll started life because Luke bothered to work through dozens of atrociously spelt & formatted answers to a survey by hand. Siteswap became popular due to the efforts of dozens of people creating hundreds of almost indecipherable ladder/state diagrams & number lines in ascii art, which were either works of genius or meaningless crap depending on your computer's default font.

Rec.juggling was fun to hang around not because of the software but because of all the people playing & experimenting & trying something new.

I thought if I could provide enough tools for people to play with I could keep that magic alive, but I was wrong.

david - - Parent

Amen, or verily if you prefer, except for the last sentence. Of course one can never supply enough tools for everyone but you and the community supporting you have supplied more tools than anyone else and more tools than most people use, if they are even aware of them. Thank you for your good works.

Orinoco - - Parent

Thank you David.

The Void - - Parent

I'd tell you about the Mugen, but I have no love of jod.
The Edge rocks - thank you.

Orinoco - - Parent

& thank you Void.

Daniel Simu - - Parent

I agree, it's the people that make a community.

Why are the people no longer interested in this kind of community? Why are not all the people here? :(

Also, I thought this might be a good place to crosspost my comment on Jay's post:

"Thanks for summing up your thoughts Jay!
Let me do an attempt to sum up mine, freewheeling this so it might be a bit chaotic.

Just so everyone knows where I'm coming from: I've probably been part of nearly every (English spoken) web juggling forum. Rec, edge, OE, reddit, fb groups, remember the original Juggle Jabber, the social media website? Well I was there. I've read everything on the WJW and Gatto forums. Oh and of course diabolo.ca, and some Dutch sites such as Prikpagina and Diastylo.
I agree none of them were quite ideal. However, long as there were people, all of them were good enough!

I'm also a loooong term member of a non juggling community for pixel artists (pixeljoint.com). This is a 100% custom platform taylored to the needs of pixel artists, a perfect front page, daily new user content, community activities, news, serious discussions, light chatter etc. However, the platform is dying. I know the community from inside out, and have fought to keep it alive. It's still coping, but most of the community has disappeared, only 1 of the many many features is still actively being used. All pixel artists have moved to Twitter instead. A platform completely unsuitable for pixel art, where nothing is easy to find unless it was posted in the last 24 hours.
Even with a perfect platform, people disappear to these large generic social media sites...

Will a perfect juggling site help? Perhaps. But if people really were interested to connect with each other in this kind of way, Object Episodes and the Edge would have already taken off, and could slowly grow to this ideal juggling site. I don't believe that it could only exist if all puzzle pieces come together in one place.

However, because of my insane interest in these kinds of communities, I'm still happy to keep on trying. I'd be happy to take part in any new project, would be excited to advice and support anyone taking on a community site, and would pour in hours to try and make it work. Because of that drive, I've also created a platform myself, Manipeo.com. I hoped that the video content would draw in people, who could then be lead to the forum and such. However, also there the amount of daily visitors remains so low that it's not worth investing much more energy in, and my attempts at creating a community around it have all failed so far.

But, who knows. I sure would enjoy such a platform. But then again I also enjoy a simple forum, just like I enjoyed the original OE.

I believe that the most important thing you need for a community to function are people. The content and the features will follow automatically, if you can get people together.."

Mike Moore - - Parent

I'm so with you on this entire post. I feel like Manipeo.com is one of the most underrated juggling resources out there. https://skilldex.org/ also comes to mind, as it's the most complete trick list (with tags!) that exists, AFAIK.

Manipeo is in my Message from the Chair section on the IJA eNewsletter this month. We have no data on how many people read that, either, but let me know if there's any kind of spike!

Daniel Simu - - Parent

Thanks for the mention! When is that being sent? (And why do those not appear on ejuggle? )
I just checked and there was a huuuuuge spike for today, so for a second I thought your message was super effective, but it turned out that all of that came from my recent facebook post.

For those who missed that one, here is a list of some full shows you can watch, a bunch of them were put online in the past few days:
http://manipeo.com/playlist/full-shows

Mike Moore - - Parent

Seems like there was an error between the editor and I, and an older version of the message was sent out (one that did not contain mention of manipeo :( )

That playlist is exactly what I wanted to send out! I'll have to include it next month.

It was sent this morning. As for why the message doesn't appear in eJuggle: I'd say they're generally not worth an article. It's usually a couple paragraphs about what's on my mind at the moment, in terms of juggling. Sometimes they relate to current events, sometimes not. But maybe having the whole newsletter slotted into the eZine as a designated column would make sense. What do you think? If you haven't seen any of the eNewsletters and are curious, I'd be happy to forward the last few to you. They're not members-only or anything like that.

For example, here's the message from last month:

Forging the Uncertain Path: Finding Direction in Exotic Juggling

Whether you’re many miles from the nearest fellow juggler, or a world-class juggler in a niche area, you’re going to find yourself in unexplored areas of juggling. Places with patterns (and problems) you’ve never seen before! There are some methods that have allowed me to navigate those uncharted waters; hopefully they’ll help you, too.

If you’ve come up with a great new idea, the first step is deconstruction. What makes the idea great? A shape the balls make in the air? Some kind of body contortion? A charming rhythm? Determining the essence of the idea allows you to improve it or concentrate it (get rid of the setup throws).

Maybe the essence can mutate[1]. A particularly efficient way to find these mutations is to try to relate the new pattern to something you already know about. For example, with box: what if you thought about the columns as if they were two in one hand? You could have them as columns, but you could also do fountain. What if you thought of box as a distorted version of 423. If you do that, then all those amazing videos of 423 variations are now things to consider trying with box! One relationship discovery can lead to dozens of pattern discoveries. Others’ discoveries are now relevant, and you’re no longer so alone on your journey.

If you’ve ever made a surprising (juggling) relationship discovery, I’d love to hear about it. Send me an email at [email address].

[1] Some variations will be obvious: changing a neutral throw to a body throw, adding another ball, etc. This is still useful! Practicing obvious variations will inevitably improve your technical skill surrounding the essence of your idea.

Happy juggling!

Mike Moore
IJA Chair

Orinoco - - Parent

If you come back here tomorrow at sometime after 08:00 UTC you will see either:

The first scheduled post on the Edge
A few posts calling me a moron because it didn't work


Actually, I think Marvin might still be sanitising the oven...

Richard Loxley - - Parent

I remember rec.juggling. I remember how full of crap it was and even after the spam filters 95%+ of the posts didn't interest me.

You're right about the people making it. And the Juggling Edge has a mix of people far more tuned to my interests than r.j ever did :-)

Julien_H - - Parent

I realize my initial message seemed a bit harsch considering i'm posting on the edge, but i'd like to clarify and say that the edge is what i consider the best community juggling message board around right now in terms of functionality and content!

Orinoco - - Parent

Your message didn't seem harsh to me in any way! Thank you for the compliments.

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

This site has the potential to be attractive for all those who are not only interested in the last link on the most monstrously difficult trick ever juggled (a very interesting thing, there is no doubt, but a bit reductive, given the enormous amount of things to say on juggling). In fact, if those who are interested in this type of videos can find what they are looking for on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, all the others are currently scattered in small, more or less niche realities, such as Reddit, so small as to induce the same jugglers who participate to talk more often than not about anything else (as evidenced by several discussions here).

Jay Gilligan wrote:
the website should be in english, spanish, french, german, italian, and japanese at least
and you replied:
All already in place except Japanese but I can add that very easily if anyone is interested in translating. Dutch & Russian are also available.

I have set Italian on my profile, but I don't see any difference compared to before: which parts have been translated? Thank you so much!

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

One last thing: in addition to the grayscale color differentiation and the indentation, could you think of some solution to make it clearer what level of answers you have arrived at with reading (for example the typical tree structure)? Because where there are many answers it becomes very unclear which message is being replied to. Grazie mille!

The Void - - Parent

Have you seen the "Parent" link in each post that is a reply? It opens up a copy of the post that was replied to, right above your reply.

The Void - - Parent

For example, when I saw you had posted in an old thread, I wasn't immediately sure who you'd replied to, so I clicked Parent, and got a blue copy of Orin's post above yours, and all became clear. :-)

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

Oh thank you! I still prefer the glance of a tree structure, but this feature is certainly very useful. I didn't know this meaning of «parent», however intuitive.

Mïark - - Parent

The amount that is in Italian depends on how much whichever volunteer has provided the Italian translation has been able to supply

For example when I look at this page on Italian version https://it.jugglingedge.com/forum.php?ThreadID=3635#Small25995

Crea una nuova discussione
Cerca messaggi
Contrassegna la discussione come letto
Genitore - Segna come letto - Rispondi - Segnalibro - Modifica - Elimina



are in Italian, but

Forum index
View 4050 unread posts
View 4050 unread direct replies
Mark all as read
Previous unread - Next unread


are still in English

If you are good at Italian and English and would like to help with the translation maybe message Orinoco

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

Thank you, the reason for the absence of changes in what I saw is clarified: once the language has been selected and the changes made to the settings were saved, the third-level domain it.* was not added to the page address, thanks to which the translation is applied. What should I have done to get that domain to be added?

I’m not good at all with English, but interface translations don't require much knowledge, and I’ve already noticed some errors in the translated entries (e.g. masculine plurals instead of feminine plurals), quindi se Orinoco vuole mi rendo disponibile a mettere mano alla traduzione 😉

Orinoco - - Parent

As Mïark mentioned above the Italian version is accessed via the https://it.jugglingedge.com subdomain (however, I've just noticed that the SSL certificate has not auto renewed as it should. The Spanish site hasn't updated either but all other domains have. I have contacted the hosting provider to fix this so should be back to normal soon). The reason for using the subdomain is to make viewing the Edge in an alternative language easily available to everyone (including those who don't have an account) without the need to store cookies on the user's device.

If you are happy to help with translating that would be fantastic thank you! Just log in, at the bottom of each page on the it.jugglingedge.com site there will be a Traduci questa pagina link The original announcement of the feature includes the full instructions.

I made a start translating into Italian but I have no doubt it needs a native speaker to make some corrections!

Ho imparato un po' di Italiano impressionare una donna, ma lei non è impressionata!

Orinoco - - Parent

SSL certificates are now up to date again!

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

at the bottom of each page on the it.jugglingedge.com site there will be a Traduci questa pagina link The original announcement of the feature includes the full instructions.

Well, I read the instructions and this weekend I'll work on it 👍.

OT
Ho imparato un po' di Italiano impressionare una donna, ma lei non è impressionata!
😄 Non sa cosa si è persa!
Giusto due cosette sulla frase: "Ho imparato un po' di italiano [in italiano le lingue si scrivono minuscole] per impressionare una donna, ma lei non è rimasta impressionata!"

Little Paul - - Parent

I agree with those who have said the people/community are important, and I think it was Richard that said "build it where the people are". I'd also dearly love to see Jay succeed!

However, I think he's trying to bottle lightning.

rec.juggling (and the ijdb) occurred at a "perfect time" - they were the right tools, at the right time, on an internet which was very different to todays. There were fewer people on the internet, with fewer competing demands on their attention, with much fewer choices for places to discuss juggling, or find other jugglers.

Much like Juggling Magazines (eg The Catch) only worked because jugglers were hard to find, events difficult to learn about.

Today, jugglers are everywhere on the internet that people are! Youtube, instagram, facebook, twitter, tiktok. Juggling is more visible than it's ever been! This is great!

People are learning, sharing and expanding what it means to be a juggler more than ever before, and I think it's amazing. They're doing this with tools that fit their purpose and lifestyle. I don't feel it's stifling or fragmenting juggling at all, from where I'm sat it's quite the opposite.

OK, so some people are reinventing, but that has always happened (we just didn't get to see it) - and the mere fact that they're exploring and creating is more important than "oh, that's been done before"

I consume more juggling content now than I ever did for all those years I was the top-poster on rec.juggling, spewing out all that crap I posted...

Juggling history is more visible now than it's ever been, thanks to people like Eric, Thom Wall, David Cain. So much more richness is available than it ever was in the r.j days.

The sky isn't falling in.

There are lots of things wrong with the internet today, but I don't think there's a vacuum to be filled by a new site.

I'd love to be proved wrong though.

7b_wizard - - Parent

the edge offers the records section,
the edge offers this forum,
the edge offers stickman (sourceforge also allows embeds/linking anyway),
the edge has a log section with progress-charts plotted,
you can post images, videos, gifs,
the edge has the hashtag-feature so nothing needs get lost,
the edge in all that is comparable to former Ijdb

it's all here. use it!

I don't understand how people prefer to log records on juggling-records.com with near to no possibility to communicate,
how they prefer to "hide away" in own channels and nishes on fb, yt, insta, with only insiders knowing about them, single jugglers splattered all over the internet,
how they come asking for this 'n that video "with balls, where the guy wears a red shirt and turns around" (or whatever) instead of using hashtags and titles that can be found again later...

#jugglingcentral

..it all feels like dirty laundry, so I'll rather stop here.

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

the edge offers the records section,
[...]
the edge has a log section with progress-charts plotted,
you can post images, videos, gifs,
the edge has the hashtag-feature so nothing needs get lost


All useful things, but... essentially for a non-professional user. And this was precisely one of Jay's points, who rather than pontificate proposed what he considered useful. Everyone has their own preferences/needs. For example, I never use hashtags, which I find objectively impractical except for obviousness like #7balls. There are those who could choose #backcross and those who #backrosses...

If you add that this site deliberately has a nerdy approach to juggling, you understand why only a fraction of our community frequents it.

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

#backrosses

Typos are another reason I don't use hashtags 🤣 Sorry!

Orinoco - - Parent

If you add that this site deliberately has a nerdy approach to juggling

You mean there is another approach to juggling?!

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

🤣. So rumors go around, but it's certainly the umpteenth unfounded rumor spread by some gutter punks!

7b_wizard - - Parent

I think, those just go by colors, that green & gray. and they wanna be welcomed by epileptic gifs jumping over and across the screen before the site finishes loading

7b_wizard - - Parent

a frank naive one

7b_wizard - - Parent

'the site has an approach'?
.. I thought users posting have approaches.

the site offers features fit(ted?) to artists & jugglers. in the first place. - users are free to say what they like, including being nerdy.

on another day, those calling the edge nerdy, feeling served badly \ inappropriately \ wrong and therefore unfrequent this place, will preach freedom of speech & tolerance!?!

say sth unnerdy for heavens sake, then!

Giocoleria da diporto - - Parent

'the site has an approach'?
.. I thought users posting have approaches.


Maybe rhetorical figures are not among the main readings of a nerd, but Wikipedia (the nerdyest encyclopedia on Internet) also covers them.

👉https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy

Stephen Meschke -

Sharing and Viewing Juggling Videos: Problems and Solutions

I use several websites and social networks to view and share juggling videos. Each portal has advances and disadvantages. Advertising content, promotion by algorithm, and biased voting are frustrating disadvantages to the mainstream portals, like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, etc...

To overcome these frustrations, I have written a simple app that just plays juggling videos. The app queries the juggling.tv database for videos that are tagged with #jugglegram. The videos are then displayed in a list of thumbnails. When a thumbnail is clicked, the user is sent to a detail activity were the video plays.

Link to video of the demonstrating the app.
Screenshots: Img #1, Img #2.
The app can be download here*: Link to .apk.
The source code can be found here: Source code Github repository.

*To install this app, download the .apk file. Transfer the file to the Android device. Navigate to that file, and click on it to install. You may need check the 'Unknown sources' box in Security. Internet is required to use the app.

mike.armstrong -

The Catch...
The UK's former juggling magazine is now (mostly) on line at www.jugglingmagazines.com - I hope you enjoy it!
Cheers
-Mike

Cedric Lackpot - - Parent

Super Mike, thanks.

I glanced through the first few pages of issue #1, and lo and behold there's Lindsay Hurd (misspelled in The Catch) who AFAIK is still working in touring circus. And there's Shaun Bridges, an Archaos-grade BMX expert and massive nutter who nearly immolated a crowd in a basement in Bath at around that time. How the fucking fuck so many of us survived the rampant negligence and recklessness of that time, I do not know.

The Void - - Parent

Well done, and thanks. (Sorry for not answering the email... Didn't have any spares).
"To view it full-screen click the icon in the bottom right-hand corner." Does that mean the magnifying glass icon? 'Cos for me, that just maximises the magazine within the viewer, but doesn't make the viewer fullscreen. (iPad 2, iOS 9.2)

7b_wizard - - Parent

On PC (oldversion firefox 16) it's same .. bottom left glass-magnifies once which is still too small; bottom right, "fullscreen" won't work.

mike.armstrong - - Parent

I've made a change which might help for older browsers for Issue 1. Does https://jugglingmagazines.com/?page_id=117 work now? If so I'll copy the change across all the pages.

7b_wizard - - Parent

Fullscreen's perfect now.

( The little zooming window appears, but it's still too small to read; but that doesn't matter, as fullscreen works well now. .. I'm anyway blaming my old machine, constellation and configuration. I'm just not updating everything all the time. )

Thanks!

mike.armstrong - - Parent

On desktops there's a square-with-gaps icon in the bottom right hand corner for full screen - it looks like it doesn't exist on mobile devices. I'll have a play and see if I can work something out...

mike.armstrong - - Parent

Hopefully it's better now...it's working well on all of my (non-apple) mobile devices
Cheers
-Mike

The Void - - Parent

And on my iPad too. Thanks!

Mïark - - Parent

That's brilliant, thanks Mike.

For your "Other Juggling Magazines" page there is also an archive of Jugglers world" 1981-1998 online at https://dev.juggle.org/history/archives/jugmags/index.php (hopefully it won't get obliterated by IJA website modernisation). It doesn't have the search capacity that the juggling.org archive has, but has a limited index and is slightly more complete

mike.armstrong - - Parent

Thanks Miark - I've added a link

Mini - - Parent

Wow.

very well done

i have a set of 3 ply press her as well that should be archived at some point should anyone with the skill and inclination fancy that

mike.armstrong - - Parent

If someone want to scan them I'm happy to host them!

Orinoco - - Parent

Great work Mike, well done!

I recognise the covers of issues 12 & 14 so I should have issue 13. I will check what condition my copy is in. What format do you need a scan in? I'll see if I can find somewhere to scan it myself, if unable I can pop it in the post to you or pass it along to you or one of your staff members at the BJC.

mike.armstrong - - Parent

Excellent, thanks Orin.
I've been working with full colour 300dpi jpgs if you can rustle them up - otherwise post would be good too.
Cheers
-Mike

mike.armstrong - - Parent

...and now complete rebuilt to (hopefully!) work better on mobile devices
Cheers
-Mike

Colin E. - - Parent

Thanks Mike - really enjoyed that trip down memory lane. I didn't realise I had previously owned quite so many issues.

Were some of those ones that I had donated? some of the (coffee) stains looked familiar!

mike.armstrong - - Parent

I've had donations from a few people, so those could well be your coffee stains - thanks very much for them!

mike.armstrong - - Parent

...now (thanks to our God Emperor) Issue 13 has been added and the archive is complete
Cheers
-Mike

The Void - - Parent

*Applause*

Orinoco - - Parent

Marvelous, well done Mike. I can staple my copy back together now then!

IJA eJuggle -

eJuggle (http://ezine.juggle.org) is the official publication of the International Jugglers' Association. The site is updated regularly with high quality juggling articles, videos, and other exciting content. There are currently over 700 original posts available on every aspect of juggling.

While most eJuggle content is freely available to everyone, some exclusive articles and videos are for IJA members only. See http://ezine.juggle.org/video-library/ for a list of exclusive videos such as full IJA Festival coverage, IRC videos, plus premium works by artists such as Wes Peden, Tony Pezzo, Jay Gilligan, Anthony Gatto, and others. Go to http://ezine.juggle.org/membership-options-page/ for more information about why and how to become a member of the IJA.

In April, 2016, we are looking forward to publishing the following content on eJuggle:

  • Message from the IJA Chairman
  • DProps Of French Juggling Masters by David Cain
  • Zarmo - The Upside Down Comedy Juggler by David Cain
  • The Juggling Tricks Of Gintaro Mizuhara by David Cain
  • Two Drop Everything Podcasts by Dan Holzman: Marlin & Dan Thurman
  • Willy Colombaioni......For the Record by Scott Cain
  • Art And Club comics by Melanie Möhrl
  • Two or Three IJA Tricks of the Month videos
  • Two or Three IJA Tricks of the Month Profile interviews by Shawn Livingston
  • Twice/month Juggler's Scoop current events articles by Nathan Wakefield
  • And more...

Below are the recent posts to eJuggle (from the archive at http://ezine.juggle.org/archive/):

If you have feedback or want to contribute to eJuggle, contact us at http://ezine.juggle.org/feedback/.

Thanks,

The eJuggle Team
http://ezine.juggle.org

###################################################

Is it too spammy if I make a post like this every month (with coming soon/recently published)? Obviously we're not for profit and doing this to provide a service to jugglers.

lukeburrage - - Parent

This post is already way too spammy, in my opinion. If you as a human being think something is worth sharing here, share it. That already happens with lots of articles on eJuggle by the authors. I don't see this forum as a publishing platform or promotional pipeline, nor do I want to.

Little Paul - - Parent

I'm with Luke.

The ezine already gets quite a lot of exposure here (either from the authors, or when a reader spots something interesting)

If some exclusive content turns up that you're especially excited about, or if you've got something important about the IJA fest like pre-reg ending or whatever - post about that.

A regular spammy post like this one doesn't add anything, and I prefer single issue threads (to be honest, I also prefer those threads to be from individuals rather than generic accounts)

Please don't turn the IJA into another "lucasgabd, hit and run, only here for the self promotion" thing.

IJA eJuggle - - Parent

I'm not that guy. I've read nearly every post on this site since its inception, and even contribute occasionally.

How do you suggest we promote eJuggle better? Should we leave it up to the few authors who sometimes post here? Is that sufficient for new jugglers to find out all the good free content provided by the IJA? Can we do better for our fine contributors?

Are you against it because it's the IJA? Is the problem that my post was too wordy? If it were just a simple link (like is done for Spectacle), would that be ok to post each month? Is the problem that the post was made by a cold new organization account instead of by my personal account? How can I make it more appropriate? What is the maximum that would be acceptable? What do you suggest?

lukeburrage - - Parent

You are not a guy. You are not a human. You don't have a name, nor a personality. You are an account created by an unnamed human purely for promotion. This is what spam is. This is what spammers do.

If you are a human being, use a name. Be a person recommending something you have created. Be a human pointing at something you find interesting. Be more and contribute more to the forum than just a feed of promotional material.

IJA eJuggle - - Parent

Are you equally offended by fest promotions done by official accounts rather than individuals? Are you just ragging on me because I was trying to be sensitive by asking? Would I have been better off without my footnote which basically brought it on myself*?

You do understand that we're just providing a useful service, right? We're not trying to make money off of anyone. Sure, the IJA does want more members, but I think you know that I'm not even an IJA member and that very little on eJuggle requires membership. My goal is to support a hobby I love and to share juggling content with as many jugglers as possible (render assistance blah blah blah). I also want to get more publicity for the contributors who work so hard and get paid so little.

-Scott (yeah, surprise, it's me, a real person)

* Probably not, because I did learn something about how to approach things differently next month.

lukeburrage - - Parent

I think you misunderstand! I'm not offended by this. You asked if it was too spammy, and I replied in the positive.

As for other non-human accounts, I've not noticed them posting a wall of text so blatantly. I didn't even consider reading it, there was so much overload of uninformative information. It didn't look like it was contributing anything to the forum, only directing me elsewhere.

If you had posted it with your own account, I wouldn't have minded at all. But you did ask!

IJA eJuggle - - Parent

Yes, I over-reacted. Sorry about that. I asked and I was answered. I'll hopefully do better next month (from that other account).

Have fun at BJC!

Little Paul - - Parent

I'm not that guy. I've read nearly every post on this site since its inception, and even contribute occasionally.

How can we tell? We have no information about you other than that you're posting from an anonymous sock puppet account.

I mean I could have a good guess at who is behind the account based on a huge amount of prior knowledge (and if I wasn't right in one try, I'd probably be right within three), but I can't really be *sure* who I'm talking to.

This account has no currency here (yet) - there is no trust established (yet)

How do you suggest we promote eJuggle better? Should we leave it up to the few authors who sometimes post here? Is that sufficient for new jugglers to find out all the good free content provided by the IJA? Can we do better for our fine contributors?

If only the IJA had some kind of social media expert on hand, someone who does community engagement and marketing campaigns on a professional basis who could help answer those questions... Someone who perhaps was recently interviewed for the podcast which forms part of the ezines regular content...

My personal preference is for people organically spreading posts which they think are interesting or noteworthy. Whether that's done by the authors, the board, the ezine team or by readers I don't care.

Make it personal, make it "rare and appropriate" - make the ezine a human interaction, not a faceless monolith.

Are you against it because it's the IJA?

Not in the slightest. I read most of the articles posted on the ezine, I listen to all the podcasts. (and
if you are who I think you are, you probably already know that, and we've probably had conversations about the ezine and you'll know I've always supported it as being the best move the IJA made in a long time)

Besides... IJA hating is sooooo last century darlink!

Is the problem that my post was too wordy? If it were just a simple link (like is done for Spectacle), would that be ok to post each month?

It's not the size of the worm it's the way that you wiggle it.

Orin posts when a new issue of spectacle is available because the RSS feed for that site is broken/non existent. It's not posted from an anonymous account, it's clearly posted by an individual who is actively/visibly involved in the community and contributes to discussion on a wide number of topics.

He's a fan of spectacle, and not otherwise involved in its publication.

It's not "promotion" or "advertising" - it's a juggler highlighting something of possible interest to other jugglers, quietly, unobtrusively, as an impartial announcement and not a partial plea for views.

Is the problem that the post was made by a cold new organization account instead of by my personal account?

I think that is my main problem with your suggestion. cold, new organization account reeks of "we" and not "I" - and that has unfortunate connotations of shadowy committies discussing strategy behind closed doors... something the IJA has made huge strides in getting away from over the last 5 years!

If I think about how other organization accounts are used (eg for BJC, Turbofest, various clubs) they're for announcements about important dates, or answering questions in threads started by other people. Giving the "official" answer rather than a personal answer - and that's useful when responding to questions about carparking at an event or whatever.

I'm not saying "burn the ezine account!!!" - just think carefully about how it could best be used, and whether a regular reminder that the website exists is the best use of it.

If after you've done that navel gazing you decide a regular post is the way to go (a post which even made you think "is this too spammy?" and if you ever have to ask yourself that question the answer is usually "yes") then fine! Go for it!

If it gets too annoying, I'll click the ignore link.

How can I make it more appropriate? What is the maximum that would be acceptable? What do you suggest?

I was reading something recently (on The Jerx) which quoted Austin Kelon - "You want hearts, not eyeballs"

I haven't read the whole of Austin's book, but if I agree with it half as much as I agree with the paragraph discussed in that post then I think it's probably worth a read.

All that said, don't make any decisions based on my and Lukes opinions alone.

We're two very noisy Brits, and I don't think either of us would claim to be representative of the entire juggling community (ok, well... I wouldn't. Luke probably would... but... well...)

This post was wordy, but I think it makes my opinion quite clear so I'll duck out of this thread now and let others say what they think.

Besides, I'm starting my mammoth journey to #BJC2016 tomorrow and I've still got packing to do!

#AbsolutelyNotAnIJAhater

Orinoco - - Parent

I'm very pleased to see the IJA trying to engage more, however I also think the OP misses the mark. It feels very 'corporate'.

I've never been a fan of vague posts from 'we', 'us' or 'the organisation'. For the Edge I try to make it very clear that the buck stops with me, a real live person. For every invitation request I reply to & the welcome page seen by every new member I tell them that this site is my responsibility. If something goes wrong I am the one you should report to, I am the one who will fix it.

For me the name itself is not as important as the pedigree behind it. When I started using the internet it was standard practice to use a handle in place of your real name, because we were all so l33t. I decided to go by Orinoco when I started the Edge because more people know me in the juggling community (especially online) by that name than didn't. I thought a familiar sounding name would be more trustworthy than my relatively unknown real name.

That said I think Norbi's use of the Turbo418 account & Mïark's use of the York Jugglers account are excellent examples of how to use an official account appropriately & effectively. Replies from these accounts are usually anonymous, terse & official, but they feel like a service & not an advert.

Promotion is extremely difficult to get right, & what works for one audience will not work for another. If the OP was posted as is on Facebook I doubt more than 5% would read past the first paragraph & even fewer would have clicked the link therein because there was no specific reason to do so. Saying, "there are 10,000 books in the library" is just a statement of fact that doesn't give me any incentive to check out which books are there. I don't think many people would have read on because there is too much information.

Here, I would guess that 40-50% of the active users who will have seen the OP are already subscribed to the ezine RSS feed. In which case this post is simply old redundant news (I'm not bothered to know about upcoming articles because they'll be delivered to me regardless).

It's a tough trick to let the non-aware know about new content without stepping on the toes of the aware. The only suggestion I can come up with is to find a way to encourage people to talk about the articles on the platform they are already using. People are more likely to follow a link their friends are talking about than one (or over a dozen) posted by an organisation. People don't want to miss out on & feel left out of what their friends are doing. That is the whole precept of social media.

If it were up to me I'd close comments on the articles themselves, specify a hashtag for each article & ask people to comment using that tag with some sort of incentive for the best/most insightful/funniest comment. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google plus & some other juggling website all support hashtags which should account for a pretty sizeable chunk of your target audience. Then use something like https://tagboard.com/ (which sadly does not check the Edge) to monitor what is being said where. You could embed a tagboard at the bottom of each post which will highlight conversations automatically or if you are feeling masochistic manually add links to interesting conversations to each article. However, I wouldn't bother as most people use social networks as their 'base' & follow links out to destinations. They don't generally go from a destination to a conversation.

Be wary of going down the clickbait route, it will probably turn more people off than on!

I do very little promotion for the Edge, because what have I really got to offer? I can offer a place to chat that is cleaner, simpler & less noisy than Facebook, I offer an archived searchable database of clubs & events that is actively kept up to date. I offer a place where you can record your practice sessions & your personal records. Which in the grand scheme of things is not a lot. Certainly not enough to warrant a big marketing campaign.

The Void - - Parent

I didn't mind the post, and wouldn't mind a monthly one like that here. That said, it still did feel a bit spammy, possibly because of the anonymity of the poster. I recommend using a personal account. It's not as though X's association with ezine would come as a big surprise.

The Void
Have I ever mentioned JTV?

Daniel Simu - - Parent

There seems to be no perfect solution :(... I dislike the spammyness of posting my own articles, but I do like the feedback I get through these promo-posts which I don't get through the comment sections of eZine. Also, I always wonder if anyone reads eZine at all, which again I only get feedback on if I post something online..
And then I have to post here & object episodes & facebook groups.. ugh, talk about spammy!!!

Online article platforms remain complicated things to run.. Now only if everyone would understand and use rss feeds & readers... I do, but I don't know anyone personally who does!

Mike Moore - - Parent

I always go by the copy/paste test: does it look like this message has been, or could reasonably be copypasted across jugglingedge, Juggling Rock, Object Episodes, etc.? If so, it's probably spammy.

Also, this kind of post doesn't really start a discussion, it's more of a list of things that exist. Something I'd find less spammy would be like:

"We've published 12 articles in the last month, including [a few particularly diverse ones]" rather than a list of links.

In the list of articles slated to be published, there could be some cutting there. While I enjoy reading messages from the IJA chairman, I don't think anyone will be excited/interested that it's an upcoming article. Periodic articles/videos I will assume are coming (Tricks of the Month, interviews etc.) and I don't think need mentioning unless they include new information (e.g. Dan Holtzman's special guests).

Cutting these bullets would draw more attention to the drama, the excitement, the CONTROVERSY that I'm anticipating in David's upcoming Willy article.

Finally, if using a group account, I think it's important to sign your name at the end of the post.

DavidCain - - Parent

My brother's upcoming Willy article, not mine! :)
David Cain

Mike Moore - - Parent

Oops! Thanks for the correction.

pumpkineater23 -

'Top 40 Jugglers' has me looking back over all the great juggling I've seen during the year, trying to decide my favorite ten videos. Out of a great bunch I managed to narrow it down to just one video. I picked Wes Peden's Salt. I think that was the one that wowzerd me the most this year.

lukeburrage - - Parent

Strangely enough, live shows usually trump videos for me, unless there is something truly remarkable.

Here are my considerations that I recorded on my phone throughout the year, with the final rough long list. I'll have to watch through some of the videos again to make sure of the final order and who is dropped:

Top 40 Jugglers of 2015 considerations

Tony Pezzo for JOI show and Fight Night.

Wes for 7 club backcrosses as Top 40 win thanks.

Jackson Ford for big video.

Jay for Paganini

Tony again for his devil stick video section.

Wes again for Salt

Matthias Romir for his solo show

Kouta Oohashi for ball video

John Witte for Galactic Pocket

Neta Oren and Eric Longequel for their pieces in All The Fun and the Open Stage in the Living Room

Israel Frutos for IJA video "Niño Topo"

Tony again for nets and balls

Ali Haikonen for Confused video

Guillaume for living room show

Eric and Guillaume again for Flaque.

Jonglissimo team for EJC and NJF extremeness.

Jimmy Gonzales for clay juggling live.

Idriss Roca for La Jonglerie est un Sport de Combat

Ameron Rosvall for Plastic Mind

Long list:

Eric
Guillaume
Tony
Ameron Rosvall
Matthias
Neta
Jimmy
Wes
Jonglissimo
Israel
Aki
Idriss
Jay
Jackson
Kouta
John Witte

I might have to put Ofek Snir in there too, just for breaking an Anthony Gatto record that I thought would stand for years yet.

Daniel Simu - - Parent

Ofek Snir - Epic record
Julius New - Because I like his name (and his vids were cool too, and meeting long time ago was cool too, and he looks cool too and)
Ameron Rosvall - PLASTIC MIND EXPLODED MY MIND
Jay Gilligan - Because.. Juggling for the sake of juggling, at an epic level in so many directions
Wes Peden - I slowly start to enjoy his work.. took a couple of years for Wes to arrive at my list
Jochen Pfeiffer - Combat is cool, and Jochen is the hero
Idriss Roca - Seeing him life was as good as seeing his video "La Jonglerie est un Sport de Combat"
Taras Podzniakov - Fresh acts from Kiev keep coming, and Taras is behind them
Sean Gandini - The godfather
Nikolay Gerasimov - If he would try to beat some world records, I bet he could own them all

It seems to get harder to find 10 names every year... In my first years I always had too many!

Julius - - Parent

Julius New - Because I like his name (and his vids were cool too, and meeting long time ago was cool too, and he looks cool too and)
:D i like you too. missed you on ejc this year, i hope ill be there next year; also i have vague plans on going to glühwein.

Daniel Simu - - Parent

Next year I'll be there for 100% sure. Gluhwein is not yet on my calendar, but I live relatively close at the moment so good chances :)

Orinoco - - Parent

Seems appropriate to include this:

https://youtu.be/KA4vHKFXhqE

Orinoco - - Parent

I can only confirm two names on my list so far: Bad1Dobby & Lewis Kennedy.

Daniel Simu - - Parent

ah, I should have included bad1dobby too.... :/

bad1dobby - - Parent

Why thank you sirs! Considering I haven't really juggled anything for about 15 years, I guess that makes me the 'conceptual' candidate...

Ameron Rosvall - - Parent

Okay, I've been kinda out of it for most of this year, so I have probably missed a lot of "new hotness". I feel all jaded and out of the loop.

Okay so, for sure these 3 are 100% for me.

Emil Dahl
Jay Gilligan
Erik Åberg
I'm most grateful that they continue to take the time to listen to my ideas and give feedback, good advice and support! I would not be the same without them.

Wes Peden
One of the best jugglers of all time!!! Works hard for his juggling and he's super positive and fun, I think he's a major trend setter and influence for at least the internet juggling community.

Andreas
I've been watching his videos since 2009, and I realized right away that he was/would become amazing. He's terrifying!!! To the point where he almost DEmotivates me to juggle, because I felt that he did/easily could do everything I wanted to do much better than I could do it!

Jackson Ford
Very curious juggler, his recent big video was full of wicked sequences with unorthodox props. Clearly going places!

Bruno Delgado
I actually did stumble upon his nicely shot club video from earlier this year, and was really impressed by the skills. Little did I know that he was inspired by my juggling!?

Idriss Roca
La Jonglerie est un Sport de Combat didn't escape me, feels like juggling has come a long way.

Onni Toivonen
Yeah he is a pretty good club juggler. Clubbed to Death is a very nice video!

Luke Burrage
He does this big vote thing every year which is highly appreciated by the community, freshly squeezed was really good, and he was a big inspiration for me back in the day, and I've been doing a lot of reminiscing lately!

Honorable mentions
Tony Pezzo (devilstick video and general awesomeness)
Jorge Vilchis (kept posting these really neat short videos all the time, if only he made a big video?)
David Cain (for caring about the community and doing a LOT for juggling and jugglers!)
Lewis Kennedy (I keep saying that you're gonna make me learn headbouncing one of these days!)
Lauri Koskinen (lots of nice tutorials for the community, also is pretty good with combo tricks and clubs)
Komei Aoki (he had a really cool club act in JJF)
Aleksi Niittyvuopio (syys was quite good, 4 clubs are particularly neat)
Willy Colombaioni (because it makes my silly "world records" feel more legitimate when I beat a 9 club WR holder to take them? ;))

DavidCain - - Parent

Thanks for mentioning me in the honorable mentions. I'll never make the list, as I was already past my prime when they were started, but I really appreciate what you said about me.

David Cain

Mike Moore - - Parent

I don't vote for you because I think you will be on the list, I vote for you before I think you should be on the list. You've been in my top 5 for the last two years, no doubt.

jamesfrancis - - Parent

Wow. I completely missed Idriss Roca. Completely awesome! I had also never heard of Jackson Ford who put together some very nice ideas in his big video and had forgotten how good the Bruno Delgado video was so thank you very much for posting.

With regards to Andreas do you mean Andreas Kebele aka andReas423ele? If so this guy is one of the most amazing club jugglers I know. A lot of people always want to vote for him, but never do because no one knows his surname. I only found it from a Tony Pezzo post a while back. I highly recommend everyone watch some of his videos though. The consistency of his tricks is scary.

https://www.youtube.com/user/andReas423ele?

lukeburrage - - Parent

I have heard Andreas Kebele and andReas423ele are not the same person. Turns out, my opinion on this matters a lot. If someone has any more than hearsay one way or another, I'd like to know.

Daniel Simu - - Parent

As long as all people mean the same person, it doesn't matter much if Kebele is his real name, right?

Googling for "andreas Kebele" always seems to point to the same person (andreas425ele)

lukeburrage - - Parent

Yeah, of course, but I don't like messing names up in any results video or anything like that. After a bit of research of my own, it seems like they are the same person. Rumors are weird.

Ameron Rosvall - - Parent

Yeah, I wasn't sure if Kebele is his actual last name, and I saw most others writing just Andreas, so I went with that. He's actually easy to contact, but I guess he doesn't want to share too much personal info.

He's pretty much the overall best 3-4 club juggler ever from what I've seen.

Mike Moore - - Parent

My video of the year is Plastic Mind. Mind you, my mental years are normally only a few months long, so there may be some gems early on that I forgot to consider. My list right now looks like:

Definitely:
Lewis Kennedy
So charming, and his videos this year have been insane.

Jonah Botvinick-Greenhouse
I always enjoy his videos, and it was fun seeing him at SkillCon

Delaney Bayles
Similar reasons as Jonah. Delaney's also really nice about helping me out with technique.

Kouta Ohashi
My favourite low numbers ball juggler right now. I like his short videos, LOVE his long videos.

Kohei Take
Outrageously good, put out a lot of videos this year.

David Cain
Huge contributions to the juggling community through his articles and museum. Looking forward to the book.

Ameron Rosvall
I usually have issues voting for people who've only posted one or two public videos...but the insanity that was Plastic Mind can't be ignored.

Some maybes:

Ofek Snir - Definitely didn't expect the 7b record to fall so soon. If I cared more about spins, he'd be a definite vote.

Jay Gilligan - Posting a few interesting videos, starting Object Episodes

Wes - I feel like he did a bunch of great stuff early this year...Salt and 7c backcrosses.

Havaard - With a few aspects of my juggling, Havaard is the juggler I want to be. Animals was great (thanks to Sydney for reminding me about it)

Julius new - Again, if he put out another video or two he'd be a definite vote, but he still gets on the short list because of how crazy this year's video was.

Andrew Olson - So many patterns, and there's so much good stuff in them. If I were better able to categorize and understand them, I think I'd enjoy them even more and the vote would lock in.

Quinn Lewis - Lots of great stuff this year posted to jugglingrock, wish he'd make a full video!

Shawn Livingston - Has been doing tons for the community recently. If he continues through next year, he'll definitely be on the list.

Julius - - Parent

I'm flattered that people actually want to vote for me.

I'm trying your famous box trick a bit and I wanted to make a short video for you showing my attempts at it, but I'm not sure if this will happen this year.
Making videos is very inconvenient for me, also my camera is not that good. Maybe I'll get a better camera next year and try to film more, but I'm also always struggling to find interesting stuff to film.

I've never seen much point in voting at the top40, although I very much enjoy following it and reading for who other people vote.
My favorite jugglers are (although maybe well known in the german juggling community) not well known on the internet.
Maybe I'll take a vote on my favorite internet jugglers this time though, I'll definitely like it if Lewis takes one of the top spots; his headbouncing juggling is the most creative and inspiring to me.
Also Ameron needs to be on #1, since he's been my favorite internet club juggler for many years, especially this year.

Mike Moore - - Parent

Are you referring to high low around inverted box? I'm kind of scared of people finding it easy, after I bashed my head against it for so long. I guess that's the price of being the first (one you know of) to do something. I think you'd have a good shot at getting it, so I'd be happy to hear about your thoughts on learning it.

I don't know if your friends would be similar, but last year I was very motivated after receiving a couple votes. As such, I don't vote only for people who I think have a chance at making it. Looking at the vote counts right now, Lewis is doing well! I'm happy about that too, I've found Lewis's videos (tricks and personality) to be motivating this year.

Willy has a shot, for sure...

Julius - - Parent

Although it seems unlikely, I would enjoy if Willy would make it to the list. Because I guess Luke wouldn't enjoy it and I would love to hear his commentary :D.

lukeburrage - - Parent

As of right now, Willy is in the top 40. I don't have anything interesting to say about it. He's an amazing juggler, so I'm not surprised he got a few votes!

7b_wizard -

#poll - Do you even  a i m ?

  1. yes .. at highest points or areas (of the trajectories).
  2. yes .. where I want prop to land.
  3. yes .. depending on what's in the air, like throw through the 'tunnel' or to avoid a collision or 'along' the other flying props.
  4. yes .. any of above (unrestricted).
  5. yes .. but  o n l y  when learning sth (any point #1-3) new.
  6. not sure .. maybe subconscious or automated.
  7. not that I know.
  8. other / I'm over that / never thought of "aiming" / .. / wrong question / doesn't apply / ..


thk 4 voting :o)

This is a competition thread which ran from 16th Jun 2015 to 23rd Jun 2015. View results.

7b_wizard - - Parent

[oops .. din' seem to work & din' get option runtime (1 week)]

7b_wizard - - Parent

[ wrong format .. didn't get options when checking "set as competition" .. @ Orinoco: Please delete, thk! (did saved html for evtl retry later) ]

7b_wizard - - Parent

(@ Orinoco) okey .. don't delete then .. everything okey .. it has become a votable thread in own dynamics lol

Orinoco - - Parent

Too late, converted to poll :P & missing poll options fixed after breaking after fixing something else last week...

7b_wizard - - Parent

Wow! Thank you soo much  a n d  plenty of it! :o) .. [thought it was my oldversion + unupdated browser] .. I get the options now.

Little Paul - - Parent

8: I usually find it most helpful to aim for the crossing point

7b_wizard - - Parent

Good point! .. forgot that one.

peterbone - - Parent

I'd put 2 or 6/7. The problem with aiming only relative to other objects in the air (eg crossing point) is that the point you're aiming for changes with error in previous throws, leading to error accumulation and eventual breakdown of the pattern.

7b_wizard - - Parent

yeh .. the pattern handles you drifting & pulling, instead vice versa ..

7b_wizard - - Parent

thats why I myself am rather #1 - aim highest point or area. (thk 4 voting this post lol)

seveirein - - Parent

Umm, my passing partner's face?

7b_wizard - - Parent

Definitely vote #2 then.

7b_wizard - - Parent

last day for this poll - anyone not voted yet? :o]

Marvin - - Parent

This poll has now ended. The results are:

  1.   yes .. at highest points or areas (of the trajectories). (2 votes)
  2.   yes .. where I want prop to land. (1 vote)
  3.   yes .. depending on what's in the air, like throw through the 'tunnel' or to avoid a collision or 'along' the other flying props. (1 vote)
  4.   yes .. any of above (unrestricted). (2 votes)
  5.   yes .. but  o n l y  when learning sth (any point #1-3) new. (0 votes)
  6.   not sure .. maybe subconscious or automated. (1 vote)
  7.   not that I know. (0 votes)
  8.   other / I'm over that / never thought of "aiming" / .. / wrong question / doesn't apply / .. (2 votes)

Chris - - Parent

Options 3 and 8 spill over onto 2 lines, as does the bar. It gives the impression that they are twice as populated as they are.

7b_wizard - - Parent

That's 'cos I made these's option's texts so long.
It counts, how far the results reach to the right.

I was mainly interested in if there's jugglers not aware of any aiming at all. But also how many do aiming how.
I take: 6 voters consciously do aim - but 3 voters seem to not have to bother with or aiming (or the question) doesn't apply for them. Also, jugglers, who do aim do it in different ways. Votes in 4 or 8 ("other") might comprise aiming on crossing points of a pattern (as I forgot to list that option).

thk all 4 voting! Thanks, Marvin for results!

Chris - - Parent

My previous comment was mostly FAO our benign overlord

Orinoco - - Parent

Well spotted, bars now limited to one line.

7b_wizard - - Parent

Maybe this conclusion: aiming is not trivial or obvious.
I do find this result remarkable .. well spread between "yes, like this or that", and (maybe) "not at all", whereas one might think, aiming is trivial or obvious and everyone does it like oneself and or in the same way ..
but it seems to be quite a topic to take into account talking and comparing about in given contexts ..

Little Paul - - Parent

Maybe this conclusion

My conclusion is that 9 responses on a survey with 8 possible answers isn't a large enough sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions from

7b_wizard - - Parent

.. thinking of e.g. 56 in a sequence, collision-bound sequences in general, it is - when e.g. teaching or learning - helpful to know, that others might aim or throw in a different way .. thus how to avoid the 6 to hit the 5 would be a question of throwing either more from the middle, but also makng sure, you know where you're throwing (at), .. is sort of what i meant.

RegularJugular - - Parent

Thanks for making me think about this: It helped me. I found that like LP I typically look at the crossing point, apart from the first throw.

The first throw I look where I want it to go and then all the rest are then aimed by crossing point. Although this gets a bit weird for fountain throws but essentially still applies.

Thx :)

magicalmarkwatson -

Hey Everyone!

#LestivalVIII - The 8th Leicester Circus Festival - is back again this year, ready to kick off the summer season of one-day conventions.

Taking place just one month after this year's highly anticipated BJC, come gather together in the heart of England for a great day of circus fun!

All your usual Lestival favourites - terrific space, great café, marvellous public show with yet another compére you won't have seen before ... and still just £8 for the whole day.

Check out the event details here - https://www.jugglingedge.com/event.php?EventID=3826 

If you're on Facebook, get yourself added to the event list for all the latest news - https://www.facebook.com/events/1545948065691160

Lot's of people working really hard to make this the biggest and best yet, so get it in your diary's and be there on May 2nd!

#LestivalVIII

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

Only 3 weeks to go until Lestival!

Don't know about you, butI'm getting BJC withdrawals already, so I can't wait for 2nd May!

Key detailsfor you to remember - Lestival VIII is taking place on Saturday 2nd May from10am til 10pm at Brockington College in Leicester. There will be workshops,games, cafe, a raffle and to round it all off a brilliant end of conventionshow - you'd be mad to miss it! Oddballs will be there selling all yourfavourite circus goodies. All this for just £8!!!

Invite your friends and helpmake this the biggest and best Lestival convention yet! https://www.facebook.com/events/1545948065691160/

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

Lestival! is two weeks today!

We've got some masterclass workshops lined up for you, but I want to pack the day out with all the skills you lovely lot like to share!

So who's up for spreading some knowledge?

If you'd like to put on a workshop, from the beginners to the brainmelting, let me know and we'll give you a space and a convention full of minds!

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

Lestival VIII is just 8 days away, so in the run up I want to give you all 8 great reasons to get out of the house and be there for an amazing day! 

So, reason #8 - we have an amazing show line up for you all! We're holding back a few surprises, but I can announce that Josh Morris from Circus Uncertainty will be astounding us all. Also Eddy Bacon who recently won this year's title of British Young Juggler of the Year will be taking to the stage. And we have the delights of Mr Tom Derrick with his mixture of great skill and fantastic showmanship. 

All this and much, much more lined up for a cracking evening show! 

Please remember to invite all your friends to join the event page and let's make Lestival VIII the best yet!

https://www.jugglingedge.com/event.php?EventID=3826

https://www.facebook.com/events/1545948065691160

#LestivalVIII

The Void - - Parent

These reasons are reversing. *beep*

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

Everyone loves a countdown!

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

Lestival VIII is just one week TODAY! 
 
Reason #7 to be there with all your friends - in the afternoon, everybody will gather together in the main practice space to take part in the Games! What will you be competing in? Who will you be cheering for? Running and hosting the Games this year will be none other than Zoo Christian​ - a Leicester local with many year's experience and great enthusiasm for running Games sessions.

It's bound to be a highlight of the day, you'd be mad to miss it! Please remember to invite all your friends to join this event page and let's make Lestival VIII the best yet!

https://www.jugglingedge.com/event.php?EventID=3826

https://www.facebook.com/events/1545948065691160

#LestivalVIII

lukeburrage - - Parent

Club balance endurance. That's my game.

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

One week today and it'll all be over! With just 6 days until Lestival VIII, reason #6 for you all to be there - once again we will be serving delicious food, refreshing beverages and tasty snacks from our wonderful Café! 

Carrie Hunt and her helpful team of volunteers will be on hand to fulfil all your culinary wishes. From hot & cold drinks, to extravagant sweet treats, and of course our usual range of value-for-money baguettes made fresh to order! 

We don't want you to miss a moment of the convention, and with all this provided on site you don't have to!
Please remember to invite all your friends to join this event page and let's make Lestival VIII the best yet!

https://www.jugglingedge.com/event.php?EventID=3826

https://www.facebook.com/events/1545948065691160

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

Just 5 days to go, folks! Reason #5 not to miss the best Lestival yet - we have a fantastic range of workshops and masterclasses lined up for you all.

Twinkle has been working hard to pull together some of the best sessions to enable everyone to learn something at this year's Lestival. 

I'll be running my "Learn to Juggle 5 Balls" workshop for anyone that wants to master the 5 ball cascade.

Also, one of our show performers, Oscar Richards, will be running an exciting masterclass in contact staff! (Oops, did I just let out another one of our acts for the show. Little piece of bonus news for you there!!!)

Remember to invite all your friends to sign up on the event page, nobody should miss out!

https://www.jugglingedge.com/event.php?EventID=3826

https://www.facebook.com/events/1545948065691160

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

4 days to go! Reason #4 - did you know it's been 4 weeks since we were all together at the BJC in Darton? That's such a long time since the last UK convention, absolutely crazy!

Come along to Lestival and relive all your favourite BJC memories, not to mention make a lot of new ones in our wonderful venue at Brockington College.

If you weren't at the BJC this year - come hear what all the fuss was about! Better yet, bring along a few friends too, and make the most of a day full of circus mayhem...

https://www.jugglingedge.com/event.php?EventID=3826

https://www.facebook.com/events/1545948065691160

#LestivalVIII

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

3 days! 3 DAYS!!!!! Reason #3 not to miss this year's Lestival - I'm sure you can't have missed this, but this Saturday is part of a 3 day weekend. That means that you can come to Lestival, have an incredible day, and still have your usual 2 days off work to relax and enjoy. 

Even better, your juggling fun doesn't have to stop with Saturday! Over in Loughborough on the Friday night and Sunday lunchtime is LSU Fever - the Loughborough Uni Circus Society. They are very welcoming to guests, and we'd love to see a few of you there to keep the circus fun going. They meet 7pm - 9pm on the Friday in William Morris Dance Studio, and on the Sunday 11am - 2pm in Room 1 within the Union building. 

For more info please speak to Abigail Frankish and, as always, invite your friends!

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

2 days 'til the wonderful Lestival! Reason #2 to be there or be square - we have a fantastic line up of traders supporting us this year!

Oddballs will be there, offering a wide range of circus treats for you all! Lazy Juggler will have their usual array of games and activities - why not buy a brand new board game and spend the afternoon playing it alongside the cafe? And last but certainly not least, Gravity Outlaws will be selling goodies of all shapes and sizes! 

Yet another great reason to get your butts over to Leicester this Saturday - why not bring some friends along as well? Keep your eye out on the Facebook page, lots of updates coming up...

https://www.jugglingedge.com/event.php?EventID=3826

https://www.facebook.com/events/1545948065691160

magicalmarkwatson - - Parent

1 day to go! In just 12 hours time, we will be open for business! ACTION STATIONS EVERYONE!!! 

The #1 reason you should all be at Lestival tomorrow is... It's a juggling convention! What better reason is there? 

If you've missed my previous posts, let me remind you we have - amazing practice spaces, incredible workshops, delicious food and drink from our cafe, new toys to buy from our traders, games to play, raffle prizes to be won and to top it all off a brilliant show lined up to finish it off! All this for just £8 for the whole day - you'd be mad to miss it! 

Get yourselves over to Leicester, doors open at 10am and there will be plenty of happy faces there to welcome you. Above all, we want each and every one of you to have the best time! And make sure to bring your friends to share in the fun!

View older threads

Subscribe to this forum via RSS
1 article per branch
1 article per post

Forum stats