PoiGeek.com - Thoughts, opinions etc

Why can't everyone just be happy with what is there? If you don't plan to buy any lessons, why would you complain?

Instructors can make the lessons any way they want. If I wanted to, I could have called my buzzsaw lessong "the wheel of death" or whatever. I did go with the more technical name (buzzsaw fountain tutorial). Glitter Girl chose to name hers the Archer Weave because that is how she teaches it to her students. She sees no reason to put 2 names on stuff to make it more confusing. Hell, there are probably 10 different names people could use for "archer weave"... Could be long arm weave, could be lock out weave, could be extended weave, etc... She chose archer weave... Makes sense IMO. Why does this upset you so much?

I mean, it's not like she renamed every poi move. Just a few, and IMO, the ones she renamed make it much simpler for beginners to understand and relate. Simple as that.

Ignoring who has set up the site, because really, it is completly irrelavent. (Lets face it, whatever anybody thinks about one of the instructors in particular, both are certainly at a high enough level to teach beginners!) My first thought when reading this was, yep, appealing to people who have just picked up poi, want instant/easy learning, don't want to have to work at something. (Usually do poi for less than a couple of months before they get bored).

Exactly the sort of people who message me all the time to give them private lessons. (And who in fact, on occasion, I have taught privately and taken money from.) Is that really any different? People paying for something that they could get if they went to a meet?

I now teach hoop to fairly similar people, although most stick at it for quite a few months before they get bored.

I do feel a bit wierd teaching them something I essentially learnt from you-tube and other people for free, and that is easily and openly available.

However, there is a market for people like that. And you know what, its not that they're necessrily lazy really, its just that they may not think in the same way as the majority of the hardcore poi-spinners/hoopers/whatever, they struggle with breaking down moves, of exploring and discovering new varients, they maybe lack in confidence in this area. Some maybe don't want to find the time to devote to it and practise, it potentially does take a lot longer to learn from youtube, than it does from someone in person. (Or I guess a very broken down, targetted series of videos).

So they want easy learning, with as fast as possible results, so they have a party trick they can show their friends.

PoiGeek has seen a gap in the market and exploited it. Is it any different from buying an instructional dvd? Or infact, paying for lessons? Just because you're downloading it, rather than getting it in the post?

Perhaps it isn't the best to change established names, (hoopgirl does exactly the same, and it does kind of bug me, for instance, how on earth is "warrior" easier to understand than figure of eight?!), but few of the people who actually buy the videos are likely to fall into the juggling scene really. Thats why they buy them in the first place. And if they do, they'll just have to learn the established names. We take it forgranted now in poi, staff and juggling etc, that names are very established and fixed. In pole and hoop for instance, most names are still very fluid, and some non-existant.

And all credit to them, at least they go beyond a three-beat weave and butterfly, and look at variations.

As usual, Dave, well said.
Folks, I have to agree with Icon on this.

This is maybe Home of Poi on account of the site founders live in New Zelaland. But or the kinds of worldwidefusionfreeformdancesockribbonfire etc form the word has come to mean... we are not OWN of poi.
If what GG has done makes it easy for people to learn and realte, great. If her new names don;t work, they won;t stick. Just like when Meenik named something and the glowstingers already had a more descriptive name for it (orbitals) after a brief chat, the original name stuck.

Personally I'd never seen or heard of the *move* in question as a *move*.. thought I'd done it heaps just mucking around. SO that slight adjustment to my thinking has been welcome; exaggerate the stiffness of the arm and do it a bit longer and its quite interesting. Cool.
Now...
can you isolate it?

What do you feel is knee-jerk about this thread Dave?

Possibly the fact that no one here has actually seen the content, yet, people are complaining about it.

I have, and I quite like it.

Did you purchase it or are you talking about the previews?

Are we just subtly marketing a commercial website here?

However - good posts, ICoN and Gabe.

i quite like it another cool site is this one not a lot of instructional vids yet but its only new and the community is very friendly

"surely the preview should be of the same quality as the purchased lessons"

Well, no... The previews are hosted on YouTube which drastically cuts the quality... And the previews are only a small clip from the lesson, they don't show how it's all broken down. Honestly, the previews don't do the lessons justice at all.

I also want to say that PoiGeek isn't what it is supposed to be quite yet. The original idea was that the lessons were going to be available via iTunes so that people could pay $1 per lesson and download the video onto their iPod/other portable device. There was a problem after production started when they found out that iTunes does not offer instructional video downloads and will not until next year. Thus, they had to create DVDs for the time being. Once iTunes opens the market to instructional videos, PoiGeek will primarily sell that way. By that time, we should have half a dozen courses complete or more.

well i think i have made my point of view quite clear in the other thread.... I feel its very arrogant for one group of people (however big) to feel they can choose what is best for the rest of the whole world.

i think that arrogance is what is going to damage your scene guys, we should be making poi and everything else OPEN to everyone, not just those who you think are techy/cool/good enough to 'be a poi-er'

from what GG profile says on the website, she is trained in both poi and dance, this reaches out to me far more than some of the 'techy' poi i have seen, i probably wont buy any lessons because i prefer to learn from people but thats just personal choice -

At the end of the day, everyone in the world has the right to spin a sock round their head and call it John if they fancy, we have NO Place telling them not to do or what to do...

Feeb-- I don't think anybody's arguing that there should be one big poi police demanding everybody do the same thing... I'm no tech spinner... Not at all... In my few forays into the Advanced poi forum here on HOP I've just gotten confused and run away. Maybe I just haven't been on HOP long enough, but nobody really strikes me as arrogant; certainly not the people posting on this thread...


Simta -- I think the previews are OK. You're not paying for the previews; why should they pay for server space to host them when YouTube does a reasonable job of it? Half the film previews you see don't match the end movie whatsoever - heck, a lot of them use soundtracks that arent' even in the movie itself, or cut scenes to make it look like something else is happening in the trailer.

PoiGeek's previews do a good job showing you what the lesson is going to be like. Maybe it'd be a little more tempting if they mentioned that the lessons are of a higher-quality, but I think the point is to demonstrate the teaching style.


ICoN -- thanks for chiming in on this thread! It's good to have level-headed input from all sides!

As a quibble - the free preview isn't a lesson, it just shows the move(s)... so "Free lessons" is still mis-leading.