[8/26/2010 SteppersUSA Daily News]
Huh? International World
By Markie Bee
National Chicago Style Steppers Day
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If yesterday's steppers beat seemed a bit disjointed it might be because I've been toying with speech recognition software in windows seven. It seems like every time I start speaking a long sentence the software misunderstands a key word or two it's all about training the software I guess. In a way it's kind of like the column that I wrote yesterday... It all comes down to practice, practice, and practice. So I'm continuing to use it today to see if the results are getting better.
With one month to go until the World's largest the tables are almost sold out, the contestants meeting is scheduled at 7:00 at the 50 yard line on the 13th and it appears everything is falling into place for the big contest.
People are trying to mess with the name of the contest over last year after the copyright discussion change the name from world’s largest steppers contest to the world’s largest steppers competition. Somebody got the brainstorm to put the word international into the name of the contest at some point which is sort of redundant. After all the words "world" and "international" seem pretty synonymous with each other don't you think?
It's all pretty ridiculous if you ask me... It's like the World Series... exactly how much of the world plays in the American or National leagues in major league baseball?
 

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Continued

I guess it's no more pretentious than calling it the world's largest years ago when the only participants were from Chicago. I guess it's just as pretentious as having an out of town category when you call it the "worlds largest"... Correct me if I am wrong but isn't every town and city part of the same world? Perhaps if we had steppers from Mars or Venus we could have and out of planet category.
I guess we can be as pretentious as we want about the name so why not call it "The Known Universes Largest and Grandest Chicago Style Steppers Contest and Extravaganza Weekend". This way I can still use most of my keyboard if this voice recognition thing works well enough to use all of the time because it will never recognize the acronym for the contest which would be "TKULAGCSSCAEW". As a matter of fact I'm not sure how that would be pronounced! I'm laughing and the speech recognition software is going "What did you say"?
Speaking of going "What did you say"? The International Steppers Association published their poll reports and I'd love to quote them but very prominently on every page of the report is a copyright notice that states No part of this report may be reproduced without written permission. There is a couple of columns worth of stuff in the report but I write this column daily and it's been my experience responses take much longer than an hour or so (which is my lead time) from the ISA. So much for openness... For the record, I have not even attempted to write for permission with this document nor will I try. I've always given attribution so I don't know what's up with that.
The biggest thing I noticed about the results was which cities responded to the poll. It appears that 24% of the participants were from Detroit... that's eight percent more than respondents from Chicago. Take what you want from that tidbit of information.
WLSC Poll
Also don't forget to answer the poll about the contest this week.  (poll below)

When asked if there will be a 2011 National Chicago Style Steppers Day Event, The short answer is yes it will be an annual event held on the weekend of the second Saturday in August. Overall, the event was a smashing success in that we managed to pull the whole thing off. Once we've had some time to digest and machinate what happened over the weekend we will have a teleconference (probably after the WLSC) to discuss what went right and what went wrong and to entertain ideas for next year.

The J.E.P. Productions Hotter than July steppers contest is now on sale and can be ordered online here. Or Right Here!

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