We are looking to create an original set of videos showcasing different moves.  They will be similar to the existing set of videos, but will be produced by BTF with the goal to be a bit more extensive and cover a larger variety of moves.  This would be an essential asset to a lot of newcomers to the community, and a great service to them. The end result will go onto our YouTube page as well as the BTF Bhangra Wiki.

Why am I writing here? We need your help.

BTF does not have millions of dollars or physical infrastructure. If there is one resource we have, it would be our member teams. We are looking now for a team/academy to take the lead on this and help create these videos.  It should only take 2 hours in an afternoon to film a series of moves.  The team and dancers will get credit on each video page and the knowledge that you backed up the idea of “spreading our culture” and “educating people on traditional bhangra” with concrete actions!

Please submit your contact information here: http://www.jotform.com/form/3191342582?

It makes me happy to announce (and it made her really happy to hear) that Dheerja is joining us on the Mod Team.  Dheerja, one of the first people to join BTF, has consistently made insightful and constructive contributions to the site.  I know her personally and am sure she has the wit and good judgment to do great.  Anyway, please congratulate her, throw karma confetti at her, or something

Welcome, Dheerja!

The past few days (after Elite 8 Bhangra Invitational) have been our busiest on record, with 60,000 to 70,000 hits per day on the site.  Despite this, I did not want to postpone the benefits of BTF 2.0 any longer. We performed a rolling, or incremental, upgrade. Early this morning (fewer than 20 people online at that time), I performed the major upgrade, and throughout the day implemented supplemental features.

Some key features:

WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get editor — No more [b]brackets[/b] for formatting, it’s all “real-effect” as in Word and other softwares

Improved Moderation Panel – This new release gives moderators the control we need to manage the growing activity on BTF.

Twitter Integration – New topics on BhangraTeamsForum.com will automatically tweet to our username, @BTFnews.  Follow us!

iPhone Skin – As you can see in the preview image, BTF is now optimized for iPhone! Visit BhangraTeamsForum.com from your iPhone or iPod to get the special version.  Soon this will also be for Android, webOS, and others.

Soon to come:

Competitions and Teams Listings – This will go live within a few days, showing off current and upcoming Competitions and their Results and Team attendance. The community has been asking for this for quite a while and we’re happy to provide it. [Thanks Swi for the coding!]

Improved Search – Soon I’ll be integrating Google Search to improve our Search functionality.

Thanks for getting us this far, welcome to BTF 2.0!

Throughout this morning and afternoon, I saw higher-than-usual activity and felt it would be an unnecessary inconvienience to bring down BhangraTeamsForum.com at the same time.  [ Also, in anticipation of any minor issues after go-live, I would rather have just a few people on the site rather than 120 simultaneously].  So I decided to postpone BTF 2.0 go-live by a bit.  It will either happen tomorrow night (Thursday) or next week, as I will be in Binghamton, NY judging Bhangra Fever this weekend! (Hope to see many of you there!)

The following positions are open:

- Writers (bhangra-related articles, interviews)

- Editor

- Marketing Representatives (building partnerships and sponsorships in the US and Canada)

This is an excellent opportunity to work with a growing organization and help BTF succeed.  Please contact Saleem Malkana at saleem [at] bhangrateamsforum.com for more information or to apply.

In your e-mail, please:

- Describe your interest and how you’d like to contribute

- Describe relevant experience, if any

- Include a 1-page resume

We are also asking bhangra experts to lend some of their time to the Bhangra Wiki project so that we can share the knowledge with new-comers.  Please contact Ram Mahalingam at ram  [at] bhangrateamsforum.com.

Happy Holidays!  BTF wishes you a happy and healthy 2010!

We are looking for organizations that care about the bhangra community to help sponsor BTF. Please contact saleem@bhangrateamsforum.com for details and a sponsorship package.

http://bhangrateamsforum.com/discuss/index.php/topic,6601.0

Jeeti Mangat – BTF Moderator

Jeeti has a long history with BTF, where he’s shown level-headedness and has brought calm to some out-of-control debates.  His years of experience in the community have shown him the worst of times pre-BTF and hopefully this will help him foster on point, respectful dialogue on BTF.

Ram Mahalingam – BTF Bhangra Wiki Manager/Moderator

Ram has given well-thought out contributions and input on BTF and is becoming active in the bhangra community.  He’s shown initiative on BTF and also brings a level-headed attitude, which is a must.  He will be working with me to architect the initial framework for the BTF Bhangra Wiki and adding initial content.  Once built, he will be an active moderator of the Wiki.  (The Wiki is currently waiting on some technical improvements completely out of the hands of BhangraTeamsForum.com.  Once the changes are implemented, we’ll be able to fire up a fully-integrated Wiki)

Two changes have helped bring page load times down to between 0.05 seconds to 0.30 seconds for various pages! These changes have made BTF at least twice as fast.

You can see it for yourself– at the bottom of each page, BTF tells you how long it took the page to be created and how many queries were involved, example for me:

Page created in 0.047 seconds with 8 queries.

I made a changes in PHP acceleration as well as how the avatars are stored on the server.  Happy browsing!