View Single Post
Old 10-30-2000, 03:07 PM   #8
George S. Ledyard
 
George S. Ledyard's Avatar
Dojo: Aikido Eastside
Location: Bellevue, WA
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 2,670
Offline
Re: Re: I'm curious

Quote:
Erik wrote:
Quote:
crystalwizard wrote:
why you feel that demonstrations wouldn't be productive.

_____________
Kelly

[Edited by crystalwizard on October 19, 2000 at 11:34pm]
I actually don't know of anyone whose signed up for an Aikido class based on a demonstration. Conversations I've had with instructors seems to confirm this. I'm sure others out there have success stories but my feedback and experience has been that they don't work to bring in students.
We used to do a survey when people signed up. The average person had seen his first Aikido over two years before they came into the dojo. Since people move around so much basically they had seen someone elses demo if they had seen one. We have done demos with 200 people watching and not had one signup. On the other hand I stumbled onto a demo 23 years ago in DC that Saotome, Ikeda, and Dobson Senseis put on with the Yudansha of the newly opened DC dojo. They got one student from that fantastic demo but it was me. I was in the dojo the next week and have been on the mat 5 or 6 days a week since then. You just never know.

George S. Ledyard
Aikido Eastside
Bellevue, WA
Aikido Eastside
AikidoDvds.Com
  Reply With Quote