The term is used in a number of ways but in essence “The Board” refers to the Australian National Square Dance Convention Board Inc. (hereafter referred to as the Board or the ANSDCB Inc.)

Initially formed many decades ago as the National Convention Advisory Board it consisted of the convenors of the last convention held in each state or area to guide existing convention committees with the task of conducting a National Convention in an advisory capacity. It had a process whereby the Convenor of the last convention in the state or area would step down and be replaced with the current convenor each year. Over the course of many years this process proved to be worthwhile, however as time progressed along with the introduction of a manual for conducting a National Convention there was a need to make this more formal.

The Annual General Meeting (now the Dancers’ Interest Meeting) used to be overburdened with constitutional amendments, manual changes along with a number of time consuming administrative requirements which overall made the meeting quite “boring & uninteresting”. To alleviate this the meeting approved that all this be the responsibility of the Board who had the expertise and knowledge to action all the requirements.

The Board become incorporated in 2008 and is now responsible for the selection of future conventions including overseeing the preparation and their reports along with monitoring and maintaining the following list of documents:

The Rules of the ANSDCB Inc.

The Regulations as applies to the operations of the Board

The By-Laws of the ANSDCB Inc.

The Manual for the operation of Australian National Square Dance Convention.

Convention committees were generally auspices under a state body and whilst this provided some structure for the committee, it still left some ‘grey areas’ and the convention committees still had to set-up a number of separate things.
With the Board being incorporated and convention committees now set-up as sub-committees of the Board this assists the convention committees with continued insurances for their convention and the establishment of bank accounts to alleviate this being done by every convention committee.

The Board meets twice at all National Conventions, once before the convention starts and once on the last afternoon to deal with all these administrative requirement thus ensuring that the Dancers Interest Meeting can be informative to all those who attend.
Our Board must not be seen as a body which tells us how our conventions are to be run.