SideMinder Developed with Hereburgh Morris

SideMinder came out of a side

I dance with Hereburgh Morris in Harbury, Warwickshire. SideMinder began as our spreadsheet, and grew because a spreadsheet can only be pushed so far.

Hereburgh Morris in white shirts, red and blue baldrics and flowered straw hats, leaning over a brick bridge wall with their handkerchiefs hanging down, July 2026

A spreadsheet can't ask

Hereburgh kept track of who was coming the way most sides do. One person owned a spreadsheet, and everybody else asked them about it. It worked, which is why it lasted, with records going back to 2017.

What it couldn't do was ask. Somebody had to open it on a Sunday, read down the columns and chase whoever hadn't answered.

By Tuesday it was out of date again. So have we enough for a Border set on the 14th? still took a phone call to settle.

I write software, design, build and commission machine control systems for a living, so in the end I stopped grumbling and wrote something better.

Hereburgh Morris posed around a small blue tractor on a village green at Barford Apple Day 2025, in white shirts, red and blue baldrics and flowered hats, two of them holding melodeons
Six pairs of feet mid-jump above grey paving, black trousers, bell pads with red and blue ribbons

Built with the side, over a season of using it

Hereburgh's records came across, every dance out and every answer. The side has run on SideMinder since the summer of 2026. That's around twenty dancers and musicians, aged from their twenties to their eighties, each on whatever phone they own.

That last part mattered more than any feature. Nobody in a side has been trained or has to use it, so anything annoying is quietly dropped. Everything in SideMinder is there because somebody asked for it, or because something went wrong without it.

Hereburgh's own copy is left alone now it does what they need. SideMinder carries on being built the same way, against what a real side does in a real week.

  • 2017archive goes back to
  • 291dance outs recorded
  • 1,609answers carried over
  • 56dances in the book

Hereburgh's own records, as they stood when the side went live.

Look round the demo
Hereburgh Morris Harbury, Warwickshire · dancing since 1987

You'll be dealing with a dancer and musician

I wrote SideMinder and dance with the side that uses it, and I answer any email. So you get somebody who knows the code, and knows what a Bagman's January is like.

I'm an active developer, so what is next added to SideMinder could come from your side. Tell me if you'd like it to work differently for you, and I'll say whether it can be done. If you find something wrong, tell me that too, and I'll put it right.

It's priced as a small thing, the sort of sum one evening's subs can cover, because that's what it is. There's no investor waiting for it to become something bigger.

Email to set up your side
Hereburgh Morris in a line inside a church at a Christmas tree festival, in kit with Santa hats, singing, with three melodeon players and a concertina at the right-hand end

Photographs and music

Nearly every photograph on this site is Hereburgh Morris's own, from hereburghmorris.org.uk and the side's Facebook group.

The music in the films on the Features page is theirs too, recorded from their practices. Five of the eight tunes are the side's own.

Other images