Burning Man have changed their privacy policy, and are asking Burners to create Burner Profiles in order to apply for tickets. The data is owned by the multi-entity hydra which is the various Burning Man for-profit and non-profit organizations, and it is shared amongst any of their “affiliates”; if they suspect you of violating any of their many legal contracts or other things, they can sell your information to anyone they like. Oh, and if someone takes over Burning Man, the policy could be changed at any time.  At least that’s how I read the contract – I call on any legal eagles out there to correct me.

this infographic is from 2009

Although this news is a couple of weeks old now, I missed it while on vacation at the beach. I think they’re going in the wrong direction – this is a 1990′s Internet approach, not a 2013 one. A quarter of the world are on Facebook now, more than a third on the Internet: 2.4 billion people, up 566% since the year 2000; 4 billion email clients. 634 million websites, increasing at 51 million per year. More than 5 billion people with mobile phones, more than 1.1 billion on the Internet with smart phones; more than a billion people a month using Facebook. Facebook processes 2.7 billion Likes per day. People are sharing data, not trying to own the content created by others.

Think about this.

Burners.Me is just one of 60 million WordPress blogs. A few times, we’ve made the Top 100 WordPress sites in the world.  Right now, our Alexa ranking is consistently in the top million websites in the world – ie the top 0.15%. Here’s how we stack up versus the official sites, funded from the $24 million a year at the gate, the $12 million a year non-party budget, etc.:

• Burners.Me – # 145, 865 in the US; #924,682 in the world; 87 sites linking in – we’re top million, have been almost top half million at our peak
• Burningman.com #15,665 in the US; #59,555 in the world; 5,552 sites linking in
• Burningmanproject.org too small for US data; #3,455,512 in the world; 60 sites linking in 
• Blackrockarts.org too small for US data; #1,431,325 in the world; 293 sites linking in

And we’re not doing anything to make money from this. Just sharing our opinions, about a culture we love, and feel like we’ve been a part of for many years. You don’t have to agree with us, we welcome for you to comment here and disagree and share your own thoughts. We respect freedom of speech more than anything, definitely more than Burning Man’s 10 Principles.

I would really love for any readers of this blog to be able to post their own videos, photos, and stories. Some of the more adventurous Burners have been doing this anyway, and have been rewarded by the promotion of their project to tens of thousands of people per week. We promoted at least a dozen kickstarter projects last year, for example.

I use wordpress.com and I haven’t found an easy way to integrate the ability for anyone to upload their own photos and videos yet.

So today I’m trying a new additional platform where you can start your own discussion topics and share your own content, burners.ning.com. It’s rough and it looks like crap right now – that’s why we need Alpha Testers. Help us with ideas about how it can look and work better. Do you have any photos or music mixes from your times at Burning Man, that you’d like to share? Burning Man related stuff you’ve posted to YouTube? Post ‘em, tag ‘em. The ones on Flickr are too hard to find and discuss, in my opinion. Tribe had a moment of blossoming but died some years ago. Anything on ePlaya is clearly owned by BMOrg. And Reddit – who served 37 billion page views in 2012 – has now seemingly been Tar’get’d by the Cop-y-Right Wing.

Let’s make this an online community for Burner content, that is more in line with the free and open spirit of the Internet. We ask anyone who is interested to please help us out, create yourself a free profile at burners.ning.com. Share as little or as much data as you want, hell make up a fake name, we don’t care – it’s the Interwebz! Upload some of your Burning Man photos, share some of your stories and music.  We will use the Creative Commons Attribution License – the content you choose as shareable can be used by other Burners for whatever they want, as long as they’re not profiting from it without acknowledging your ownership. The license does not erode your copyright ownership over your own digital information, it just describes a way that others can share your stuff on the Internet if they like it – without everything being red tape and a huge pain in the ass.

Whether this idea works or not is up to you, Burners. There’s nothing in this for us, in fact it’s only going to take more precious time and effort to administer; but it seems to me like the right thing to do. Or at least, to try…”there is no try, only do” – Yoda.

Information wants to be free! The world has benefitted so much from Open Source licenses and the philosophy of sharing and mutual benefit that underpins it. Not so much so from the Patent Trolls, suppressing brain-children because they want to own everything. These digital robber barons want to retain exclusive use of the invention, and restrict others from using it; this is the philosophy that led the world’s greatest scientist Nikola Tesla to die penniless, and is the opposite from that espoused by the Pirate Party about our obligation to share our culture heritage with others (for example).

Bruce Sterling? Now that’s a Burner from WAAAAAAY back. Is it a coincidence that Burning Man has eerie similarities to the sorts of things going on in the second video above – while it is being discussed as one of the similar events to the Davos World Economic Forum?

this infographic is from Russia…not sure what it all means!

We search images.google.com for photos related to “Burning Man”, we share them under the Fair Use provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. We’re allowed to do this, because we’re discussing an event in popular culture. Wherever possible, I attribute photos, and always if we get requested to by the photographer. Sometimes we have taken photos down – being polite will get you further than threats for this one. But that’s for this blog, burners.me – me and some of my friends commenting and sharing our opinions about Burning Man.

burners.ning.com is for everyone – please post everything, share everything, let’s have a Burner repository independent of the BMOrg…because we all have no idea who is going to be running the BMOrg in 5 years. Criticize us all you want, open dialog with a view to progressing to better solutions is what’s going to make this community better – but don’t be hurt if we defend ourselves from your barbs.

If any Burners have graphic skills and an inclination to make this easier for the whole community to use, please help us make it look nicer. And anyone with Burning Man related mixes, please post it in Music, let us know what year and camp it’s from as well as the DJ name if possible.

If it’s meant to fizzle and fails, then it fails… no skin off our nose, at least we tried something; but if you can help all of us by using your graphics, Internet and Social media skills to help build the global community of Burners: join our free alpha trial and share your ideas about how we can make the Burner world a better place. And please post all your Kickstarter projects there.

Bob Wiseman’s New Album Includes a Call for Change, Burner-Style

by Whatsblem the Pro

Bob Wiseman is a Canadian musician and filmmaker who is sometimes referred to as “the Canadian Tom Waits.” Don’t ask me why, and don’t ask him why either; neither of us thinks he sounds anything like the Pride of Pomona. Maybe it’s the genre-jumping eclecticism?

Wiseman himself discounts the comparisons with Waits. He has his own thing going on. . . and as a founding member of major-label artists BLUE RODEO with five albums under his belt with the band and thirteen solo albums on the Atlantic Records and Warner Music labels, Wiseman has paid his dues and made his mark.

Wiseman’s latest solo effort, GIULIETTA MASINA AT THE OSCARS CRYING, was released four days ago to critical acclaim both in Canada and here in the States. Musically, the album is all over the map, bopping around between slow piano ballads, folk-rock, and quirky, nervier numbers. . . and as is Wiseman’s habit, the lyrics are marked by the unambiguous political content that sometimes irritates his record company handlers; his second solo album, 1988′s BOB WISEMAN SINGS WRENCH TUTTLE, contained a song called Rock and Tree whose potentially libelous lyrics so alarmed Warner Music that they destroyed the first thousand copies pressed. On this new album, the song Robert Dzienkanski at the Vancouver Airport leaves no room for doubt: the song is written in plain language, and taken from the true story of a Polish immigrant who was tasered to death by the RCMP in 2007.

Most interesting of all is the fact that Wiseman’s new album also contains a song entitled The Reform Party at Burning Man:

They passed a law last week scientists cannot speak

Gag order they want every tape-recorder

They want to control the blues restrict access to news

Shamelessly they grin there will be no facts without spin

They’re tough on crime that’s right

They own a patent on that sound-bite

Their grand plan unveiled: build more jails

They want to control the blues restrict access to news

Shamelessly they grin there will be no facts without spin

It is in vogue to spin in the era we are in

But once upon a time people had a dime

Nobody would think it was a crime when a poor person dared

To ask you to share because life is unfair

But the era we are in it is in vogue to spin

Put the truth in a box and do not let it talk

And expand the wars and the military bets

And limit the questions the media gets

How many lies can you bake in this pie

And pretend that you are friends with the little big guy

It is a mystery book the way you look

knight to queens rook

They are ok with foul play every little G20 cop got paid

But what’s especially perverse is that this all feels rehearsed

They want to control the blues restrict access to news

Shamelessly they grin there will be no facts without spin

We didn’t vote so

You could make a joke out

Of people that are broke

Interesting that while the title explicitly mentions our annual festival, Wiseman apparently feels no need to make any explanation to people who might ask “what’s Burning Man?” Has TTITD penetrated the public consciousness to the point that the question is now rare, and even a little silly?

It wasn’t long ago that Burning Man was a fairly obscure thing; even now, many who have heard about it have some strange and terribly inaccurate ideas about what we do out there on the playa, mostly mixed up with visions of filthy Rainbow Gathering hippies wallowing in mud and exchanging drugs and social diseases. Bob Wiseman’s casual name-dropping of the Man with no accompanying explanation tells us that this might be changing; Wiseman wants to send Canada’s staunchest Conservatives to Burning Man for a political makeover, and he assumes that his audience gets it.

They’re onto us. Maybe someone should talk to Larry about changing the name of the event to something unpronounceable.

Vice has a story on the efforts of the Burner community to help out on the East Coast after Superstorm Sandy, using skills refined at Burning Man, and in relief efforts in Haiti and post-Katrina New Orleans (go Niners!) that have been supported by Burners Without Borders.

 a small group of Burning Man enthusiasts have formed what appears to be an extremely efficient charitable organization that helps people in ways more bureaucratic organizations can’t. 

Just because the typical view of Burners is that they’re computer programmers who fantasize all year about wearing furry purple pants while tripping on 2CT7 and convulsing to dubstep, it doesn’t mean they don’t know their way around a construction site. These same people spend months and even years constructing elaborate psychedelic mutant robo-vehicles atop of which they party for a week like the world is going to end. And they really love demolition. “Going to Burning Man is like boot camp for disaster relief,” said Tom Price, one of several cofounders. “Dealing with food, water, and shelter in a harsh environment and building a community from scratch isn’t a challenge, it’s what we do for vacation.”

2CT7? That’s a new one to me…is that a new name for bath salts?

The Burners have provided $1.5 million worth of work for a shoestring budget of $30,000. This compares favorably with the Red Cross, who fleeced raised $170 million from concerned fellow citizens, and handed out a few old hotdogs and blankets.

photo from blog.burningman.com

“Although we don’t have the capacity of the Red Cross, we end up making a very large impact on people’s lives with very little money,” said BWB director Carmen Mauk. There’s no denying that the group is a hardworking bunch that is more flexible than unwieldy organizations like the Red Cross, which has taken in $170 million since the storm but has come up with a somewhat embarrassing response, consisting of blankets, week-old hot dogs, and disgruntled volunteers. 

“Big agencies are prescribed in what they can and can’t do,” said Tom, “but we don’t have those preconditions. We do whatever needs doing.” 

Good on ya, Tom, Richard, Carmen, and everyone else helping out with the relief effort. I was in Sandy with a bunch of Burners, we all pulled through together. Some of us got the fuck out, others ran in to help – that’s the Burner way too! Fuck yer day! Gift me the fuck out of here!

GQ once stood for “Gentlemen’s Quarterly”. Now it is a monthly, closely associated with metrosexuality. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (although prissy hair-waxing male mani-pedi types might not enjoy the Playa dust so much).

They’ve just done a big story on Burning Man – “the world’s largest chemically enhanced self-expression festival“ - not to be confused with their other big story on a burning man from the same magazine last year. This one’s about a guy going to Burning Man for the first time with his 69-year old father. Expect an influx of oldies and their RVs, you’re not a true hipster until you’ve had a hip replacement!

Here’s a few highlights of the 6-page masterpiece, it’s beautifully written and very entertaining – but if you’re the type of Burner who gets offended by nudity or comments about “getting to third base” with girls, you might want to give this a miss – it’s from a Men’s magazine, after all…

One would think we were pulling into this planet’s nearest simulation of hell, but if this were hell, we would not be driving this very comfortable recreational vehicle. Nor would there be a trio of young and merry nudists capering at our front bumper, demanding that we step out of the vehicle and join them. These people are checkpoint officials, and it is their duty to press their nakedness to us in the traditional gesture of welcome to the Burning Man festival, here in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert…

…My father and I are staid, abstracted East Coast types without much natural affinity for bohemian adventures. But we are here less for the festival itself than in service of an annual father-son ritual. Fourteen years ago, my father was diagnosed with an exotic lymphoma and given an outside prognosis of two years. When we both supposed he was dying, we made an adorable pledge—if he survived—to take a trip together every year. Thanks to medical science, we’ve now followed the tradition for a solid decade, journeying each summer to some arbitrarily selected far-flung destination: Greenland, Ecuador, Cyprus, etc. This year, we’ve retooled the concept and departed instead on a bit of domestic ethnography. We have joined the annual pilgrimage of many thousands who each year flee the square world for the Nevada desert to join what’s supposed to be humanity’s greatest countercultural folk festival/self-expression derby. Or it used to be, before people like my father and me started showing up.

Now I, too, am in the daylight, being hugged by a small, bearded Mr. Tumnus of a fellow, and also by a bespectacled lady-librarian type with a scrupulously mown vulva. “Welcome home,” they murmur in my ear. “Home” this is decidedly not. Whether it is good to be here, we shall discover in the coming week. Still, I reply, “Uh, it’s good to be home.”

At the adjacent welcome booth, dreadlockers, having been duly greeted, are trudging back to their hippie wagon. “I hope it doesn’t suck this year,” one of them says, eyeing our vast and foolish RV. “We’re surrounded by all these bougie people.”

“I’m so fucking stoned,”complains a bikini-clad girl wearing a fedora snugged over dreadlocks stout as table legs. “Man, I gotta focus. Gotta get ready for the Slut Olympics.”

We climb back aboard, tracking pounds of dust into the RV. My dad is enlivened. “What a nice greeting that was,” he says. “Did you know that woman didn’t have any trousers on? I was so focused on her breasts I didn’t notice she was naked until after the ceremony.”

Read More http://www.gq.com/news-politics/mens-lives/201302/burning-man-experiences-wells-tower-gq-february-2013#ixzz2KEupwZSt

Their first impressions?

Among the hundreds of visual extravagances in store this year: an actual-size replica of an eighteenth-century shipwreck, a diesel-powered cast-iron dinosaur, a snowstorm in the desert, plus a menagerie of flammable installations (a plywood cathedral, a multistory effigy of Wall Street) to be torched in celebration of life’s transience and other arty ideals. The whole thing defies expectations pretty spectacularly, especially if what you expected, as I did, was a Grateful Dead parking lot with no bands and more intense personal filth.

It is, in short, worth the lamentably expensive ticket price ($240 to $420, depending on when you buy). The ticketing system’s supposed to accommodate veteran Burners, but somehow things got screwed up this year, and a full third went to people like me and my dad—here, the old-timers fear, to party and gawk and score free shit but not to “contribute” to the festival in any real way. 

These old timers Burned pretty hard, threw themselves into it. At the end, they got reflective…

“I don’t know that it’s religious,” says my father, gazing contemplatively at the Temple’s gold-lit steeple. “It’s just amazing the lengths people go to, to be thought of as special. I never imagined that a crew of folks could build a temple as elegant as this, only to burn it down.” 

“I’m just trying to find the common theme, and the only common theme, I think, is that this could only happen in the United States,” says Dean the Canadian. “Both in its excesses and its excellence. Some people look at America as a nation of vulgarity and excess, and others think it’s the most creative country in the world. I think it’s both. Who else would burn a sculpture that took a year to build? But Ed, you and I know you can’t run an economy this way.”

“I don’t think it’s about running an economy,” says Cam. “It’s about freedom. It’s about celebrating creativity, the human spirit.”

“Yes,” says Dean. “But for most us, we’ve channeled our creativity into purchasing excessive camping supplies at Walmart.”

But Dean’s diagesis is halted by a sudden explosion. A fleur-de-lis of fireworks erupts across the playa, where one can see the sperm car chasing a vagina barge. 

Love it – and their guide to shirtcockers and darktards.

Sparkleponies: Some come to the desert without much in the way of survival skills. They try to make up for that skill deficit by being basically naked most of the time. These are sparkleponies.

Black Rock rangers: They dress like sheriffs—wide brims, khakis, aviators—and act like the neighborhood watch.

Darktards: Burners who fail to wear enough reflective material and wind up on the business end of a bicycle or diesel-powered dinosaur.

Shirtcockers: Step one: Take off pants. Step two: Walk around with your li’l Burner peeking out.

Yahoos: Creatures whose participation is limited to consuming massive amounts of drugs and raving until said drugs wear off.

Does Burning Man have influence over world affairs? Hard to say, but I find it interesting that the “Cargo Cult” meme is now finding its way into the mainstream media. Max Keiser is a financial journalist/comedian who has a regular show on Russia Today. A recent episode delved into the Cargo Cult, and similarities between this historical concept and foolish natives who believe that our economic prosperity is in the hands of wise unelected officials who only have our best interests at heart…

“This is not the return of Disco. This is a Cargo Cult!” Perhaps it’s just pure coincidence that Max is now talking Cargo Cult. But I doubt it – here’s hoping we see him and Stacy out on the Playa some time soon.

The Brooklyn Paper has published a story on veteran Burner and visionary artist, Yarrow Mazzetti. I first met Yarrow in 2010 when I camped with the Overkill crew, he’s a great guy and builds some of the raddest art cars out there – the Fish Tank, the Lady Bugs, and many more.

Fish Tank at Fertility 2.0

A metalwork artist is creating high-octane art by driving a bit of Burning Man into Brooklyn.

Artist Yarrow Mazzetti is turning the “art car” phenomenon of the funky desert art festival into big business here — and the outlandish Burning Man-style sculpted vehicles that he creates in his Williamsburg garage are turning heads around the city.

“These are ridiculous sculpture concept cars,” said Mazzetti, who builds anywhere from two to 15 fanciful vehicles in any given year.

Mazzetti’s own personal transportation is one of these cars, a tricked-out limo dubbed the “Batlimo” by his Tribeca neighbors.

Some Lady Bugs with their Mother Ship, Freeform Festival NJ 2012

Each Lady Bug has its own generator and sound system, and 3000 LED lights in its shell. Yarrow transports them around the country in a custom designed Lady Bug-mover semi trailer – every time I see him there’s more Lady Bugs, the last count I heard was 15. Everybody LOVES the Lady Bugs.

The Fish Tank’s design shows the experience of its creators in building the “right” kind of Art Car. It is surely one of the most interactive art cars on the Playa. Anyone can jump on it and have a good time – as long as you can run fast enough to catch it! It’s not a bus, after all…

Significantly, Yarrow is bringing his art cars to other events beyond Burning Man. One of the Fish Tanks was in the Houston Art Car parade last year, and another one in the Reno

Lady Bugs at Double-Seven NY, Oct 2012

Art Car show; some of the Lady Bugs were at the Freeform Festival in New Jersey and Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. And these art cars just love to tear up the streets of South Beach during Art Basel in Miami – the Fish Tanks have been painted by Red Bull challenge champion street artist and Burner Hans Haveron.

Both the Lady Bugs and the Batlimo had major roles to play in lighting up the darkness of Lower Manhattan, during Hurricane Sandy.

Yarrow, who on occasion can seem like a caricature of himself, builds his vehicles as caricatures of their owners. Who obviously have a good sense of humor, healthy egos, and booming bank accounts: expect to pay this artist $100,000+ for one of his creations:

Yarrow Mazzetti driving one of his Lady Bugs

Mazzetti says that what for many people is a part-time hobby to indulge in the months leading up to the annual desert festival at the end of August, has become a full-time trade for him in New York, where people pay him big bucks to create art cars to keep the whimsical Burning Man spirit alive year-round.

“People have gotten so much life force out of the experience that those who have the means want to give back to the spirit so that other people can receive what they found at Burning Man for themselves,” he said. “So they fund art cars.”

The fully customized cars start at around $100,000 — and the price goes up from there.

Mazzetti says he tries to get to know the owners first before creating what he hopes will be an authentic automotive reflection of them.

“All the cars are designed in a way to be a caricature of the owner,” said Mazzetti. “We usually hang out or take a trip, go somewhere or go skiing, and during that time we’d talk about what they’re trying to do. Do you want it for your friends, to pick up girls, a party car, a light car, transportation car? I try to find out what makes them tick. A lot of times I’ll ask what their spirit animal is.”

Although the price might seem high, it’s not out of the ballpark: last year’s Playa Force One spaceship was rumored to cost $450,000; the entrance door alone on Christopher Bently’s library-equipped Nautilus cost upwards of $20,000.

If you’ve got the money to burn, trust me, you’re going to have way more fun with an art car than a Ferrari.

Congratulations to Yarrow and his team for getting much-deserved publicity for their ingenious creations.

Look out for this “Bat Limo” on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan

Some of the other art cars mentioned in this story, not built by Yarrow. Here’s the door from the Nautilus:

Here’s Playa Force One – the “engines” on the wings are speakers, the wings fold down and the party begins.

Playa Force One – photo by Tomas Loewy

Out with the old, in with the new. The Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship, a much loved addition to the Embarcadero waterfront over the last few years, has been taken down. On to pastures unknown. The Space Cowboys took the Unimog down and Rocked the Raygun away.

What started as a BRAF funded collaboration to get temporary large scale art installed in public places, blossomed into a two & a half year run of the Rocketship patiently waiting for its lift off at the edge of the city, the border with the bay.

In the meantime, Disorient Burner and Artist Leo Villareal has created the largest LED light sculpture in the world – 1.8 miles long, and 500 feet high, featuring 25,000 LED lights that will cost less than a couple of thousand dollars a year in electricity. The Bay Lights has launched, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Bay Bridge with data input being fed from traffic and weather pattern data, amongst other things. The $8 million project is expected to generate at least $97 million for the city.

From CNN:

The final result is 25,000 LED lights strung up along the 1.8-mile stretch of bridge connecting San Francisco and Treasure Island. The individual lights are spaced 12 inches apart and each one can be set to one of 255 brightness levels. The designs Villareal created and programmed to flicker across the bridge don’t include any images or text, and the sequence won’t ever repeat itself.

“What people will be seeing are abstract sequences which are inspired by the kinetic activity around the bridge,” said Villareal. “It’s not literally traffic or the water or any of those sorts of things.”

The designs were also inspired by Villareal’s previous experiences in the Bay Area in the 1990s, when he worked in a research lab in Palo Alto and attended the Burning Man festival.

The result is an open-ended piece of art that Villareal calls highly subjective. Lights might dim slowly from the edges or shapes will unexpectedly dart across the surface like comets. The movements are playful, relaxing and unpredictable.

“You can imagine anything you want in these lights. For me, it’s the mustache,” said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who sports a signature tuft of hair on his upper lip. Lee was on hand for the opening ceremony, along with California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom.

While designing the sequences, Villareal had to address practical issues like safety for passing boats and drivers on the bridge, as well as artistic considerations such as making sure the animations were viewable from up close, below the bridge, and as far away as Twin Peaks, where the bridge can been seen on fog-free nights.

After obtaining permits and securing funding, trimming the bridge was the final daunting step of the project. Teams worked from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. over the past few months to install the fiber optic network, choosing late night hours in order to have minimal impact on bridge traffic. They used custom clips to hang the lights on 300 vertical spans, mounting some lights as high as 500 feet. Locals have caught peeks of the final product over the past couple of months as producers tested the lighting system ahead of the big debut.

On Tuesday, the hard work finally paid off as crowds of onlookers braved rain, cold winds and a few rogue waves to see the light display’s first official showing. Artist Carolyn Tillie and her husband brought chairs, picnic food and wine to the show. Others accessorized outfits and even bikes with blinking lights to celebrate the occasion.

Mayor Lee predicted an extended lifespan for the project, saying the city will want to keep the display longer than its two-year engagement. He hopes it will help give San Francisco the reputation as a location for world class art.

Relieved to finally hit the On button for the project after years of work, Villareal isn’t thinking that far into the future at the moment. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” he said.

by Whatsblem the Pro

Cosmo: Too irrelevant to make fun of since the ’70s (Image: Harvard Lampoon)

Anna Breslaw, writing about sorority life for Cosmopolitan:

“Greek life lost me when, as a freshman, I heard a rumor about sorority pledges having to sort Froot Loops for their pledgemasters all night long. In the dark. (I’ve also heard wayyy worse, but I don’t want to scar anyone.) It’s always seemed to me, like Scientology or Burning Man, a cult for the lost, the lonely or the drunk.”

Uh oh, Anna. . . a cult for losers, really?

The members of the Burning Man group on Facebook, always notorious for their wonderfully snarky vitriol, seem to have taken notice:

Sam Davidow: A writer for Cosmo bagging on sororities. And drinking. And cultish behavior. And comparing burning man to all three. Let’s see if she wants to go! Maybe she can camp with Krug.

Steve Foxfur Fox: Lost, lonely and drunk? Sounds like a country music cult, lulz.

John William Fairclough: I tried to get lost there, but every time I looked up, I was at Burning Man. Have you ever tried to get lost while you were home?

Sam Davidow: Here’s another gem by her, in which she writes “Since I was 12 I’ve had an unappealing, didactic distrust of people with the extreme will to live. My father’s parents were Holocaust survivors, and in grade school I received the de rigueur exposure to the horror— visiting geriatric men and women with numbers tattooed on their arms. . .”

Jake Gin: “How the cancer victim at the center of the AMC series justifies my skepticism of Holocaust survivors” It must be nice to go through life with no hope of ever finding a clue. Ya know, just blissfully babbling away.

Sam Davidow It’s just. . . fuck, it’s mind boggling.

The backlash has just begun to hit the comments on the article at Cosmo’s own website, and promises to swell into a veritable tsunami of amply-warranted Breslaw-bashing, with people weighing in both from the Facebook group and independently. So far, the comments range from civil-but-chilly to absolutely caustic:

Michael Watkiss: Burning man isn’t a cult. And the lost and lonely often have the most interesting stories. But thank you for your casual generalization.

Sam Davidow: “It’s always seemed to me, like Scientology or Burning Man, a cult for the lost, the lonely or the drunk.” I was raised in a cult, and was an alcoholic. I’ve also been to burning man, and you couldn’t be farther off in your analogy. Are you drunk, or just ignorant?

Angi McFarland: So Sam, how often do you read Cosmo?

Sam Davidow: Well, it’s entertaining. Whenever I want broad generalizations of what “all men want”, I give it a look over, ‘cuz if there’s something that I want and don’t know that I want, i wanna know.

Peter EarthBiscuit: I’m so glad you clumped cults, the lost and lonely, drunks and sororities in there with Burning Man. Because that’s all it is! A bunch of lost, lonely, drunk people desperately trying to fuck anything that will increase their social standing and get them a better seat to the burning of the cult god at the end of the week. Bravo, Cosmo has a real gem on their staff and I’m sure they know it. Can’t wait to read your next piece, “How I know you’re a slut because you use your phone in the toilet.”

Hal V J Muskat: Why would author Anna Breslaw want to camp with Delta Gamma at Burning Man anyway? Why does she troll for Scientology? Did she NOT ever get laid at Burning Man? Why not? Could she not get laid AFTER? Why not? Did she in fact, GET LAID at Burning Man? Why?

Anastasia Marie: wtf did I just read. . .

You can join in the fun and comment too, if you’d like to tell Anna Breslaw and Cosmopolitan Magazine just exactly what you think of being told that you’re in a cult for lost, lonely, drunk people. Hurry, though. . . there’s no telling how long Cosmo is going to leave commenting open on this one. Let’s get in there and show some them that if they want burners to read their publication, they need to avoid filling it with the kind of ignorant, insensitive drivel that Ms. Breslaw seems so prone to writing:

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/celebrity/news/insane-maryland-sorority-email

Thus starts one of the latest posts blowing up the blogosphere, from Burn After Reading magazine.

If you ask me, the most absurd thing you could do is this:

…which doesn’t make it bad. Even if tricks (eg superglue) are used, this is freaking amazing. I could get started with many more introductions to the Theater of the Absurd, but that’s an aside. We’re here making our plans for the short-term occupation of the Temporary Autonomous Zone – as taxed by state police, county police, Bureau of Land Management, DEA, and many other agencies – where we get to “express ourselves” and “rely on our selves” and maybe even (though it’s tenth on the list) do that amazing principle of “gifting”.

:

What is the most absurd thing you could do? Imagine it, right now. If you’re thinking of merely putting a lampshade on your head and drunkenly dancing on the table, you’re not even close. Get creative. First, you’ll need to look far sillier, so put on an unholy mismatch of your last few Halloween costumes and some of your partner’s formal wear. Grab some duct tape or rope and strap random objects to yourself: a teacup on your elbow, a dog toy to your thigh, TV remotes from your earlobes, a lit candle balanced on your nose. Okay, now speak nonsensically: insist that people call you Sludgecinder, come up with silly — and preferably clever — names for ordinary objects, and talk like a space pirate. Next you need to act weirdly too. Show off your party tricks: tie cherry stems in your mouth, juggle, eat pickles with ice cream, dance like a chicken — ideally all at once. Now you need a ridiculous way to get around. Stand on a skateboard and use a mop like an oar to move across the kitchen floor, put roller skates on your hands, or ride your lawn mower across the carpet. You’re doing pretty well, but we’re just getting started

via What is the Most Absurd Thing You Could Do? A Newly Deflowered Burner’s Interpretation | Burn After Reading Magazine.

BAR magazine, we love you’se all, our bro’s (and sis’s) before ho’s in the Burner blogosphere. But, why y’all gotsta be hating? Gotsta be hating on the ravers?

What if you take absurdity as your god, the driving force in your life? What if you study engineering and chemistry, master carpentry and welding, advance the fields of architecture and sculpture, all in order make more ridiculous projects? Then you can make a dance stadium with a sound system loud enough to violate the noise ordinances of any other city in the world, where the DJs have control of huge fireballs and lasers to shoot into the sky that can be timed with the music.

OK, maybe you were worshipping at the Molly-sprinkled altar of the ravers. In which case, nos moratori te salutamus!

Burning Man was a rave, possibly the world’s best one, long before EDM was an acronym. I saw Paul Oakenfold in a stonehenge playing for 8 hours to all of 70 people. My favorite DJ in the world, the best set of his I’ve seen in 15 different gigs over that many years. For real and for free. People will write odes to this in the future. Right now, Daft Punk is launching their latest album in Wee Waa, one of the most remote parts of Australia. Coincidence, or Burning Man? Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, I pick Burning Man. What other explanation do they have for an album launch like this?

Daft Punk @ Burning Man is one of the ultimate culture bombs, exposed in the Burning Man Wikileaks of 2010. Burner Dispatch actually delivered them at the Old Skool Rave in 2011.

You got 99 problems, and a bitch is/ain’t one? Call captain Larry …”it’s not a riot, it’s just a rally”…[this chick sounds like she brings the good times! NOT]

Filed under: Burner Stories Tagged: 2013, art projects, city, ideas, press, stories, virgin

Burning Man is suing Pershing County for trying to increase levies on the event. Despite recent legislation passed by the Assembly in Nevada, the lawsuit continues. Pershing County hit back with a motion to dismiss – which was dismissed. The Judge recently made a preliminary ruling, dismissing some of Burning Man’s claims but allowing the lawsuit to continue (and the lawyers on both sides to continue to get paid).

According to the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Last week, a federal judge in Reno dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Burning Man organizers against Pershing County over a disputed festival ordinance.

On Thursday, Pershing District Attorney Jim Shirley responded, calling U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones’ ruling on April 26 a victory for the county.

“The dismissal of three of the six claims that Burning Man filed was a huge victory for Pershing County and a huge defeat for Burning Man,” Shirley said in an email. “That means that Burning Man failed to even make a facial showing on those three claims. The judge also pared down two of the other…claims, meaning he dismissed portions of them. This was also a victory for Pershing County and a defeat for Burning Man. To portray this otherwise, is not only laughable, it is an enormous spin on what the judge’s ruling really means.”

He added, “In Pershing County, we are enormously happy with the ruling because we had such a burden to prove the claims did not merit going forward. The judge was reviewing allegations which were full of hyperbole and inaccuracy.”

Black Rock City LLC sued Pershing County last year because of a county festival ordinance that would regulate the annual arts and free expression festival, which attracts more than 50,000 people each year.

…

Perhaps predictably, the BMOrg claimed victory also:

On Monday, Burning Man representatives claimed victory, too.

“The biggest claims in the lawsuit were the First Amendment claims and contract violation claims,” said Ray Allen, the government relations and legal affairs manager for Black Rock City. “We’re focusing on the First Amendment aspects of it and the breach of contract and for us it’s a win because those get to move forward.”

The matter is expected to go to trial on Sept. 24 in Reno.

From the SF Examiner:

“The judge’s ruling is a major victory for Burning Man,” said Black Rock City general counsel Terry Gross. “The county attempted to dismiss the entire case, and the court denied that as to all critical claims.”

The legal battle is moving forward at the same [time] as a bill in the Nevada Legislature that would exempt federal land from any local ordinances.

Three claims get to be heard: so the glass is half full? More money to be spent on lawyers, for an ordinance that might be over-ridden by State legislation – a victory? 

In other bad news, it looks like Burning Man is being targeted for an 8% state tax in another new bill that appears mostly aimed at the legalized brothels in the tax haven state. We predict this tax being passed on to us punters via higher ticket prices, rather than BMOrg eating the cost.

One of the most prolific DJ’s out there on the Playa has been Dutch techno master Jesse “The Scumfrog” Houk. Here’s his set from Robot Heart at Burning Man Fertility 2.0 2012. Where I come from we call this the DPH…DEEP PROGRESSIVE HOUSE. And we also call it the TTH – TRIBAL TECH HOUSE. If you know Steve Lawler, Danny Tenaglia, Peace Division or Lexington Avenue, you know that this is the shit. YMMV.

Scumfrog’s been going as a DJ for more than 25 years. He has just released a new album “In Case We’re All Still Here“, and I have to tell you, it’s being played very loud and very often at Burners.Me HQ. You can keep your DeadMau5 and David Guetta, thankyou very much. That stuff is amateur hour. This is a masterwork – gezellig, as they say in Amsterdam. This album is the sound of one of the world’s Uber-DJs slamming it home, someone in the zone and at the top of their musical game.

Here’s to hearing more progressive house, psy-trance, hip-hop, trance and electro out there on the Playa this year and beyond. There are more beautiful experiences to be had beyond dubstep. Scummy bring this sound and crank it! Robot Heart turn it up…I think you might need some more speakers.

Congratulations to The Scumfrog for making such a wicked album. This seems like one that will stand the test of time…$8 well spent.

From Armada Music

Nearly a decade after his last artist album, the underground legend that is The Scumfrog returns. His roots firmly planted in the underground house scene, the Dutch born producer/DJ brings a new connection between the intangible and deep and the ever-growing movement that is electronic dance music. ‘In Case We’re All Still Here’ is The Scumfrog in full underground swing.

Now that the dance scene is more alive than ever before, New York based producer Jesse Houk shines a new light on the deep, techy sounds of the underground. With more than 15 years of experience, the mastermind behind classics such as ‘The Watersong’ and remixes for the likes of Armin van Buuren, Missy Elliott, New Order, Kylie Minogue and Annie Lennox, is ready to take another deep dive into the journey of music. All through the sounds of ‘In Case We’re All Still Here’.

Featuring collaborations with Sting, Static Revenger, Christian Burns, Vince Elliott, Vassy and more, ‘In Case We’re All Still Here’ is the brand new album of The Scumfrog. An eclectic affair that takes you past the entire spectrum of electronic dance music.

 Here’s another review

Last year, The Scumfrog (aka Jesse Houk) returned to the global EDM stage with 12 new tracks, mixed together in a tailor-made DJ mix called “A Place Where We Belong”. The individual tracks were released by various prestigious labels such Armin Van Buuren’s Armada, Umek’s 1605, Prok & Fitch’s Floorplay, and more. Tracks like “In Love”, “Running” and his remix of the classic “The Sky Is Not Crying” quickly found support, not only from The Scumfrog’s long-time peers, but also from the new generation of underground DJs.

This year, the Dutch born American producer continues on his path, miles away from mainstream EDM, by completing a new, full-length album for Armada Records titled “In Case We’re All Still Here”, made up of cutting edge underground Deep House and Tech House. The first single from this album is The Scumfrog’s long awaited project with Sting. Since the beginning of DJ culture, Sting has been the voice of sampling-choice for many producers, and new bootleg versions of his popular songs still surface at an ever-constant rate. But an official Dance Music release baring the 16-time Grammy Award winner’s name is rare. Last year, however, The Scumfrog received approval to remake “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You,” and the amazing result of this long awaited project is finally here. The Scumfrog has been a House Music staple in the Dance scene, releasing records since 1999. He is mostly known for his underground flavored remixes of artists like Missy Elliott, New Order, Kylie Minogue, and Annie Lennox, his Grammy nominated collaborations writing/producing techno oriented works with David Bowie and Cyndi Lauper, and his own hit singles “Music Revolution”, “Serenade”, and “Escape”. With his versions of “If I Ever Lose My Faith,” The Scumfrog returns to his deep house roots, while still giving the main vocal mix his signature mass appeal.

As a DJ, he has toured the world many times over, and since 2009 he hosts a weekly radio show/podcast Glam Scum International. http://www.glamscum.com

This is the first time you’ve ever heard Burners.Me recommending an album to you. Why this one? Think about it – there’s only one reason. It’s that good. It really stands out. It probably won’t be the last…we’ve opened a can of worms here. I have more than 16,000 albums in my record collection. What motivated us to break the proverbial seal? How good this album is, and also what a dedicated Burner the Scumfrog has been over many, many years. This is a seriously good album – I dare you to buy it and come here and tell me it sucks. I think more likely you will be so wowed that you will be in our comments going “thankyou, Burners.Me!”.

Get it, you won’t regret it.

PS. Nadia Ali is where it’s at. Check out the Scummie handiwork in this next one. Scumfrog and Nadia at Burning Man this year? Or, maybe even, one dares to dream (especially at Burning Man) all of the above plus Juno Reactor Michele Adamson Lucent Dossier Cosmic Gate and Emma Hewitt and Deekline? Dreams may come true…

by Whatsblem the Pro

Houston, we have a Whatsblem.

[Whatsblem the Pro is embedded in the International Arts Megacrew for the building of THE CONTROL TOWER, a sixty-foot “cargo cult” version of an FAA control tower, equipped with lasers and flame effects and other interactive features. This series of articles begins with The Poor Man's Burning Man: Part One, and shows you how you can attend Burning Man even if you don't sleep on a giant pile of money at night.]

The Control Tower project is still in fundraising/proof-of-concept mode at this relatively early date, which is possible because the actual build will be so much easier than a frame structure like the IAM’s Temple of Transition in 2011. The Tower’s main structural members are all bamboo, so there won’t be much to do for the hammer-swingers that made up the bulk of the crew for the Temple build. The Tower would represent a daunting challenge to an untested group, but it’s going to be a cakewalk of a build when compared with projects the IAM already has under its belt.

We proved that in the last week by assembling a twelve-foot 1:5 scale model of the Tower, to test the ease of construction and structural integrity of the thing. Ken Rose opted to go with lengths of bamboo that are actually only two-thirds actual scale in diameter; if these are sufficient to build a solid model, then we can be supremely confident that the real thing at sixty feet tall will be generously overbuilt in terms of structural strength.

The Tower uncrowned, at 1:5 scale

The model went up like a dream. A little light tugging and measuring was necessary to pull it into true, and then lashings of hemp rope were applied at the intersections of the bamboo poles. Even with only the lower lashings in place, you can reach out and give the thing a good shaking, without it needing to flex more than about a centimeter to absorb the shocks. The Tower will be light, but incredibly strong and flexible, and should be able to easily withstand even the strongest gusts of wind we might encounter.

The crew is still a small core group, with casual labor on hand when needed, mostly thanks to locals from the 2011 Temple crew. Right now it’s a matter of pulling together the top technical people – our laser expert, our flame effects specialist, our Arduino guy, etc. – with IAM’s architect, Ken Rose, and letting them hash out the best ways to accommodate each others’ work.

It’s also fundraising time. This project won’t happen without funding, and the Org has chosen not to give the IAM a grant this year. All the money has to come from the generous contributions of burners who have enjoyed the crew’s past work, and want to see more. As I write this, we’ve got just half of the $25,000 we’ll need, with only eleven days left on our Indiegogo campaign.

At this stage, my role has mostly been related to that need for funding. The IAM is a non-profit organization with a 501(3)(c) conduit that allows us to give a tax deduction on most donations of money, goods, or services; I spend my mornings and the early afternoons on the phone and the computer, calling business owners and managers and asking them to kick something, anything, into the pot that we can use to defray our costs. Computer parts. Welding rod. Bottled water for on-playa. Stuff we can raffle off at fundraisers, like dinner for two at a nice restaurant. Food for our crew.

A lot of people say no, but a good many say yes. The local mom-and-pops are as good to us as they can afford to be. Some big corporations say yes right away, but they have protocols in place that prevent them from helping out too much. Every little bit counts, so we take what we can get gratefully; still, it seems a shame that a giant “big box” store chain with literally billions in their coffers can only give us a maximum of $25 worth of goods, while a struggling local business can find a way to make underwriting hundreds or thousands of dollars of our expenses a net positive for them too.

Sometimes it’s a total win-win when you call someone on the phone and ask what they can do to help out with your project, even if they don’t have a lot of ready cash. I chanced on a company that makes solar water heating systems using a patented heating element they invented themselves; they’re still a start-up, and poised to expand, so they don’t have the liquid assets to just dump cash on us. . . but when I mention Burning Man, they tell me they have been wanting to build a self-contained water-recycling shower trailer using their solar heaters, so they’ll have something to take to festivals and show off. After a meeting with the company’s partners, the CEO, a gentleman in his sixties and a deacon at a local church, comes to visit us at our build site. He likes what he sees so much that he actually ends up signing a site waiver and climbing up a twelve-foot ladder to help assemble our scale model of the Control Tower. As we break for dinner and part ways, he shakes my hand and tells me they’ll build their shower trailer project for our crew to use on the playa. I let him know that he won’t be able to do any kind of advertising out there, but he’s fine with that; he wants to see Burning Man for himself and will put off using the shower trailer as a rolling billboard until he can haul it out to some other festival.

Architect Ken Rose — Photo: Mark Hebert

There are just two snags: one is that they’ll need a little help with the labor; that’s no problem at all. The other is that they don’t have any cash to put into the shower trailer project, and they are lacking the filtration system they’ll need to turn greywater from the shower’s drains back into potable water ready to be used again. They’ve got everything else necessary to build the high-tech closed system they envision, but we’re going to have to come up with two different types of filter on our own. One type we can make ourselves cheaply and easily; the other type that we’ll need will be expensive.

On my way home, I stop at a large pool and spa store, and the owner happens to be there and not at all busy. We have a friendly talk and I tell her about the Control Tower; she’s been to Burning Man and promises me that once I figure out exactly what size and type of filter we need, she’ll donate it.

People are pretty generous, and just plain great in general, when you give them a good opportunity to be that way for a cause that excites their imaginations.

Aside from fundraising, I’ve been pitching in on things like painting the wooden parts for the scale model, or doing whatever else needs extra hands, but that’s been pretty light work.

I’ve also been gearing up to do some indirect fundraising, by making swag to give to people who donate to our Indiegogo. I hand-carve and tool leather, so I thought I’d decorate some leather panels and stitch them around metal liquor flasks. I finished my prototype yesterday; you can’t buy one at any price, but if you donate $250 to the Control Tower I’ll make one for you for free. . . and if you come to the Control Tower to collect it on-playa, I’ll even fill it with Scotch for you.

DOOK DOOK DOOK

Cheers!

Is there something in the air? It seems that the theme for this Spring is tech moguls dropping Burning Man references. Burning Man, the Maker world, and the tech world are about to converge for a weekend at BurnerHack. Some people trace the demise of Burning Man to 1996, with the event’s first coverage in WIRED magazine in Bruce Sterling’s article. WIRED and Burning Man have always gone hand in hand, as have Burning Man and  tech. Despite the naysayers, they’re all still going strong. Right now it seems to be de riguer to work Burning Man into whatever you’re promoting to the technology world.

WIRED has recently done a story on Monty Taylor of Hewlett-Packard and OpenStack, the NASA backed offspring of the Rainbow Mansion that aims to run much of the infrastructure of the Internet. Monty is the engineer in charge of “Continuous Integration” for the OpenStack project, meaning he’s the gate keeper for all the developers out there who submit code to be integrated to the core. He’s a Burner, he wears pink sunglasses (Robot Heart, one wonders?), and he likens the open source movement in the software world to Burning Man:

Monty Taylor posing on New York’s fashionable High Line (photo Wired/Andrew White)

Though engineers are so often caricatured as single-minded introverts, Monty Taylor is an extrovert with a taste for more than software. “He’s super-technical,” says Mark Collier, who worked with Taylor at Rackspace and is now on staff at the OpenStack Foundation, the not-for-profit that oversees the project. “But he’s also so personable.”

No, you wouldn’t call him a typical software developer. But he’s not as far from the norm as he may seem. Whatever the stereotypes, software development is a social activity, and this is particularly true of massive open source projects like OpenStack. Taylor compares OpenStack to Burning Man, where a vast array of individuals, each with his own agenda, come together and share common ground. The OpenStack CI service is the tool that keeps this community going, ensuring that the collective doesn’t turn to chaos.

“I’m always making big Burning Man metaphors,” Taylor says. “We want to give developers as much freedom as we can, but if you give them too much freedom, it turns into anarchy. You have to have a certain amount of structure and rules.”

Open Stack seems to be a combination of several “skunkworks” type projects being conducted by NASA, Google, and others, all rolled up into one in the salon at the Rainbow Mansion. It’s open to the world, and backed by more than 150 companies, including some of the tech world’s biggest:

So much software they needed a container

OpenStack has many founders across NASA, Rackspace, and beyond. But several of the most important players were a regular part of the tech commune that thrives at the Rainbow Mansion, including Chris C. Kemp, 34, one of the freethinkers who founded the Mansion when they joined NASA’s Ames Research Center in 2006. “We were just looking for a place to live,” says Kemp. “But it turned into a place where the idea was to recruit interesting people — interesting people to have dinner with, to run into in the common areas, to be around a lot — people who could expand our understanding of the world.”

Kemp went on to become the chief information officer at Ames and later the chief technology officer of NASA as a whole. While there, working alongside several others with close ties to the Rainbow Mansion, he spearheaded the creation of NASA Nebula, an effort to bring Google’s web genius to the rest of the world. And after two years of struggle, a key part of this project — an open source platform called Nova — would merge with a complementary platform from Rackspace and give birth to OpenStack.

Like Linux, OpenStack is a bit of a miracle. The odds were against Kemp even getting Nebula off the ground at NASA — not only because it’s somewhat tangential to the agency’s mission, but because the NASA bureaucracy was so unsuited to the creation of something openly shared with the rest of the world. And NASA is only half the story. It’s even more remarkable that a project created at NASA would so quickly find a home among the giants of the tech world.

“This could have fallen apart in a million different ways, from the beginning. In fact, it all seemed impossible,” says Rick Clark, who worked at Rackspace when OpenStack was in its infancy and now helps drive the project at Cisco. “You have to please NASA and the NASA legal team and the Rackspace legal team and the Rackspace board of directors, and you have to do it in a way that still have something that’s palatable to developers everywhere else. It’s amazing that it actually happened.”

Open Source software means anyone can contribute to it; this shift in the concept of intellectual property has revolutionized the software industry, gutting the market for application software developers who are now lucky to get $3 in the App Store for their masterpieces. Google and Facebook were built on massive server farms running Linux, the variant of the UNIX operating system kernel developed as Open Source by Finland’s Linus Torvalds in 1991. The low-cost, easily modifiable software stack meant their server farms cost less to build and operate than their competitors. It’s safe to say that most of the Internet runs on open source these days – which still hasn’t stopped companies like Microsoft and Oracle making money. Their profits have increased, but some of their monopoly has been passed back to the people. This model is what is needed as evolution careens on its unstoppable course towards the Singularity…information wants to be free. The infrastructure and systems that govern our lives should be created by the people, and transparent to all – not purchased from IBM and Accenture for multi-billion dollar sums, the same systems sold over and over again to government departments and large corporations. Open source software is always evolving, can always be improved. It is free, made by the people, by those who want to share their skills and efforts for the benefit of anyone else who appreciates it.

Sound like anything familiar? In likening the open source movement to Burning Man, Monty makes the point that “without some rules, it descends into anarchy“ – which is true, but misses the larger point about the organization of human beings. We need leadership, not just rules. Sure, we need rules. Without leadership, rules descend into bureaucracy, blandness, even tyranny. Rules for the sake of having more rules. This is kind of like the role Standards play in Open Source – a convenient way for the corporate interests to put their fingerprints all over emerging technologies, slowing down and steering their development in the name of “Open Standards” (which is not the same thing as Open Source). The Open Source projects that seem to work best are the ones where there is a media-friendly character involved, a geek prepared to have a slightly higher profile than the others perhaps. The mainstream media might have no idea who these characters are, but enough of the geeks know that they have the street cred required to get others to follow them.

This same point seems to be missed by Google’s Larry Page, in calling for “spaces without rules” where experimentation can take place. I agree we need these spaces – but even more, we  need the tribes that will fill them, the scouts who will convince the leaders to bring more of their tribe. In the nightclub world these would be called promoters, in the tech world they are called “thought leaders”. At BMOrg I believe the title is “social alchemist”. These tribes can operate in existing spaces and within existing rules, Burning Man is an example of a space (and challenge) that greatly facilitates the formation and connections of these tribes. What do they do to promote these tribes, and help them prosper? What sort of leadership do they provide to the inhabitants of their Temporary Autonomous Zone – and what will that look like in the future?

The Rainbow Mansion (photo Wired/Ariel Zambelich)

Back to OpenStack:

That’s what OpenStack is: a way for the rest of the world to compete with Amazon. “Amazon [is] at war with every IT vendor out there,” says Sebastian Stadil, the CEO of an open source cloud management outfit Scalr, the founder of the Silicon Valley Cloud Computing group, and a former resident of the Rainbow Mansion. “I think one of the reasons OpenStack is getting so much traction — despite, to be frank, iffy stability — is that it represents the industry’s only hope to survive.”

All these massive companies – and NASA! – teaming up just to fight in a war against Amazon, over a business that’s not even doing $1 billion a year? With technology coming to us from the Rainbow Mansion, 15 minutes down the road from NASA Ames? And it’s our only hope to survive? Something smells fishy to me here. This has the pungent reek of 20th century thinking, nicely packaged in a fetid veneer of pseudo-openness. It stinks of open source for the wrong reasons. It seems more like the eternal cycle of computing, from the server room to the client and back again. A whole new excuse to sell hardware and services to customers who already bought them 5 years ago when the buzzwords were different.

Anyway, the point is that  Open Source ultimately wins over proprietary monopoly. If BMOrg want to monopolize their control over Burning Man, they will eventually be subsumed by something more open. People want their voices to be heard. Information wants to be free. The energy and spirit of Burning Man want to be free too, and gifted to the world.

Burning Man is the epitome of the crowd-sourced event. The cremé-de-la-cremé of BYO parties. But in a way, the rules for it get crowd-sourced too. It starts with the 10 Principles – what are they, Rules? Commandments? Then rules get added to the mix from BMOrg, from the authorities, from Burners doing stupid stuff. New ideas, new rules. Every year, more people, more rules. Without leadership, the creativity will be stifled by the imposition of systemic authority. You can see this happen all day long in Silicon Valley – the founders get kicked out of the company once it grows past a couple of hundred people, the early staff quit, because it’s “not the same” as things get bigger and more complicated and the rules come in. This is why big companies can’t innovate – they just buy innovation with their giant treasure troves.

Here’s what Monty thinks about the rules:

Taylor and team have also built a tool called Zuul, a means of efficiently testing the enormous amounts of code produced by the project, and unlike most CI systems, it tests all code before it’s merged into the collective, so that the community can move as one — and move much quicker.

The other key thing to realize, Taylor says, is that the process is automatic. No human can merge new code into the project without the approval of the system. With a massive project like OpenStack, he explains, you need a process that doesn’t favor the wishes of any one contributor. You don’t want anarchy, but you don’t want dictatorship either.

“You can’t have human enforcement of the rules. That lends itself to corruption. We want rules to — as much as possible — be sensible and machine-enforced. You can’t have someone laying down a rule because they don’t like you. They have to be rules that apply to everyone.”

The ultimate aim is to create a project that is truly communal — the sort of thing that so rarely happens in the real world. “We can’t do this in normal human life,” Taylor says, “but we can do it in source code.”

Zuul!

“The Freaks Come Marching-In” – they asked Burners to draw self-portaits. (Todd Berman)

We can’t do this in normal human life – but Burning Man has the size, ingenuity, and weirdness that maybe it could be a chance for us to create a project that is truly communal. Not controlled by a small group of privileged insiders. And  not just in one way, repeated ad infinitum…but on an ongoing, repeatable basis. For example, why do we have to build the same city layout, again and again? Is it for occult reasons? We want to change things, then “Jupiter” becomes “Juniper”, and we can all feel more edgy? Let’s mix it up a bit. Experiment with different ways of living together, and see what lessons we learn. Try something new, and burn it at the end. If not at this event, then perhaps other, new ones to come.

Free Software Guru, Rochard Stallman

Burning Man can have increasingly more rules and still thrive, so long as there is leadership. They would do well to learn from the successes of Open Source, and ideas like Burner Lawrence Lessig’s Creative Commons. Burning Man is the ultimate creative commons, in the original sense of the term commons. Now Lessig, and Open Source demigod Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, and even the Pirate Party which is gaining legitimate political support in Europe, are promoting the next big thing: the Free Culture movement. Enrich humanity, by sharing our cultural heritage with each other. Hollywood and the record companies still make money, Burning Man will still make money.

Since BMOrg do not exploit our photos for their own commercial gain, why do they need to have such onerous copyright policies? Why not use a creative commons license, so that we can all share together the rich tapestry of unique culture that we create and add to with every Burn. Sure, there’s stuff on YouTube, but we could do better. Everyone’s experience at Burning Man could be shared with everyone else – if they chose. Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat – we live in a world of sharing now. Not taking, controlling, hoarding. Sharing, giving, remixing, improving. Burning Man would only gain from this way of thinking, and so would the Burner community. It’s the value of the inclusive approach - it’s a party that’s created by its participants, so encourage their participation in the design and governance of the city, and the spread of the movement. Don’t try to own and control; instead give, and share, and open, and include. Its 2013, we speak the Language of We. Sharing is the new owning.

You may have heard of the curious case of Burner Kim.com, the most wanted man on the Internet (according to WIRED magazine). The flamboyant German hacker and founder of MegaUpload and now Mega got raided last year in the largest copyright infringement case in global history by the FBI in New Zealand, a sovereign country where the American FBI has no jurisdiction.

Well, it seems that he is now foraying into the burgeoning EDM bubble. His latest track “Dance My Friends” features either Rihanna, or a sound-alike.

This builds on his previous commercial song, “Mega Upload” featuring Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas and Kanye West.

“Kim Dotcom, also known as Kimble, and Kim Tim Jim Vestor is a German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur, currently residing in New Zealand. He is the founder of Megaupload and its associated websites, as well as Megaupload’s successor site, Mega”

He stands 2 meters tall, and has three albums out. One of his claims to fame is having been ranked the #1 player in the world in the XBox game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to see him back at Burning Man anytime soon, since the US is trying to extradite him.

“It’s just kind of ridiculous what they did to his life,” Apple founder Steve Wozniak told the AP. “An awful lot of Kiwis support him. The U.S. government is on thin ground.”

It looks like Kim.Com is pulling out all the stops to defend himself against bizarre accusations of a victimless crime, a “crap indictment” personally signed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and recently described by New Zealand’s highest judge as “a miscarriage of Justice“. He recently won some big legal victories, including an apology from the Prime Minister. We wish him well in his case, which affects all of our rights as Internet users and global sovereign citizens.

by Whatsblem the Pro

You are not authorized to read this book

The Cacophony Society is a venerable but obscure institution that can lay claim to being the very origins of Burning Man, art cars, Santacon/Santarchy, the Billboard Liberation Front, urban exploration, culture jamming, and more, with strong ties to organizations, traditions, and phenomena like St. Stupid’s Day, zombie flashmobs, Survival Research Labs, the Church of the SubGenius, Fight Club, etc. The Society can also legitimately take some serious credit for the resurgence of circus/freak show/burlesque troupes across the nation and around the world.

The San Francisco Institute of Possibility, led by Chicken John Rinaldi, presented an “unauthorized book release party” at the Castro Theater in San Francisco last weekend for the release of TALES OF THE SAN FRANCISCO CACOPHONY SOCIETY. Whatsblem the Pro attended.

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100% Genuine Santa — Photo: Panda

When I first heard that the Cacophony Society was having a book release party in San Francisco, I imagined a modest get-together of perhaps forty or fifty people at a place like City Lights Bookstore. Apparently, that’s what the book release party at Ferlinghetti’s Folly was supposed to be like: tweed, elbow patches, plastic cups of Cab-Merlot, little squares of fontina cheese with toothpicks in them, something light and unobtrusive on the stereo, and a lot of polite reminiscence about how much fun everything used to be.

Chicken John had a different vision; a bigger, bolder vision. . . so he shamelessly hijacked the event. At Chicken’s behest, approximately a thousand walking anomalies, professional raconteurs, semi-human chimerae, stump preachers, miscreants, miscreations, amateur inventors, bons vivants, characters, loners, part-time zombies, sports, morlocks, kooks, crackpots, anti-human racists, beatniks, geeks, Overmen, neodadaists, giant ants, screwballs, underground celebrities, common deeves, Situationists, Groucho Marxists, burlesque mutants, renegade federal agents, sign-wielding protestitutes, and other assorted weirdos invaded the Castro Theater and filled that hallowed hall (and the sidewalk out front) with a veritable bacchanal of conceptual and sartorial mayhem, in celebration of their tribe and people.

And of course, they shilled the book. Hard. Chicken John is, after all, nothing if not a consummate showman, and well-endowed with the appropriately hucksterish skills and instincts that go with that.

Al Ridenour’s Art of Bleeding troupe makes it all better

If you’ve never heard of the Cacophony Society before, or only have a rough idea of its history and purposes and accomplishments, then you’re quite mistaken if you think you know much of anything about Burning Man. For instance: perhaps you are under the impression that dictums like ‘Leave No Trace’ and ‘No Spectators’ are a Burning Man thing; of course they are, but we got them directly from the Cacophonists who first introduced Larry Harvey and his Man to the Black Rock Desert. John Law, one of the triumvirate that originally founded the Burning Man Org, is a very prominent Cacophonist. . . and he is a co-compiler and editor of TALES OF THE SAN FRANCISCO CACOPHONY SOCIETY. Without Cacophony, there would be no Burning Man, plain and simple. Cacophony is nothing less than the root of the many-branched tree of weirdness that makes life tolerable for those of us who realize that the Apocalypse has already happened.

Once I had a firm grasp on the scope of the event, I knew I had to be there come Hell or high water. An appearance by THE YES MEN was promised, as were performances by the likes of Al Ridenour and his brilliant ART OF BLEEDING troupe. POLLY SUPERSTAR was on the bill, and the Reverend IVAN STANG, spiritual leader of THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS, was rumored to be hosting, accompanied by Church luminaries PHILO DRUMMOND and the formidably erudite DR. HAL ROBINS.

Chicken John — Photo: Chris Stewart/Chronicle

Chicken John – whose sole failing as a carny is his unflinching generosity – graciously offered me a free ticket, and this bit of largesse cemented my resolve to make it to the show in spite of the fact that I was determined not to use that ticket under any circumstances. No; I was dead set on infiltrating instead and being a part of the show, a performer without portfolio, as unauthorized as the event itself.

To this end, I arrived early, and simply walked in amid the hustle and bustle of staff and crew getting ready, as though I knew what I was doing and was supposed to be there. Having located a coatroom backstage where I could stow my gear with that of the other performers, I changed into my favorite evening wear: a fully-accessorized Santa suit, paid for with the Burners.me credit card – still uncomfortably hot to the touch – that nestled in my Santa hat with the rest of my valuables. I wore my costume with the confidence that can only come from having True Santa Nature, an epic beard, and the assurances of the staff at the costume shop that my outfit had indeed been laundered since the last Santa threw up in it.

I spent the next two hours hobnobbing, palavering, flirting, exploring the Castro Theater, and joining the other performers in entertaining, confusing, and harassing both passerby and people waiting in the long line out front that snaked around the corner onto Market Street. . . and then, suddenly, the doors were flung wide, the line began to inch forward, the theater seats were filled. The show began in earnest.

After that, I can’t remember much. There was some sort of film playing, I recall, with a spinning hypnomat filling the screen as a man’s voice droned on and on from the surround-sound speakers. A strange odor filled the air as some kind of gas began to quietly hiss its way out of the ventilation system in smoky tendrils. Strong men first pounded upon, and then hurled themselves at, the oversized theater doors that led back to the lobby and safety, but to no avail; the Castro is an old theater, built well and well cared-for. The doors held; my head reeled.

Yes Man assaulted by Hell Yes Women — Photo: John Curley

Glimpses of half-remembered scenes that swim up from the darkness that followed are all that is left to me now: Andie Grace tucking a dollar into my Santa belt as I performed a wholly involuntary St. Vitus’ tarantella; Andy Bichlbaum, surrounded by a bevy of adoring painted harlots, tearing his own face off to reveal the face of Jacques Servin beneath it; Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond gently extracting an “ordination fee” from my nerveless fingers; a bizarre but tender assignation backstage with a honey badger (call me, honey!). A man covered from head to toe in bandages and wielding a keyboard and joystick seemed to be controlling all my movements.

When I awoke, I was in an alley in downtown Reno, soiled and disoriented. A hardbound copy of TALES OF THE SAN FRANCISCO CACOPHONY SOCIETY lay open before me in my lap, silently exhorting me to “DO YOUR DISHES.”

There seem to be some recordings on my phone, with time/date stamps that indicate they were made that terrible evening as I languished in some kind of nightmarish state of induced fugue. Stay tuned; once I’ve had a chance to listen to them I’ll let you know if they reveal anything of importance.

FREEBIRD ME, HONEY BADGER — Photo: Leslie Benson

Burning Man founder Larry Harvey has been over in London for the Bilderberg Le Web Conference. Here’s an interview from TechCrunch with Larry and Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Perry Barlow – the man who coined the term “meatspace“, which here at Burners.Me we much prefer to “Defaultia“. Larry looks very much the rock star here, Barlow on the other hand actually IS a rock star.

These two titans of the Bay have some interesting perspectives on the similarities between Burning Man, “le web”, Aborigines, the art world and the Silicon Valley startup culture:

that’s Barlow on the right

As Barlow points out in the video, early computer culture and the Psychedelia movement grew up alongside each other. There was a “revolutionary zeal in the notion of intellectual empowerment” in Psychedelia which found common cause in tech culture.

During the discussion Harvey points out that Burning Man builds an ephemeral city once a year and bans commercial transactions. Instead, they have pioneered a gift economy which matches much of the “gifting” economics online startups today.

JP Barlow believes we’re returning to a gift economy that actually existed long ago, in former human societies. The ‘scarcity’ economic model which drives much of business today has problems in a new age of potentially limitless space online.

Indeed, points out Barlow, we keep getting encouraged to create scarcity. “I have an artist friend who’s agent invited him to fake his own death to increase the value of his art!” he jokes.

But the collaborative art created at Burning Man is not commercial in the same way, and at the same time it mirrors the world of collaboration online today.

The radical self expression at Burning Man also has parallels in the way Silicon Valley approaches startup culture. Entrepreneurs throw themselves at a problem without knowing if they will succeed, and indeed it’s likely they will fail.

In the same way, the art created at Burning Man can work or it can fail. As Harvey says: “If the unknown isn’t present then art withers”. It’s a phrase that would sound familiar to many entrepreneurs dealing daily with the unknown, but felling all the more driven to create something.

They challenge us to promote social interaction, and boldly embrace the unknown collaborative technological future we hurtle towards…

Both men feel the march of technology itself is not a concern, it’s – in a word – how we “deal with fear”.

“Any powerful technology has sauce for the goose and the gander… It’s just an extension of humanity,” says Barlow. “You can [also] increase your ability to see inside that which is trying to look inside you.”

Harvey believes the often bad reactions to technologies like Google Glass and fears about a future surveillance society are mainly down to irrational, primordial fears.

“We’re caught between fight and flight. I guess we have to go forward,” he says.

Larry claims “no one at our event has ever signed their art”…for reals? I’m gonna be scouring the playa for artist signatures this year.

As well as Tech Crunch, Larry Harvey made the most of his presence at Le Web with interviews at Tech City Insider and Bloomberg (TV and radio) - preparing for the forthcoming Burning Man IPO, perhaps? They were fascinated about how the relationship between Google and Burning Man evolved, Larry skillfully steers the discussion around to drawing the links to Silicon Valley, the Wild West, and a blank slate. “If you scratch an engineer, you’ll find a closet artist” – err, no thanks Larry, I’m not scratching any crusty engineers and I don’t wanna know what’s in their closets!

Most interesting that Bloomberg drew the links between the secretive Bilderberg Group meeting going on nearby, all the tech luminaries also in town ostensibly for Le Web, and our festival based on the idea of “radical inclusion” – ranked #3 amongst the principals in our recent poll, with “radical self-reliance” actually being #1. “No-one ever turned a scene into a city”, says Larry. A nice way to look at it – a not dissimilar perspective to my own “no-one ever turned a rave into a city”.

You might have heard a lot of the hype about the new documentary about Burning Man, Spark. It’s screening tonight in Reno at 7:30, then playing to 1400 people in Washington DC, heading to New York City, and playing to 500 or so up my way in Santa Rosa on July 9.

There is a plethora of other documentaries about Burning Man. Like, Dust and Illusions – the film Burning Man doesn’t want you to see, or the excellent Emmy-nominated Current TV coverage of a few years back (now seemingly deleted from the Current.TV web site, since its acquisition from Al Gore by the Arabian network Al Jazeera).

So what makes this one different?

Well, for one, the Burning Man founders have been quite prominent in attending its premieres around the country. That certainly wasn’t the case with Dust and Illusions. It debuted at SXSW in Austin this year, to mixed reviews. And the BMOrg have been behind it too, talking it up in the Jacked Rabbit Speaks and the official Burning Man web site. They even went so far as to create an entire online portal called Spark – which at the time I thought was a coincidence, but read on, perhaps not…(I’m not sure I can pin the coincidental name of nearby town Sparks, Nevada on BMOrg but if anyone has any Burnileaks style info on this, please send it in!)

Just like the 7 Scandals besetting Our Prez right now, the leadership of Burning Man has yet another new scandal to contend with, thanks to the hard work of a perceptive Burner investigative journalist. Scribe is the author of The Tribes of Burning Man, probably the best book about Burning Man’s history (although if you want photos, Tomas Loewy’s Radical Burning Desert gets a lot of use on my coffee table).

He’s also a writer for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and their specialist on Burning Man. His recent 5-page cover story raises a lot of questions about the Spark Movie, and how much truth the Burner community is actually getting from the founders and leaders of BMOrg about what is going on.

A documentary called Spark: A Burning Man Story is arriving on the big screen, with dreams of wide distribution, at a pivotal moment for the San Francisco-based corporation that has transformed the annual desert festival into a valuable global brand supported by a growing web of interconnected burner collectives around the world.

Is that a coincidence, or is this interesting and visually spectacular (if slightly hagiographic) film at least partially intended to shore up popular support for the leadership of Burning Man as the founders cash out of Black Rock City LLC and supposedly begin to transfer more control to a new nonprofit entity?

Radical Burning Desert by Tomas Loewy

Filmed during last year’s ticket fiasco — in which high demand and a flawed lottery system created temporary scarcity that left many essential veteran burners without tickets during the busy preparation season — both the filmmakers and leaders of Burning Man say they needed to trust one another.

After all, technology-entrepreneur-turned-director Steve Brown was given extensive, exclusive access to the sometimes difficult and painful internal discussions about how to deal with that crisis. And if he was looking to make a film about the flawed and dysfunctional leadership of the event — ala Olivier Bonin’s Dust & Illusions — he certainly had plenty of footage to make that storyline work.

But that wasn’t going to happen, not this time — for a few reasons. One, Brown is a Burning Man true believer and relative newbie who took its leaders at face value and didn’t want to delve into the details or criticisms of how the event is managed or who will chart its future. As he told us, that just wasn’t the story he wanted to tell.

“We got trusted by the founders of Burning Man to do this story,” he told us. “They were in the process of going into a nonprofit and they wanted to get their message out into the world.”

So, sort of an authorized biography then.

Well, actually, more like a commissioned puff piece corporate story:

the filmmakers and their subjects are essentially in a partnership. Brown and the LLC’s leaders reluctantly admitted to us that there is a financial arrangement between the two entities and that the LLC will receive revenues from the film, although they wouldn’t discuss details with us.

Chris Weitz, an executive producer on the film, is also on the board of directors of the new nonprofit, The Burning Man Project, along with his wife, Mercedes Martinez. Both were personally appointed by the six members of the LLC’s board to help guide Burning Man into a new era.

Usually, if you star in a movie, you get paid. At least, you get a credit. In this case, we’re all the stars, we’re the talent, we pay to go there…and they profit from our images till the cows come home. How much? No-one’s saying, but for $150k you can do a Vogue Magazine Photo Shoot out there!

“We saw it as location fees. We’re making an investment, they’re making an investment,” he said, refusing to provide details of the agreement. “The arrangement we had with Burning Man is similar to the arrangements anyone else has had out there.”

Goodell said the LLC’s standard agreement calls for all filmmakers to either pay a set site fee or a percentage of the profits. “It’s standard in all of the agreements to pay a site fee,” Goodell said, noting that the LLC recently charged Vogue Magazine $150,000 to do a photo shoot during the event.

No wonder BMOrg were so pissed at Krug. They wanted their $150k. Or at least a pallet of champagne! Wonder if Town and Country had to pay similar buck$ too. This sponsorship of Burning Man by magazines, fashion labels etc. could be very lucrative, and could explain the difference between reported gate revenues (around $22 million) and the BLM fee of $1.87m for 3% – which brings us to a total event revenue closer to $62 million). What’s the deal with the missing 40 million dollars? Is the event actually much bigger than the permits, like some have speculated? Or is Burning Man cashing in big time on books, movies, TV shows, photo shoots, merchandising, the whole shebang?

Scribe very perceptively delves into the timing of this movie, with its unprecedented access to the founders and Org; the bizarre ticket lottery scandal, which could be looked at as a “culture jam” that shook the community up and made very clear the divide between veteran Burners (not so welcome any more, time to move on) and the new generation of Burgins (welcomed with open arms). It certainly made a great story thread for them to base a movie around – stirring the petri dish of Burners, creating carefully cultivated controversy amongst their Cargo Cult subjects with strange moves like “70% Virgins”. The other aspect of the timing of note is Larry Harvey’s announcement in 2011 (on April 1, no less) that Burning Man would transition to a non-profit over the next 3 years. We’ve got less than a year to go, and the vision and transition do not seem clear even to the leaders. Indeed, the Burning Man founders seem to be stepping back from their original idea of relinquishing control.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but Scribe thinks it’s going to bring a few eye-rolling moments to veteran Burners:

More cynical burner veterans may have a few eye-rolling moments with this film and the portrayals of its selfless leadership. While the discussions of the ticket fiasco raised challenging issues within the LLC, its critics came off as angry and unreasonable, as if the new ticket lottery had nothing to do with the temporary, artificial ticket scarcity (which was alleviated by summer’s end and didn’t occur this year under a new and improved distribution system).

And when the film ends by claiming “the organization is transitioning into a nonprofit to ‘gift’ the event back to the community,” it seems to drift from overly sympathetic into downright deceptive, leaving viewers with the impression that the six board members are selflessly relinquishing the tight control they exercise over the event and the culture it has spawned.

Yet our interview with the LLC leadership shows that just isn’t true. If anything, the public portrayals that founder Larry Harvey made two years ago about how this transition would go have been quietly modified to leave these six people in control of Burning Man for the foreseeable future.

So, is there actually a transition going on to a non-profit? Well, apparently, it’s complicated:

As altruistic as Spark makes Burning Man’s transition to nonprofit status sound, Harvey made it clear during the April 1, 2011 speech when he announced it that it was driven by internal divisions that almost tore the LLC board apart, largely over how much money departing board members were entitled to.

The corporation’s bylaws capped each board member’s equity at $20,000, a figure Harvey scoffed at as ridiculously low, saying the six board members would decide on larger payouts as part of the transition and they have refused to disclose how much (Sources in the LLC tell me the payouts have already begun. Incidentally, author Katherine Chen claimed in her book Enabling Creative Chaos that the $20,000 cap was set to quell community concerns about the board accumulating equity from everyone else’s efforts, but Harvey now denies that account).

In that speech, Harvey also said the plan was to turn over operation of the Burning Man event to the nonprofit after three years, and then three years later to transfer control over the Burning Man brand and trademarks and to dissolve the LLC (see “The future of Burning Man,” 8/2/11).

Board member Marian Goodell assured us at the time that the LLC would be doing extensive outreach to gather input on what the future leadership of the event and culture should look like: “We’re going to have a conversation with the community.”

But with just a year to go until the event was scheduled to be turned over to the nonprofit board, there has been no substantive transfer, the details of what the leadership structure will look like are murky — and the six board members of Black Rock LLC still deem themselves indispensable leaders of the event and culture.

The filmmakers say that the transition to the nonprofit was one of the things that drew them to the project, but the ticket fiasco came to steal their focus, mostly because the nonprofit narrative was simply too complex and confusing to easily convey on film.

According to Burning Man’s main founders Larry and Marian, everything is just fine. They’re on track to transfer the ownership to a new structure. They can’t just put everything into the Burning Man Project, so they’re still figuring out what to do with that and how it will interact with the party event. They definitely don’t want it to be a bureaucratic tyranny, so to protect us from that they’re going to control the culture more than ever before:

“We’re pretty much on schedule,” Harvey told me, noting that he still hopes to transfer ownership of the event over to the nonprofit next year. “The nonprofit is going well, and then we have to work out the terms of the relationship between the event and the nonprofit. We want the event to be protected from undue meddling and we want it to be a good fit.”

From our conversations, it appears that a new governance structure seems synonymous with the “meddling” they want to avoid.

“We want to make sure the event production has autonomy, so it can water the roads without board members deciding which roads and the number of tickets and how many volunteers,” Goodell said. “We did look at basically plopping the entire thing into the nonprofit, but if you look at what we’re trying to do out in the world, we don’t have any interest in becoming a big, large government agency.”

It was an analogy they returned to a few times: equating a new governance structure with bureaucratic tyranny. They rejected the notion that the new nonprofit would have “control” over the event, even though they want it to have “ownership” of the event.

“You just said the control of the event would be turned over to the nonprofit,” Goodell said.

“No, the ownership,” Harvey added.

“Yeah, there’s a difference,” Goodell said.

That difference seems to involve whether the six current board members would be giving up their control — which she said they are not.

“All six of us plan to stay around. We’re not going off to China to buy a little house along the Mekong River,” Goodell said.

“We want to make sure the event production company has sufficient autonomy, they can function with creating freedom and do what it does best, which is producing the Burning Man event, without being unduly interfered with by the nonprofit organization,” Harvey said.

“That’s why you heard it one way initially, and you’re hearing it slightly differently now, and it could go back again,” Goodell said. “We don’t think it’s sensible, either philosophically or fiscally, to essentially strip away all these entities and take all these employees and plop them in the middle of The Burning Man Project.”

In other words, Black Rock LLC and its six members will apparently still produce the event — and it’s not clear what, exactly, the nonprofit will do.

“We are giving up LLC-based ownership control, we are not giving up the steerage of the culture,” Goodell said. “That we’re not giving up. We’re more necessary now than ever.”

Scribe finishes his piece by presenting the two different viewpoints at play here.

There are at least a couple ways for burner true believers to look at the event, its culture, and its leadership. One is to see Burning Man as a unique and precious gift that has been bestowed on its attendees by Harvey, its wise and selfless founder, and the leadership team he assembled, which he formalized as an LLC in 1997.

That seems to be the dominant viewpoint, based on reactions that I’ve received to past critical coverage (and which I expect to hear again in reaction to this article), and it is the viewpoint of the makers of this film. “They’ve dedicated their lives to creating this platform that allows people to go out and create art,” Brown said.

Another point-of-view is to see Burning Man as the collective, collaborative effort that it claims to be, a DIY experiment conducted by the voluntary efforts of the tens of thousands of people who create the art and culture of Black Rock City from scratch, year after year.

Yes, we should appreciate Harvey and the leaders of the event, and they should get reasonable retirement packages for their years of effort. But they’ve also had some of the coolest jobs in town for a long time, and they now freely travel the world as sort of countercultural gurus, not really working any harder than most San Franciscans.

The latter point is felt by many old time Burners, who are often under-employed and under-funded. The art is made collaboratively, and financed collaboratively. By us, not the BMOrg. Many feel that we’ve all made this event together and that the BMOrg is being unfair in their ruthless persecution of anyone trying to make a buck in the Burner commuity, while simultaneously maximizing profits behind closed doors and doing all kinds of licensing deals without any transparency. They don’t have to share the profits, it’s not communism, but at least let the rest of the Burner ecosystem profit from Burning Man too. Do they want to be Apple and Microsoft (who pay people to develop the intellectual property that they license and control) or do they want to be Open Source (where a community gifts to the commons, for the good of all)? We’ve all heard the talk, it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in the next year if they actually do sort their transition plans out.

Burning Man 2.0 is starting to look suspiciously like Burning Man 1.0… just with less transparency; tighter control over the culture; stepped up political campaigning in Washington, Nevada, and San Francisco;  new revenue streams from new media and new markets leading to a hugely expanded scope of revenue production from the event and brand that we all co-created together – aka “we pay them to be the talent and we take care of our own wardrobe, travel, accomodation and all expenses too”; more fragmented volunteer-run organizations that may or may not be doing lots of useful stuff away from the party to give back to the community; and last but by absolutely no means least, a massively expanded public relations blitz featuring (to name a few) the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, New York Times, Reuters, the Guardian, Washington Post, Vogue, Town and Country, San Francisco magazine, Cosmo, Salon, the Huffington Post, even Popular Mechanics and the Delta Airlines in-flight magazine!

In an earlier post I raised the possibility that Burning Man’s interviews with Bloomberg could be seeding the garden for a possible IPO. Interestingly, this story was presented on Bloomberg as “The Spark That Created Burning Man Festival”. Spark again. Is there some multi-year plan afoot here, similar to Facebook’s idea to release an Oscar-winning movie before announcing their iPO (with another movie)? Or is it just a coincidence that Burning Man seems to have taken the travelling, speaking, and interviewing to a whole ‘nother dimension in the last couple of years?

Watch this space – Scribe has conducted quite a few interviews about this story, and will be bringing us more soon.

Filed under: News Tagged: 2011, 2013, bmorg, city, commerce, complaints, event, fashion, festival, future, news, Party, plans, press, scandal, tickets, virgin

by Whatsblem the Pro

In fact, you’re ALL fired. Merry Christmas!

Is it a coincidence? A deliberate reorganization? A quiet rebellion? Recent days have seen a spate of high-level firings, resignations, and even a strike taking place in the often insular world of the Burning Man organization.

Palmer ‘Gameshow‘ Parker, DPW’s Dispatch Manager for many years, was invited to attend Burning Man for free again in 2013, but his contract was not renewed. Gameshow has now been replaced by another long-time Dispatch worker. Those in the know were tight-lipped about it at the subsequent manager’s meeting, and simply cited “a Human Resources issue,” while other sources cited an alleged dissatisfaction with Gameshow’s ability and/or willingness to integrate DPW Dispatch with EMS personnel and their system. Gameshow himself has declined to make any official comment on the Org’s decision.

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Quinn Yarbrough, sometimes known as “Ghost Dancer,” was asked to resign less than a week ago after some ten years as the DPW Ranch Manager, according to sources close to him. Of course, in the corporate HR world of professional candy-coating and face-saving, “asked to resign” is just a euphemism for being fired without having to tell your next employer that you were fired.

Quinn was reportedly escorted around the ranch – his only home for the last ten years – as he gathered his belongings, like some kind of suspected thief. This is not to say that Quinn is suspected of being a thief; it’s a not-uncommon feature of big-boy corporate culture that fired employees are shepherded around by security guards and formally shown the door. What this says about the Org, about their goals, and about how very far they’ve strayed from a Cacophony Society Zone Trip is much more interesting than anything it might imply about Quinn Yarbrough, who is unfortunately unavailable for comment at this time. His Facebook page, however, gives us a public statement notable for its civilized tone; Quinn is often said to be rather a deep person, and his serene stance in the face of what must be a massive life change would seem to support that opinion of him:

“Where as word spreads like wildfire let me just say this much for now. I love you all and have nothing ill to say about anyone, it’s simply time and appropriate for our collective evolution for me to step onto a new path. Much love and gratitude for the many many memories – blessings to the Burning Man Community.”

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In contrast, Otto von Danger, whose calamitously controversial leadership on Burn Wall Street our very own Burnersxxx wrote about back in September 2012, posted the following comment on his Facebook page just today (presented here unedited):

“After 6 years of Militey service the government discarded me as they do many others and now after 13 years Burning Man has done the same.They invented some bullshit and fired me last night.So I’m trying to fix it but as it stands I will not be going to Burning Man anymore and Shwing is canceled.FrogBat will go on of course.”

In response to queries, Otto gave the following explanation (also unedited):

“it’s true…they said I pulled a knife on one of the Burn Wall street crew…which is obviously not true.I think that would have got me arrested.Again I’m trying to fix this but as it stands Burning Man is done with me.”

When asked why the Org would do something like that, Otto’s response was that the recently-released film SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY portrayed him in too flattering a light, and that the Org hates successful people like himself:

“probably because I looked good in Spark is my guess…they don’t like success unless it’s thiers.”

People who have drunk a little too deeply of the Org’s kool-aid frequently chide us here at Burners.me for being too critical of their sacred icons, but in this case we have to speak up in defense of dear Uncle Larry and the other false gods of the Org-worshippers for a change: the idea that they get rid of people for being successful and appearing in films in a good light is even more absurd than the idea that Otto von Danger is successful by any objective definition of the word. Otto is clearly selling a flavor of kool-aid all his own, and his stated reasons for being dismissed are very possibly not a clear or accurate reflection of reality. Given the personality clashes and accusations of rank incompetence, volunteer abuse, mishandling of funds, and even sexual assault that were leveled at him (and his right-hand man, Jonathan ‘Fester’ Cooksey) in the weak aftermath of the Burn Wall Street project, the Org very likely had more than one excellent reason to give Otto the old heave-ho, regardless of any overarching plan to purge their ranks.

Meanwhile, during a Q and A with one of the directors after a screening of SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY in Reno, a woman in the audience asked ”why was Burn Wall Street romanticized?”

Apparently, the director’s goal was to show projects from beginning to end. . . but the darker aspects of Burn Wall Street depicted in earlier edits of SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY were deemed much too negative in comparison with the other elements of the film, and thus a great deal of ugliness connected with the project and with Otto personally was simply left on the cutting room floor in the interests of a more upbeat end product.

Otto made another interesting and not entirely accurate or true comment:

“they also fired alot of other good people this year including the entire Man base crew.”

=====

Which brings us to the Man Base crew.

As nearly as we can gather, Otto’s assertion that the entire Man Base crew is being replaced is still just speculation, although certainly a possibility. The meat of the story so far seems to be that a dispute between the Org and Travis Ludy, who has been managing the crew that builds the Man Base for years, has escalated into a strike that may very well result in the entire Man Base crew being replaced, and the size of the 2013 Man Base scaled down dramatically to make up for lost time and the lack of an experienced crew.

Ludy was paid $8000 to build the Man Base in 2012. The Org reportedly tried to cut his pay in half for 2013, and Ludy declined in favor of holding out for the whole nut. When they tried to give his job to someone on his crew instead, that person turned the job down. . . and news of the attempt to cut Ludy out over money – possibly exacerbated by other crew members being let go recently – led to the entire crew rebelling and going on strike.

We’re told that a meeting was held just today to try to settle the dispute. . . so let’s see how the balloon goes up, or how the cookie crumbles. Will the Org really scuttle the entire Man Base crew, and is it really all over a paltry four thousand dollars, or is there a welter and web of politics and personal agenda and independent problems between the Org and individuals, all coming to a head at once?

More importantly, is there some kind of a deliberate reorganization going on, and if so, what are the intentions driving it?

Geek.com has an article on the solar powered art car which debuted at Maker Faire. You might recognize the legs from previous Burning Mans…

It may look terrifying, but Scott Parenteau’s solar- and wind-powered monstrosity was born of love, rather than Frankenstein madness. Originally envisioned as a vehicle to drive around the Burning Man music festival, this is actually the work of a pair of industrial sheet metal professionals.

The crab, viewable in the video below, is hardly a speedster, but it can charge its surprisingly modest power supply with a single top-mounted solar panel and a wind turbine.

It’s not technically solar-powered, since the panel can only be used to slowly recharge batteries that were probably first filled thanks to a fossil fuel-powered generator, but the addition does help. Also, since the huge robot only carries a single photovoltaic panel at present, there is clearly room for expansion of its green power generation.

The creators showed the robot at Maker Faire 2013, and even in an environment of such inflated expectations, drew significant attention. 12 legs carry the pod forward The sheer scale of the thing is impressive enough, but it’s the small numbers that achieve the greatest impact. It runs roughly 800 watts, or about half that of the average hairdryer. Even more impressive is the fact it can be disassembled and compressed to a pile of metal just over 3 x 3 x 3 feet in size, or less than half the size of the average household refrigerator. The motors that drive its movement are household dishwater gear motors.

Theo Jensen’s StrandBeest design was the inspiration for the legs.

The actual genesis of the design was apparently the geodesic dome that houses the crab driver’s seat. The vehicular aspect comes thanks to the rightly famous StrandBeest designed by Theo Jensen. Upon seeing the simple, beautiful, and functional leg designs of Jensen’s artistic walker, Parenteau knew he could achieve much the same design in his native medium of sheet metal.

The elegance of the design on display here is only half the story, though. To me, the much more interesting part is the fact that the democratization of design, coupled with increasingly approachable means of green power, can empower hobbyists with no more than a keen mind and imagination to realize projects of truly impressive scope.

I mean, just look at this thing. It came from a pair of welders with nothing but passion and some fundamental skills. It uses no particularly revolutionary technologies, but rather stands (and walks) as a reminder that when we share information, we are also sharing inspiration.

via Thank Burning Man for the world’s first All Terrain Solar Transport | News | Geek.com.

[Haters?  Don't bother reading. This is one of those Burners.Me posts that you're not going to like. You'll probably even want to comment about it and call me names. Wonder why I'm always negative, or bashing BMOrg. Let me save you time, it's terrible, just skip to the comments and start bashing me. Thanks very much. I say this because I think it needs to be said. Is this our party, or not? - ed.]

Last year’s bizarre ticket lottery system caused a lot of controversy amongst the Burner community. It was sold out. Then more tickets were permitted, and they sold out. Then all of a sudden it wasn’t sold out. Then tickets started going below face value. A sign on the way in said “SOLD OUT EVENT – GO BACK IF YOU DON’T HAVE TICKETS”. Then tens of thousands (supposedly) left before the Man burned. Newbies who couldn’t handle the dust, perhaps? The event survived, but ultimately with shrinking numbers.

This year – as far as we know – an officially funded and promoted Burning Man documentary is not being shot inside BMHQ. Telling the story of “only 50,000 can go, but 150,000 wanted to, it’s the hardest to get into party on earth with the World’s Biggest Guest List” is less of a strategic objective in 2013. The media blitz has happened, mostly fuelled by the controversy. Burners got pissed, major camps pulled out, attendance started to shrink. Some of the press even started heralding “Burning Man on its Last Legs“, “RIP Burning Man“. “Jumped the shark” became the new “Fuck yer day”. Whoops-e-daisies! Time to change tack. So, they changed the guard, got a new CEO for the event, and went with a more conventional and less controversial ticket system. A good thing. Higher prices, more tickets. Still some low-income tickets. But these days this is mostly an event for rich people. Minimum $1000 and a week off work to go, more realistically $2000. And many individuals and couples spending above $10,000. A hundred or more, perhaps, spending over $100,000. Every year.

It’s officially sold out, with a waiting list for tickets. There will be a last-minute release of tickets: 1000+ according to the official announcement. They have re-cycled their ticket re-cycling program, called only we can be scalpers STEP - you can still enroll in this any time up to July 31, 2013.

1000+ huh? “Plus” any tickets that didn’t get sold through STEP? Or “plus” any tickets that insiders couldn’t scalp sell at face value only to friends?

I got an email today saying my tickets have shipped. Here’s a quick look at the current aftermarket situation:

StubHub 317 tickets, starting at $574 each; you can buy as many as 86 tickets at $5000

eBay – 41 tickets, starting at $400 going up to over $1000

Craigslist just has a few wanted ads. But, it seems like it’s not going to be too hard to get Burning Man tickets this year. Just like the last few years have been.

You know, as I’m writing this post and putting in these hyperlinks, re-reading some of our old stuff from last year…I think I’m putting two and two together. I’m listening to Infowars.com as I’m writing, so maybe I’m just on the conspiracy wavelength. But the extreme increase in census taking seemed over the top. And we called them out on it. And then what they announced they were going to do with the data seemed like number-fudging. And we called them out on it. But now, everything seems to make sense. They want the numbers to suit the story, and they want the story to support a different set of numbers. Spreadsheet numbers, Powerpoint numbers. Valuation numbers.

The Powerpoint-ization of Burning Man. Has it really come to this? Can anyone really think the 10 Principles have credibility anymore? Most Burners can’t recite them, most people can’t remember more than 3-5 things…so why bother?

If Burning Man’s audience is the new young future of Silicon Valley, then it’s more likely that Google or a consortium led by their founders might buy Burning Man. These guys don’t want basketball teams (like Burner Chris Kelly, former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer who’s now the third major sports franchise owner I know who’s been to Burning Man) or America’s Cup teams (like Lanai Luau Larry). Burning Man is the ultimate billionaire’s trophy prize, the ultimate island. For at least a couple dozen billionaires in the world anyway, who pretty much all happen to be tech billionaires. And you can bet they’re big partiers, if they like Burning Man.

The founders want to cash out. Good on ‘em, they deserve it. They’re going to IPO – or trade sale, to Google or one of their other HNWIs. Philanthropy is opening the doors for them to some real money. Like “affluent kid” David de Rothschild, who camps with them at First Camp. The owners of AOL and the Empire State Building are around somewhere, ensconced in their Plug-n-Play ecstasy. Lots of big money, this is one of their few playgrounds where the famous can be anonymous.

There’s a nearby land parcel they want to buy with a hot springs. They need to raise funds for that, so maybe they can package up a permanent location as part of the deal. They want to keep having the event on Federal land because everything’s pretty good with the BLM. Their guys are on various boards of various important political bodies in the region, and they’ve spent decades building personal relationships in the area and with the various agencies.

So, they set up a 501(c)3. They can dump profits into that and get the tax write-off at the same time as their projected windfall. Then, as with many private philanthropic foundations, they can find a way to funnel the money back to themselves in future salaries, directors fees, and travel expenses. Overseeing their global, crowd-funded, “Burner Empire”. And now as they travel, paparazzi camera crews in tow, they get to tell the story of everything Burning Man is doing to save the world, instead of just telling the story of “free beers and hot chicks and cranking tunes in the dusty Wild West sun at Distrikt”, that you might hear from sites like this.

They team up with a film crew keen to make a movie, and come to a financial arrangement with them. They get a share of the profits, and the film crew will get an unprecedented inside look at Burning Man in this time of transition. They’ll present a couple of alternative viewpoints in the movie so no-one could accuse it of being a puff piece. But, like any good reality TV show, the producers want to crank up the controversy. “501 c 3 does not make good TV”

They need to get Wall Street’s attention. They want Wall Street thinking “Burning Man = Money”. They need some good demographic data, to present to Wall Street. The current data of “a lot of us lost our jobs when the Great Depression hit”, or “we’re artists and don’t make a lot of money”, or “we’re not from around here”, or “we all grow weed up in Humboldt and don’t have bank accounts or drivers licenses”…was not as valuable to them. New data would be needed, that better supported the story of “Burning Man and the tech industry are intertwined, and have developed together”. The ideal, saleable demographic would be ”we’re young, college educated, live in SF Bay Area, work in tech”. In our city, this is known as “hipsters”. And sometimes “yipsters”. And I won’t tell you the word my friends and I actually use to describe them. But we’ve all seen the type. Hint: lives in Dogpatch, rides bicycle, eats raw food diet.

Yes, that would be a much better demographic. But how to change things? How to change the demographics, appeal more to Wall Street, and create a story for the movie”?

Hmmmm…..

….are you with me here readers…

Here’s how the plan went down…hypothetically, of course. Because this blog is nothing but unsubstantiated, hypothetical speculation…troll food, for the haters. We never back up our claims with references, we’ve never been right when BMOrg has been shown to be wrong. BMOrg is always right. They are above criticism. They are like a flawless pearl, too good to even be made into a necklace.

OPERATION HELLCO – How to sell out and pretend not to sell out

We need to start with a step. A step, and a spark.

STEP 1. Create a ridiculous new ticket system that makes little sense. In classic Bernays propaganda techniques, say that this system is to help Burners. How does it do that? By “giving them a more fair chance to go, and combatting scalpers”. In itself a nonsensical statement. Scalpers are the ones that help Burners, by letting them go to the party if they want to but didn’t win the lottery. And scalpers are 1%, an irrelevance.

The result? “Quelle surprise! 150,000 people wanted to go, our servers were overwhelmed”. Their mysterious black box algorithm ultimately comes down to “the software guy says this”, which is a Book of Mormon style trust to take in truth.

Burners were quite surprised that so many wanted to go. It had sold out for the first time ever the year before, 2011. But not until August, just before the event. It had never, ever been a big deal to get tickets in the history of Burning Man. Which meant, scalpers had never been a big deal either. Once the dust had settled, BMOrg admitted scalping was only 1% of tickets at most. But scalping did exist – for a few months, the only tickets you could get were on the secondary market, at $1000+.

We tracked the price of tickets through the year. Then, there was a mysterious continuous supply of high priced tickets for a few months. We broke the story that there might be more tickets, and the after market price plummeted (3/19). Burning Man quickly issued a panicked denial as the price looked like it was going to sink back down below $1000 (4/10), swearing black and blue that there would not under any circumstances be more tickets. Then the prices went up again, until as Burners.Me predicted more tickets were announced…and then all of a sudden the price collapsed, first to $500, then below face value, then you couldn’t even give them away. It all smacks of manipulation to me, and I said so at the time.

We’re supposed to believe that demand tripled from one year to the next? But then vanished when the event actually came around? And this was because of a YouTube video? And the unprecedented media blitz of Burning Man during the year didn’t increase the demand in any way, or even maintain the existing demand – only Dr Seuss could do that? And that this year, even though the Hula-Hoop video is 4 times as popular as Dr Seuss was, numbers are back down to normal and there’s plenty of tickets going on the secondary market at near face value? But all of this is just natural, or coincidence, and nothing to do with the Spark movie? The first rule of Sinister Master Plans is, THERE IS NO SINISTER MASTER PLAN. You’re just paranoid, you crazy conspiracy theorist.

Were there ever 150,000 that wanted to go? Perhaps the extra 50,000 buyers wanting 2 tickets each were all Burners applying for friends and family, and not winning the lottery, or winning only to recycle them through STEP. Except that only 500 tickets went through STEP. We’ll probably never know, it’s all black boxes, but I don’t believe the official line. To believe that, you have to believe that out of 100,000 people who wanted to go at the start of the year but missed out on tickets, almost none wanted to go when it was actually the time of Burning Man? It doesn’t make sense. More likely, the 150,000 is a questionable number.

Curatious George, the curatious little Door Bitch

take a Burgin under your wing

This ticket lottery system achieved a lot of things at once. First, they got to decide a “Burgin Ratio” and apply it, cutting through the established Burner community. We don’t know whether this was done on a one-by-one basis to give them the demographics they were seeking, or by an arbitrary algorithm. Remember we had to fill out a questionnaire with our application, then we found out if we “won” the chance to give them hundreds of dollars, and spend thousands to participate in their event. I know I didn’t win (but still ended up there of course). What sort of Burgins did they pick to win? How much curation went on? This could have the result of stuffing the demographic with people to answer surveys at the gate – collecting a data set that would be used to fudge adjust the numbers from  10 previous years of detailed census information. This is their right, it’s not like this is a Presidential election or anything. But why would they even care – unless they needed that dataset to make their case to someone? And who could that be? Whoever is buying it.

Bringing such a high proportion of Burgins in was sure to create controversy. For every one that was allowed in, someone else (who had been before, at least once) was not invited back. At the time I likened the situation to standing in the line outside an empty club. In hindsight, perhaps it was more like a change of security at a club – the new bouncer knocks back the people who’ve been coming there for years.

They got to create, and curate, the World’s Biggest Guest List. I keep harping on about that but I really think it is, it’s way bigger than the Oscars. Bigger than any club, or Vanity Fair party. The guest list I’m talking about is the 10,000 tickets that they got to allocate to specific theme camps. Of course if you are a celebrity or wealthy tech titan you will get on the guest list, no problem. It’s not that exclusive. But if you piss off the door bitch, it could be curtains for you. Oh, you lost the lottery again? Oh dear. What a string of bad luck you’re having.

This curation presents an interesting paradox for BMOrg though. Do they curate based on the 10 Principles? Or does celebrity or vast wealth carry more weight? Do you get in, based on what you give? If you don’t participate, if you just spectate, should you be invited back? What if you own the Empire State Building? What if you’re the President of the Board of Supervisors for San Francisco? Should the same principles apply, or is there a VIP list that’s beyond the officially stated principles? Some “old school Burnier-than-thou” types were very much against Plug-n-Play camping. Oh, the wailing, the gnashing of the teeth! At the same time, these “high rollers” are the Wall Street crowd that the Burning Man founders want to attract to their event. I hear that the head of PlayaSk00l gets skewered pretty badly in Spark for even having a Plug-n-Play camp. Now they’re completely allowed, you just have to pay a 3% tax to BMorg.

You could say “the spark of controversy of the ticket lottery, with the kindling of the wunderkid Burgins (chosen ones, by door bitch or by BEAST), and the fuel of the old timers who were then vocal on social networks, ignited a firestorm of media coverage of Burning Man around the world. Just as the movie was coming out.”

___________________________

Ich Habe Ein Blitzkrieg!

I’m going to list the press coverage again because it was astounding to me when I started to put it together:

Wall Street Journal,

Bloomberg,

New York Times,

LA Times,

CNN,

Reuters,

Washington Post,

Rolling Stone,

GQ,

Vogue,

Time,

Town and Country,

San Francisco magazine,

New York magazine,

Cosmo,

Salon,

Gawker,

Huffington Post,

Forbes,

Inc,

Fast Company,

Business Insider

Popular Mechanics

Delta Airlines in-flight magazine

Financial Times

Times of London

Guardian

Daily Mail

Russia Today

Australian TV

What a brilliant move. The ticket lottery didn’t make logical sense at the time, and many Burners wondered why BMOrg were ignoring our pleas for reason…but now it makes perfect sense. They get to carve up the database anyway they want. And we take their word for it that there were 150,000 applications for tickets. But if that were true, then surely the event would have sold out? Surely all this media attention would have increased demand over the year, not decreased it? And what about 2013? Where were the 150,000 applicants this year?

This certainly explains all the censi, questionnaire after questionnaire. And the statistically bizarre move of adjusting the long-form surveys from Center Camp over 10 years with the random sample at the gate from 1 year . They wanted to profile us as well. And they made sure that anyone with a smartphone – so, everyone – signed the photo rights over to them.

The Powerpointing of Burning Man

All this demographic data will be very useful in the Powerpoint presentation to Wall Street and Sand Hill Road. Especially if it says “yipsters”; less so “unemployed hippies, weed growers, artists, tradespeople, people from out of State or overseas”.

So, they applied the algorithm, whatever that was the result was yipsters up, old timers out, controversy created, ticket prices jacked to extremes on after market, global media blitz going on. Film producers happy, they have a story line they can work with, without getting into the complexities of the financial chicanery transactions between all the various entities, sub-entities, actors and advisors. It’s scandalous, but it’s not really a real scandal. It’s one of those “nice to have” problems, oh, people can’t get tickets, hundreds of thousands want to go and are missing out. Oh dear. Film film.

Fusion art car, 2012

“How else can we get Wall Street’s attention?

How about we burn it!

Yeah! Great idea! How about we link it to the #Occupy Movement, and burn it!”

Which happened. With an Honorarium grant, free promotion for his project on the Burning Man official site (something most artists would love to get), an apparent leave pass for the artist to do as much press as he wanted talking about Burning Man, and a lot of funding, including a rumored 6 figure check from a JP Morgan executive. If JP Morgan gets the IPO, that would give a lot of credence to that particular playa rumor.

And it worked. #Occupy was pre-occupied by Burning Man. They’ve been pretty quiet in San Francisco and Oakland ever since. Wall Street paid attention. Bloomberg covered Burning Man then, and they covered Burning Man again last week at Le Web in London.

Bloomberg called it Silicon Valley’s hottest startup. That is a pretty big call. Especially for a company that is 16 years old and a partcipant-created event that we’ve been making for 25 years.

Other Bloomberg Burning Man coverage:

Burning Man at 2:01…

The discussion twixt Larry and Marian revealed in Scribe’s story, about the difference between ownership and control, the idea that although they would be relinquishing ownership to the masses, they would be retaining control more tightly than ever – had a whiff of the Popes lining their silk robes with lucre – as in Lucretia – in the Borgias, or the “Illusion of Control” as allowed to Joffrey by the Lannisters in Game of Thrones.

If Burning Man are going public or selling out to a bigger fish, then I applaud them; but the ends don’t justify the means. Dicking around your community for the sake of a movie you’re making money from, just so you can get some publicity, sucks. Making us suffer through that so you can get better numbers for your powerpoint slide, really sucks. And the end goal of all of that being, to maximize profits no matter what the impact on the Burner community…well, that would be one of the worst things they’ve pulled on us yet, way worse than just the lottery in itself.

Burners should get to participate too in the windfall to come. Let people in the ecosystem license the brand – make money with them. Help the Burners, Burning Man’s long-term survival depends on their prosperity. Anyone can sell tickets to spectators, but we’re not spectators. We’re the biggest fans, the people who love this party and come to the middle of nowhere to make it and take it away, every year. Let us buy a share when we buy a ticket. Start issuing some stock options to the people who’ve put in the years and the tears – don’t think of it as you making less, think of it as seeding a community to flourish over the long term, so you can continue to make money into the future. A rising tide lifts all boats, Burners don’t begrudge the founders getting the biggest boats, but we’re the tide. We want boats too!

I doubt that’s gonna happen. Instead, I predict annual ticket price increases, and expect all the Intellectual Property policies to be much more strictly enforced. The brand will be licensed more widely, as “decommodification” gives way to “only we make the money”. There will be lawsuits, and Burners would be blamed for any dips in the stock price.

If it gets bought by some tech guru, then perhaps Burning Man could be an experiment in the kind of “benevolent dictatorship” that is supposedly the best model for humanity to live in harmony and prosper under. Singapore, who are usually held up as a shining example of this model, was recently measured as the world’s unhappiest country. The new King would need to support and believe in the freedom the desert invites, rather than the NSA spying that Google and Facebook support. You don’t want to turn people who know how to burn stuff into rebels! Have you been to Burning Man? These people look like Mad Max and have flamethrowers and lasers.