Will Chase has added to the chorus of Commodification Camp justifications we’ve been hearing from BMOrg, with a post saying “what’s all the fuss about? Nothing to see here, move along”:

Virgins and Turnkey Camps Are Ruining Burning Man.

The content of the post is nothing like its title; quite the opposite. He is “Minister of Propaganda”, after all.

We’ve been hearing and reading a lot about Turnkey Camps over the past couple months (haven’t we all?) and I have to say, I’m a little confused by people’s apparent willingness to make or buy into blanket statements and generalizations about Turnkey Camps, virgins, who should be allowed into Black Rock City, etc.

Did some people do bad things? Sure. Are some people “doing it wrong”? Yep. Will it destroy Burning Man? Nope. Are we learning from this year what we can do better in the future? Absolutely. We are bigger than this, and our community can — as it always has — figure it out, adapt and self-regulate. There’s no question in my mind.

Wednesday after the Burn. Caravancicle and Lost Hotel still have all their stuff there, regular Burners had to be packed up and gone

Self-regulate? Where the fuck does he think all the regulations come from? Certainly not from the community. It’s not the community saying “hey, you’re rich, cool, how many tickets do you need?  You can leave MOOP, you can exclude Burners from your camps, you don’t have to gift anything. Line up for 8 hours because we can’t mail tickets internationally. Pay royalties to the new LLC called Decommodification. Get insurance for your own art projects, because $30 million’s not enough to cover it. Your art car is public transport that belongs to the whole city”.

As for “blanket statements and generalizations”, that seems to be what we’re getting from BMOrg, not the other way around. The questions I’m seeing from the community have been pretty frikking specific. BMOrg’s definition of “Turnkey camps” is about as general as you can get.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not apologizing for Turnkey Camps and virgins who may have mis-stepped … nor are we sweeping anything under the carpet.

Oh, you’re not? Could’ve fooled me. I guess you think you have nothing to apologize for – it’s “your” event, after all.

Here are some facts to keep in mind:

1. Burning Man has always had virgins. It’s how this thing keeps going and growing. In fact, in the early years Black Rock City was sometimes more than 50% virgins, since the event doubled in size from year to year.
2. The percentage of virgins has been steady for the past few years, between 35% and 40% of the total population.
3. Not all virgins are clueless twits. Some won’t know what they’re doing, and some will (but we’ll attempt acculturate all of them).
4. Some of those virgins are never going to “get it”. Most will. (I had no clue what I was doing in 2001, and I’d like to think I turned out OK in the end. Heh.)
5. Every single year of Burning Man’s existence, people have lamented how it’s all going to pot because [insert reason here] and virgins are doing it wrong. And it hasn’t. (The #1 most common thing I hear from virgins is “I didn’t understand what it was about, how could I possibly have? But now I get it! I’m a Burner!!”)
6. Turnkey Camps are not all the same. There’s a broad spectrum from “doing it fine” to “doing it horribly”. The percentage in the latter group is small. Very small.
7. The “tech elite” have always been at Burning Man. Hell, they’re practically what made Burning Man possible.
8. Burning Man will always change and evolve.
9. It is in the media’s interest to generate and stir up conflict and scandal and paint black and white pictures, because money.

Talk about trying to change the subject, to dodge the difficult questions. “We’re not trying to sweep anything under the carpet, we just want you all to talk about something else. Because we’re listening. No really, we are! Here’s a list of 9 reasons why your concerns are wrong”

What difference does listening make, in a do-ocracy? Actions speak louder than words. All we’re seeing is words: words that make it seem like actually, BMOrg are not listening.

Real ad, offering cash for sherpas on the Playa.

Turnkey camps are a “broad spectrum”, because that’s the way BMOrg is trying to define them. Commodification Camps are not a spectrum – they’re more like a cancer. An alien parasite, leeching off our culture. Contributing nothing to our city. By saying “most camps are turnkey camps, and there are only a tiny number of bad ones”, BMOrg pave the way for as many Commodification Camps as they can sell. It’s a spectrum – “oh, you had one of the bad ones? Not to worry, DPW will pick up that MOOP for you. Better luck next year. We’ll try to acculturate you and socially engineer you so you can move further up the spectrum to where we want you”.

By heavily promoting Burning Man to the mainstream media – from Town and Country to Vogue to the New York Times – BMOrg make tourists want to come. By favoring Virgins in the ever-changing ticketing system, they make it harder for Burners to go. By diverting tickets sold back to STEP in good faith by Burners, and instead selling them in secret for $650 to Commodification Campers, they make a mockery of Burner values – robbing good-hearted Burners of profits that they could be earning from scalping, by telling us it’s “against Burning Man”. By promoting celebrities and politicians, who have “special needs” that somehow prevent them from Self-Reliance, they make Black Rock City more like Any Town, USA.

The community is upset about Commodification Camps “because money”. He got that right. But no-one is objecting to the profits made by the New York Times. I doubt their Burning Man sherpa story was even a drop in their giant ocean of cash. No, we’re upset “because money” – because people are MAKING MONEY from our spectacle which was FREELY GIVEN.

It seems like, in all their listening, BMOrg have totally missed the part where we said we don’t want to be bingo items for safari campers. That’s not why we bring all our art and music and energy and love – why we PAY BMOrg to “let us” bring it. We do that for fun, and to give to each other: not so that a select few can then commercially exploit it, and tell us we’re not invited.

MOOP #fail

The community is not upset about Virgins. We’re upset about how experienced Burners can’t get tickets, and long-time camps can’t get placement; meanwhile, Commodification Camps mysteriously get all the tickets they want. We’re upset because we have to pick up after ourselves, while Commodification Camps leave entire blocks worth of MOOP for DPW to collect. We’re upset about selective rule enforcement: one set of rules for insiders, and one for Burners. We’re upset because volunteers slave their guts out for no pay, while tickets that could go to worthy Burners get diverted to paid employees to be the Self-Reliance that Commodification Campers are too lazy to learn for themselves.

We’re upset because BMOrg keeps telling us they’re listening, and keeps writing these posts that show they’re really not.

Let’s re-cap, shall we:

Radical Self Reliance and Rich People at Burning Man – 72 comments, lots of questions from Burners, few answers

How Turnkey Camps Get Placed – 50 comments in a single day, lots of questions from Burners, no answers

Virgins and Turnkey Camps Are Destroying Burning Man – 9 “talking points”, lots of trying to change the topic of discussion, no answers

A Rich Man Dreams of Paradise – 67 comments, no answers

Will says:

It’s part my job to keep my finger on the pulse of the community in Black Rock City.

If so, then maybe you should read all the comments above. That’s your community speaking, right there. What comes out the most? What question does the community want answered, more than any other?

HOW DID THESE CAMPS GET SO MANY TICKETS?

Four different posts on the topic at burningman.com, and still this basic question is ignored like it doesn’t even exist.

despite a sensationalist New York Times article that was inflammatory and inaccurate but had legs, Burning Man was happening in all its diverse glory.

Will Crawl, 2014 photo: John Curley

That’s what you think we’re upset about? A single article in the New York Times? Way to have your finger on the pulse, dude.

We firmly believe everybody deserves the opportunity to have a transformational experience, ESPECIALLY the people who may not ‘get it’ right away … they probably need it more than anybody. Is that risky? Possibly, but our culture is so rich that I challenge a newcomer to NOT be impacted by it. And, as our culture gets stronger, it’s harder for a minority element to contaminate it. Think of it like this: if our culture was a thin soup, one carrot could change the whole flavor. But if you toss a carrot into a rich stew like ours, it’s hardly noticeable … but it becomes part of the mix.

The minority element contaminating the culture, appears to be a small group of decision-makers who encourage this commercial exploitation of Burning Man. And guess what: they’re NOT making the culture stronger. I’m listening to the community too, and that’s not what I’m hearing – AT ALL. Quite the opposite, in fact. BMOrg boast that they’re pleased they’ve jumped the shark, but most Burners don’t feel that’s a positive thing for our culture.

I wonder if BMOrg really are getting lots of emails and feedback forms from Burners saying “Commodification Camps are great, there should be more of them” – and somehow, that message just isn’t making it through to social media? Is there some “we love Sherpas, we love MOOP” group on Facebook that I’m not a member of?

Caravancicle “Interaction Guide”

No-one is denying that virgins should be able to have a transformational experience. Why should Burners be squeezed out, to make room for Commodification Campers who are exploiting the Playa – and all of our free Gifting - for their own financial gain? Why should these camps be allowed to turn Burners away because they don’t have wristbands?

It’s our job to figure out how to get more people to experience Burning Man without compromising our principles in the process (INCLUDING radical inclusion). This is all of our work. And as the event grows in popularity, we’re going to have to work harder. But don’t panic, this stew is really, really good.

Waffle. What will be done? That’s what the community wants to be told, not “you’re all doing it wrong, but we’re doing it great”. And, guess what: it’s not your job to get more people to experience Burning Man. It’s your job to get the permit, and provide the basic infrastructure for the event, so WE can bring our party out there. That’s why we pay you $400 per ticket, of which $13 goes to art and $57 goes to Mysterious Other. We understand it costs money to rent the port-a-potties and pay the cops and build The Man. We didn’t give you that money so you could sell higher-priced tickets to tourists and film us to sell it in YouTube videos and the iTunes store. We’re not paying you to do the job of inviting a bunch of strangers who don’t care about our values and don’t want to learn, who think they’re better than all that. Who come to SEE the spectacle, not BE the spectacle.

If it’s so important to the Burning Man Project to acculturate Virgins and spread its message around the world, then let them do that for the whole rest of the year when we’re NOT putting our party on together, sharing our hospitality and camaraderie out on the inhospitable Playa. Let them divert Virgins to the Regionals, instead of squeezing out long-time Burners. Why kick us out of Black Rock City, to make room for strangers who care nothing for our unique culture and want to exclude us at our own event?

To me it’s quite simple. Radical Inclusion doesn’t extend to people who shit on all the other Principles. Fuck them – it’s They who should be excluded, not we Burners who don’t have the right wristbands for their $2 million camps. If you don’t want to be a Burner, fine, no problem: we don’t want you. It would be easy to sell 70,000 tickets to people – even 40% Virgins – who want to Gift, Include, be Self-Reliant, Participate, make a Communal Effort, and Leave No Trace. Why should it be “bring them in anyway, maybe they’ll get it, maybe they’ll want us to re-educate them so we can move them along the turnkey spectrum?” What about all the people who really do get it, but can’t get tickets? What about all the Burners waiting all year in STEP, hoping that their chance will come up, so they can start planning and preparing for their Burn?

What is it that makes these Commodification Campers so special? Money? Prestige? Power? Why do we need them at all? What about all of us, over nearly 30 years now, who HAVE put in the effort, the blood, sweat and tears? What about OUR feelings? What about OUR city?

Read Will’s full post here.

If you’re not sure what a “Commodification Camp” is, here’s just some of our other coverage on the topic:

Commodification Camp Concerns

Commodification Camps and the Tin Principles

Plug-n-Play Goes All The Way To The Top of the Pyramid

Comfortably Commodified

$2 Million Camps: Gentrification of Burning Man

Will Chase, BMOrg’s Minister of Propaganda, has made a statement in response to the community’s concerns about Commodification Camps. He wants us to know that he’s listening. And he told his bosses the right folks about our concerns.

From burningman.com:

Will Chase, Burning Man’s Minister of Propaganda

Hey everybody, THANK YOU for these comments. I really do appreciate it. My intention for this post was to bring some facts into the discussion that I’d seen some people missing, and to see and hear what people were thinking and feeling. And you made your thoughts very clear, and we’re listening.

Like I said, part of my job is to keep my finger on the pulse of the community, and this conversation is part of that. I needed to hear exactly this input. This is great information and perspective to bring into our discussions about this issue, and they’re being read by everybody involved. So again, thank you.

I absolutely take your point about conflating the issue of virgins with turnkey camps … that wasn’t my intention, but since they often come up in the same conversation (XYZ people are screwing up Burning Man! We should keep them out!), I thought it made sense to combine them here. In retrospect, I should’ve broken the two topics out into different posts. My bad.

The big takeaway I’ve gotten here (and shared with the right folks at BMHQ) is that you’re a) not happy, and b) wanting to hear solid facts, answers and transparency with regard to Burning Man’s policies around turnkey camps. And I can tell you that’s in the works — we’re processing a number of moving parts here.

Lastly, I stand by what I wrote here. I believe deeply in the 10 Principles (I have kinda made it my life’s work), and I don’t want (and refuse) to see them eroded. And that includes Radical Inclusion. This stuff isn’t easy, but I believe we can work together as a community to solve this problem.

Thanks again. Pulse taken.

What about the one question the community really wants answered:

HOW DID COMMODIFICATION CAMPS GET SO MANY TICKETS?

[crickets]

Yet again, they pretend this question doesn’t even exist. Apparently, we only want solid facts and transparency about Burning Man’s turnkey camps policy. Ummm, no. How about you start calling them Commodification Camps – that would be a step in the right direction. It would make it seem like you are not only “listening”, but actually hearing. We already know the policy: it’s to place Commodification Camps on K Street, scalp them all the tickets they want for $650, and if they’re not participating, chide them in the hope that they’ll do better next time. And, pretend it’s not even a problem, since there’s a broad spectrum of Turkey camps, and at the same time there were only 25 Turkey camps…and only a very small number of those were “doing it wrong”.

Only yesterday, they told us:

We’ve received more than 400 post-event emails and hundreds of comments through the Feedback form

Was the content of these hundreds of emails and comments really so different from the 100-odd comments they’ve got on their blog in the last couple of days? Is this really all unexpected news to the guy whose job is to have his finger on the pulse of the community’s concerns? He didn’t know, but we told him, and he told the right folks, and they’re listening, so now they know?

More likely, they realized their feeble attempts to misdirect our attention away from the story, re-define the problem as a “spectrum” and “hardly noticeable”, and put their typical corporate PR spin on it weren’t working.

Solid facts, answers to the community’s questions, and transparency shouldn’t be something that only comes out of this “non-profit” when the community is assembled at their gates ready to riot, with pitchforks and flaming torches. Forget the Tin Principles, honesty, openness and integrity should be the fundamental essence of everything they do. Not just because that’s a “nice to have”: as a 501(c)3 public benefit corporation, they’re actually required by law to operate with a high standard of ethics. As well as the law, it’s on Article and Page 6-9 of their Bylaws.

Burning Man ended nearly 2 months ago. Their “community feedback” process ended more than 2 weeks ago. Sure, 400 emails is a lot, but one person can read that many in a day. And if they’re all saying the same thing, the message isn’t that hard to distill and report up the chain of command to the masters.

Once again, transparency from BMOrg is…”coming soon”.

If you’re against Commodification Camps, you might want to check out this petition. So far in our poll, it is literally the 1% that support them. A third agree with me that they should be allowed if they have a public participation area, and a majority two thirds say No.

Thanks a million to Anonymous Burner for sharing this timely evidence. BMOrg doesn’t want to explain how Commodification Camps got so many tickets to an event that was sold out in February, so it’s left to Burners.Me and our wonderful community of readers.

These tickets were offered secretly to some Theme Camps, as well as Commodification Camps – right up to the last minute. A special code was required to apply for them. Read the fine print: although they call it “Donation Ticket”, only $250 of the $650 is actually tax-deductible.

2500 tickets were sold back to STEP by Burners, but only 1500 Burners in the STEP queue got tickets. BMOrg held onto 1000 for some purpose – probably this one – before saying they would release another 1000 tickets into STEP, and an extra 2000 into their OMG sale. They closed the STEP queue early, and we have no way of knowing how many STEPpers got tickets, and how many were left wanting after 3 months of waiting patiently.

Here’s a copy of the original email from BMOrg staffer Steven Young, which was leaked to us by another source in June.

From: Steven Young <steven.young@burningmanproject.org>

Subject: Donation Ticket Introduction

Date: June XX, 2014 [snip]

We have a special opportunity to share with you. The Burning Man Founders have made a group of 2014 Burning Man tickets available asthank-you gifts for Burning Man Project to offer to our supporters.For a limited time, your $650 contribution includes a $250 tax-deductible donation to the non-profit Burning Man Project along with the gift of one ticket (valued at $400).We have a limited number of these Thank You Tickets available. If you would like to make a donation to Burning Man Project, kindly send us your name, email, and phone number, and desired number of Thank You Tickets. The default maximum is two tickets. If you need more than two, please let us know in your email and we will be happy to accommodate your needs. We will send you a link to a private website with a personalized code which can only be used one time. Once the donation is complete, we will send you an acknowledgment for your contribution. Thank You Tickets will be mailed separately by Burning Man Project via express mail. These particular tickets are not refundable and will not be available for pick up at Will Call in Black Rock City.This is a short-term initiative about which we are being discreet; kindly do not post about it on social or traditional media, but let us know if there is anyone you would like to include in this opportunity. For questions, please contact steven.young@burningmanproject.org or 415-865-3800 x 198.These crucial contributions help Burning Man Project share the Ten Principles and the transformative spirit of Burning Man with the larger world. Burning Man Project initiatives are helping more people around the world gain access to transformative experiences and manifesting expression and inclusion in the arts, education, and civic participation. Our generous community of donors continues to help us grow, and we are very grateful to all who make it possible! Appreciatively,Steve YoungBurning Man Headquarters )’(

[Update 10/13/14 10:24am]

A couple of Burners have wondered about the date and time on the screenshots above. It is midnight August 25 – that’s when the event started (yes, we know, technically it started at 10am Sunday 24th – blame BMOrg for being confused, not us).

However, this block of 10 tickets was sold after the OMG sale. Anonymous Burner tell us:

the order date isn’t on there. I do know for certain that the transaction occurred post OMG sale! Tickets were “sold” as part of a package deal to mates who flew into Bman, got picked up at the airport and checked into their cube. Each had a bike and or scooter waiting for them and a survival pack, with access to a “handicap registered” golfcart.…and a whole lot of expectation based on the price they paid. Expectations that no Real Burner would ever have and no Camp could have ever fulfilled without everyone pitching in.
These camps are not without their headaches! Many of those failed expectations have led to people wanting their money back or not paying and the dominoes fall from there. There are many who have not gotten paid as promised for their time and energy put in, cargo containers are being held hostage as payments haven’t been made to the trucking co. while the higher ups have taken their cut off the top.

The community pays the price, while the bosses bank whatever cash they can get their hands on. A familiar story.

This revelation highlights further lies truth-stretching from BMOrg. Steven Young said in his email “this is a short-term initiative about which we’re being discreet” – that was in early June, and they were still selling the tickets right up to the start of the event at the end of August.

image: Rolling Stone

Seth Troxler is about to tour Australia, and he’s given an interview to Henry Johnstone at Pulse Radio. When asked about the infamous Robot Heart incident, he pulls no punches:

HJ: The magic of the internet. 

ST: You guys are quite magical. There was this Pulse article about me at Burning Man – I thought it was quite funny, even though it was only partially true. But I was wondering how you guys magically got the information from Burning Man to the internet so fast? That’s what astounded me.

HJ: Are you talking about the Diplo/Skrillex/Robot Heart incident? 

ST: Yeah. I thought the vibe was horrible and I don’t stand for anything that Robot Heart believes in and who they are. But it was Jamie [Jones] and his friends who weren’t allowed on the bus, but he played anyway. Earlier in the night I got on the bus and the guy from Robot Heart was really rude to me…see they have a thousand DJs who that want to play there, and Craig Richards and I were like, “Yeah well we’re the ones who don’t.” And then we left, because they’re obnoxious assholes and I don’t have time for that.

Seth also has a lot to say about “Pop EDM vs the Underground”:

HJ: You’ve been quite outspoken this year in the whole ‘EDM vs underground’ debate and you believe they’re two completely different scenes. I was speaking to Sasha recently and he seems to share your view. I asked him whether or not he thought that eventually the kids in America who are into EDM will start to dig a little deeper and discover more obscure music. He wasn’t so sure. What do you think? 

ST: Yeah I do think there will be a trickle down effect. Mass marketed EDM did bring in a lot of young 12 year-old kids who will hopefully one day get older and realise, wow this music fucking sucks. But they’ll also realize, OK I like dancing and I like electronic music and then they’ll find cool stuff. Or maybe they’ll find Gorgon City or whatever next level shit there is, and then hopefully give in to elitist, underground dance music [laughs].

But I do believe that our scenes are completely separate and should remain separate because our communities and end goals are completely different. To be honest I don’t think any of us want to be involved with them, even though there’s plenty of them who want to seem credible to us…but they never will be. So I’m just like, let’s stop playing games and acting like we should be involved with each other. You do your thing, we’ll do ours and we’ll call it a day. And please don’t ever mention yourselves in the context of real dance music. It would be so much better if they could just come clean and call themselves a pop act – they’re entertainers who make pop music. I didn’t get into dance music to hear it on the radio. I fucking hate the radio. The pay to play system goes against everything I stand for.

Read the entire amusing interview here.

Here’s an interview about Burning Man that Seth did with BBC’s Radio 1 in 2012.

Seth Troxler at Robot Heart in happier times, 2013

At the end of last month, BMOrg breathlessly announced all kinds of exciting news. They said:

(shhhh, just between you and us …) we’re working on a really really BIG project that will serve to tell the Burning Man story as it is today and into the future, and it’s gonna be RAD. You’ll know it when you see it.

On a more practical note, if you want to apply for a BRC Honorarium Art Grant for 2015, we’re changing the process, and rolling it out in mid-November … get ready, and watch for it!

It’s now past mid-November, getting into late November, and we’re still waiting. Waiting for the really really BIG RAD thing. Waiting for the new online Art Grant submission system. Waiting for BMOrg to respond to all the community concerns about Commodification Camps. Waiting for the theme (which rumor has it, is Circus). And waiting for everything else we’ve been promised that’s still “coming soon”.

I don’t know about you guys, but personally I’m sick of waiting. This event happens for a week once a year, it is now a quarter of a year since the last one. What do these people do all day, in their fancy offices with their $8.5 million year-round payroll?

The Jackedrabbit said:

Y’know, used to be the months right after the Burn were pretty chill around BMHQ. It was kinda quiet. Well, that’s long gone, tell you what. Now that we’re working to foster Burning Man culture in the world year-round, there’s no downtime anymore. But hey, it’s pretty great work to be doing…our staffers are out in the field, giving lectures and talks about everything from the 10 Principles to community building to ritual, death and transformation, as part of our ongoing education program.

Perhaps the hard work they’re doing is really making some sort of difference to the world. But what about our party? What about our community? That’s what makes them $30 million a year. A little less focus on standing on a stage and talking about how great they are, and a little more focus on their customers would be nice. Especially since the unique thing about this event is we don’t buy a product that they put together for us; we make a product for them to sell.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Earlier this year, BMOrg finally announced what the 2014 Temple was going to be. Then, soon after, they announced that they’d changed their minds, and instead of Ross Asselstine’s Temple of Descendants, it was going to be David Best again with the Temple of Grace.

photo: John Goodman. Art: David Best

We covered this in:

Temple Debacle Highlights Hypocrisy

Temple Deal Falls Through

Temple of Decent Dance?

So what really happened? Thankfully for us Burners, artist Ross Asselstine has “put his head above the parapets” and risked the eternal anger of BMOrg…by telling us the truth. And the truth is shocking.

Ross has published a paper Art Grants at Burning Man: A Way Forward outlining exactly what happened, and helpfully including some suggestions about what could be done to make things better. Let me summarize this long document, by highlighting some of the key issues.

Basically, BMOrg treats the artists like absolute shit. They ask for concessions that show their interests are purely about themselves, and their own potential to make long-term profits. They want the artists to sign their rights away in a completely one-sided contract, that shifts all the risk to the artist, and shifts almost all the upside to BMOrg. Worst of all, BMOrg can re-sell those rights to anyone, any time. If they want to sell Live Nation the rights to commercially exploit the art, so they can license them for Fiat commercials, the artist is powerless to stop them. If the artist sells their art, BMOrg takes a cut; if BMOrg profits from commercial use of the art, the artist gets nothing. And if the artist dies, BMOrg gets the art, but the estate is still saddled with all the liability.

The art grants total for 2014 was $800,000, split this year amongst 60 projects. That works out to an average of $13,333 per artist, or $12.70 per ticket. Grants above $20,000 are rare.

This is nowhere near enough to bring large art projects to the Playa, so all artists are forced to do fund-raising for at least half, probably more than three-quarters of their entire project costs. They are not allowed to use the words “Burning Man” or images of their previous art on the Playa in their fundraising efforts. The Art Grant works out to about the same as what Burning Man spends on Travel, Training and Costumes for themselves. Their $1 million+ “mysterious other” which BMOrg say goes to the BLM but the BLM says doesn’t, is more than BMOrg spends on funding art at their event.

image: Peter Ruprecht. Art: Bryan Tedrick

Artists get told they have been awarded an “Art Honorarium Grant” about halfway through the burnal year, and only then do they get to see the contract they have to sign. Even if they sign it, they don’t get the money straight away – a big chunk of it, they don’t even get until months after Burning Man has ended. The pressure is on to complete their projects, so many just sign. Many artists have little in the way of tangible assets, so if they get sued, there is no real consequence. Or, if they can find someone to give them insurance (a process BMOrg provides no assistance in), the $1 million policy cap is enough to protect them. Artists are not generally experienced business people, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some don’t even realize what they are signing, in their haste to be “recognized” by Burning Man Arts. Most lawyers would advise their clients not to sign such a one-sided contract without requesting modifications; a $13k art grant barely gives the artists enough to pay a lawyer in the first place.

Some of the most egregious issues with this contract are:

1. BMOrg profits if the artist sells their art outside Burning Man. BMOrg can commercially license the images to anyone for royalties, and sub-license or transfer this right to anyone. However, the artist can’t do that.
2. When the artist dies, BMOrg owns their art.
3. Artists must get separate insurance, despite BMOrg’s event policy and ticket liability disclaimer.
4. In addition to #3, if there is any claim against BMOrg related to the art, Artists must pay that claim in its entirety, including all BMOrg’s legal costs and any payout from BMOrg’s insurance.
5. Artists cannot provide use the grant to provide food for their workers – BMOrg are literally starving artists.
6. Artists cannot pay themselves anything for dedicating a massive amount of their time to the Burning Man project.
7. Artists must pay BMOrg a daily rate for use of equipment and lighting.
8. If they score less than Green on the MOOP map, they can forfeit their entire grant. Meanwhile, $17,000/head Commodification Camps get a Red MOOP score, without any consequence.
9. Artists don’t actually get all the money from the Grant before Burning Man. A large percentage of it is paid in November or even January, after the event. If the artists breach even one clause, they can forfeit their entire grant.
10. The contract says “Integrity is the cornerstone of responsibility for every Recipient”, and yet there is no corresponding clause stating that BMOrg has a responsibility to act with integrity.
11. It requires all the work to be done on the artist’s premises. This is patently absurd, since the art has to be constructed and configured on the Playa.

BMOrg deny commission or commercial licensing rights to the artists, while they claim rights to license the co-copyright, and also sub-license it. The whole contract seems designed to keep the artists poor, and therefore servile.

The issue of transferring insurance responsibility to the artist – with a blanket indemnity clause that says if BMOrg is sued, the artist will pay all the costs of BMOrg’s legal defense and any payout from BMOrg’s insurance too – seems to create a potential liability for anyone who funds an art project. The damaged party could go after those who provided the funds to enable the art, if the artist themselves is not the one with assets.

BMOrg has far more money and resources than any of the artists. They spend $1.4 million a year on lawyers and accountants, almost double what they spend on art. BMOrg are required by the BLM to have their own liability insurance for the event – in 2013, they spent $532,632 on insurance. It would be easy for them to say: “in exchange for all the commercialization rights we take from you, and can pass on to anyone, we will cover you with our insurance policy. If something happens at Burning Man, the injured party will need to deal with our insurance company and our legal team”. As well as protecting the artists who make the event so photogenic and media-worthy, this would protect the Burners who contribute to funding the art. Remember that to get a ticket, you “voluntarily assume the risk of serious injury or death”.

Have you noticed how in all the media publicity surrounding the event, the photographers sometimes get credited, but the artists never do? Burners.Me are as guilty of that as anyone else, but how are we supposed to know who the artist is behind a given art car or art piece? It seems that BMOrg, who control the placement of the art, the funding of the art, and the commercial use of the images of the art, are in a position to know. They should make an effort to identify and promote the artists involved. How many people work full-time in their media department, 6? How many in their art department, 2? That’s a lot of resources that could be used to help promote the artists who slave away to create the photo ops.

Bliss Dance, by Marco Cochrane

Larry Harvey is fond of saying “no artist at Burning Man has ever signed their work” – a statement that I find a little hard to believe. But it seems that’s the way BMOrg wants it: they would prefer the artists to remain unknown, unfunded, starving, and unable to profit from their work – while BMOrg can use the same work to bring in multi-million dollar Commodification Camps, get articles written about them in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and Rolling Stone, and earn royalties for themselves from someone else’s hard work.

What really motivates these BMOrg people? Is it supporting the Arts – or controlling them? Is it creating a space for a temporary community to form – or profiting from that? Is it bringing rich people and poor people together in a level playing field – or elevating themselves to the level of the ruling class? Is it promoting artists – or promoting themselves?

Here’s some of what Ross said in describing how the process of being selected as the Temple artist went down:

The review period started two weeks later than the previous year and ran three weeks longer than expected. All art projects were going to start five weeks late. Considering the temple is one of the biggest pieces out there and 22 weeks was now 17 weeks, I was in fetal position on the couch anticipating the tightening workload in the coming months. I has set aside six months of my life to do this and it was going to be very, very hectic if the piece was selected. Friends called …..“we know a secret!”, major artists invited me to parties to celebrate the award weeks before I had heard formally. I curled up on the couch, watching the time tick away waiting for a call. WTF. 

On March 23rd I got an email to call Burning Man and later that day during a phone call….notification of the award. I was thrilled…The small core crew I had listed on my submission was ecstatic. We laughed, felt that tingle of excitement and looked at each other knowing we had all done big things before and were ready to make this the best it could be. We raised glasses and then went at it hard. The entire “Temple Crew” was behind us and we ran like heck. 

I received the art grant contract a week later on April Fools Day. I had read contracts almost every day my entire career. The principle is not complex: two people agree to something and it’s written down…The Art Grant Contract was horribly one-sided. April Fools.

I had previously contacted insurance companies that knew Burning Man and now that I had something to insure, they had something real to price. There was nothing out there for over a million dollars in coverage. This was a building that would be occupied by hundreds 24/7 for a week in a harsh and challenging environment.

…I asked Burning Man for help. Nothing…I read the contract through again. My god, it was both silly in numerous places and so one-sided to be laughable. It was not just one issue, it was just plain weird on many issues. When things are badly written, you can almost see the person typing extemporaneously to cover every fear, every situation and then without proofing it…just pushing it across in an email to you. Bad contracts are almost always evidence of an author that is afraid or in over their head. 

This contract had evidently been around for a very long time. It read like it had never been refined or negotiated. After another two weeks of going full blast, I asked for help from Burning Man again. Two of us went to the offices in San Francisco and sat opposite four BM folks. There are meetings you attend in your life where nothing really happens. This was one. I walked them through my understanding of the personal risk I would be taking: my house and family’s wellbeing would be behind the very, very small amount of insurance and a thin LLC. I needed help. I tabled numerous common options and they were all rejected….the other side of the table did not care about the “artist”, because they never had to. They were all paid, insured and none of them were taking a dollar of risk. I was at the wrong table. It was actually all about me now. It was not about providing a place of respite for 70,000 people, it was not about our team fundraising the 60-70% of the funds, it was not about six months off and months to build the piece. If anything went wrong, there was no other side of the table other than lawyers: it was about me all by myself, all alone, and a contract with my signature on it. Or not.

So there you have it. No help for the artist. People who earn a salary working for BMOrg, and have no personal dollars on the line beyond that, shifting all the risk onto someone else and their family.

This contract has never been made public, before Ross’s whistleblowing. Now we know why. Will the new “online system” let artists see what they’re signing up for, before they submit their intellectual property with their “Letter of Intent”?

Ross Asselstine: Burner hero

Ross has suggested a number of very reasonable modifications to the contract, which would make it more fair and balanced. If BMOrg cared about artists, they would listen. Just like if they cared about their community, they would listen. Not just listen: act, accept responsibility for their wrong-doing and make changes to improve the situation going forward. That would show us that they heard us.

Instead, they’ll probably say “hundreds of artists have signed this contract, so we don’t care about one artist complaining just because we wouldn’t change the terms for him”.

Is fairness and a level playing field important to this community? Or should BMOrg be free to exploit everyone for money, wherever they see fit?

Ross says:

How can Burning Man become, and set the highest standard as, the best self-expression and art event anywhere in the world, by having the best support, grant process and environment for artists anywhere in the world?

I believe the “self-expression” portion of the question has been achieved. There is quite simply no other event like Burning Man. So many people have worked years to make it what it is. It’s unique, and the world comes to Burning Man for that reason. I think the answer to the “art event” portion of the question is how does the event move forward and develop the following items:
1) A transparent and equitable form of agreement for artists.
2) Adequate support, funding and an improved art department.
3) The best participant culture that respects and honors artists.
4) A fair and easily understandable process for use of artwork post BM.

Many attendees think that all artists at BM are there because they love all things BM. Most are there because it has a unique culture and unique prominence for large or unusual art. What is linked with this opportunity is a horrible  contract and huge burdens on artists. Almost every artist out there would not sign the contract if it was for any other venue. If put succinctly if not crassly: the audience is the bait and the contract is the hook. It’s that bad.

It’s actually simple to make it fair.

I’ve left the worst of the legal clauses to the end of this story, for the sake of readability. Some have Ross’s comments attached; any emphasis and [comments in bold] are from Burners.Me. Read the whole contract here.

RECIPIENT RESPONSIBILITIES
1.1. Integrity is the cornerstone of responsibility for every Recipient receiving an Honorarium Grant. This Agreement sets a base level expectation of responsibility for Recipient, and Burning Man expects that Recipient will adopt integrity as his or her modus operandi. Recipient is considered accountable for every aspect of the Art and shall serve as Art Project Lead.

2.3. Recipient will also furnish one or more high-resolution Art Image(s) or drawing both as a digital file as well as a printout, to be used by Burning Man to help inform and promote the Art, both before and after the Event. The Art shall be deemed approved upon Recipient and Burning Man’s dated signatures on this Agreement. (This is fine except, the question is what happens after the event. Many artists feel abused by giving up all rights on a partial grant to art before final payment is even made. Most grants are not fully settled until November or as late as January. Really,… that late.)

2.4. Any materials prepared and submitted to Burning Man, including the Art Plans, maquettes, drawings, and models, may be retained permanently by Burning Man for possible exhibition and other uses. (This silliness is in direct conflict with the submission text that says you get everything back. This whole thing should come out. What I don’t get is they just demand it rather than requesting temporary use or to pay for it…)

They’re listening. They’ve been listening for months. Their response? Continuing to sending their volunteers out online to cop the heat from the Burner community.

Now it’s the turn of Caveat Magister.

reblogged from blog.burningman.com:

12 Shocking Revelations about ultra-rich Burning Man plug-and-play camps!

I am as shocked as anyone that rich people came to Burning Man and behaved like rich people.

There’s only one explanation:  it’s a conspiracy, and it goes all the way to the top!  Yes!  The only way people with money could have possibly used that money to try and game the system is if Burning Man was directly involved!  In on it!  We all know it, but you don’t the half of it!

Here are the 5 biggest, most shocking, examples, of plug-and-play malfeasance – and the Burning Man organization’s complicity in it!

• A group of prominent venture capitalists paid Larry Harvey $6 million to write them an extra-fun 11^th principle that no-one else has.

What is it?  I don’t know!  You don’t know!  But it’s got to be amazing, and we’re not living by it!  Only they are!

• The compound prepared for the Walton family, which owns Wall-Mart, actually paid its greeters

They brought out a bunch of senior citizens to tell everyone on the playa to have-a-nice-day!  They even hugged people!  And then were paid minimum wage!

• Haliburton’s massive camp art project was really a derrick testing for oil under Black Rock City.

Sure it shot out flames, had a DJ, and Friday night’s Gushing Oil Party was awesome, but that’s not the point!

• Billionaire Amazon.com owner Jeff Bezos’ theme camp never even came out in physical form, and instead was available only on Kindle.

Anyone who went is now under the terms and conditions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act!  On the plus side, there was no MOOP.

• Warren Buffett slipped Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell $10 million to move Burning Man to Omaha, and fix it so nobody noticed.

That giant sculpture with the funky lights that everybody loved?  That was really the Nebraska statehouse.  We were so used!

And there’s MORE: […]

We can’t let them get away with this!  Obviously we need to fix global income equality!  Or bitch about how Burning Man’s run!  Whichever is easier for us to do on the internet!

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Burners.Me:

That’s how seriously they take the community’s concerns, Burners. They’re laughing at us. It’s all A Big Farce. The Simpsons guarantees them a steady stream of new tourists, so why should they be bothered with what a few thousand disgruntled Burners think?

The issue isn’t rich people at Burning Man. Rich people have always been going, and most of them are happy to be Burners like everyone else. They gift sound stages, or rides on their art cars, or food for hundreds or thousands, or a free bar, or an interactive art piece. They pick up after themselves, and pick up the MOOP of others. They take their bikes and their trash out with them when they leave.

The issue the community is most concerned about is the rise of Burner bingo-playing Commodification Camps, how they got so many tickets, and how they blatantly disregard the Tin Principles. We’re concerned about lack of transparency in the dealings of the new “non-profit” that now owns the event. We’re concerned about the for-profit dealings of some members of BMOrg’s Board of Directors who are commercializing our culture, trying to make money for themselves off the volunteer labor and freely given gifts of tens of thousands of Burners.

If BMOrg really were listening to Burners, they’d know that. The comments on their blog are pretty frikking clear.

Except for a few nut cases trying to foment a revolution with Burning Man as the front lines of their “class war”, most Burners don’t care how much money the person next to them has. It’s about what you bring to the party. We’re all the same in a dust storm and in the porta-potties. Camping in an RV doesn’t stop the call of Nature happening away when you’re far away from your camp; and having success in your career doesn’t somehow make you a “bad Burner”.

BMOrg would do well to respect the community’s concerns, instead of continuing with their line of the last few months: misdirection, silence, and laughing it all off.

In 2011, 5000 bikes were left behind. image: WendeWho Thompson, flickr/Creative Commons

I bought my RV on eBay for $19,000. It’s made it to the last 4 Burns. It didn’t magically make me never need to use a portapotty ever again. It’s nice to have a comfy bed, air conditioning, a fridge and an ice maker, and shelter from wind and dust storms. Plus the stereo CRANKS.

Over at burningman.com, Caveat Magister’s attempts to laugh off the Burner community’s Commodification Camp concerns - Why Am I Making Fun of Burners and 12 Shocking Revelations About Ultra-Rich Plug and Play Camps - went down like a lead balloon.

Commenter Metapony likened it to the 2007 DPW workers rights protest at BMHQ, during a Regionals Conference:

This burning blog posting mocking people and misrepresenting the issue reminds me of something…
Oh yes, I remember! This is like the time there was a small protest across the street from the Burning Man office (during the spring regionals summit in 2007) and the BM Org sent a bunch of people out to make fun of them…

So carry on that fine tradition of misrepresenting and mocking folks with real issues, CM. Good job.

This is an interesting chapter of Burning Man’s history that I had never heard of before. From Bright Path:

Today, Feb. 18, 2007, a few workers, some with their heads covered by paper bags, staged a small demonstration outside of Burning Man headquarters in San Francisco to protest what they say are reductions in pay, forced “death waivers” and lack of adequate health care for the workers who primarily clean the desert up after the Burning Man event.

Now that I’ve seen the video, it definitely has some resonance with the current situation.

The protest begins in a fairly low-key fashion, with 2 of the protestors afraid to show their faces for fear of losing their jobs or future art grants. Caleb, the unmasked protestor, is very well-spoken about the reasons for their protest. Then, Burning Man HQ’s doors open and some other protestors stream out to disrupt the protest with a protest of their own: mocking the seemingly valid concerns about pay cuts, medical treatment, and possible violations of labor regulations.

Caleb “Shooter” Schaber

Sadly, a couple of years after this video was made Caleb “Shooter” Schaber, the unmasked protestor, gonzo artist, and  former combat photojournalist, committed suicide in Gerlach, NV .

At the time these events occurred, he spoke out on tribe.net about the sock puppets that were dispatched to attack him as revenge against his peaceful protest. People wondered on ePlaya if the counter-protestors were acting independently, or if they were sent out by BMOrg to misdirect the situation. Some of the protestors were identified as Regional representatives of the Org.

Here’s some further discussion of the situation at Indybay and Fark.

Does anyone know the real story behind this? Was it all just a Cacophony-style prank, another Big Farce - or were the protestors expressing legitimate concerns? Did BMOrg ever respond seriously, or was the pranking the extent of it?

If you feel like protesting today, sign the petition against Commodification Camps.

Caleb David Schaber – founder of the Chupacabra Policia, press correspondent in Afghanistan, writer for Hustler magazine. He earned his playa name of ‘Shooter’ with a .38 in a Seattle bar in 1996. On April 17, 2009 he took the Hunter S Thompson exit from life. Image: flickr/Danger Ranger (Creative Commons)

A guest post from our reader Pantsless Santa. It’s an eye-opener! The desire of these people to laugh at the very principles they created, and told us we had to live by, seems to know no bounds.

image: RK Richardson/Flickr (Creative Commons)

By Pantsless Santa:

This belongs in the totally effin’ hilarious category more than anything else:

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Decommodification LLC is actually trying to register the word “decommodification” as a trademark itself, and they’re doing it in the most hypocritical and illogical way possible.

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Trademark registrations and applications are all public record. If you search for “Decommodification LLC” on the Patent and Trademark Office’s search system, “TESS,” you can see all of the trademarks that that the LLC owns and has applied for.

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There are the usual suspects “Burning Man,” “Decompression,” and “Black Rock City.”

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“Flambe Lounge,” which dates back to 2003, is probably some old business idea that never panned out.

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“Burning Man Brew” was originally registered by a brewer and later purchased (I suspect) by the LLC, likely because it would have been more expensive to fight over it in court – nothing indicates that the BMOrg intends to get into the speciality beer business.

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“Black Rock Gazette” is registered by the BMOrg (Black Rock City LLC). Nothing is currently registered by Larry, Michael, or Marian.

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Finally, the LLC has applied to register “Decommodification.”

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I’ll stop for a minute here to explain a couple of important things about trademarks. Trademarks are very different than copyrights. You can’t simply pick out a word or phrase or logo (a “mark”) and get the rights to it.

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To oversimplify greatly, you can’t register or protect a mark unless it’s associated with a particular good or service (defined broadly), and has actually been used publicly to promote or sell the thing it’s associated with. That last part is called “use in commerce.” People often get tripped up over “use in commerce,” because in normal human language it looks like it means the same thing as “used commercially.” It doesn’t. It’s a legal term of art meaning something like “used to promote or sell any type of good or service for any reason whether or not for profit.” This keeps companies from simply registering all of the words they think that they or their competitors might use and squatting on them. They can only register marks they’re actually using.

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To oversimplify again, you can only protect or register a mark in order to keep people from using your name (or brand or logo) on their products in a way that might fool consumers.

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So, Decommodification LLC applied to register the mark “Decommodification.”

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Thinking back to the above, you might ask yourself: “What the hell good or service could Larry & Co. POSSIBLY plan to use this for?” Well, they put it right in the application: “Commercial administration of the licensing and sublicensing of intellectual property by others.”

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Now, before anybody (*cough*) gets started with grand theories about what the LLC might be planning with this, I want to share my opinion that absolutely nothing sinister or underhanded is going on here. “Commercial” is still being used as a term of art as above, and the rest of the sentence simply describes exactly what the LLC does. In other words, the actual purpose of this trademark application is to prevent somebody else from opening up their own Decommodification LLC or Decommodification Inc. or Decommodification Gmbh that does the same thing as this one.

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This trademark has a very narrow reach. Remember, a trademark must be associated with a particular good or service. This wouldn’t stop any of us from calling our toilet-removal businesses “Pantsless Santa’s De-Commodeification” or whatever. So why bother bringing it up in the first place? Like I said above, it’s effin’ hilarious! To spell it out:

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Larry Harvey & Co. are attempting to define the word “Decommodification” as “Commodifying intellectual property.”

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Decommodification LLC filed their application for “Decommodification” on March 26, 2012. The application is still being processed because the LLC has not, even after multiple extensions, been able to provide evidence that they have actually used the word “Decommodification” in “commerce.”

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Honestly, there is no reason for them to actually register “Decommodification.” Who else in the world would ever create an intellectual property licensing company by that name? The only reason anybody might do that is to poke fun at the BMOrg/Decommodification LLC: and a trademark does not protect you against parody.

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You can check the history and status of the trademark application here: http://tinyurl.com/mojkq47

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Pantsless Santa, Esq.

Last weekend, Burning Man Arts – the new organization that is a merger between two of the non-profits in BMOrg’s empire, Black Rock Arts Foundation and the Burning Man Project –  threw its Eighth annual Artumnal Gathering event.

I would love to be able to tell you the story of what a great job Burning Man’s non-profit subsidiary is doing in supporting the Arts, how much money it gives to poor artists and how little it keeps for itself.

Sadly, that story would be a fairytale: the evidence paints a different picture.

Today, the IRS Form 990 filing for 2013 for BRAF was released. We’re still waiting on BMP’s information, when it’s available I will write another post.

Their overall efficiency score was 20% – meaning that if you give $1 to the Arts via BRAF, only 20 cents of it will go the Arts. The rest is absorbed into salaries and overheads.

Here is an updated table of their giving for the previous 7 years:

The total amount of money the charity raised in 2013 dropped 20% from 2012. They kept their salaries about the same, and reduced the amount that actually gets paid out in grants.

Gifting

2012: $114,449

2013: $101,566

Gifting dropped by 11.3%.

The grant money was split between Individuals (US and non-US), and Organizations.

Individuals (US): $36,370

Organizations (US): $46,696

Individuals (non-US): $18,500

16 un-named individuals split $36,370; 11 got an average of $1,306 each, and 5 received larger awards, $4,400 average.

The overseas figure is made up of $12,500 to the Czech Republic, split between 2 recipients; and $6,000 to someone in London.

Of the Grants to US Organizations, the breakdown is:

The Exploratorium $10,000

The Box Shop $6,000

Urban Matter, Inc $6,000

Engineered Artworks Ltd $11,100

The $10,000 is a mere drop in the bucket to the Exploratorium, which raised $40 million in 2012 and has $138 million of assets. But it is the second largest grant handed out by BRAF, representing almost 10% of their total grant allocation.

12 works of art were donated to the group, recorded as a non-cash contribution of $50,000 – $4,166 each.

The charity still sits on most of the money given to it. Net Assets increased 15.7%:

Net Assets

2012: $507,753

2013: $587,335

They ended the year with $478,088 in cash – 4.7 times what they gave out to artists.

Almost half of the organization’s revenues went to salaries, which increased slightly:

Salaries (% of revenues)

2012: $209,461 – 33.7%

2013: $211,491 – 41.6%

This was more than double the amount of funds they paid out to the cause they represent.

They were charged $40,000 for accounting costs – a number that seems extraordinarily high, for filling out a 34 page form. More than $1000 per page – and many of the pages are blank. I wonder if the charity was forced to shoulder some of the burden of the complexities related to their “transition to a non-profit” – which included carving out the only real assets of the business, its trademarks and related royalty streams, to Decommodification LLC, a new for-profit company owned by the 6 remaining founders of Burning Man.

Note that the overall “non-profit” group paid a staggering $1.43 million to its accountants and lawyers in 2013, according to their Afterburn report.

BRAF paid $25,154 for rent and office expenses, $1,707 for travel, and $4,303 for insurance.

Like BMP, there are 18 directors of BRAF. Each put in 2 hours per week – except for Freddy Hahne (President) and Tracy Burton (Treasurer), who commit 4 hours each. Of Burning Man’s 6 remaining founders, only Larry, Harley, and Will & Crimson are listed as contributing their time to BRAF.

BRAF’s Artumnal was their only fundraising event during the year.

According to the IRS form, BMP Director Chris Bently charged them a whopping $8,345 for the use of his Bently Reserve venue: 8.1% of the money that was raised at the event. Mr Bently inherited the $47 million building and many other assets including a $45 million coin collection and a 50,000 acre cattle ranch.

The 2013 Artumnal Gathering grossed $185,780.

$38,684 was spent on food.

$33,315 was spent on entertainment. Some of the entertainers (listed below) are salaried employees of BMOrg.

$102,936 went to BRAF as contributions. For any sponsors wondering how much of their donation is tax-deductible, it appears to be 55% – but don’t take my word for it, I’m not an accountant. You should seek independent, professional advice, rather than telling the IRS “Burners.Me is my financial advisor”.

Since $101,566 was the amount actually gifted by the Black Rock Arts Foundation over the course of the entire year, basically the Artumnal raises all the money that goes to the artists.

You can see the IRS Form 990 for the Black Rock Arts Foundation here. Hopefully when they release the 2013 Form 990 for the Burning Man Project, it will tell a much better story, one of generously passing donations given to them on to the artists.

From blackrockarts.org:

Performers

• Atish
• Aurora
• Bear Kittay – sitar
• Cello Joe
• Cptn Jay (Airpusher)
• Diva Marisa Lenhardt
• Dr. Abacus
• Dutch Star (Techno Syndicate)
• Emily Athena – dance
• Fou Fou HA!
• Haute Mess (Brass Tax)
• The Gentlemen Callers (featuring Atom and Buck of Mutaytor)
• Jeff Hobbs – violin and saxaphone
• LouLou (Thievery Corp) & Pleasuremaker (Afrolicious)
• M.O.C. – Modern On Command
• Mauro ffortissimo – Sunset Piano Project

• Miss Emmma and Her Band of Boyfriends

• The enchanting chanteuse, Miss Emma Nation. photo: Facebook

  Mz K

• Natalie Rhae – contortion and dance
• SexBombe Kabaret
• Smudge
• TYCHO DJ SET
• and Master of Ceremonies $teven Ra$pa
• and more…

Art and Installations

• Inflatable art by Astrobotanicals
• Site specific installation “Studies in Photokinesthesia” by Ben Burke
• Art by Karl Gillick
• Wearable art by Miranda Caroligne
• Sculpture by Erin Ferguson, Valerie Elizabeth Mallory and Mikell Haynes
• Visual Artistry by Rainbow Puddles
• Interactive art by Christopher Schardt
• Wearable sculpture and masks by Jamie Emerick
• Contributing artistry by The Style Ranger
• Sunset Piano by Dean Mermell and Mauro ffortissimo
• Site specific art by Peter Tjeerdsma
• Space Palette by Tim Thompson 

Flowers and Decor

• Christina Pettigrew
• Julz (Hookahdome)
• Marcia Crosby
• $teven Ra$pa

Photography

• Portrait photography by George Post
• Event photography by Leori Gill
• Event photography by Marco Sanchez

image: Eleanor Preger, Facebook

Thanks to our eagle-eyed readers who spotted this post at The Burning Blog Voices of Burning Man. It seems they posted it, and as soon as there was a critical comment, yanked it again. Not before one sharp Burner could capture it, though; thanks Grey Coyote.

The irony of their Minister of Propaganda being censored on the Voices of Burning Man is one of their best jokes yet.

It seems they are trying very hard to shut down any discussion of Commodification Camps, preferring Burners talk about Halcyon’s Mom instead. Or maybe they don’t want to piss off Billionaire Burner (and Amazon founder) Jeff Bezos.

If you don’t want to donate a share of your Amazon purchases to BMOrg, they accept stock transfers now too.

November 27, 2014      | Filed under Participate!.
Black Friday? Well, if you must …
Posted by Will Chase

We’re not huge fans of Black Friday, which puts the unseemly side of rampant consumerism on exhibition, shamelessly turning over-consumption into a spectator sport.

Yep, it’s like that.

Not to get all sanctimonious, but we prefer “Buy Nothing Day”, which was invented in 1992 by Vancouver artist Ted Dave, and subsequently given amplification by the folks at Adbusters (all hail Adbusters, who also initiated the Occupy movement).

It’s simple to participate: buy nothing on Black Friday. Well, it can be less than simple of course — sometimes you find yourself in a pinch, and you gotta buy diapers for the little one. But a massive flat screen TV? An X-station-Wii box? Pass. You get the idea.

Instead, we’ll get all hippy and stuff and — brace yourselves — make gifts for our family and friends. Or not. Sometimes we go for a hike in the fresh air or something. But we’re sure as hell not going to set foot in a box store.

Sure, it may be the equivalent of pissing in the ocean, but it’s something. And it feels as good as it is quixotic.

Now, if you’re committed to playing your part in America’s capitalist dream, great — have at it. But if you do, maybe consider making some good stuff happen with your purchasing power? If you’re shopping on Amazon, do it through AmazonSmile, and Amazon will donate .5% of your sale price to the Burning Man Project, supporting our year-round efforts to share Burning Man culture with the world. You get your stuff, and more people get to experience Burning Man. Win win.

Either way, however you roll, we wish you and yours a happy holiday season.

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About the author: Will Chase

Will Chase first attended Burning Man 2001. He volunteered as the Operations Manager for the ARTery (Black Rock City’s art HQ) and was on the Burning Man Art Council from 2003-2008. He was Web Team Project Manager and Webmaster from 2004-2009, then transitioned to the Communications Department in 2009 to become Minister of Propaganda, working on global communications strategy. He’s the editor-in-chief for the Jackrabbit Speaks newsletter and the Voices of Burning Man blog, and content manager for Burning Man’s websites. He also manages the ePlaya BBS and Burning Man’s social networking efforts.

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One thought on “Black Friday? Well, if you must …”

Grey Coyote says:
November 27, 2014 at 2:25 pm

I can’t believe it, Will. Are you freakin’ serious? Given everything the BMORG has been caught at recently (ie, selling out to Commodification Camps, scalping tickets from STEP to “special VIPs” at far beyond face value, having a board member RUNNING such a camp, etc, etc, etc) you have the nerve to pen this:

“…Now, if you’re committed to playing your part in America’s capitalist dream, great — have at it. But if you do, maybe consider making some good stuff happen with your purchasing power?If you’re shopping on Amazon, do it through AmazonSmile, and Amazon will donate .5% of your sale price to the Burning Man Project…”

No thanks. Not a PENNY for the BMORG until they ANSWER THE QUESTION.

[Update 11/27/14 10:10pm] Grey Coyote has done a nice job re-wording Will’s post, from a more Burner-y perspective:

———-

Burners are not huge fans of Commodification Camps, which puts the unseemly side of rampant consumerism on exhibition, shamelessly turning over-consumption into a spectator sport.

Yep, it’s like that.

Not to get all sanctimonious, but we prefer “Radical Self Reliance” which was invented in 1998 by a group of burners and subsequently given amplification by the folks on Eplaya and http://www.burners.me  (all hail Burners.me, who also initiated the BMORG Accountability movement).

It’s very simple to participate: Shun all commodification Camps. Well, it can be less than simple of course — sometimes you find yourself in a mood, and you gotta whip out a can of whup-ass for the little people. But a toilet that flushes? A sherpa to shine your shoes? Pass. You get the idea.

Instead, you guys could get all hippy and stuff and — brace yourselves — make a real camp and actually interact with your Burner family and friends. Or not. Sometimes ya just gotta get out the water balloons and go for a hike out by Avenue K. But we’re sure as hell are not going to set foot in a CommieCamp.

Sure, it may be the equivalent of pissing in the ocean, but it’s something. And it feels as good as it is quixotic. Rich fuckers paying 20 grand to hide from the dust. Epic FAIL.

Now, if you’re committed to playing your part in America’s capitalist dream, great — have at it. But don’t do that shit on the playa. If you do, you’re a Fair Target, and we are watching.  Your ass may be jumped by a bunch of Burners with weed-blowers, tar and feathers. If you’re camping with a Commodification Camp, you’re fair game and its open season.  It doesn’t matter if you’re “donating” part of your ticket price to the Larry Harvey Retirement Project, you’re still a total chump in our book.  You’re not supporting the year-round efforts to share Burning Man culture with the world. Instead you’re getting a turnkey camping experience complete with hookers and blowjobs and sherpas to wipe your ass.  This isn’t how you should experience Burning Man.

However you commodifiers ultimately choose to roll, rest assured your Burner Bretheren can’t wait to meet you on the playa.  We wish you a happy holiday season. Try the caviar.  Feel free to choke on it.  See you in the dust.

image: Roadside Pictures/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Finally, more than a quarter of a year after the last week-long Burning Man event ended, BMOrg has given some official answers to the many concerns raised by the community in the wake of Caravansary. They gave us a double whammy:

Turnkey/Plug-n-Play Camping in BRC (written by “Burning Man”, probably several authors)

Equality, Inequity, Iniquity: Concierge Culture (written by Larry Harvey)

These posts only went on the “Voices of Burning Man” – their official blog. They weren’t posted to the 817,000 people on their Facebook page.

I recommend you read both posts in their entirety, because this article is going to be discussing the aspects of them that are relevant to the 115,000 Burners.Me readers. I’m going to talk about the concerns they addressed, directly or indirectly; and the ones they pretended don’t exist.

If you were expecting me to say “everything is wonderful now, BMOrg are so amazing for listening to us, let’s hug it out and party up!”…you should stop reading now, because you’re at the wrong blog. If we got the transparency we’d been promised, or got answers to most of the questions raised as “Community Concerns” here and at burningman.com .org, then I might be able to say that. But we didn’t, so I can’t – blame me for whining, rather than them for ignoring and misdirecting, if that is your wont.

Whether or not the community’s concerns get addressed, Burning Man will go on, and we can all have a good time there. Hey, it’s just a rave – who cares? “If you don’t like it, start your own”.

For those who do care, because they think there’s something special about this event – it’s more than just a festival, more than just a big drug- and sex- fuelled party, more than a corporate networking event – please read on. I care about this unique culture that we’ve all been creating together, and that’s why I’m taking the time to write this.

While it is nice that finally they have acknowledged some of our concerns, these posts raise as many questions as they answer.

Summary

As predicted, BMOrg have tried to downplay everything: “it was less than 1% of 1250 camps”. They make a big fuss about “policy changes”, but in the end the only real change is promising to end the practice of selling invite-only Donation tickets which we caught them at red-handed. Commodification Camps will have to have an interactive component, but they did this year too. Burning Man’s Board of Directors have nothing to do with the Burning Man event, so what they get up to at the event is nothing to do with BMOrg. Sherpas don’t even get a mention, they’re a non-issue. So are workers’ and artists’ rights. 58 Burner theme camps applied for placement and didn’t get it; 12 Commodification Camps got prime placement near the Plaza areas. Because none of them actually made a profit, it’s no big deal. BMOrg held on to 5,700 tickets all through the year, on top of the 61,000 official tickets. The Ten Principles are not rules, they’re just an “ethos”. On to the Carnival of Smoke and Mirrors now, Burners, they listened and they made a policy change so we can all be happy now.

Introduction

They are still trying to use language to re-define and diminish the issues.

The term “turnkey” has been used to describe camps with paid teams that set up infrastructure before other camp members arrive. This general definition could be applied to many camps, including many well-known, beloved and highly participatory theme camps.

[so why persist in using it? The community is calling them Commodification Camps, because this definition clearly explains the problem – Ed.]

Turnkey is a category that includes a variety of camps along a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum are camps that offer major contributions to the playa and depend on infrastructural support to do their work and provide their offering on the playa (the Temple Camp, for example); these camps have a team that provides support services, enabling their fellow campmates to focus on giving in ways that benefit the wider BRC community.

On the other end of the spectrum are “plug and play” or “concierge camps” (A.K.A. hotel camps, resort camps, commodification camps), where vacation-type experiences are sold in package deals at exclusive prices, often with no expectation or commitment by campers to contribute to the larger community. It is this latter type of camp we are addressing here

Why not just call them Commodification Camps? At least they acknowledged (once, in passing) that some people call them that. However, their response of saying “they’re all turnkey camps but some people call them concierge camps, so we’re going to talk about rich people and their luxury lifestyle, which exists in the Default world too”…is answering the wrong questions. If BMOrg really thinks this is what the community’s concerns are, they need to go to a listening workshop. Other than a few “Radical Revolutionaries” on *.burningman.com advocating vandalism, violence, class warfare, and communism, most Burners couldn’t care less how much money someone has. The whole point about this party is what you bring to the middle of nowhere to give to others, not what you do in the Default world. No Burner should be “Burnier-Than-Thou”, and no camp should be closed off to Burners.

It is the idea behind the Commodification Camps that is the problem: turning something free, based on Gifting by the whole community, into something packaged up and sold to profit a few. Burning Man is supposed to be based on principles such as Radical Self-Reliance, Participation, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leave No Trace, and particularly, Decommodification:

In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Decommodification was presented to us as a core Principle that Burners live by. It wasn’t supposed to be a for-profit LLC, extracting cash from “Burning Man” which has “fully transitioned to a non-profit” – except, it seems, for the annual event called “Burning Man”.

Being a member of the Burning Man Project Board does not grant any authority to make decisions about, or influence the operations of, the Burning Man event.

Say what?

BMOrg’s Questions

In their post of November 11, “Turnkey Camps – Moving Towards Effective Solutions“, BMOrg told us they were listening, and posed the following questions as their summary:

Is the Burning Man organization profiting off turnkey camps?
How did turnkey camps get all their tickets?
Do turnkey camps get preferential treatment?
Were people buying blocks of tickets through the Burning Man Project donation ticket program in the days before the event? If so, why?
Are turnkey camps undermining the practice of Decommodification and Self-Reliance?
What is going to happen to the turnkey camps going forward? Is there accountability for poor behavior?

Since they didn’t bother to directly answer these in their “FAQ”, let me do it now.

Is the Burning Man organization profiting off turnkey camps?

No – not any more than they profit off any other camp. If any Burning Man Project Directors were trying to, they didn’t end up making any profit, so it doesn’t count. Anyway, Burning Man Project Directors have nothing to do with the Burning Man event.

How did turnkey camps get all their tickets?

As well as through methods available to “rank and file” Burners, it was via Invite-only Donation tickets above face value, and buying them from scalpers. They would have us believe that not a single ticket went to any Commodification Camp in the Directed group sale (aka World’s Biggest Guest List).

Concierge camps purchased tickets through all of the same avenues available to other participants and other large camps, including the early Pre-Sale, the main Individual Sale and on the secondary market. A few of these camps also purchased tickets through the Burning Man Project’s Donation Ticket Program

Invitations were sent to participants who had previously contributed to Burning Man Project, or who had expressed interest in doing so, including some in plug and play and concierge camps

Do turnkey camps get preferential treatment?

Officially, no. Pretty much every camp is a turnkey camp. They all said they would have interactive elements, and pick up their MOOP. Commodification Camps get no preferential treatment whatsoever, other than special access to tickets, placement in large, dedicated areas in K street, early access passes, and a lifting of the requirement to be packed up by Tuesday. Sure, they can leave tons of MOOP – but this will be noted by the Placement team when next year comes around.

Were people buying blocks of tickets through the Burning Man Project donation ticket program in the days before the event? If so, why?

Yes – technically, not in the last 3 weeks before the event. To raise money for BMP.

Are turnkey camps undermining the practice of Decommodification and Self-Reliance?

Yes. No big deal, the Principles aren’t rules.

What is going to happen to the turnkey camps going forward? Is there accountability for poor behavior?

Nothing. Poor behavior by a camp in the previous year and a bad MOOP score will be considered by the volunteer placement team in the future.

These answers are far from satisfactory. And the questions themselves left a lot to be desired, as they did not really address the community’s concerns.

The Community’s Questions

Earlier in the year, Halcyon chimed in on the Burning Blog. He got slammed for defending Plug-n-Plays, and to his credit took time to understand the issues, then posted again. He listened to all of us, and his swift response showed that he listened. In the comments during the controversy, he made a good attempt at summarizing the community’s questions:

I think this is a better description of the community’s actual concerns, rather than just the ones BMOrg cherry-picked to address. So how did they do with these questions?

1) Isolation / exclusivity of safari-style camps (wristband areas)

ACKNOWLEDGED, BUT NOT ADDRESSED. Commodification Camps can continue to be exclusive, even though it is “frowned upon” by BMOrg.

2) Use of paid labor of ticket holders during the event. (Some people working as gifts to community while others are working to make money)

NOT ACKNOWLEDGED OR ADDRESSED

3) Camp organizers running turnkey camps for profit. (Commodification of the Burning Man experience)

DENIED. They acknowledged (a) that there were Commodifcation Camps – 12 of them – but none of them made a profit. Therefore (b) no-one created a camp to make money. This is a logical fallacy known as a non-sequitur – (b) does not follow (a). “Attempted murder” is a crime, even though no actual murder occurred.

4) Unfair attainment of tickets by wealthy donors. (blocks of $650 tickets offered “discreetly” – while others use STEP)

ACKNOWLEDGED. They sold 1200 invitation-only Donation Tickets for above face value.

Invitations were sent to participants who had previously contributed to Burning Man Project, or who had expressed interest in doing so, including some in plug and play and concierge camps

They’ve cancelled this program for next year, though they still haven’t announced how the ticketing will be handled in 2015, or if there will be any price increases.

The door remains open for this type of thing to re-emerge under a different name. Will Chase, commenting on this blog a couple of weeks ago, said “Actually, charitable donation tickets are tickets that Burning Man donates to charities for their fundraising raffles, etc.” So it appears that VIP Donation tickets might be gone, but Charitable Donation tickets remain.

What remains unsaid, is blocks of tickets being sold by BMOrg insiders – possibly on the secondary market.

5) Unfair placement of turnkey camps (Inadequate interactivity while others do not get placed)

DENIED. They said there were 58 Burner camps who applied for placement and didn’t get it. This is supposedly fair. “Thousands” of Burners camp without getting placement – this used to be tens of thousands. BMOrg claim that all the Commodification Camps that got special placement were “committed to providing interactive experiences”, and they were placed deliberately around the 3, 6, and 9 o’clock plazas to create community.

6) Board member connections to above practices.

DENIED. The Board of Directors of the Burning Man Project have nothing to do with Burning Man. Involvement of any BoD in any Commodification Camps was not acknowledged. It appears that directors can break the rules at Burning Man, and act outside the Principles, without consequence.

Being a member of the Burning Man Project Board does not grant any authority to make decisions about, or influence the operations of, the Burning Man event. This also applies to resources at the event.

They denied that any tickets were taken out of the STEP queue. However, they stopped short of telling us exactly how many tickets were sold via STEP. We just have to take their word for this, since there is no audit, no transparency.

What they did acknowledge was that they added another 2500 tickets to be sold via STEP. They also added 2000 tickets to the last-minute OMG sale, and they sold 1200 Donation tickets. So this is 5,700 tickets that they sold IN ADDITION to the 61,000 tickets they “officially” had.

Why keep nearly 10% of the tickets in reserve until about a month before the event? It seems a little shady to me: artificially creating scarcity. The main effect of this was to keep ticket prices high on the secondary market all through the year, which was no doubt useful to justify the above face value asking price of the Donation tickets. Their permit specified their population for 5 years, so it’s not like they didn’t know they had these tickets to sell. $780,000 for 1200 Donation Tickets, plus $1,710,000 for 4500 tickets at $380 – this is an extra $2.5 million that they kept “up their sleeves”. If the event could break even with 61,000 tickets, then this is pure profit.

I know that certain BMOrg insiders get access to blocks of tickets they can sell. Do any of these get sold above face value? Other than illegally recording someone in a “sting”, this is impossible to prove. We’ll probably never know. Even BMOrg may not know. Their creation of extra scarcity sure helps this hypothetical scenario, which would be a way to award bonuses without actually paying out any extra cash.

Sherpas

Many Burners were dismayed to hear about the acceptance of paid employees in camps, which was highlighted by the New York Times before the event, and by whistle-blowers afterwards. The sherpas take tickets away from participating Burners. Other big concerns for many Burners were the slave-like working conditions imposed on these employees – including “if you quit, we’ll dump you in the desert” – and Commodification Camps putting up “help wanted” ads at the event hiring people for cash.

The impression you would get from BMOrg’s post is sherpas don’t exist. Perhaps it creates a sticky situation for BMOrg, who rely heavily on free volunteer labor to produce the event. If they acknowledge that there are many people out there getting paid, they bring to the attention of thousands of volunteers that they’re not. There was no mention of worker’s rights, which were demanded by some DPW volunteers, or a more fair treatment of artists.

Special Access to Tickets

They have finally admitted that they sold tickets to VIPs above face value – 1200 of them. They insist that none of these tickets were sold after August 1, which conflicts with reports from our sources. How did they work out who got a VIP invitation? That has still not been adequately explained.

Invitations were sent to participants who had previously contributed to Burning Man Project, or who had expressed interest in doing so, including some in plug and play and concierge camps. Other well-established theme camps also purchased Donation Tickets to cover a shortfall in tickets for their build crews and campmates.

What was the breakdown between existing donors, Commodification Camps, and Guest List theme camps?

Board Involvement

Their argument is that the Board of Directors of the Burning Man Project have nothing to do with the Burning Man event. This seems absurd, and is possibly necessary due to the self-dealing laws which prevent non-profit directors making profits off the tax-exempt organizations they volunteer for. Following this logic, the directors of Decommodification, LLC should also have nothing to do with the Burning Man event – even though, according to their lawsuit, they are DBA (doing business as) Burning Man.

Being a member of the Burning Man Project Board does not grant any authority to make decisions about, or influence the operations of, the Burning Man event.

If the Burning Man Project exists to promote the values of Burning Man around the world, shouldn’t it be important for its Directors to promote the values AT BURNING MAN?

Selective Rule Enforcement

2 of BMOrg’s Board of Directors are now working for AirBnB. AirBnB had listings at Burning Man this year. AirBnB’s “ironic” Burning Man advertisement is still up.

BoD Jim Tananbaum was behind Caravancicle. If such camps are completely against BM, how was he allowed to get away with it?

BoD Chip Conley made a video at Burning Man to promote his Fest300 business. DJ Sander van Doorn got shut down by BMOrg’s IP team for making a video of his trip this year. Meanwhile, Conley’s Fest300 commercial is still up. The video shows multiple violations of drone safety rules. Both videos are great, but that’s not the point. Why was Sander’s video bad, but Chip’s is fine? The same rules should apply to all Burners, whether they volunteer for the Board, Gate, DPW, or on the decks at a sound camp.

image: Sid Penance/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Disabled Vehicles

In 2014, we heard of the rumor, but can find no evidence internally that any camp received handicapped stickers for non-disabled golf carts or other conveyances

A very interesting choice of words. Could camps have non-decorated utility golf carts or “other conveyances”, that weren’t for handicapped people? This statement certainly allows for that – as long as they didn’t display a handicapped sticker, it seems like it was fine. If they had a handicapped person and received a sticker, it doesn’t seem like there was much enforcement about who was actually using the vehicle.

The information leaked to us by Burners is different. If you have any further knowledge or photos, please share.

Does the Board even care?

We gathered information internally and externally, and held a roundtable discussion with the Burning Man Project Board of Directors.

We then held a series of internal meetings with participation from three of Burning Man’s founders, event operations leadership, and the key teams poised to address this issue directly (Placement, Community Services, Ticketing and Communications).

What about the other 3 Founders? Is there some sort of internal politics going on behind the scenes? Or have they retired already, and just can’t be bothered with it all any more?

It took time to respond because we were determined not just to say “this is what happened” but also to say “this is what we plan to do about it.”

So what do they plan to do about it?

Cancel the Donation tickets. That’s about the extent of their policy changes. Although Commodification Camps will be required to have a strong interactive component, that was their policy already.

bringing a VIP lifestyle experience — with velvet ropes and wristbands — introduces an element of exclusivity into a culture that values inclusion, and those that opt in to these kinds of camps miss out on the transformative power of the event.

OK. So what will they do about that? Nada. Those camps are “missing out” and showing “bad manners”, but otherwise, no problem to be addressed, no policies to be changed.

What is the Burning Man organization doing to stop this?
Each year, we encounter a handful of companies advertising luxury, all-expenses paid package tours of Burning Man. When they make use of the Burning Man name or logo, our intellectual property team works to curtail promotional efforts by forcing any reference to ‘Burning Man’ to be removed.

So as long as Caravancicle doesn’t advertise, no problem. If Billboard wants to write a story promoting VIP festival packages on “Billionaire’s Row”, well, nothing BMOrg can do about it.

Meanwhile, artists still cannot in any way use Burning Man to market their art or fund-raise.

If Burning Man stops businesses from selling things in BRC, how can it allow for-profit theme camps that package and sell experiences in our gift economy?
Burning Man does not condone this activity. Commodification camps are not only in direct conflict with our culture, they are also not allowed by the terms of our permit.

BMOrg were clearly aware of the 12 Commodification Camps that they placed. They even gave one of the organizers a seat on their Board. They also gave those camps access to the invite-only Donation ticket program, that regular Burners didn’t get the chance to participate in.

You can find a list of the 45 permitted vendors in 2014 here. It doesn’t seem like all 12 Commodification Camps were on the list. The idea that because they didn’t end up making profits, it doesn’t matter, is not what the BLM Permit says.

Will tickets still be “packaged up” for Commodification Camps, which are now disguised as “turnkey camps on a spectrum”, and sold directly (and discreetly) under a different name than “Donation Tickets”? Some say this is the 800-lb gorilla that is still in the room. If they are, it is unlikely to be easy for us to track, unless the promised transparency somehow manifests.

Larry Harvey said “This issue of equality almost amounts to a straw man”.

Yeah it does. Equality, or lack thereof, is not the issue for the majority of Burners. Commodification, exclusivity, and Selective Rule Enforcement are the issues people have been complaining about.

It is as if these camps have been allowed to parade past the Main Sale ticket queue and insert themselves at the head of the line.

Yes. Not only is that how it seems – BMOrg have now acknowledged, that’s exactly what happened.

What I think these camps are really guilty of is being gauche. This is not so much about morals, it is more about manners, and we’re convinced bad manners can be mended.

Actually, it’s about Principles. Those who espouse them, should also be seen to be living by them, not flouting them. Can this be mended? Only if the leaders feel it’s important. Larry says:

these principles are in no way commandments. They represent an ethos that arose from the lived experience of a community; this means these values need to be internalized, they should become a kind of second nature, not a set of literal and unyielding rules that are imposed upon us

The Tin Principles. They’re not rules. They’re an ethos. Burn on.

The Community’s Response

Lest you think that we are an isolated voice in the wilderness, “being mean” because we have a “grudge against BMOrg” – here are some of the Burner community’s responses to these posts, completely independent of this site. There’s starting to be a lot of messengers to shoot.

Burning Man. What is it? A rave in the desert? An arts festival? A Temporary Autonomous Zone? An experiment in new ways of living together as a community, relying on each other to survive, without the trappings and comforts of modern society? The world’s biggest occult ritual?

Or is it a giant drug- and sex- fuelled Bacchanalian orgy of debauchery?

If you ask me, it’s all of the above. But to most of the world, it’s the latter.

Recently The Simpsons, one of the world’s most popular TV shows, went to Burning Man – or, as they called it, “Blazing Guy”. One of the show’s directors, Tubatron, is a long-time Burner. Many Burners were excited to see our favorite magical event portrayed in a TV show that has been running about as long as Burning Man itself has. I remember watching the Simpsons on the Tracey Ullman show when I was a teenager, before it became its own show on Fox and part of the fabric of mainstream society. Was this part of the Burning Man Project’s mission to spread Burner culture around the world? They’d held workshops on The Ten Principles in Education, and how businesses could learn from the Ten Principles in the sharing economy. Would we now see the Ten Principles go global, on one of the world’s most famous and successful TV shows?

Sadly, no. They chose to highlight the drugs. We saw infant Maggie playing with a MOOPed syringe that she’d picked up on the ground. The main storyline of the episode was Marge being dosed with a hallucinogen without her knowledge: one of the absolute WORST things you can do to someone anywhere, and the complete opposite of what Burner culture is about. She trips off her face, gets all horny with Homer, and overall seems to have a positive experience. Most Burners are portrayed as rude, shady, ego-driven characters.

This year also saw two famous political figures attending Burning Man for the first time. Former Presidential candidate, Democrat Denis Kucinich gave interviews on the Playa, and a political speech. Tax-reformer and Republican party puppetmaster Grover Norquist gave interviews before he went, tweeted from the Playa, and then went on a PR tour to promote his involvement in Burning Man.

What did the press want to talk about? The Ten Principles? The amazing art? How Burning Man is saving the world?

No. It was the drugs and the nudity.

We recently ran a poll asking Burners if they had ever done illegal drugs at Burning Man. I realized that if I just asked “Yes/No”, there would be many readers who had never been to the annual Nevada burn. As it turns out, about a quarter of respondents. Of those who had, 90% had done illegal drugs there.

Is Burning Man about drugs? Undoubtedly. Can you go there without taking drugs? Sure, and about 1 in 10 do – around 6000 people. To put this in perspective, 10% of Burners visited the Orgy dome. There are about as many people having a sober burn than there are indulging in a public orgy. It’s worth noting with these statistics that there are at least 4000 children at Burning Man, hopefully not doing drugs, and hopefully not visiting the orgies.

San Francisco has always been pretty tolerant of drugs. BMOrg’s founders don’t seem to care. Larry Harvey has publicly acknowledged having hallucinogenic experiences before. John Perry Barlow, who was promoted by the Org in their “The Founders Speak” event in 2013, is a very public advocate of hallucinogenic drugs – it was a fundamental part of the whole “Deadhead” scene. Michael Mikel spoke publicly about his drug use at a community event in San Mateo earlier this year, saying “we had access to stuff direct from the Stanford Chemistry Lab”. The crowd laughed approvingly.

The spectrum of illegal drugs at Burning Man runs from medical marijuana, which even if prescribed by a doctor in Nevada is illegal on the Federal land underneath Burning Man; to exotic designer drugs, which get medical papers written about them. Sasha Shulgin, the regular Burner, Berkeley chemist and Bohemian Grove sax player who passed away this year, is considered the “father of Ecstasy”, and credited with popularizing that drug in the US. He isolated more than 200 different drugs in his career, wrote many books about them, and collaborated with the DEA.

For many Burners, whether or not they actually take drugs at the event doesn’t matter. By going to Burning Man, they get tainted with the stigma. A recent Black Rock City census poll asked:

The majority of Burners never mention that they’ve been to the event in the public space. Many don’t even tell their friends and family that they go.

Their professional life is the largest category requiring secrecy.

Do people use their Playa name outside Burning Man, or do they keep it a secret?

Only about a quarter have ever used their Playa name publicly:

As you can see, the majority of Burners do not tell their Playa name to their non-burner colleagues, friends, or even family members. Why not? Because of the reputation of Burning Man: drugs, nudity, and extreme sex.

Most of the “unique” aspects of Burning Man are modelled on Bohemian Grove. Nicknames at the event, theme camps, a ban on commerce, an effigy burn, robed lamplighters, educational workshops, corporate networking opportunities. Burning Man is much closer in its nature to Bohemian Grove, than it is to any other EDM Festival. The use of nicknames at Bohemian Grove evolved because the event was started by a bunch of journalists working for Hearst newspapers, and theatrical performers from the predominantly male San Francisco of the late 19th century. The Captains of Industry who financed the thing, wanted to let loose “without Care” and without their antics being reported by the press when they got back home.

Even most of Burning Man’s 6 founders prefer to interact with the public primarily through different identities than their birth names. “Crimson Rose” is really “Nanci Peterson”. “Harley Dubois” was called “Harley Bierman” when the event began. ” Will Roger” is really “Will Peterson”. And “Danger Ranger” also goes by the unlikely moniker of “Michael Mikel”, often shortened to “M2″. This extends to their management team too: their Social Alchemist “Evan Kittay” goes by “Bear”, one guy calls himself “$teven Ra$pa”. Then we have names we recognize from the Burning Blog Voices of Burning Man, like Halcyon, Answer Girl, Caveat Magister.

“Burner Names” or “Playa Names” are a popular and accepted part of Burning Man’s culture, and have been for a long time. That’s cool, right?

Well in the early hours of yesterday morning, Burning Man founder “Danger Ranger” decided to publicly “out” me. If I wanted to keep my corporate identity separate from my Burning Man life, he would take that privilege away from me. And in the process, maliciously slur me with lies.

Before I even went to Burning Man, I had a nickname. Pretty much everyone in my family, and almost all of my friends, call me “Saus”. I named the first company I started after my nickname, “Sausage Software”. I owned the domain name sausage.com, and wrote software for making Web pages called HotDog. In 1997, Wired magazine named HotDog as the third most downloaded piece of software on the Internet – after Netscape, the only real browser of the time, and Eudora, the only real mail application of the time.

I started the company in my bedroom when I was 22, and down to my last $18. 16 months later I took it public, it was the first Internet company to list on the Australian Stock Exchange. I became the youngest ever CEO of a public company, taking a record Rupert Murdoch (who inherited his Dad’s business) had held since the 1950’s.

When I went to Burning Man for the first time in 1998, I had already built my own community of more than 1 million people. By the time I left the business in 2000, retiring at age 26, this had grown to 3 million. We had more than 800,000 active users, who were using the product at least once a month. This community went on to become Sitepoint, which is still the largest webmaster community in the world, and regularly in the Top 1000 websites. We competed with some of the biggest and most powerful companies in the industry: IBM, Adobe, Symantec, Microsoft. HotDog was the #2 product in its category, beaten only by Microsoft’s FrontPage – which was given away for free with Office, the world’s most widely used business application.

In 2000, I sold the company just after the famous “dot com crash” for $700 million. Our peak market cap was $1.7 billion, so one way to look at that is we lost a billion dollars. But I think most people would say to go from nothing to a $700 million exit in 5 years was a pretty good run for a kid in his twenties with no experience, money or family connections. At the time of the sale, I had created 1200 jobs and enabled hundreds of thousands of people around the world to earn a living building web sites – a profession that didn’t even exist in February 1995 when I started. Back then, there was no Amazon, no e-commerce, the browser (Netscape/Mozilla) was free software from a college not a company, and Yahoo was a list of web sites, not a search engine. We played a major role in making the web easy and accessible to people in more than 200 countries. We gave our software away for free to schools and sold site licenses incredibly cheaply to colleges. In fact, I gave it away for free to anyone – for the first 30 days. After that, you had to pay. I called it “the heroin model” – we get you hooked for free, then you love it so much you’ll gladly give us your money. The basic version of our product cost $29 and the professional one was $99. 75% of our sales were for the more expensive product, which had more features.

Some of the “Black Rock City Communist Party” at burningman.com have said anyone with money didn’t make it, they stole it. It’s hard to see where my theft was. I made a dozen people working for me millionaires – a common practice these days in the tech industry, where Twitter’s IPO was estimated to create 1600 millionaires from its staff, but practically unheard of in Australia at the time. Many of my founding team have gone on to great success since, with Sitepoint/99 Designs, Hitwise, Reactive, and Urbanise – another company I founded, which went public 3 months ago.

I’ve heard countless stories since my first IPO from ordinary people who saw me on TV and believed in my vision, bought stock, and were able to pay off their mortgage. The stock was $0.08 at its lowest, and $8.20 at its highest. After Sausage’s IPO, we raised $130 million from corporate investors Intel, Telstra, and St George Bank, and turned that into more than $500 million for those guys in less than 2 years. The company that bought us, SMS Management and Technology, paid a fair price and got an amazing amount of value – the most elite technical team in the Southern Hemisphere.

How is any of that theft? And how does any of that make me a “bad Burner”?

It’s almost 3 years since I started Burners.Me, and I’ve never told this story before. I’ve never made a big deal about who I am, what I’ve accomplished in my career, or what I do in my “day job”. I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to hide it, either – my photo appears with every comment I make, and I’ve talked about some of the charities and companies I’m involved with before. I write under the pseudonym “burnersxxx” – why xxx? Because I’m only interested in talking to adults, and I believe the drugs, nudity, and sex of Burning Man are not suitable for children (not to mention Playa lung, Playa foot, and the other harsh physical realities of the environment). Political correctness might have its place in the world, but not on my blog. I want to speak frankly, coarsely sometimes, and about adult themes.

Why try to keep my professional life separate from my time at Burning Man? It’s because of the reputation of the event – one which, according to the information I’ve published above, is well deserved. I am an investor in many different businesses, that employ thousands of people. I have a number of investments in the security space, an area that is notoriously conservative. Some of the technologies my teams have developed over the years required a Munitions Export license (for military grade cryptography), which means vetting by the Department of Defense. I travel extensively around the world, and for certain countries have to go through complicated processes to get visas. I have a lot of business activity in the Middle East, specifically all the Emirates of the UAE, Bahrain, and Oman. Some of these places are governed by strict Islamic sharia law, where not even alcohol is permitted – and drugs are a death sentence. In Dubai, “bringing drugs into the country” includes drugs that are in your system because, for example, you smoked prescription marijuana a week before. Holding hands with your wife in public can get you thrown in jail. I have always felt that a public association between my corporate identity and Burning Man could make it harder for me to do deals in these places. Not only that – it would make life harder for the many people who work for me, who have nothing to do with Burning Man and no desire to go. “Guilt by association”, people who are completely innocent being affected by my personal life.

Well, now Danger Ranger, a man living under a pseudonym, with a 14-year “black hole” in his LinkedIn resumé, has decided to take that away from me. Why? Apparently, to take some of the Burner community’s quite legitimate heat off the founders and their Board of Directors.

If you believed the trolls, you’d think I’m somehow embarrassed about who I am and what I’ve accomplished in my life, but this is hardly the end of the world for me. After re-engaging with business life again more than a decade ago to build up facilities management software company Urbanise (formerly Majitek), I stepped down from their board in February, and it went public without me in September. I own a bunch of stock, but no longer have anything to do with the company. At 41, I’ve pretty much retired for the second time. For the last 18 months, I have been writing a book about the “Dark Side of Utopia”, which I always intended to publish under my own name, rather than a pseudonym. The choice of where and when to link this blog with my research has now been taken away from me, but I’m going to do my best to turn that into a positive. I’m starting to get sick of only writing about Burning Man, anyway. I used to believe in them, used to drink the Kool Aid, but the more research I’ve done, and the more of the actions of this group that I’ve chronicled, the more the cult-like indoctrination has worn off. I see things now as they really are, and it’s disheartening.

This story should be a lesson to anyone else in the 55% of Burners who don’t tell the public they go to the festival. Your privacy means nothing. Your career means nothing. The truth means nothing. Speak out against the “Almighty Borg”, and they will have no hesitation about doing whatever they think they can to hurt you. This year has seen a spate of suicides in the wake of the event – 3 from DPW, I believe. This is nothing new, it has been happening for a while, and like so many other things with this cult, gets hushed up and swept under the rug. They are the only organization since Adolf Hitler’s Nazis to employ a full-time “Minister of Propaganda” – yes, that is really Will Chase’s title. And look at the spin that comes out of them. “Oh we listened to your concerns! Now Commodification Camps have to go through the placement team!” This was already their policy. “We’ve discontinued our Donation Tickets program” – which only happened because we caught them red-handed. They tried to deny it, and Burners sent us more evidence. Then they tried to ignore it. Eventually, when they realized this wasn’t working, they came clean and admitted it – but tried to hide it in a bunch of verbiage saying “we’ve always had a Holiday pre-sale program”. No matter that they don’t even try to pretend this is so Burners can buy tickets to Gift at Christmas any more.

And what of the rich? We waited 3 months to get some kind of statement from BMOrg about Commodification Camp concerns, and what did Larry Harvey say?

Wealth is a straw man issue.

And then what did Danger Ranger do, that very night? Talk about attacking the Straw Man.

Look! The Goodyear blimp!

He posted on Facebook at 1 in the morning. It seemed like he was doing what the community was asking for – calling out their Director Jim Tananbaum for running a for-profit Commodification Camp, despite the strict wording in the Burning Man Project’s Bylaws about volunteer directors profiting from the activities of the group, and the requirement that all Directors uphold the Ten Principles. But reading the fine print, as we are forced to do with these propagandists, showed that really he wasn’t throwing Tananbaum under the bus at all. He was giving him a pass “oh, he lost tens of thousands” – which implies that his goal from the beginning was profit, because otherwise it would be “he gifted tens of thousands” – something many of us have done at Burning Man, without charging $17,000/head, bussing in Mistresses of Merriment to entertain our high rollers, and creating elaborate wristband-only cocktail lounges complete with paid sherpas and drinks menus. Instead, Danger Ranger blamed all the problems of Caravancicle on the camp’s producer, who he then accused of embezzlement.

No, in a classic case of misdirection, it was actually ME that Michael Mikel (if indeed that is his real name) chose to throw under the bus. Not just by “outing” me with my real name, which I have never used publicly in relation to Burning Man; but by spreading outright lies about me. Because this is a Burning Man founder, owner, and director, his words are more than just some cranky Burner on the Internet. They are taken as gospel by many in the community.

He said:

I immediately addressed his concerns, saying:

But it seems it was too late. The nearly 70-year old former Navy seaman, infiltrator of cults and neo-nazi groups, defacer of billboards, builder of robots, underground explorer, had gone to bed. That didn’t stop many other Internet trolls from piling on the hate.

I stayed there until the early hours of the morning, addressing the issues raised. Hoping that Danger Ranger would respond. I messaged him privately. The trolling escalated. People started posting personal photos from my Facebook page. I told them they didn’t have permission, and asked them to take them down. Some did, others went and made dedicated web sites just to post my personal photos.

Finally, about 9 am, Danger Ranger appeared again commenting on his post. “Great!”, I thought. “Surely this person, who is posting under a pseudonym, with a legal responsibility as a Director to uphold the Ten Principles and act ethically, will at least respect my request to keep my corporate identity out of his rant! Maybe he will even realize that he was misinformed, and remove the lies!” But no, Danger ignored me and just responded to other commenters. Then, I was locked out. I couldn’t get into his post any more. Some loyal readers have since told me that he then went through the comments on his post and simply deleted mine. Suddenly, his account was suspended.

I was instantly blamed for doing it. For the record: NO, I didn’t report Danger Ranger for using a fake name on Facebook. This happened to me about a month ago, and has been happening to many users on the Burning Man Facebook group – which now has no admins, thanks to people reporting pseudonyms there. Most of the admins there used pseudonyms. Facebook has a “real names” policy, and like it or not, rules are rules. Since I joined Facebook in 2007, I’ve met about a thousand people all around the world who only know me as “Zos”. No matter, I was forced to change my name. This really sucks, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, let alone a founder of Burning Man, an event that I love so much I’ve spent three years of my life writing about it for free. As a gift, because I’m shit at art but I know a thing or two about the Internet.

I was on Danger Ranger’s facebook group for hours, trying to clear up his false statements about me. It makes no sense that I would do that, if I wanted to report his account.

But the blame continued. And Danger Ranger, rather than correcting his lies, used his official power as a Burning Man director to up the attacks on me. He commented on blog.burningman.com at 9:12am, and his comment got picked up by known troll Simon of the Playa at 9:14am on ePlaya (to his credit, Simon removed my corporate name from the post, which is required by ePlaya’s terms of service). I’ve also heard that Danger Ranger’s post was then sent out to thousands of people via their Regionals mailing list.

BMOrg changed their blog to allow replies to comments. Propaganda Minister Will Chase, and Communications Director Megan Miller, were all over the blog responding to comments. I replied to Danger Ranger, once again correcting the false statements.

They could have edited the message so it was less of a personal attack on me, but still critical of Burners.Me. Instead they said:

So there you have it, folks. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Truth doesn’t matter to BMOrg. The founders can openly lie, just to smear someone’s reputation, and they feel no need to correct it. Things BMOrg write on the “Voices of Burning Man” don’t have to be 100% factually accurate, no matter who it’s coming from.

The troll attacks against me have continued – funny, given that I am the one accused of trolling. This post is long enough as it is, so I’m going to write about that in more detail later for those who are interested.

If other wealthy, successful people out there are reading this, be warned. “What happens on the Playa, stays on the Playa” is a myth. This cult has thousands of volunteers at its disposal, tattooing their logo on their bodies, ready to go to extreme lengths to do their bidding and cultivate “borg points”. This NPD-driven CULTure provides a convenient “plausible deniabillity” to the instigators, who can operate through unseen proxies. The founders have shown that they have no qualms about slandering their customers, and will not show respect for truth or privacy. This comes straight from the top. Associate with this group at your peril, and donate your money to their tax-exempt structure if you must – but if you think you’re making the world a better place by taking drugs at a rave, well I have a rainbow bridge in the desert I can sell you.

One thing I always loved about Burning Man is people didn’t ask “what do you do?” or “where do you live?” or “what car do you drive?” For a brief while, 20 years ago, I was kinda famous in Australia and New Zealand. There’s almost nothing good that comes with fame, it’s pretty much all downside. At Burning Man, I could relax and party without having to deal with muckraking journalists trying to “expose me” and drive my company’s share price down, making life harder for all my employees. The Burner I was talking to could be one of the long-term unemployed, but rather than sitting on their ass smoking dope, had worked for months scraping together used materials to create an amazing piece of art. Or they could be growing the dope, and using some of the funds to build some incredible fire-breathing apparatus with their engineering skills. They could be the founder of a tech company, or a famous actor, or a politician, or a trust-fund kid who spends their life working on charitable projects. I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. We were all the same. We were all Burners, using the same port-a-potties and choking on the same dust storm. Having fun together at a party that we’d all traveled miles into the middle of nowhere to enjoy.

Some have tried to paint the Commodification Camp issue as a “class war”, advocating everything from vandalism and arson to violence as the appropriate response – in the process, deflecting protests away from First Camp, and towards anyone in a nice RV. Certainly, there is an “anti-tech” element in San Francisco today, driven by escalating real estate prices and the loss of housing that has been subsidized through rent control (a concept alien to most of the world). Some are making fortunes in real estate and tech, while others are being forced to move from neighborhoods that have gentrified to places they can still afford. They wait in line for public transport, and see happy, successful young people getting onto buses to take them to booming tech companies – and decide that is someone else’s fault. This really should have nothing to do with Burning Man. Up until now,  I thought that those saying “eat the rich” and “Burning Man is the front lines of the revolution” were just a few kooks. I didn’t think it was a deep part of the ethos of the event, at which I’ve met some of the richest people in the world.

But Larry Harvey saying “wealth is a straw man”, followed by Danger Ranger trying to single me out as some sort of hypocrite for having default world success, shows that this goes all the way to the top. Perhaps because they’re a “non-profit”, they think they can cash out of the event with millions while pretending to still be “part of the people”. Perhaps they have to cultivate this charade to encourage thousands of volunteers to build their $30 million event for free. Maybe there’s a split on the board, with Danger and his cronies wanting to go back to their anarchist punk cacophony “Satanists with guns” roots, while Larry and Marian and Bear court the world’s billionaires and venture capitalists and Presidential candidates.

From my perspective, I still don’t think it matters. I’ve burned sleeping in a car, I’ve burned in the most extreme luxury you can imagine (a post for another day). For the last 4 Burns, it’s been my year 2000 Fleetwood RV that went to Burning Man – the only RV I’ve ever owned. I’ve gifted tickets to friends, and I’ve traded tickets to people who drove so that I could drink. I’ve bought flights from overseas for friends and family to join me at Burning Man, and paid camp dues for them. So what? How does this make me a bad Burner?

For three years, I have contributed my art – such as it is – to this community. Not just for a week, but pretty much every day. I’ve given my time for free, on top of what I’d done previously: helping to fund art cars and art projects and logistics, and gifting the experience to virgins. For that, I get called a “troll” and all kinds of other names. And I get the Directors of Burning Man bringing their drug orgy into contact with my corporate career, which will have no real affect on me in my retirement, but could potentially hurt many people around the world who’ve never been to Burning Man and never would.

I go out of my way to provide links and references to all the claims I make on this site. It takes a long time to do this. I have always invited anyone to come here and comment, whether they agree or disagree. If they update me with new information, I change my stories. I take the time to respond to almost every single comment – even the trolls.

Meanwhile, Burning Man’s founders simply LIE about someone in their community, and have no concern whatsoever to correct it, or provide any evidence of their claims. They barely speak to the riff-raff, preferring to trot out their volunteers to cop the flak and their media team to dispense the spin. It takes months to get anything that even remotely looks like a straight answer from them. Many of their people are made to sign non-disclosure agreements and prevented from commenting on social media.

I share my opinions here, sure. That’s the whole point of a blog. I discuss what people are saying on the Internet about Burning Man, I chime in on the conversation with what I think about it all. I know that not everyone agrees with my opinions: I never asked them to, or expected them to. Does that mean I don’t have a right to express them, just because some don’t agree? Of course not. Freedom of speech still means something in the USA – a country I have a visa to live and work in because of investing in startups and creating jobs. This site is coming up on 1400 posts, and I stand by pretty much all of them. About 10% were written by others, so I can’t include those – but I am still proud of them, and glad to have shared them.  Many of our detractors say that we publish misinformation, to which I reply “please provide an example”. So far, none of them have been able to produce any examples. Seriously – out of 1400 posts, you can’t provide ONE? So is it really misinformation, or is that just an unfounded slur? Sure, I publish rumors and speculation: but I tell you when it’s that. I treat my readers as smart enough to make up their own minds. Over 90% of our articles are positive, but they’re not the ones that get the most shares – leading to a situation where people who don’t even read this blog, complain about how negative it all is because that’s what’s showing up from Burners.Me in their Facebook news feed. The ratio of positive and entertaining posts is even higher than 90% on our Facebook page.

As for “trolling” and “sock puppets” – it’s something I deal with a lot, but have never employed myself. Why would I? What would the possible motivation be? I already have my own, massive audience. Why would I go to the trouble of researching and fact-checking everything I write, if I was just going to make unfounded attacks under multiple false identities on other peoples’ sites? How does that benefit me in any way? On the other hand, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see what the motivation would be for BMOrg and their cadre of loyal volunteers to cast aspersions about me under fake names, and try to address facts and figures with lies and smears.

This site has more truth about Burning Man than any other on the Internet. Don’t believe the smear campaign: we do our homework, we publish references to our claims, we deal in FACTS. Even if the truth is sometimes not what the sparkle ponies want to hear.

Would Burning Man have stopped their Donation Tickets program, if we – thanks to leaks from our own loyal readers – hadn’t exposed it? I highly doubt it. Hopefully there will be more positive changes to come in the future. Maybe they will up the efficiency of their charity, and do more good with it. Maybe they will consider making ethics, integrity, and honesty part of their corporate culture.

Like many of my endeavors, Burners.Me has been successful. Across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WordPress, we have nearly 120,000 followers. Our audience is spiking again over the last couple of days thanks to all the publicity, which I doubt was Danger Ranger’s intention in attacking me. I don’t profit from this site in any way, it is totally free, and totally brought to you at my expense.

This year we set new traffic records. A single post I did on Facebook went to nearly 1.2 million people; the same story on the web was viewed by more than a million people over 2 days. In August, 1,512,864 people visited this site. We had the #1 most read story and #1 most seen blog on WordPress, out of 42 million. We’re regularly in the Top 100 of both categories. We’ve been quoted as a credible source by the New York Times, among many others. We’re usually reaching more than 1 million people per week on Facebook. They can smear me, but they can’t shut me up – and a lot of people are doing their own research, looking into the facts for themselves instead of blindly accepting the corporate spin, and waking up.

Where do we go from here? I still plan to write about Burning Man, and Burner culture. The more they attack me, the more I get motivated to expose. I’ve heard they have an “Access Control List” of people banned from the event, and some online critics are on it. If it includes anyone, I’d think it would be me – punished without trial or recourse, guilty of nothing but loving the event, and wanting its management group to be accountable for their words and actions.

BMOrg to me is looking increasingly desperate, a formerly great lion thrashing around in its death throes. Maybe they can pull a rabbit out of a hat, salvage their crumbling credibility, and preserve the awesomeness of this culture through their transition. Or maybe, like many startups, the money comes in, the Founders become less relevant, and the soul goes away. Maybe the long awaited transparency will come, and Larry & Co will look like saints. Or perhaps the skeletons will pile up in the closet until the “fetid ossuary” (thanks Reb!) can no longer be contained. Perhaps there will be amusing, Cacophonist pranks on the Playa against First Camp; or perhaps there will be anarchist attacks and criminal assault and destruction of property against anyone with a flash RV. Maybe they can grow and improve the culture, through Regionals and acculturation of virgins. Maybe veteran Burners were never meant to continue being part of Burning Man anyway, and it will be no great loss to the culture without them – bringing the Principles to virgins will make the world better, than letting the people who’ve made the party what it is keep coming back for more. Maybe enough veterans will be interested in preserving what we’ve all made together, to start something fresh and new, fair and open.

Elon Musk said “Burning Man IS Silicon Valley”, and that to me is the more interesting story. What’s the real history of Silicon Valley, and how does Burning Man fit into that? How do drugs and cults fit into that? Where is technology going, now that Google is becoming SkyNet, and the government is intruding into our private lives in ways we’ve never before imagined? What hope is there for humanity, in the Age of Artilects, cyborgs, and transhumanism?

Pile onto the Burners.Me hate parade if you want. If you want to be that guy, then slander Steve Outtrim, steal my private photos to paste all over the Interwebz, dredge up whatever dirt others have published and post links to it. It’s nothing I haven’t encountered before, I’ve dealt with plenty of lawyers and been in plenty of lawsuits. Heard plenty of fat jokes. Unfortunately, it’s something that goes with the territory, as I think most successful people can tell you. The world is full of jealous and petty people, who if they can’t achieve anything themselves, want to point the finger of blame outwards towards others. If someone drives past them in a shiny Ferrari, these people say “look at that asshole”. I still believe Burners are different. While I’m no longer drinking the Kool Aid BMOrg are pissing into our mouths, I do believe in Burners. Burners are some of the smartest, coolest, funniest, most talented people in the world. If anyone can make the world a better place, it’s Burners. Thanks for all your support, and I hope together we can make this site more interesting and positive in the future.

- Steve

Steve Outtrim – Wikipedia

Steve Outtrim – LinkedIn

Steve Outtrim – Twitter

Lease an up-cycled shipping container from ekovillages.com

Buy some real estate in Costa Rica at Puerta La Vida

Invest in the public companies I support:

Urbanise UBN.AX

MaxSec MSP.AX

Many US brokers can assist you with buying stock on the Australian Stock Exchange, including Interactive Brokers and Charles Schwab.

Donate to the charities I support:

Reallocate

Operation Dignity

Sea Shepherd Society

Wildlife Warriors

Caravancicle and the Lost Hotel

It only took 3 1/2 months – and, quite probably, me spending an hour yesterday talking to a reporter from Bloomberg Business Week, then passing his details on to Caravancicle’s manager – but finally the community gets to hear things straight from the horse’s mouth. Burning Man Director Jim Tanabaum has issued this statement at caravancicle.com (re-posted at burningman.org, which is lucky because Caravancicle has now taken their whole site down):

Burning Man Project board member and Caravancicle founder Jim Tananbaum has addressed questions raised about his 2014 camp in Black Rock City.

The following was posted today on Caravancicle.com … we’re reposting it here for your convenience:

The Man himself. Image: Google+

I am writing to respond to a number of posts regarding Caravancicle, a camp of which I was a member in 2014 – I also helped envision and fund the camp.

I first want to apologize broadly to anyone who felt disrespected by our camp or concerned about the implications of our camp’s operation to the long-term health of Burning Man.

I have been attending Burning Man every year since 2009. Burning Man is a singularly impactful event for me and, since first attending, I have become deeply moved by the 10 Principles, the potential for these principles to change the world, and the environment of the playa as an embodiment of the principles. This is the reason I joined the Burning Man Board of Directors. It is also the reason why I wanted to create a camp environment that would help enable my friends to share the transformative experience of Burning Man. In addition, we wanted to introduce a more sustainable, communal and aesthetically pleasing alternative to RVs to the playa. It was always our intention to provide an open environment, which welcomed everyone and was consistent with the spirit of Burning Man. It is clear based on blog posts and comments made online that not everyone experienced what we intended.

For that, I would like to apologize. Despite our best intentions and efforts, some things did not turn out as planned. 

Caravancicle is the third camp I have been involved with at Burning Man. My experience has been with larger camps requiring some workers to provide the infrastructure. Our camp was constructed by a long-term Burner with deep respect and care for the community, who was hired to manage the camp. He also led the build for the camp we did the year before. We have worked with people in the past to build out our camp who were hired by the camp organizers and then would enjoy the Burning Man experience when they were not working. Our campmates would staff the bar, greet people, give out gifts, etc.  This year, our plan was to gift a neighboring camp infrastructure in exchange for their assistance in building ours. We were trying to build community through sharing resources.

To make a long and painful story short, our partners were not able to complete our build and our remaining staff was left having to build out toilets, showers and other infrastructure (without having planned to and therefore not having the proper resources to do so). During this crisis, many people in our camp rose to the occasion, but a few, like “SherpaGirl,” decided to leave and then wrote a disappointing account of her few hours in our camp. Another person in camp posted a sign asking for help without asking anyone else. We had some first time Burners in the camp, including the person who posted the sign. We also had many return Burners in the camp.  I think most people attending Burning Man have had some unexpected situations; we did, and we tried to adjust to these in the moment.

The hero of this unfortunate situation was our camp’s manager who worked tirelessly for 2 days along with other camp members to help provide basic infrastructure for all of us. While the crisis was going on, all of us were greatly distracted and weren’t able to properly respond to the many people coming through our camp. Our supplies were also dwindling. Since the camp was so large, we used wristbands to help manage the food, water, and booze supply during non-public hours. It was really sad for me to read the accounts of people who visited our camp and were turned down for drinks during the day (including a number of my friends). Ughh….  If we had simply posted a sign providing details on camp gift times, it would have made a big difference.

Our camp breakdown was also compromised because the group responsible for providing the infrastructure was also responsible for part of the breakdown. In the end, our camp manager and some other members of the camp, plus breakdown staff, cleaned up our camp by Saturday after the event. We took a photo of our campsite before we left the playa and it was free of MOOP. We then learned that a camp next door was having significant issues with clean up and we sent trucks back to help them. It is unclear to me as to why we remain with some red marks on the MOOP map.

To specifically answer questions:  I did not profit from Caravancicle (in fact I gifted money, as I do every year). Our bar was open to the public at night but not during the day. We should have posted a sign to make this clear. On Friday night, used up all of our booze to gift a huge party for anyone who visited our camp. We regularly gifted very yummy homemade popsicles and herbal tea but were not able to set up the gift stand in front of the camp as originally envisioned because of the build crisis we had. We regularly gifted drinks, water, and electrolytes at night.

Regarding questions on the 10 Principles of Burning Man:

1. Radical Inclusion: Burning Man welcomes people from all walks of life. Referring to Caravancicle campers or members of any other camp as “the rich people” is creating a class system within Burning Man, which I don’t believe is beneficial to the community. Our camp welcomed people from all walks of life. Sometimes we had art cars that were filled up with our camp members and would not have been safe to include others. During other parts of the days, these art cars welcomed anyone to come on board until they were filled to safe capacity.

2. Gifting: Burning Man is devoted to acts of giving. Caravancicle gifted popsicles, tea, booze, water and electrolytes, but at the beginning of the week we did not serve non-camp members drinks during the day and failed to make it clear to non-camp members that we would be offering drinks during nighttime hours to everyone. We did gift a blow out Friday party with full bar and snacks. We could have greatly improved our communications on this matter.

3. Decommodification: Our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorship, transactions, or advertising. Caravancicle was in no way affiliated with any third party sponsorships. We hired a team to produce the camp (as many camps do), but Caravancicle did not participate in any advertising. The ‘promotional materials’ and website were sent to guests who were invited to join the camp. We did not actively promote the camp. No one in Caravancicle made money off of the camp.

4. Radical Self-reliance: Although many of the more physical aspects of self-reliance were lost on the Caravanciclers, camp members were encouraged to exercise and rely on their inner resources. Just as in other camps, many members spent extensive amounts of time reflecting and self-exploring out on the playa. They faced many of the same challenges every other Burner faces at the event.

5. Radical Self-expression: Caravancicle was an act of creative expression in and of itself. The camp had months and months of planning and effort put into it, including help from many of its members. While not all members of the camp participated in the creative aspect of building the camp, each brought their own unique personality, costumes and contributions to Burning Man.

6. Communal Effort: While I can’t argue that Caravancicle members had significantly less work to do as far as cooking and maintenance, all members were still responsible for chores around camp including, but not limited to, picking up trash and being responsible for washing their own dishes. We also created a beautiful space open to the public that fostered cooperation and collaboration.

7. Civic Responsibility: Caravancicle assumed responsibility for the conduct of our events. We refused alcohol to minors and to people who didn’t have cups in order to limit MOOP. On one specific instance there were so many bikes parked outside one of our parties that the Rangers had to come inside and let us know. We killed the music and shut down the party immediately, making sure the mess was cleared up right away.

8. Leaving No Trace: Our clean up was delayed because of our co-dependency on a partner camp. We were able to clean our site, with pictures taken that document a clean site on Saturday after the event. It is unclear to me why we received red marks on the MOOP map, but I think we were generally docked points because we were late in leaving. We also sent back help for a neighbor camp that was having difficulties cleaning up.

9. Participation: Members of Caravancicle participated and achieved through “doing”. I urge everyone to remember that for some of our campers, this was their first burn. Personally, I contributed substantially less my first year than I have in years since. This year, however, I allocated vast amounts of time, effort and money to create something beautiful to share with the community.

10. Immediacy: Most Burners agree that Immediacy is the touchstone of value in our culture. Just like every other participant in this community, I wish to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves. I did not get it perfectly right, but I did make my best effort to create something beautiful and creative, unique and innovative.

Regarding other questions that have been raised about me and my camp:

Plug and Play: While a lot of personal responsibility was deflected onto camp employees, I have worked tirelessly since the beginning of the year planning, organizing and executing a camp that brought beauty and value to the playa. Although some of our campers were “plug and play” participants per se, the act of judging them or excluding them goes against everything that Burning Man stands for regarding radical inclusion.

Profit: There have been suggestions that our camp was for profit. I can assure you our camp generated no money and was not, in any way, a money making venture. Additionally, the Burning Man organization was in no way involved with the planning or production of the camp – it was an entirely personal project.  Our website was meant to be viewed by 60 or so people who were planning to participate in our camp and was password protected. The material which referred to artists was produced by our partner camp and not us as a way of describing what they envisioned. Our partner camp described this as fully endorsed by the artists they included. I am sorry that people outside of Caravancicle camp were able to gain access to our website and share our draft material without our authorization. I am also sorry about artists whose names they included without their authorization. Caravancicle was trying to create an environment which shared the beauty of our architecture and design with other creative forces on the playa.

Burning Man Project Board of Directors: I joined the board of directors because I’m passionate about the impact Burning Man culture can have on the world, and because I believe my professional experience and perspective is valuable to the new nonprofit at this early stage of its development. I believe Burning Man and what it has to offer the world is still very nascent and am thrilled to be working with other board members to steward its growth and development.

I believe there is a silver lining in the discussion our camp has engendered because it has caused a healthy dialog about the implications for Burning Man’s evolution. I am proud to be a Burner. I am proud that my fellow Burners felt passionate enough about the sanctity of Burning Man to push this discussion, and I look forward to taking new ideas and lessons learned into the future.

 

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Burners.Me:

It wasn’t his fault, see. He blames all his staff. The paid workers didn’t do a good enough job, the camp next door who he paid to build his camp for him didn’t do a good enough job, and he lost money on the whole deal. They never used any artists names in their marketing materials without permission, that was the camp next door’s fault. The MOOP? Camp next door. Although they were allowed to stay until Saturday cleaning up (not Tuesday), they got no special treatment from BMOrg. Anyone can bend the rules if they like, hey, like Larry says, they’re not rules, just an ethos.

If “Sherpagirl” hadn’t left when she did, it all would’ve worked out great.

Their camp brought “beauty and value” to the Playa.

“I allocated vast amounts of time, effort and money to create something beautiful to share with the community.”

- what, Jim? What? Please tell us what were the beautiful things that your camp shared with the community. Popsicles? The bingo?

“We refused alcohol to minors and to people who didn’t have cups in order to limit MOOP”

- right. Not because of the laws of the land, or physics.

In one breath he says

Our camp welcomed people from all walks of life…We also created a beautiful space open to the public that fostered cooperation and collaboration.

and then straight away he says:

Sometimes we had art cars that were filled up with our camp members and would not have been safe to include others….at the beginning of the week we did not serve non-camp members drinks during the day and failed to make it clear to non-camp members that we would be offering drinks during nighttime hours to everyone. We did gift a blow out Friday party with full bar and snacks

Of course, we also see the familiar “straw man” misdirection:

Referring to Caravancicle campers or members of any other camp as “the rich people” is creating a class system within Burning Man, which I don’t believe is beneficial to the community

I haven’t seen this issue being raised from any Burners in the community, actually. Just 3 of the Board of Directors now, and a couple of the shit-stirrers on the state-sanctioned forum ePlaya.

It was always our intention to provide an open environment, which welcomed everyone and was consistent with the spirit of Burning Man

Yep, they brought 70,000 wristbands. And money. They gifted us money.

MOOP #fail

It is unclear to me as to why we remain with some red marks on the MOOP map.

Actually Jim, your entire camp got yellow. That’s bad. Red is really bad.

So not even a Director of Burning Man can explain how they got their score on the MOOP map. In that case, who can? It seems that the MOOP result is rather arbitrary, possibly politically with no recourse, oversight, or explanation.

I’m not impressed. What do you think, Burners?

 

The sorry saga of the Sherpa and the Popsicle Camp has made it to Wall Street. Bloomberg BusinessWeek has published a lengthy article on the whole affair, titled Occupy Burning Man: Class Warfare Comes To The Desert Festival. Yes, we’re in it..the lone voice speaking out against this Class Warfare being at Burning Man. Larry Harvey’s shifted from “rich people are straw men”, to seeing Burning Man as an educational tool for the 1%…and apparently this was the thinking behind Caravancicle. Now they are promoting all types of ironic theatrical pranks being planned for the event by Burners as our response, like Commodification Camps are now some sort of art theme in the Carnival. Burners will jump to create another bingo item for the amusement of the safari selfie sherpas crowd. Have they read some of the comments on groups like Sherpa Liberation Front? Maybe the online feedback gets filtered before it is handed up the pyramid to the board.

[Update: 2/6/15 8:47pm] Bloomberg TV delves further into this story.

From Bloomberg.com

The Billionaires at Burning Man

Move over, Google Bus. There’s a new symbolic fight over tech money, class, and privilege

by Felix Gillette

For his 50th birthday, Jim Tananbaum, chief executive officer of Foresite Capital, threw himself an extravagant party at Burning Man, the annual sybaritic arts festival and all-hours rave that attracts 60,000-plus to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada over the week before Labor Day. Tananbaum’s bash went so well, he decided to host an even more elaborate one the following year. In 2014 he’d invite up to 120 people to join him at a camp that would make the Burning Man experience feel something like staying at a pop-up W Hotel. To fund his grand venture, he’d charge $16,500 per head…

The mission of the new organization is to propagate the Burning Man culture throughout the world, in part by launching a series of smaller, regional festivals. In theory, the beefed-up board will use its far-reaching professional connections to help accelerate the global spread. “It’s not a thoughtless amassing of rich folks,” says Harvey of the expanded board. “But if you want to change the world, you’d better get some people who have real muscular power.”

…Outtrim points out that for years there have been wealthy people at Burning Man. In the past it wasn’t in people’s faces. “What’s really been an issue with the Caravancicle camp,” Outtrim says, “is the involvement of someone from the Burning Man Project’s board of directors.”

Historically, he adds, Burning Man was “a great leveler”—nobody in Black Rock City cared who you were. The prevalence of costumes allowed the rich and famous to mingle with the masses. “For a lot of captains of industry and the celebrities, it was a chance for them to go and be a normal person at the party like anybody else,” says Outtrim. “But bringing in servants is where it’s become a bit of a problem. It’s pushing buttons related to class war in San Francisco.”

…Lillie liked the idea of using Burning Man as a crucible to re-educate the 1 Percent. She signed on to work as a bartender and server. Her pay would be a flat rate of $180 per day…The only employees who appeared to be enjoying themselves, Lillie wrote, were the attractive models, a posse dubbed the “mistresses of merriment,” who had traveled from L.A. ostensibly to flirt with and help entertain the male guests. During the telephone interview, Lillie concedes that she never saw any harassment of workers take place. But she says the introduction of paid laborers like her into the libertine atmosphere of Burning Man created an awkward dynamic. “It was like a bunch of old, married men expecting a freaky sex party at Burning Man. The girls were all kind of looked at as though we were going to be a part of that.”

…For his part, Harvey, who personally invited Grover Norquist last year, continues to see the arrival of the ultrawealthy as a good thing for Burning Man. “I want to convince people that it isn’t as if the 1 Percent represents an evil bacillus that like Ebola will sweep through our city,” he says. “That’s not possible. Much of the anger is because of a feeling of impotency. The whole issue of the 1 Percent has been a matter of public discourse for some time now, and nothing has changed. People are frustrated. … My mission is to reform the 1 Percent.”

Read the full article here.

Invoking ebola here seems to be the ultimate use of the straw man rhetorical diversion tactic. People want to be convinced that the Board are going to uphold the Tin Principles, instead of coming up with new ways to run ever-more lavish and high dollar Commodification Camps with Exclusive wrist-band only Gifting. That’s the issue Larry, not Ebola.

I must commend Sherpa Beth Lillie for everything she has done for the community in being the whistleblower on this story, as well as thanks to all the other sources who have also come forward. And we should thank the OS “Original Sherpa” Tyler Hanson, who first raised the alarm about ridiculous gentrification replacing radical self-reliance in the New York Times the week before the last Burning Man. Perhaps from now on the Commodification Camps will fund more (and better) art, or culturally indoctrinate their wealthy clients more thoroughly. Free the sherpas!

Will some fresh LSD Billionaire Burgins arrive as a result of this article, lining up for Larry & Co to re-educate them with a life-changing experience, and pulling out their checkbooks to donate to the Burning Man Project’s global colonizing mission? Stay tuned.

BMOrg’s latest post on ticketing does nothing to quell doubts about the motivations behind Ticket Hell. Taking us on an emotional roller coaster from hell, and generating and focusing a massive amount of psychic energy around a totem, are clearly uppermost in the minds of the rulers of Burning Man:

it takes time to process all those transactions. Maddening time. Anxiety-inducing time. Time people spent on an emotional rollercoaster from hell, as they waited helplessly to see whether or not the winds of fate would blow a golden ticket into their hands. And during this time, probably more intensive psychic energy was heaped onto one single thing than anything else in Burning Man’s 29-year history: The Little Green Man.

The Little Green Man (yes, we’re capitalizing it, shut up) was the little dude standing, strolling or running along the progress indicator bar, marking one’s advancement through the ticket queue. As ticket-seekers urged him on with a fervor worthy of a filly at the Derby, he ascended to the level of a little green mythical being of possibility that would make the average totem, rune, relic or fetish (wait for it…) green with envy.

So wait a minute – one of the world’s largest occult rituals, with a city of 70,000 people anchored around the symbol of The Man, sitting awestruck as the effigy burns – and even that doesn’t generate as much “intensive psychic energy heaped onto one single thing” as this ticketing process?

Most people wouldn’t consider the idea of making someone “green with envy” over a magical symbol like a totem, rune, or relic, as a thing to brag about. We are investing all our psychic energy into the alien-looking avatar of BMOrg’s creation, and being taken on an emotional roller coaster ride from Hell that puts us in a helpless position. This has been deliberately engineered, and now BMOrg are crowing about how well it all worked.

At one point there were Pac Man ghosts chasing the man:

The ghosts are yet another occult symbol. They emphasize the cycle of Death and Rebirth being celebrated in this annual sacrificial ritual.

Image: Emilie Ogez/Flickr (Creative Commons)

[Update 2/23/14/ 11:53am] – Reader JV informs us that the Pac Man screenshot above was Photoshopped, and posted on Burning Man’s official web site in the discussion forums as a joke.

In another post de-briefing us on the situation, BMOrg said:

Did the servers crash?
No, they never did and the ticket buying process was never stopped — the queue was intentionally paused (briefly) to allow the servers to catch up to the demand — and nobody lost their place in line as a result.

This conflicts with reports from at least 5 different Burners who got a message that Ticketfly went down. Here’s a screenshot from one of them:

If Ticketfly had crashed, and the system had to be brought up again, that would have explained why some who were in the queue at 12:00:07 or less didn’t get tickets, while others who entered around 12:10:00 did. The queue was re-started on a new server, and all the people in the original queue were left hanging. If the system worked as planned, then how did people who logged in later skip the queue?

Whether the system crashed or not, it is becoming extremely clear that this did NOT operate on a FIFO (First In, First Out) basis. People who logged in at seconds past noon didn’t get tickets, while people who logged in 15 minutes or more after did.

Why did some Burners get offered a $20 donation to make, and some a $40? Something is obviously segmenting Burners into groups, before they get to buy. Is this segmentation based on Burner profiles? If not, then how do they decide who gets shown a $20 donation and who gets the $40? Random? Or once the tickets are sold, the donation cost rises?

It should be: every Burner is equal, first come-first serve, process the transactions simultaneously. This is a computer system, after all. It’s not like we are all actually standing in a line at a ticket booth, waiting for someone to type in our details and get back to us. I can see no technical reason why 21,500 transactions couldn’t be processed in less than 10 minutes.

What about the massive waste of time from when they sold the last ticket, to when they let Burners know there was no point waiting in the queue any more?

Why were people held in line for so long only to find out tickets had sold out?
The system lets people into the purchasing stage, and then people purchase their tickets. Until they’ve all successfully purchased their tickets, it’s not sold out. If for some reason somebody doesn’t complete their transaction (bad credit card, they bail out, etc.), then their spot is given to the next person in line. So we don’t remove people from the line until all the tickets have been successfully purchased, because technically you still have a chance to get one.

While this statement may be accurate on the face of it, it’s not the whole truth. If you are #50,000 in the line when the last ticket is sold, there is no chance for you to get a ticket, technically or otherwise. The statement does not adequately explain how 60,000 58,500 people were kept waiting in line for 15+ minutes after the last ticket had been sold.  It takes no-one 15 minutes to complete the transaction with Ticketfly, not everyone.

Putting the pieces together, it seems like what happened was the queue didn’t shut down because there was still soe inventory available. The inventory was the Donations, which were unlimited.

Were people given any advantage if they made a donation?
No, not at all. It was first-come, first-served for everybody.

Another statement that is clearly not true, according to hundreds of Burner reports online. Some people were logging in to buy multiple tickets for their friends, because they could get straight through while their friends were still waiting. If it was “first-come, first-served for everybody”, this would have been impossible.

we do actively weed out known resellers as part of the registration process (that’s one of the reasons we have you register for the sale).

An admission here that Burner profiles are screened, and “undesirables” on their list are “weeded out”. Do they ever receive a message, being told “your Burner profile has not been accepted because we know you’re a reseller”? Or are they just sitting there in the queue, waiting like everyone else, but with no chance to get through because their code won’t be accepted?

as long as people are willing to buy tickets at exorbitant prices (we wish they wouldn’t, but some apparently do), there will be a market for predatory resellers. It’s antithetical to our community’s ethos, but it’s also the reality of supply and demand (and technically legal).

“We wish they wouldn’t”…and yet they hiked the price of VIP tickets to $800 this year. I guess $800 is no longer considered “exorbitant”, so long as you give the money to BMOrg instead of a fellow Burner.

The lack of vehicle passes is looking to be a huge problem, they have leaped to $325 now on Stubhub. Some Burners are prepared to go to extreme lengths to get the little slip of paper:

We have no information that this is Susan, or that this camp is offering vehicle pass trades. It’s Burning Man, these things do happen…

Some Burners are reporting that Verizon customers got through much faster:

Verizon Customer Service: I was a Verizon Customer Service Representative for 9 years until I moved into management. Verizon has a camp at BM, but I can’t tell you the name. We’ve been working closely with BMorg to bring cell service and other benefits to the playa. I can’t tell you officially that Verizon customers get preferential treatment in the sale of BM tickets, but if I were you, I would change service providers next year to increase your chances.

---

There has been a great deal of discussion online about this ticket situation. Here are a few selected highlights from Voices of Burning Man:

IE How can there be a thousand scalped tickets? Do 100 people work for stub hub who have the back door secret? Who, besides the 1%, can afford to pay $1000 for a ticket, many many tickets? Something just seems out of line here. I feel your pain.

 

Hmmm, okay, I guess that was my surprise of the day. I wasn’t going to play the game this year, but decided ‘oh what the hell’. So at 12 minutes after, I got in thinking I had zero chance since I know everyone else starts within seconds after the hour. Guess what? Tickets baby!

We didn’t break any rules as the codes they used were from other friends and they purchased all of our tickets as they were getting through so quickly.

I was lucky (so much so that I had to check my confirmation email multiple times to make sure that it was actually real) enough to get ticket within minutes and was never put in the dreaded queue. At about 11:59 (2:59 my time) I clicked the link in the email and was told I was to early. I kept closing the page and re-clicking the link until the page changed. My memory gets little fuzzy here – to much adrenaline – but I don’t even remember seeing a green button. The page first said something about the site being down. So I refreshed. Then it said all tickets were already in carts! BUT HOW COULD THAT BE!?! Only a minute had gone by. I just kept refreshing the page until the ticket buying option came up – bingo, got one in about four minutes.

This is the same thing I did last year. Refreshing constantly. Didn’t get put in queue either. Got my ticket in two minutes.

Unfortunately out of our planned camp of six, only myself and my friend got tickets. The others will join the thousands of others in the hunt for one.

To all of those looking – best of luck and stay positive.

Also, all international tickets are sent out via post which is way better as there’s no need to spend hours queueing for Will Call!!
I’ve no idea why BMorg don’t implement a similar system, why keep trying to reinvent the wheel??

This further implies that the end of all the successful 21,500 sales probably occurred around 64.5 minutes after noon, i.e. the AVERAGE rate of processing of successful transactions was about 1,000 every three minutes, or FIVE PER SECOND.

This further implies that TRANSACTIONS WERE PROCESSED IN PARALLEL. i.e. there were MULTIPLE SERVERS (or AT LEAST multiple threads within a single server) processing the eventually successful transactions at any given time. We can estimate that the fastest an average individual could possibly complete the final purchase with confirmations of credit card, mailing address, etc would be 10 seconds, and a more likely upper average transaction time for an individual final purchase completion would be about 60 seconds. Since the eventual average processing rate was 5 purchases per second, this means that there must have been somewhere between 50 and 300 processes (threads within servers) handling eventually successful transactions ON AVERAGE throughout the sale.

But given the EXTREME variations in expected wait times that I saw during my 57-minute wait to get to the final purchase page, IT CANNOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE that there was no variation in server resources (e.g. due to server or thread crashes/hangs) during the first hour of the sale process, EVEN WHEN YOU ACCOUNT FOR THE “PAUSE” of the line (unless you assume that the algorithm to calculate the remaining wait time was complete bullshit :-)

Because IF the allocation of server resources had remained constant (apart from the pause), and the average time taken by an individual to buy ticket(s) when they got to the final page remained constant, AND the remaining wait time algorithm WASN’T complete BS, then we should have seen expected remaining times decreasing monotonically throughout each successful purchasor’s sale process.

Because IF the position in the queue was determined by the server arrival times of the clicks on each user’s green button (in my case at about two SECONDS past noon), then effectively every eventually successful person’s position in the queue was determined WITHIN THE FIRST FEW SECONDS AFTER NOON of the sale, since on the basis of my experience clicking two seconds after noon (I synced my computer’s clock with the nist.gov atomic clock and had a display of that running during my purchase) and being probably one of the last people to get a ticket, there must have been over 20,000 green button clicks received at the servers within the first few seconds….

The thing that gets me (and probably most other people) emotionally wound up, is when we see (as I did), for over half an hour, that each minute my expected wait time is going down by a minute (so we believe all is going along nicely and we just have to wait) and then suddenly it goes up (as it did in my case) from 9 minutes to OVER AN HOUR, when we are MORE THAN HALF AN HOUR into the wait process. Changes like that CANNOT POSSIBLY be due to changes in the AVERAGE time taken by an individual user behavior in completing their purchase once they are on the final page, which probability theory tells us is EXTREMELY unlikely to change by a factor of two over many thousands of presumably similar buyers. It MUST be due to changes in the allocation of resources on the sever side (e.g. crashes).

So if the sale had proceeded per the theoretical “stable” model, by 30 minutes into it there should have been approximately 10,000 eventually successful purchases left to process. But my remaining wait time after waiting more than 30 minutes was shown to be 9 minutes (which would imply an estimated average sale completion of more than 1,000 per minute i.e. three times the final “official” average). But then it went up to “over an hour”, a change by more than a factor of six, which cannot be reasonably accounted for by changes in average user purchase time behavior.

On a technical note, there is really no need for the process to be as incomprehensible as it currently is. Since there is a pre-reg, it is trivial to load-balance ahead of time. In principle, if we expect 80,000 attempts to purchase, we can pre-allocate users to 80 servers, each of which only needs to process 1,000 requests (or equivalent architectures with multiple threads per server). The ONLY technical challenge is in fairly synchronizing across server queues, but if the clocks of the servers are synchronized, and arrival times of each user “green button click” are noted at each server down to the millisecond, then there is NO REASON WHATSOEVER not to make it totally transparent to everyone within the first few minutes of the sale EXACTLY what position they are at in the queue, EXACTLY what the average purchase processing time has been so far, and to show a REALISTIC view of how likely it is for their purchase to be successful given the current average number of tickets sold per customer, plus a REALISTIC and relatively predictably changing estimate of how long it will take to either get to the purchase page or find out that they have not been successful….

I’m a “glass half full” kind of guy, so I celebrate the fact that I was able to buy one ticket, but I still do think it was weird that I wasn’t able to buy two, and I strongly believe that the whole process could be dramatically improved…

People- My comments have nothing to do radical inclusion. This ticket thing year after year has nothing to do with radical inclusion. This is business making business decisions which for the life of me I don’t agree with.

Chip- Please help the rest of the org understand this, to give back to the loyal customers just like you did so perfectly at JDV.

Disappointed? Yes. But more just tired of this ticket game year after year.

 

image from WIRED

The news of hackers exploiting a “back door” in BMOrg’s new ticketing system broke last week on Reddit. We covered it last Wednesday in Ticket Hell. Now, the story has been picked up by a broader media audience, with stories in WIRED, Computer World, Paste Magazine, CBS Local, and SFist.

WIRED:

Burning Man has practically gone mainstream. The once-fringe desert camping festival is now cultural fodder for The Simpsons and Taco Bell commercials. Celebrities and CEOs routinely attend. So it’s no surprise that 40,000 Burning Man tickets sold out in less than an hour last Wednesday when they went on sale.

But software engineers in Silicon Valley hacked into the Burning Man ticketing system powered by Ticketfly to cut to the front of the queue. Who needs luck when you have engineering skills and you’re willing to use ‘em for your advantage?

…Several engineers and web developers on a Burning Man Reddit thread speculated that hackers were able to create this backdoor after discovering a few lines of JavaScript code on the ticketing website that gave preeminent access to tickets three minutes before they officially went on sale at noon on Wednesday.

“They left code in the page that allowed you to generate the waiting room URL ahead of time,” said Michael Vacirca, a software engineer at a large defense corporation. “If you knew how to form the URL based on the code segment then you could get in line before everyone else who clicked right at noon.”

Burning Man admits the error and says those hacked tickets will be put back up for grabs during the scheduled last-minute sale in August.

[Read the full story at WIRED]

It’s interesting to watch the corporate spin machine in action. Rather than any sophisticated hacking being required, simply entering your code directly into TicketFly seems to have worked. According to hundreds of Burner comments on the Interwebz, clicking the emailed link ten minutes after noon pretty consistently got Burners in to buy tickets immediately, whereas clicking the link a few seconds after noon led to many Burners being stuck in the queue for 90 minutes with no success.

To me, these are the real issues here: it was definitely not First Come, First Served, and it was trivially easy to bypass the queue – multiple methods were used, and most did not require the ability to write code or hack into systems. The focus on these “200 hacker tickets” is smoke and mirrors around the obvious explosion in the number of tickets being listed on the secondary market. Even BMOrg are now encouraging Burners to get tickets and vehicle passes “on the open market”. With software to automatically buy as many tickets as you want from TicketFly selling for a mere $750 – about the profit margin for a single ticket right now – it seems that there continue to be some serious issues with BMOrg’s ticketing system.

Who would have thought they could make it even worse than the lottery? As BMOrg proved with their Spark movie, perceived ticket scarcity makes a nice story for the media.

WIRED:

The way this year’s sale operated, however, didn’t help to dissipate the resentment. Those interested in purchasing tickets were placed in an online queue as each sale was processed and given a time estimate as to how long they would be kept waiting before they could purchase tickets. The time estimates kept shifting, going from an 24 minute wait, to 46 minutes, back down to 18 minutes, to then “more than an hour,” which might as well have read, “abandon all hope ye who enter here.” At one point, the line was inexplicably “paused” for several minutes, causing another nerve-wracking moment on social media.

This drastic, back-and-forth change in wait times gave those in line the illusion that somehow hackers were cutting in front of them and bumping them out of scoring tickets. Burning Man’s social media team responded by saying that the wait times fluctuated based on how long it took each buyer to complete the purchase. It surely didn’t qualm any anxiety to have used such an unpredictable factor as a counter, instead of a fixed number (“There are 39,999 people in front of you trying to buy tickets”).

See the comments from ZOrg in Emotional Roller Coaster From Hell about why this theory of wait times fluctuating because of some people taking a long time to complete transactions doesn’t add up.

WIRED:

This is not the first time Silicon Valley has been criticized for tampering with Burning Man’s ideals and processes. Last year’s festival garnered unflattering feedback from Burning Man die-hards after venture capitalists, executives and celebrities descended on the desert with air-conditioned camps, personal assistants and other VIP-perks. In recent years, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have all scored tickets to Burning Man.

It seems like now, Silicon Valley is leveraging more than its money to get in front of the line.

[Read the full story at WIRED]

Way to shift the blame to your customers, BMOrg. “Silicon Valley is using its technical might to cheat the system and get Burning Man tickets”: it sure makes a great angle for a story, compared to “some people typed the code into TicketFly”.

Actually it’s BMOrg’s leadership that has been criticized for tampering with Burning Man’s ideals, not Silicon Valley. No-one gives a flying fuck if Zuck brings his P.A., but many Burners do care when some on the Board of Directors are selling $17,000 hotel rooms like it’s some sort of Mega-AirBnB in the desert, and getting an unlimited supply of tickets for their customers and sherpas.

Cancelling 200 tickets will do nothing to fix the problems that occurred in the Directed Group and Individual ticket sales. There is no evidence that it will hurt scalpers, indeed it may even punish some Burners for being radically self-reliant. BMOrg have said they will void these tickets and add them back to the OMG sale – so now there are 1200 tickets left, for 60,000 Burners to attempt to buy in milliseconds on August 5.

Image: Simon Davison/Flickr (Creative Commons)

“Usually people are hacking to steal things…these people were hacking just to get a chance to spend $400 to get a ticket”

89.3 KPCC radio did an interview with Brian Doherty, author of This Is Burning Man, about the ticket scandal. Listen here.

The media blitz has continued, with MixMag, NY Daily News, Las Vegas Sun, the Bold Italic, NBC Bay Area, the SF Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and hundreds more.

It’s amazing how this narrative is so quickly being spun by BMOrg’s PR machine to “Silicon Valley techies hacked Burning Man and stole tickets from everyone else”, and away from “the ticketing system was not First In First Out and all you had to do to buy tickets was go through Ticketfly’s web site and ignore the queue”. Once again, the Burners get the blame – just for exercising Radical Self Reliance. And BMOrg, rather than accepting responsibility for the unique system they’ve designed and the problems it caused for tens of thousands of their most loyal customers, gets to play the innocent victim.

Despite the story going global, BMOrg haven’t even looked at the report from Ticketfly yet. From SFGate:

While Burning Man organizers confirmed they had been hacked — and that the suspected parties would be stripped of their tickets — they said they needed to see the report from Ticketfly to get into the details. Whether actual hackers posted their exploits on social media was unclear.

“We may have more information later, but Ticketfly is taking the lead on figuring out what happened,” Burning Man spokesman Jim Graham said Monday. “We don’t want to say anything that is incorrect.”

BMOrg confirmed they had been hacked? Not Ticketfly? Hmmm….

I was in at 12:00:56 and didn’t get tickets. Some were there at 12:00:02 and didn’t get them. Others logged in at 12:10 and later and bought tickets. THAT is the biggest problem, and is nothing to do with hackers.

Let’s take a condensed look at the ticket problems, as reported by Burners:

1. People wrote scripts to connect to the link at exactly 12:00:00
2. People looked at the source code of BMOrg’s web page and found what the URL would be for the link to the waiting room; entering this URL in their browser meant they didn’t have to wait until the button turned green to get in the queue
3. Bots were for sale for $750 that automatically bought tickets from Ticketfly
4. People logged in after the “Pause” and got straight through
5. People logged directly into Ticketfly, chose Burning Man, and entered their code
6. People on mobile devices on Verizon got straight through

[if you’re aware of any others, please share]

According to BMOrg, echoed through the world’s media:

200 Burners used sophisticated software hacking techniques to place themselves at the front of the queue

The comments to the WIRED article (and at Burners.Me) have been quite dismissive of the use of the word “hacking” in this story.

None of the numbered examples I listed require any hacking, or any code to be written, although #1 and #2 do require some very basic technical knowledge. So do all these methods get a pass, and there was another hack that we don’t know about? Or is BMOrg trumping up #2 as the scapegoat for all their ticket woes – before they’ve even received the report from Ticketfly? Is this whole story they’re telling simply based on speculation on Reddit? “We found these 200 people in the queue before 12:00:00, they must all be hackers”.

Even if there were more techniques used to circumvent the system, including hacking directly into the servers involved…it does not change the appalling delay between the last ticket being sold, and the 60,000 unlucky Burners in the queue being notified that they were only waiting to make a donation. For that one, they can’t blame hackers.

Meanwhile, tickets are now being offered for $1 million each on Stubhub. No word how many Mistresses of Merriment come with a million dollar ticket…

KPNR has an interview with Burning Man spokesman Jim Graham about the latest controversy in the Burnerverse.

.

The Twitter-verse was abuzz over the weekend in Nevada over Burning Man.

You all know Burning Man as the Labor Day week no-holds-barred celebration in the Black Rock Desert in the far reaches of northern Nevada.

The buzz was over the perks that the Bureau of Land Management is seeking from Burning Man organizers. The federal agency oversees the week-long event.

The agency’s list of desires reads like something a celebrity might request backstage, including soft-serve ice cream 24 hours a day, seven days a week; steaks, hamburgers, the ice cream treat choco-tacos, and a list of condiments and items that number well more than 100.

Not only that, but the Bureau wants VIP quarters, flush toilets and more.

We requested an interview with Bureau of Land Management officials but received no answer.

[Source: KPNR]

Jim revealed some hard numbers for 2014 costs.

BLM Fees were:

$2.75m cost recovery

$700,000 commercial use fees – BMOrg see this as a tax on top of the ticket price. If this is 3% of the gate then ticket sales were $23.3 million.

$600,000 infrastructure

Total $4.05 million

2011 BLM fees $1.4 million, population 54,000

2015 BLM fees $4.9 million , population 70,000

Jim said that this is a substantial increase in fees, for only 16,000 more population

Of course, the 16,000 extra population is worth $6,544,000 in bonus ticket revenue to BMOrg (at $409 a ticket).

Expected population this year is now officially 70,000 – so there could be an extra 2,000 tickets floating around, to be added to STEP or OMG. This weekend I heard a rumor of 25 tickets being available for $1500 each, but you had to buy the whole 25. Not quite sure how something like that comes about…

Jim said that the $1 million cost figure being bandied around is not just for the Blue Pit Compound. The million dollars is the sum total of all of the requests for infrastructure this year: radios, catering, flush toilets. He said their catering requests were not that unusual…“We feed more than 50,000 meals during the week – our staff and volunteers.” So it looks like the BLM are asking for an increase in the infrastructure budget from $600k to $1 million.

Burning Man are not sure who the VIPs are for the 8 designated containers in the Blue Pit.

Jim said “We house all the BLM agents in the town of Gerlach, we rent out the hotels. Vast majority of them stay there, 14 mile drive from the town out to the site – we feel that’s pretty reasonable…We don’t begrudge anybody how they’re going to live when they’re out there. ”

[Update 6/30/15 1:45pm PST]

Did I say 2,000 extra tickets? How about 12,000?

At The Hill, the Deputy Director of the BLM seems to be giving a green light to 80,000 people this year. An extra 10,000 tickets to sell will certainly pay for a lot of chocotacos.

On Monday, BLM Deputy Director Steve Ellis said the agency should “take a fresh look” at the requests. 

“I am concerned about the reported costs associated with supporting the Burning Man festival. I have directed that BLM staff take a fresh look at the initial proposals for food and facilities at the event,” Ellis said in a statement.

“Our priority is to provide for participant and employee health and safety, sanitation, and environmental compliance at this unique event that is attended by up to 80,000 people in a remote part of the Nevada Desert. I have full confidence in BLM staff and their ability to develop a plan that is cost efficient and ensures public health and safety.”

That sure would be a win/win/win compromise for everybody. Burners would win 12,000 more tickets. BMOrg would win another $5 million revenues. BLM could get a nice VIP compound and increase the infrastructure budget $400k. Looks like a pretty good deal all around, let’s hope it works out that way.

Soho Gardens is the latest ultra-luxe glamping experience at Burning Man. It is very much following the lead of previous sherpa-laden hotel experiences at Burning Man that have been highly promoted to the media, from Directors Chip Conley, Jim Tananbaum, and Chris Weitz.

So, what’s the Soho Gardens twist?

No maids, no sherpas. No fire. No drama. No ‘razis.

O. M. F. G.

How would one cope? This self-reliance thing is getting a little ridiculous. How are we supposed to rely on ourselves without maids or paparazzis? What’s the point of sherpas if some camps forbid them? Should we chain them to our camps and not let them ever go free range at Burning Man?

Soho Gardens promise to educate their guests in the Principles of Burning Man, but only about 3 of them…after that, there are better principles to focus on. And who’s to say that “Love” and “Green Energy” aren’t better than “Immediacy” and “Radical Self Reliance, anyway”? The principles are just guidelines.

Wi-Fi is available at limited hours, presumably as a free gift to all Burners.

They’re pretty specific about who they do, and don’t, want to Radically Include:

They’re looking at a few more amenities than the BLM’s Blue Pit:

They’ve figured out how to include Gifting and Radical Inclusion with the requisite VIP Exclusivity: Gift Tickets

No word yet on how much per head, but we believe there are still slots available.

Yesterday Burning Man bigwigs and BLM bigwigs got together to discuss Chocotacogate. According to the information leaked (by BMOrg?) to Jenny Kane at the RGJ: the BLM wanted $1 million+ in extra funding to build them the Blue Pit, an off-site VIP compound with 8 double rooms for visiting dignitaries; and this is all coming from one person, BLM special agent Dan Love.

Image: Burn.Life

This information – blasted widely around the world – was later quietly corrected by Burning Man spokesman Jim Graham in a radio interview on NPR, who said that actually, the BLM were just asking to increase the Infrastructure part of the budget from $600,000 to $1 million. This includes walkie talkies and other safety equipment. Part of this increase was to pay for expanded medical facilities, and only some was to provide VIP accommodation. The VIP component was coming from the highest levels of the Department of Interior, who naturally wanted to visit the event after all the media and lobbying campaigns by BMOrg. The request for food was the same as last year’s, which was met without complaint by BMOrg.

Still, the global media ran with the RGJ story, putting egg on the faces of the BLM. Some politicians were stirred to pile onto the story, including Harry Reid and Mark Amodei.

Yesterday, on the day of the meeting BLM’s Nevada Director Neil Kornze wrote a column for the RGJ, saying:

Many have read stories in recent days about a proposed lavish encampment for Bureau of Land Management employees working at the Burning Man festival that is held annually on public lands in the Nevada desert. These reports painted a troubling portrait of government employees seeking VIP accommodations and outlandish provisions. Like you, I was surprised and upset by much of what I read.

I have directed my team to take a top-to-bottom look at exactly what is needed to properly support BLM employees that have oversight responsibility for this enormous public event in a remote corner of Nevada. Our revised proposal will include only what is essential for our core operational needs for providing appropriate health, safety, and environmental safeguards on the playa. That is our commitment.

And while we undertake that review, we are also working to address critical safety and health issues at Burning Man. Over the past five years, the Burning Man event has nearly doubled in size. What was once a loosely organized gathering of a few thousand like-minded individuals is now an instant metropolis hosting 75,000 attendees, volunteers, and staff in one of the most remote corners of the American west. At its peak, Burning Man is the sixth largest city in Nevada, complete with a busy airport. Attendees come to the playa from around the world with their own ideas of what Burning Man is and ought to be.

This rapid evolution has dramatically increased the complexity of the BLM’s and Black Rock City LLC’s management responsibilities, and in recent years a series of incidents have made it clear that improvements need to be made. Last year, a total of 2,880 patients were treated for medical issues, including 71 drug overdoses, 67 trauma incidents, and 30 cases of alcohol poisoning. Tragically, a woman was killed last year when she was run over by an art car. Incidents of burglary, battery, and sexual assault have risen as the event has grown, and the BLM has also responded to flooding, aviation accidents, and out-of-control fires in recent years.

In March, the BLM raised twenty critical health, safety, and environmental issues with event organizers, including ensuring that on-site medical services are adequate to serve the vast population of Black Rock City. To date, Black Rock City LLC has only acknowledged seven of these important issues and has provided adequate plans and updates for just two.

In the coming days, the BLM will make an important course correction regarding what is needed to support our teams that are on the ground during the Burning Man event. It will also be necessary for the organizers of Burning Man to come to the table as serious partners in addressing the concerns that were identified for them months ago. We look forward to further dialogue on these issues. Our priority is to make sure that all burners come home safe and healthy.

[Source: RGJ]

Yesterday’s meeting was the first time BMOrg had met with BLM’s acting State Director John Ruhs.

From the Reno Gazette Journal:

Present at the meeting Wednesday from Burning Man were founder Larry Harvey; Marnee Benson, political affairs manager; Rosalie Barnes, agency relations and regulatory affairs manager; Ray Allen, attorney; and Goodell…For BLM, Ruhs was present along with Winnemucca district manager Gene Seidlitz, Nevada-Utah special agent in charge Dan Love and acting assistant state director Ann DeBlasi from Washington, D.C.

…the meeting centered on safety and security concerns, which have been repeatedly brought up in BLM statements to media. 

Rather than review the points of contention in documents obtained by the Reno Gazette-Journal in June, Burning Man and BLM officials discussed some of the failures and successes of working together in years past.

It sounds like the meeting ended on a positive note, but didn’t go quite the way BMorg were expecting.

“There’s a lot of heat on everyone at the moment,” Goodell said after the 90-minute meeting. “The intention of the meeting probably changed in the past 24 hours.”

“We agreed to collaborate on what we can accomplish this year, and we looked back. We looked at the present and the past,” Goodell said. “We pointed out that there’s been a 40 percent increase in the event population and a 244 percent increase in cost for the permit,”

“This was a good meeting and an opportunity to discuss our mutual interests in coming up with a plan to support Burning Man, which is a truly unique cultural event on Public Lands. We are working to come up with a plan that is cost efficient and ensures public health and safety,” Ruhs said. “We are going to do all we can to make this year’s event a success. I am confident that BLM and BRC will be able to work together to address safety and environmental concerns.”

[Source: RGJ]

The meeting discussed 20 medical and safety issues. Only 2 have been resolved, and only 7 have even been acknowledged by BMOrg. The gates open in 50 days.

From the Las Vegas Review Journal‘s Washington DC bureau:

WASHINGTON – A month and a half before the scheduled start of this year’s desert festival, organizers of the annual Burning Man in Northern Nevada have yet to resolve more than 15 health and safety issues stemming from last year’s event, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

Officials from the BLM and the Burning Man organization were meeting Wednesday in Reno to discuss outstanding issues in advance of the Aug. 30-Sept. 7 festival in the Black Rock Desert.

The federal agency has yet to issue a permit for the event. John Ruhs, the BLM acting Nevada state director, said all conditions raised in a post-event review last year must be addressed for the BLM to allow this year’s event to proceed.

Ruhs stopped short of saying the BLM might shut down Burning Man, expressing confidence an agreement could be worked out.

“We have a long ways to go yet but I’m pretty confident we will as always be able to address issues together and get to a good place with them,” Ruhs said in an interview.

But the agency took the unusual step of making public a letter listing the outstanding health and safety issues. Of 20 compiled following the 2014 festival, the BLM said 18 remain to be resolved including improvements to its medical program, transportation management and security surrounding the festival’s signature burn events.

“Last year, a total of 2,880 patients were treated for medical issues, including 71 drug overdoses, 67 trauma incidents and 30 cases of alcohol poisoning,” Ruhs said in the letter to the government affairs director of Black Rock City, LLC, the nonprofit that runs the festival. In addition, a woman from Wyoming was killed when she fell beneath a moving bus…

BLM officials on Wednesday denied they were in a tit-for-tat with Burning Man. The agency’s letter though makes a connection…

“We are now taking a top to bottom look at exactly what is needed,” Ruhs said, adding “While the BLM revises its statement of work, dialogue must also continue on a wide array of health, safety and environmental concerns raised by the BLM earlier this year.”

[Source: Las Vegas Review Journal]

Read the original letter from the BLM to BMOrg, outlining the concerns after last year’s event.

The 20 Safety, Health and Security Issues and Concerns are:

1. BRC Medical Program
2. BRC Fire, Rescue, Hazmat Programs
3. Fatality Medical Response and On-Scene Management
4. Transportation Management
5. Art Project Management
6. Security and Safety Plan for Scheduled Burn Events
7. Sanitation Management
8. Early Arrival Program
9. D-Lot Design and Management
10. Fuel Storage Management
11. Deployment of Medical Resources
12. Placement of Emergency Vehicles at the Airport
13. Highway 34 Road Conditions
14. Population Tracking and Reporting Program
15. BRC Event Table of Organization
16. BRC Event Management Program Description
17. Participant Evacuation Contingency Plan
18. Significant Incident Reporting
19. Art Car operations
20. Illicit narcotics

Time precludes me from going into much detail on this letter now, it warrants a post in itself as it reveals interesting details on a number of events last year, such as the art car fatality and Embrace burn. One thing in particular really jumped out:

The letter makes frequent references to the 2014 HGH After Action Report (AAR). If anyone has a copy of that report, please send it in. It seems that HGH raised some concerns, these concerns went to the BLM who then raised them with BMOrg – who then fired HGH.

Did BMOrg try to scapegoat HGH here? Did they think that just ditching HGH would resolve the issues, since HGH are mentioned in many of them? Perhaps they didn’t like HGH giving the Feds a list of headaches problems to fix.

The number of patients being thrown around, 2,880, is very different from what has been reported in previous years. BMOrg’s own 2014 Afterburn report said there were 6,100 medical patients last year – more than double the number the government are using. The difference may be in this magic word “treated” – this year, there will be much less treatment provided on-site by CrowdRX.

This morning I have received an Anonymous tip-off, from someone with inside information about the medical discussions. Treat this as an unconfirmed rumor, but I trust the source.

It seems that, as usual, there is much more to the story than what we’re being told.

To recap, BMOrg ditched local providers Humboldt General, who have supported the event for the last 5 years; they replaced them with festival specialist CrowdRX, who have never done a remote location event except for one Phish concert in the 90’s. The official unofficial message seems to be “nothing will change, CrowdRX will just hire all the same people as last year”.

One thing the source revealed is that BMOrg have recently filed a public information request for Pat Songer’s records of HGH’s care at the previous years Burns. It doesn’t look like there’s going to be much continuity between medical services at Burning Man between 2014 and 2015, it’s a brave new world now.

The bombshell revelation from this source is to do with off-Playa medical treatment.

In previous years, your Burning Man ticket purchased you Medical Insurance at the event. If anything happened to you at Burning Man, even if you didn’t have insurance yourself, theirs would take care of your treatment.

In the past with HGH, all care was covered, on-Playa and transport off. If anything happened to you at Burning Man and you needed to be taken to a hospital, an HGH ambulance would take you to the nearest hospital (Reno). Humboldt’s plan was to treat everything they possibly could on-site at Black Rock City.

Image: American Med Flight

Now, if anything happens, you’ll have to be taken outside the event to a Default world hospital – most likely, still Reno/Sparks. By air. There will be no medical ground transportation for medical emergencies, the plan is air transport only. Fixed wing, no helicopters.

The price for an airlift with American Med Flight is $30,000.

The rumor is that certain members of the Org are getting a better rate if they become injured and need transport. This seems to approach the idea of “kickbacks”. There may also be issues of local county permitting, in relation to this business.

This comment is from Anonymous Burner. We have no specific information on this arrangement.

Of course none of this should be a problem, since Obamacare means every person in the United States now has medical insurance. Someone else will pay! Oh, but what about the 20% of Burners from other countries? Hopefully they got travel insurance.

American Med Flight are offering a Burning Man insurance package. For only $25, if you do need their services, you won’t pay more than $7,500.

Towards the end of 2013, a former DPW manager blew the whistle on safety issues, then BMOrg lost their respected Emergency Services Director, Joseph Pred. Chaos seems to have ensued, with 18 major issues unresolved less than 2 months before the gates open. Let’s hope BMOrg can sort this out – in the circumstances, perhaps sticking with their existing partner HGH should be re-considered.

[Update 7/9/15 1:25pm]

Thanks to A Balanced Perspective for alerting us to the latest RGJ story, in which BMOrg say they have already responded to many of the BLMs concerns and there are a lot of falsehoods in the report. Keep reading for my comments.

[Update 7/9/15 4:47pm]

Someone Who Knows has given us this update:

HGH transported to Reno, just like REMSA did, not to Winnemucca. Careflight has been offering low cost membership that helps cover the whirly bird ride for years. That being said, fixed wing is actually a safer, more reliable option than helicopter in the black rock playa conditions and I highly doubt CrowdRX will not have ambulances

They sound like they do know. And I agree – surely there will be ambulances. Surely there will be helicopters. Coming soon.

[Update 7/9/15 5:30pm]

Francisco Ceballos from Humboldt General Hospital created a pro-active presentation last year, on what could be done to prevent injuries at Burning Man. One of their suggestions was to communicate with Burners via Burners.Me! Perhaps that may have led to their downfall…

Francisco was right: we would be happy to share any information that could improve the safety and wellbeing of Burners.

[Update 7/9/15 6:30pm]

BMOrg have claimed that they sent a response to BLM addressing all 20 concerns in April. We call on them to share their documentation with all Burners, not just chosen journalists at the RGJ. Why are the “After Action Reports” not part of the “After Burn Reports”?

In April, Burning Man submitted a 40-page working document that addressed “every single point” that the BLM made, according to Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell…

Burning Man’s own assessment, which is put together in collaboration with various county, state and federal agencies, including the BLM, contradicts many of the BLM’s findings. According to the Burning Man’s series of “after action reports,” the BLM’s assessment has a number of inaccuracies, including:

•All appropriate HAZMAT procedures were followed during the handling of bodily fluids following the fatal accident.

•Emergency medical services vehicles were available at all times during the event, though Humboldt General Hospital did report a sustained 11 minutes during which time five of eight vehicles were dispatched and three were “idle.” Burning Man organizers are uncertain as to why the idle vehicles were not available for use during those 11 minutes.

•Vehicles were not stranded during the delay, but instead were parked on the side of the road. Burning Man organizers at the time told participants that they had the option of going home, though most decided to wait until the weather and conditions improved.

•Pyrotechnic effects, which usually include fireworks or explosive displays, are not allowed on art cars, though Burning Man does allow flame effects, which are automated fire features.

Burning Man also took issue with Kornze’s statement Wednesday that the San Francisco-based nonprofit had not addressed enough of the agency’s concerns, saying Burning Man staff have been working with a number of agencies to improve its operations.

Burning Man created a new emergency operations chief position, according to Graham, and hired a new medical services management provider, replacing Humboldt General Hospital.

[Source: RGJ]

Here’s what Acting Nevada State Director John Ruhs told them: