Is it a coincidence? A deliberate reorganization? A quiet rebellion? Recent days have seen a spate of high-level firings, resignations, and even a strike taking place in the often insular world of the Burning Man organization.
Palmer ‘Gameshow‘ Parker, DPW’s Dispatch Manager for many years, was invited to attend Burning Man for free again in 2013, but his contract was not renewed. Gameshow has now been replaced by another long-time Dispatch worker. Those in the know were tight-lipped about it at the subsequent manager’s meeting, and simply cited “a Human Resources issue,” while other sources cited an alleged dissatisfaction with Gameshow’s ability and/or willingness to integrate DPW Dispatch with EMS personnel and their system. Gameshow himself has declined to make any official comment on the Org’s decision.
=====
Quinn Yarbrough, sometimes known as “Ghost Dancer,” was asked to resign less than a week ago after some ten years as the DPW Ranch Manager, according to sources close to him. Of course, in the corporate HR world of professional candy-coating and face-saving, “asked to resign” is just a euphemism for being fired without having to tell your next employer that you were fired.
Quinn was reportedly escorted around the ranch – his only home for the last ten years – as he gathered his belongings, like some kind of suspected thief. This is not to say that Quinn is suspected of being a thief; it’s a not-uncommon feature of big-boy corporate culture that fired employees are shepherded around by security guards and formally shown the door. What this says about the Org, about their goals, and about how very far they’ve strayed from a Cacophony Society Zone Trip is much more interesting than anything it might imply about Quinn Yarbrough, who is unfortunately unavailable for comment at this time. His Facebook page, however, gives us a public statement notable for its civilized tone; Quinn is often said to be rather a deep person, and his serene stance in the face of what must be a massive life change would seem to support that opinion of him:
“Where as word spreads like wildfire let me just say this much for now. I love you all and have nothing ill to say about anyone, it’s simply time and appropriate for our collective evolution for me to step onto a new path. Much love and gratitude for the many many memories – blessings to the Burning Man Community.”
=====
In contrast, Otto von Danger, whose calamitously controversial leadership on Burn Wall Street our very own Burnersxxx wrote about back in September 2012, posted the following comment on his Facebook page just today (presented here unedited):
“After 6 years of Militey service the government discarded me as they do many others and now after 13 years Burning Man has done the same.They invented some bullshit and fired me last night.So I’m trying to fix it but as it stands I will not be going to Burning Man anymore and Shwing is canceled.FrogBat will go on of course.”
In response to queries, Otto gave the following explanation (also unedited):
“it’s true…they said I pulled a knife on one of the Burn Wall street crew…which is obviously not true.I think that would have got me arrested.Again I’m trying to fix this but as it stands Burning Man is done with me.”
When asked why the Org would do something like that, Otto’s response was that the recently-released film SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORYportrayed him in too flattering a light, and that the Org hates successful people like himself:
“probably because I looked good in Spark is my guess…they don’t like success unless it’s thiers.”
People who have drunk a little too deeply of the Org’s kool-aid frequently chide us here at Burners.me for being too critical of their sacred icons, but in this case we have to speak up in defense of dear Uncle Larry and the other false gods of the Org-worshippers for a change: the idea that they get rid of people for being successful and appearing in films in a good light is even more absurd than the idea that Otto von Danger is successful by any objective definition of the word. Otto is clearly selling a flavor of kool-aid all his own, and his stated reasons for being dismissed are very possibly not a clear or accurate reflection of reality. Given the personality clashes and accusations of rank incompetence, volunteer abuse, mishandling of funds, and even sexual assault that were leveled at him (and his right-hand man, Jonathan ‘Fester’ Cooksey) in the weak aftermath of the Burn Wall Street project, the Org very likely had more than one excellent reason to give Otto the old heave-ho, regardless of any overarching plan to purge their ranks.
Meanwhile, during a Q and A with one of the directors after a screening of SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY in Reno, a woman in the audience asked ”why was Burn Wall Street romanticized?”
Apparently, the director’s goal was to show projects from beginning to end. . . but the darker aspects of Burn Wall Street depicted in earlier edits of SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY were deemed much too negative in comparison with the other elements of the film, and thus a great deal of ugliness connected with the project and with Otto personally was simply left on the cutting room floor in the interests of a more upbeat end product.
Otto made another interesting and not entirely accurate or true comment:
“they also fired alot of other good people this year including the entire Man base crew.”
=====
Which brings us to the Man Base crew.
As nearly as we can gather, Otto’s assertion that the entire Man Base crew is being replaced is still just speculation, although certainly a possibility. The meat of the story so far seems to be that a dispute between the Org and Travis Ludy, who has been managing the crew that builds the Man Base for years, has escalated into a strike that may very well result in the entire Man Base crew being replaced, and the size of the 2013 Man Base scaled down dramatically to make up for lost time and the lack of an experienced crew.
Ludy was paid $8000 to build the Man Base in 2012. The Org reportedly tried to cut his pay in half for 2013, and Ludy declined in favor of holding out for the whole nut. When they tried to give his job to someone on his crew instead, that person turned the job down. . . and news of the attempt to cut Ludy out over money – possibly exacerbated by other crew members being let go recently – led to the entire crew rebelling and going on strike.
We’re told that a meeting was held just today to try to settle the dispute. . . so let’s see how the balloon goes up, or how the cookie crumbles. Will the Org really scuttle the entire Man Base crew, and is it really all over a paltry four thousand dollars, or is there a welter and web of politics and personal agenda and independent problems between the Org and individuals, all coming to a head at once?
More importantly, is there some kind of a deliberate reorganization going on, and if so, what are the intentions driving it?
Burning Man’s placement team have used their newsletter to clarify for us exactly what the rules are in relation to their trademark – helping explain how to get sued by Burning Man.
And it’s just like I was saying in the last post. See for yourself – amongst other restrictions, camp fundraisers may not use any photos from the event - of the camp, or anything else.
Originally, I posted this at dinner from my iPhone, and didn’t have time to expand. I just thought it was so relevant to the post I’d just done, quoting Scribe’s essential division of Burners into 2 camps – those who think the BMOrg should be a totalitarian state and the founders should get all the profits and control it from a closed room committee, beyond even SEC Securities Laws…and those who think we make the party, we are a stakeholder in the ownership of the intellectual property too. Read the latest statement of the official position, then I will discuss at the end..
This is a public service announcement from Burning Man’s Intellectual Property Team.
Fundraising season is now in full swing, and questions from many of you have been making their way to us on the use of Burning Man’s intellectual property for fundraising purposes.
We hear you!
We therefore thought it might be helpful to share Burning Man’s approach to intellectual property (aka “IP”) with you, and how our collective IP can be used in fundraising, in case anyone still has any questions.
There are Three Topics we will address in this email:
Gifting of items containing Burning Man Logos or images
Use of the words “Burning Man” or “Black Rock City”
Personal Use of Photographs taken at the Burning Man Event
1. Gifting of the Trademark
Burning Man has federally registered symbols depicting The Man and words like “Burning Man,” “Black Rock City,” “Decompression,” “Burnal Equinox,” and “Flambe Lounge” as trademarks of Burning Man. We do this so that we can protect these symbols or words and make sure that third parties cannot use these items for commercial or other unwelcome purposes, or otherwise associate themselves with us, causing confusion as to Burning Man’s involvement. This also helps us preserve the Decommodification and Gifting Principles that are an important part of our culture. While Burning Man protects its trademarks from unauthorized use by third parties, Burning Man always encourages the community to incorporate and use the trademarks in their art and projects on the Playa.
To This End and in keeping with the Gifting principle, Burning Man permits the use of Burning Man’s trademarks (Man logos and images) on items to be GIFTED both on and off the Playa.
Totally OK:
Items with the Man trademark can be gifted at fundraising events as a thank you, note of appreciation or recognition, or as a reward in return for some achievement, contribution, or lampoon.
(Example: keychain with trademark for guests of your fundraising event or lighters with the trademark for your theme camp crew)
Projects with Kickstarter Campaigns (or similar fundraising tools) have permission from Burning Man to gift items at various price tiers that contain Burning Man’s trademarks or photography.(Example: Donate $15 to our Kickstarter and get this “gift” mug with the Man symbol- OK)
Not OK However:
You cannot sell any items with Burning Man’s trademarks. This includes vending online in peer-to-peer resale spaces as eBay or Etsy. (Examples: selling a Burning Man logo t-shirt for your theme camp on eBay or selling earrings with the man symbol on Etsy- Not OK!)
2. Use of the words “Burning Man” or “Black Rock City”
Now, a word about words. You may use the term “Burning Man” or “Black Rock City” as part of descriptive text, but do not use these words as the central adjective (or only adjective). Burning Man does not want people confused about who is sponsoring or producing the event. See the examples below.
Totally OK:
“A Fundraiser for Camp Forgotten Monsters at Burning Man.” Or
“A Fundraiser for the John Frum Institute Art Project at Burning Man,”
Not OK:
“Burning Man Fundraiser for Camp Forgotten Monsters.” or
“Burning Man Fundraiser for the John Frum Institute Art Project.”
Nuanced, but different. Two Fundraisers doing art events.
Personal use of Photographs.
Anyone who comes to the Burning Man event is allowed to take photographs for personal use. This means it is absolutely ok to share these images with friends, post these images on social networks, print personal copies and share your media in informal presentations. However, as soon as the use of media taken at the Burning Man event expands to non-personal use, you need advance permission from Burning Man. See examples below.
Totally OK:
Posting images from the Burning Man event on Facebook to your personal account;
Gifting your friend a lovely photo from the event.
Not OK However:
Posting images from the Burning Man event to your Theme Camp Fundraiser Page or website;
Selling images captured at Burning Man in any manner.
If you want to sell or post photos professionally, you must work with press@burningman.com for permission to shoot, record and distribute images you take at the event.
Given the kinds of questions that have been raised, and the uses we allow for fundraisers, hopefully we have answered any questions you may have regarding Burning Man’s approach to intellectual property.
But if you do have any more questions, please feel free to shoot us an email at:
Thanks again, VERY much, for all the wonderfully mind-blowing stuff that you are doing! We wish you a very successful fundraising season ahead!
What’s new? Well, you have to look at the use of the language. Someone there – and maybe it’s more than one person involved in this – is trying to claim ownership of more than they really have. A cheek, when their ownership in the first place has been disputed since the beginning. There’s a long history of dispute between the owners, the founders, and the Burners over all this stuff. I never signed a contract with Burning Man, did you? Maybe you did. They try to have implicit contracts in the legalese on the tickets, in your application on the web site, any chance they can – to make it seem like you’ve entered into a contract with them. This is similar to Apple’s 48 page license agreement – did you read it? Did you sign a contract? Or did you just click “Agree”? This is a VERY grey area of the law that has yet to be effectively tested for enforceability in the United States.
What do I mean by use of language? I only did one year of Law at college, my grades were pretty good but it was not my thing. However, in my career I’ve had to deal with lots of lawyers abouts lots and lots of different things. Particularly pertaining to software and intellectual property. I’ve asked Burners.Me’s resident Samoan Attorney General Counsel Toburn to chime in but he’s no doubt out at some fabulous musical event tonight.
So for now you’ll have to follow my lead, if I’m wrong or it’s arguable, please comment. Let’s look at the first blatant example:
Burning Man has federally registered symbols depicting The Man and words like “Burning Man,” “Black Rock City,” “Decompression,” “Burnal Equinox,” and “Flambe Lounge” as trademarks of Burning Man. We do this so that we can protect these symbols or words and make sure that third parties cannot use these items for commercial or other unwelcome purposes, or otherwise associate themselves with us, causing confusion as to Burning Man’s involvement. This also helps us preserve the Decommodification and Gifting Principles that are an important part of our culture. While Burning Man protects its trademarks from unauthorized use by third parties, Burning Man always encourages the community to incorporate and use the trademarks in their art and projects on the Playa
Weasel words. “Federally registered symbols” – the first red flag. What does that mean? Why don’t they just say trademarks? Perhaps it’s because they own copyrights, and design marks, and even some trademarks – but they do not AT ALL have control over the common English words “Burning Man” in the way this paragraph implies.
First of all, it’s common use words. They can trademark “Facebook” but they can’t trademark “Face” and “Book”. Sony owns “Playstation” but not “Play” or “Station”. If you make a logo with the words “Face” and “Book” in it, that is blue and white like the Facebook logo, you might encounter issues of trade dress – if not misleading imitation. But you can say “use my face book” or “face my use book” or “face book my use” as long as you want (although the last one is somewhat arguable, since “to facebook” has become a verb associated with the software company’s brand).
Next, there are different categories of trademark. So Apple Computer, Inc., owns the trademark on “Apple” in the computer space, but not in the food space. And not in the music space either – the Beatles’ label Apple Records famously got there first. We’ve covered this before: in the United States, Burning Man owns the trademark “Burning Man” for community festivals.
The BURNING MAN trademark is filed in the category of Education and Entertainment Services . The description provided to the USPTO for BURNING MAN is ORGANIZING COMMUNITY FESTIVALS FEATURING A VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES, NAMELY, LIVE MUSIC, ART DISPLAYS, AND PARTICIPATORY GAMES; CONDUCTING ENTERTAINMENT EXHIBITIONS IN THE NATURE OF ART FESTIVALS; AND ENTERTAINMENT IN THE NATURE OF ART FESTIVALS.
So you can’t have an art event with live music called Burning Man. And you might not be able to have a live music event with art, either. An electronic music festival? With VJs lighting the stage, but no art displays or participatory games? Seems to me that would be completely fine. Bring a few art cars, get Alex Grey there live painting, and you might get in trouble if you’re calling it Burning Man. Call them “light cars” or “flame cars” and you might be sweet. There’s no reason why you couldn’t have a clothing label – although they’ve sued against this in the past successfully. It’s the same thing for Decompression – you can’t have a musical event called that without their permission as mark owners, but you can sell diving equipment.
This is not legal advice, you want to do something like that go and get a professional opinion. But this is my armchair opinion. As long as you make it clear that you are NOT affiliated with the owners of the Burning Man trademark for the community festival category, which might confuse the consumer, you’re completely fine. And if your use of the trademark is not in the category of trademark they own (Community Festivals featuring Art, Live Muisc and Games), you’re fine (except if someone else owns a mark in that category). That’s what the law says, as far as I can tell.
You wouldn’t get that from reading the trademark ownership the way BMOrg describes it, would you?
I understand their request that “you can call this Tiki Island Burning Man fund raiser, but you can’t call it Burning Man Tiki Island fund raiser” is not unreasonable. That is: if they were the owner of the trademark “Burning Man” for fundraisers. But they’re not – they’re just using clever legalese to make it seem like they are.
Thirdly, and most relevant to the concept of getting there first, there’s the question of prior art.
Most significantly, a musical festival called “Burning Man” was held in the exact same space, with many of the same people, before Black Rock City, LLC was formed, and the words were in common use to describe a certain style of music festival by the time this trademark was filed in 2003. There was an original “service mark” filed on September 12, 1995, and there were some legal stoushes over its ownership before the refiling of the new trademark in 2003. The original event held on Baker Beach with a flaming effigy has its roots in the Cacophony Society, who first brought this motley crue out to Black Rock City in 1990; the first official use of the term “Burning Man” in relation to this festival is murky, but the other day when I was doing the historical research I called it as 1996. Anyway, years before the formation of Black Rock City LLC, and tens of thousands of people already using those generic words to describe a particpatory music festival. According to Wikipedia, Burning Man started in 1986, but 1996 was the year everybody gave it a name:
1996 was the first year a formal partnership was created to own the name “Burning Man” and was also the last year that the event was held in the middle of the Black Rock Desert with no fence around it.
Going back even further, pioneers in the American desert have been throwing events based around a “Burning Man” for a hundred years:
Zozobra (“Old Man Gloom”) is the name of a giant marionetteeffigy which is built and burned every autumn during Fiestas de Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, usually during the second week of September. As his name suggests, he embodies gloom; by burning him, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous year in the flames.[1] Anyone with gloom that they need to get rid of can come by the offices of the Santa Fe Reporter in the weeks leading up to the burn to drop off slips of paper with personal gloom written on them. Many people put legal papers in the gloom box as well. At the festival the papers from the gloom box are placed at Zozobra’s feet to be burned alongside him.
Fiestas de Santa Fe has been held since 1712 to celebrate the Spanish retaking of the city in 1692 by Don Diego de Vargas from the Pueblo tribes who had occupied the city since the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The burning of Zozobra dates from 1924. William Howard Shuster, Jr. came up with the idea of creating the effigy, also called Old Man Gloom, and ritual burning. Zozobra means “anxiety” in Spanish. Shuster’s idea was probably influenced by Mexican cartonería (papier-mâché sculpture), especially the effigies exploded during the burning of Judas that takes place on Holy Saturday or New Year’s Eve, as a way of ridding oneself or one’s community of evil.
Today in Santa Fe more than 50,000 people go to watch Zozobra, who stands fifty feet tall. His burning marks the start of three days of celebration that includes traditional mass at St. Francis Cathedral; a reenactment of the Entrada, when Don Diego de Vargas returned to the city; a Children’s Pet Parade; and the Historical/Hysterical Parade. The Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe builds Zozobra and burns the effigy at Fort Marcy Park. The Zozobra that was burned on September 7, 2007, was certified by Guinness World Records as the largest marionette in the world,[1] measuring 15.21 m (49.11 feet) in height.[2
You might have heard a lot of the hype about the new documentary about Burning Man, Spark. It’s screening tonight in Reno at 7:30, then playing to 1400 people in Washington DC, heading to New York City, and playing to 500 or so up my way in Santa Rosa on July 9.
There is a plethora of other documentaries about Burning Man. Like, Dust and Illusions – the film Burning Man doesn’t want you to see, or the excellent Emmy-nominated Current TV coverage of a few years back (now seemingly deleted from the Current.TV web site, since its acquisition from Al Gore by the Arabian network Al Jazeera).
So what makes this one different?
Well, for one, the Burning Man founders have been quite prominent in attending its premieres around the country. That certainly wasn’t the case with Dust and Illusions. It debuted at SXSW in Austin this year, to mixed reviews. And the BMOrg have been behind it too, talking it up in the Jacked Rabbit Speaks and the official Burning Man web site. They even went so far as to create an entire online portal called Spark – which at the time I thought was a coincidence, but read on, perhaps not…(I’m not sure I can pin the coincidental name of nearby town Sparks, Nevada on BMOrg but if anyone has any Burnileaks style info on this, please send it in!)
Just like the 7 Scandals besetting Our Prez right now, the leadership of Burning Man has yet another new scandal to contend with, thanks to the hard work of a perceptive Burner investigative journalist. Scribe is the author of The Tribes of Burning Man, probably the best book about Burning Man’s history (although if you want photos, Tomas Loewy’s Radical Burning Desert gets a lot of use on my coffee table).
He’s also a writer for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and their specialist on Burning Man. His recent 5-page cover story raises a lot of questions about the Spark Movie, and how much truth the Burner community is actually getting from the founders and leaders of BMOrg about what is going on.
A documentary called Spark: A Burning Man Story is arriving on the big screen, with dreams of wide distribution, at a pivotal moment for the San Francisco-based corporation that has transformed the annual desert festival into a valuable global brand supported by a growing web of interconnected burner collectives around the world.
Is that a coincidence, or is this interesting and visually spectacular (if slightly hagiographic) film at least partially intended to shore up popular support for the leadership of Burning Man as the founders cash out of Black Rock City LLC and supposedly begin to transfer more control to a new nonprofit entity?
Radical Burning Desert by Tomas Loewy
Filmed during last year’s ticket fiasco — in which high demand and a flawed lottery system created temporary scarcity that left many essential veteran burners without tickets during the busy preparation season — both the filmmakers and leaders of Burning Man say they needed to trust one another.
After all, technology-entrepreneur-turned-director Steve Brown was given extensive, exclusive access to the sometimes difficult and painful internal discussions about how to deal with that crisis. And if he was looking to make a film about the flawed and dysfunctional leadership of the event — ala Olivier Bonin’s Dust & Illusions — he certainly had plenty of footage to make that storyline work.
But that wasn’t going to happen, not this time — for a few reasons. One, Brown is a Burning Man true believer and relative newbie who took its leaders at face value and didn’t want to delve into the details or criticisms of how the event is managed or who will chart its future. As he told us, that just wasn’t the story he wanted to tell.
“We got trusted by the founders of Burning Man to do this story,” he told us. “They were in the process of going into a nonprofit and they wanted to get their message out into the world.”
So, sort of an authorized biography then.
Well, actually, more like a commissioned puff piece corporate story:
the filmmakers and their subjects are essentially in a partnership. Brown and the LLC’s leaders reluctantly admitted to us that there is a financial arrangement between the two entities and that the LLC will receive revenues from the film, although they wouldn’t discuss details with us.
Chris Weitz, an executive producer on the film, is also on the board of directors of the new nonprofit, The Burning Man Project, along with his wife, Mercedes Martinez. Both were personally appointed by the six members of the LLC’s board to help guide Burning Man into a new era.
Usually, if you star in a movie, you get paid. At least, you get a credit. In this case, we’re all the stars, we’re the talent, we pay to go there…and they profit from our images till the cows come home. How much? No-one’s saying, but for $150k you can do a Vogue Magazine Photo Shoot out there!
“We saw it as location fees. We’re making an investment, they’re making an investment,” he said, refusing to provide details of the agreement. “The arrangement we had with Burning Man is similar to the arrangements anyone else has had out there.”
Goodell said the LLC’s standard agreement calls for all filmmakers to either pay a set site fee or a percentage of the profits. “It’s standard in all of the agreements to pay a site fee,” Goodell said, noting that the LLC recently charged Vogue Magazine $150,000 to do a photo shoot during the event.
No wonder BMOrg were so pissed at Krug. They wanted their $150k. Or at least a pallet of champagne! Wonder if Town and Country had to pay similar buck$ too. This sponsorship of Burning Man by magazines, fashion labels etc. could be very lucrative, and could explain the difference between reported gate revenues (around $22 million) and the BLM fee of $1.87m for 3% – which brings us to a total event revenue closer to $62 million. What’s the deal with the missing 40 million dollars? Is the event actually much bigger than the permits, like some have speculated? Or is Burning Man cashing in big time on books, movies, TV shows, photo shoots, merchandising, the whole shebang?
Scribe very perceptively delves into the timing of this movie, with its unprecedented access to the founders and Org; the bizarre ticket lottery scandal, which could be looked at as a “culture jam” that shook the community up and made very clear the divide between veteran Burners (not so welcome any more, time to move on) and the new generation of Burgins (welcomed with open arms). It certainly made a great story thread for them to base a movie around – stirring the petri dish of Burners, creating carefully cultivated controversy amongst their Cargo Cult subjects with strange moves like “70% Virgins”. The other aspect of the timing of note is Larry Harvey’s announcement in 2011 (on April 1, no less) that Burning Man would transition to a non-profit over the next 3 years. We’ve got less than a year to go, and the vision and transition do not seem clear even to the leaders. Indeed, the Burning Man founders seem to be stepping back from their original idea of relinquishing control.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but Scribe thinks it’s going to bring a few eye-rolling moments to veteran Burners:
More cynical burner veterans may have a few eye-rolling moments with this film and the portrayals of its selfless leadership. While the discussions of the ticket fiasco raised challenging issues within the LLC, its critics came off as angry and unreasonable, as if the new ticket lottery had nothing to do with the temporary, artificial ticket scarcity (which was alleviated by summer’s end and didn’t occur this year under a new and improved distribution system).
And when the film ends by claiming “the organization is transitioning into a nonprofit to ‘gift’ the event back to the community,” it seems to drift from overly sympathetic into downright deceptive, leaving viewers with the impression that the six board members are selflessly relinquishing the tight control they exercise over the event and the culture it has spawned.
Yet our interview with the LLC leadership shows that just isn’t true. If anything, the public portrayals that founder Larry Harvey made two years ago about how this transition would go have been quietly modified to leave these six people in control of Burning Man for the foreseeable future.
So, is there actually a transition going on to a non-profit? Well, apparently, it’s complicated:
As altruistic as Spark makes Burning Man’s transition to nonprofit status sound, Harvey made it clear during the April 1, 2011 speech when he announced it that it was driven by internal divisions that almost tore the LLC board apart, largely over how much money departing board members were entitled to.
The corporation’s bylaws capped each board member’s equity at $20,000, a figure Harvey scoffed at as ridiculously low, saying the six board members would decide on larger payouts as part of the transition and they have refused to disclose how much (Sources in the LLC tell me the payouts have already begun. Incidentally, author Katherine Chen claimed in her book Enabling Creative Chaos that the $20,000 cap was set to quell community concerns about the board accumulating equity from everyone else’s efforts, but Harvey now denies that account).
In that speech, Harvey also said the plan was to turn over operation of the Burning Man event to the nonprofit after three years, and then three years later to transfer control over the Burning Man brand and trademarks and to dissolve the LLC (see “The future of Burning Man,” 8/2/11).
Board member Marian Goodell assured us at the time that the LLC would be doing extensive outreach to gather input on what the future leadership of the event and culture should look like: “We’re going to have a conversation with the community.”
But with just a year to go until the event was scheduled to be turned over to the nonprofit board, there has been no substantive transfer, the details of what the leadership structure will look like are murky — and the six board members of Black Rock LLC still deem themselves indispensable leaders of the event and culture.
The filmmakers say that the transition to the nonprofit was one of the things that drew them to the project, but the ticket fiasco came to steal their focus, mostly because the nonprofit narrative was simply too complex and confusing to easily convey on film.
According to Burning Man’s main founders Larry and Marian, everything is just fine. They’re on track to transfer the ownership to a new structure. They can’t just put everything into the Burning Man Project, so they’re still figuring out what to do with that and how it will interact with the party event. They definitely don’t want it to be a bureaucratic tyranny, so to protect us from that they’re going to control the culture more than ever before:
“We’re pretty much on schedule,” Harvey told me, noting that he still hopes to transfer ownership of the event over to the nonprofit next year. “The nonprofit is going well, and then we have to work out the terms of the relationship between the event and the nonprofit. We want the event to be protected from undue meddling and we want it to be a good fit.”
From our conversations, it appears that a new governance structure seems synonymous with the “meddling” they want to avoid.
“We want to make sure the event production has autonomy, so it can water the roads without board members deciding which roads and the number of tickets and how many volunteers,” Goodell said. “We did look at basically plopping the entire thing into the nonprofit, but if you look at what we’re trying to do out in the world, we don’t have any interest in becoming a big, large government agency.”
It was an analogy they returned to a few times: equating a new governance structure with bureaucratic tyranny. They rejected the notion that the new nonprofit would have “control” over the event, even though they want it to have “ownership” of the event.
“You just said the control of the event would be turned over to the nonprofit,” Goodell said.
“No, the ownership,” Harvey added.
“Yeah, there’s a difference,” Goodell said.
That difference seems to involve whether the six current board members would be giving up their control — which she said they are not.
“All six of us plan to stay around. We’re not going off to China to buy a little house along the Mekong River,” Goodell said.
“We want to make sure the event production company has sufficient autonomy, they can function with creating freedom and do what it does best, which is producing the Burning Man event, without being unduly interfered with by the nonprofit organization,” Harvey said.
“That’s why you heard it one way initially, and you’re hearing it slightly differently now, and it could go back again,” Goodell said. “We don’t think it’s sensible, either philosophically or fiscally, to essentially strip away all these entities and take all these employees and plop them in the middle of The Burning Man Project.”
In other words, Black Rock LLC and its six members will apparently still produce the event — and it’s not clear what, exactly, the nonprofit will do.
“We are giving up LLC-based ownership control, we are not giving up the steerage of the culture,” Goodell said. “That we’re not giving up. We’re more necessary now than ever.”
Scribe finishes his piece by presenting the two different viewpoints at play here.
There are at least a couple ways for burner true believers to look at the event, its culture, and its leadership. One is to see Burning Man as a unique and precious gift that has been bestowed on its attendees by Harvey, its wise and selfless founder, and the leadership team he assembled, which he formalized as an LLC in 1997.
That seems to be the dominant viewpoint, based on reactions that I’ve received to past critical coverage (and which I expect to hear again in reaction to this article), and it is the viewpoint of the makers of this film. “They’ve dedicated their lives to creating this platform that allows people to go out and create art,” Brown said.
Another point-of-view is to see Burning Man as the collective, collaborative effort that it claims to be, a DIY experiment conducted by the voluntary efforts of the tens of thousands of people who create the art and culture of Black Rock City from scratch, year after year.
Yes, we should appreciate Harvey and the leaders of the event, and they should get reasonable retirement packages for their years of effort. But they’ve also had some of the coolest jobs in town for a long time, and they now freely travel the world as sort of countercultural gurus, not really working any harder than most San Franciscans.
The latter point is felt by many old time Burners, who are often under-employed and under-funded. The art is made collaboratively, and financed collaboratively. By us, not the BMOrg. Many feel that we’ve all made this event together and that the BMOrg is being unfair in their ruthless persecution of anyone trying to make a buck in the Burner commuity, while simultaneously maximizing profits behind closed doors and doing all kinds of licensing deals without any transparency. They don’t have to share the profits, it’s not communism, but at least let the rest of the Burner ecosystem profit from Burning Man too. Do they want to be Apple and Microsoft (who pay people to develop the intellectual property that they license and control) or do they want to be Open Source (where a community gifts to the commons, for the good of all)? We’ve all heard the talk, it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in the next year if they actually do sort their transition plans out.
Burning Man 2.0 is starting to look suspiciously like Burning Man 1.0… just with less transparency; tighter control over the culture; stepped up political campaigning in Washington, Nevada, and San Francisco; new revenue streams from new media and new markets leading to a hugely expanded scope of revenue production from the event and brand that we all co-created together – aka “we pay them to be the talent and we take care of our own wardrobe, travel, accomodation and all expenses too”; more fragmented volunteer-run organizations that may or may not be doing lots of useful stuff away from the party to give back to the community; and last but by absolutely no means least, an unprecedented public relations blitz.
In an earlier post I raised the possibility that Burning Man’s interviews with Bloomberg could be seeding the garden for a possible IPO. Interestingly, this story was presented on Bloomberg as “The Spark That Created Burning Man Festival”. Spark again. Burn Wall Street – that’s certainly one way to get Wall Street’s attention, before you hit them up for money on your roadshow for “Silicon Valley’s Hottest Startup“.
Is there some multi-year plan afoot here, similar to Facebook’s idea to release an Oscar-winning movie before announcing their IPO (with another movie)? Or is it just a coincidence that Burning Man seems to have taken the travelling, speaking, and interviewing to a whole ‘nother dimension in the last couple of years?
Watch this space – Scribe has conducted quite a few interviews about this story, and will be bringing us more soon.
Burning Man is a major economic and cultural influence in the Northern Nevada region. Still, there are some who don’t want it there at all and some who want to crack down on nudity or tax it more. In recent legal stoushes, both Burning Man and Pershing County claimed victories. This time…building on top of their recent success against the land-sailor – it’s good news for Burners and bad news for the haters. Nevada has just ruled in favor of Burning Man being allowed to provide us our right to nudity, because we’re on Federal Land, and haters other counties be damned. Nevada has given us Burners a strong signal: they ♥ Burning Man. And they also ♠♣♦ Burners too.
The Associated Press (via Reno’s 4 News) had this to say on the matter:
PANDAS! GIANTS!
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has signed into law a bill that streamlines the permitting process for the Burning Man festival and other events on federal land.
The new law gives counties the right to opt out of state permitting requirements for events held on federal land that already undergo a comprehensive federal permitting process.
Pershing County commissioners earlier passed a resolution exempting Burning Man from county permitting requirements.
Burning Man spokesman Ray Allen calls the new law “a huge victory” for the festival. He says it “ensures local permitting requirements won’t infringe upon the First Amendment rights of Burning Man participants.”
The anything-goes art and music festival leading up to Labor Day draws over 50,000 people from around the world to the Black Rock Desert, some 100 miles north of Reno.
The new law takes effect July 1.
Needless to say, BMOrg was stoked, claiming this as a major victory – not just for Burning Man, but for the whole Constitution and First Amendment.
This is a huge victory for the Burning Man event,” said Raymond Allen, Government Affairs Representative for Black Rock City, LLC. “The law ensures local permitting requirements won’t infringe upon the First Amendment rights of Burning Man participants. It also ensures the continued right of assembly for the entire event.”
… As a result of collaborative negotiations involving Burning Man representatives, Pershing County officials and the Nevada Association of Counties, Pershing County commissioners already passed a resolution exempting Burning Man from county permitting requirements in perpetuity.
For a lot of people, Burning Man is a once-a-year thing. They spend more or less time getting ready for and/or recovering from their trip to the desert, but it’s still essentially a vacation for them, a get-away, a short break from their ‘real’ lives. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course.
Some of those people are simply unaffected; they’ve been there, they’ve seen what goes on and maybe even participated, but they don’t necessarily define themselves as ‘burners’ and don’t spend an inordinate amount of time thinking or talking about Burning Man (yes, such people do exist). It’s kind of a dead giveaway, though, when you hear people rhapsodizing about the single week they spend at the event as though it is what defines them as people above all else, and yet also represents the entirety of their contact with and participation in burner culture. It seems like the more entranced you are with the Ten Principles, or the more enchanted you are by something like an unexpected whiff of dust while poking around in the garage, the more likely you are to be someone who thinks that Burning Man is just a short-term thing that happens once a year.
We’re not trying to be burnier-than-thou about it, or put anyone down, but Burning-Man-the-event is only the tip of the iceberg; no matter where in the world you are, there are opportunities not too far away for you to get together with other like-minded people and be that amazing all year long. . . which, really, can be even better than the annual party at Black Rock.
You don’t have to be at Burning Man to burn, and you don’t have to quit your job or give all your clothes to charity to burn all year ’round. You don’t need a ticket, or permission from anyone. All you need is the will and whatever leisure time you can free up, and you can transform your life and the lives of others for (what we fondly regard as) the better.
Today, the Org put their new Regionals web site up, where you can get contact information to help you hook up with your tribe wherever you are. The new site is located at http://regionals.burningman.com. The old site will be made available soon at http://crabgrass.burningman.com, which is probably a good thing, as nearly fifty Regionals have yet to copy their data from the old site to the new.
If you don’t see the new site when you visit http://regionals.burningman.com, you may need to clear your cache, or restart your browser. The new site may not be available to you yet; DNS changes do take time to propagate throughout the world, but within 48 hours of this writing the change should be global.
The Org’s web development team asks that you “keep an eye out for bad links from the old site,” and drops a tantalizing hint: “There’s an easter egg. . . on the Second Life page.”
So what are you waiting for? Why are you still here? Go get connected! Find some people doing something great in your area, and arrange to spend some time with them. Be awesome, help out where you can, and don’t worry about what you’re getting out of it. . . generally speaking, you’ll find that you get a lot out of it without having to look to your own interests much.
Almost everywhere, anyway — Image: regionals.burningman.com
