I’m not excited by old fashioned ideas rammed down our throats by bureaucratic minions of the BMOrg. But I love it when enterprising members of the Burner community independently come up with incredibly useful things, and share them all with us for free. One such idea is Burnwait:

photo by Peter Ruprecht

BurnWait, a new BurnTech project that uses crowd sourcing technology to measure the current entry/exodus wait times at the gate to the Burning Man playa. BurnWait let’s people know the current wait time in advance, by email or web, before they leave home. Since the wait time can be up to 10 hours of sitting in the heat, kicking up dust, burning gas, getting burned, BurnWait will reduce world pollution and mind pollution and make the playa just that much more lovely for us all if everybody uses it.

Not quite sure how the tech works – anyone who does, please explain. But a freaking great idea, especially if email is working on the way out.

Please HELP OUT: Burnwait relies on use to work for everybody, PLEASE USE IT CORRECTLY.

Click the ALMOST HOME link below when arriving to playa at Empire/Gerlach, and the ENTERING link below when you reach the gate. That’s how BurnWait measures the wait times.
Please don’t click the wrong links or your karma may cause you to combust before ever reaching the playa…

ARRIVING CHECK-INS – I’m almost to the playa. Register my position/time, tell me the Entry wait time.
ALMOST HOME I’m in Gerlach/Empire/heading to gate road.
ENTERING I got to the gate to enter the playa.

EXODUS CHECK-INS – I’m leaving the playa. Register my position/time, tell me the Exodus wait time.
DRIVING AWAY FROM MY CAMP I’m leaving the camp to drive to the gate.
EXITING ONTO HIGHWAY I’m exiting at the playa at the highway.

GET CURRENT WAIT TIMES. I’m not at a check-in point, but want to know the waits.
CURRENT ENTRY WAIT Please use the check-ins above when you arrive, that’s how this works!
CURRENT EXIT WAIT Please use the check-ins above when you leave, hope you had a great burn!

This project is independent of the Burning Man team, and is independently created as a playa gift to you.

We know the playa connectivity is terrible!
We know. This is a pilot year to see if this works. It only takes some people getting through for the system to work. Please do your part and try hard to be one of them! Please don’t bother the gate staff if you can’t or if BurnWait isn’t working – this has nothing to do with them, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

How BurnWait works
We measure the times from when people check-in when they arrive (in Gerlach/Empire) till when they get to the playa gate. We tell you what they are. Same in reverse on the way out.

What Else You Can Do to Help
Send us creative uses for this platform to measure other kinds of waits. This is a pilot project. We are going to test it out on hospital emergency rooms next. We’ve thought about waits in traffic, borders, DMV’s, shipping times… send your ideas to ideas@burnwait.com

I like this idea – crowd-sourcing queueing information. Maybe they can do it for the ice lines at Arctica too!