It seems there has been lots of turnover at the top at BMOrg over the last couple of years. Out with the old, in with the new…or out with the old, WTF do we do now? This seems to have left somethings up in the air, with less than a month to go. Rat Lady has stepped up to help out with mobility-challenged transportation; and now Burning Man needs our help to restore the Live Feed from the Playa that was enjoyed in the past by so many who couldn’t attend the party, or wanted to get psyched up on the way up.

Here’s the UStream Channel.

From Camp Envy’s facebook page:

Jim Graham here, communications director for Burning Man. Thanks for your interest in helping with this year’s webcast. 

Here’s what we’re dealing with. Our webcast team, who’s been doing it for more than 10 years, decided it’s time to pass the torch. I’ve just recently come on board as the comm director and didn’t realize the team was using its own equipment to live stream the event and the burn. 

In the best of all worlds, I’m hoping to put together a small team to manage this year’s webcast, including providing the tower-mounted camera and video encoders / streaming box, regularly checking the stream to make sure it’s online and occasionally climb the center camp tower to clean the camera lens. (This last one might be optional since I’ve got someone who really likes to climb.) The signal would go into our Network Operations Center in Center Camp and out to Ustream from there.

A fallback position is that we purchase new hardware and hand it to someone with expertise installing it on the tower. And then monitor the feed throughout the week and during the burn. 

Experience with maintaining the hardware and software portions is key. 

In past years we’ve had BMIR streaming on the audio feed (we use Ustream) and we’ve had a camera that can be remotely controlled by participants. The BMIR option this year would be a “nice to have”. We’re open to having the camera target a small number of installations and cycle between them, but having the camera controlled by people online is not going to be an option.

We plan to take very good care of the person or persons who can help us out this year. We’re be looking at a bit more sophisticated set up for 2014. 

If you are still interested and can handle the hardware side as well as the streaming, shoot me an email and include your phone number so I can give you a call.

Thanks again for your interest.

Jim / ronjon
Communications Director
Burning Man and Burning Man Project

So, anyone who knows anything about streaming video live on the Internet, or even better providing P/T/Z controls to multiple Internet users…BMOrg needs your help.

Set Smartphones to UStream! Data plans be damned, maybe this could be the biggest U-Streamed event yet. Everyone holding their smartphones in the air, who needs glowsticks?