May 20 2015

Concierges At Burning Man: Now Made Official [Updates]

There was a bit of an uproar last year when we shared that Festivals Concierge Service were making money from Burning Man. Well, it seems they’ve read the rules and done their best to comply with them – and no less than Larry Harvey’s words are being used to pitch their product.

As we predicted, Larry & Co’s response to last year’s Commodification Camp Concerns has been to give a full green light to concierges, commodification camps, Mistresses of Merriment, and anything else the VIPs require.

From Festival Concierge Service:

Burning Man is not a festival like no other, it is a community experience based on 10 principles that serve as guidelines.

The services we offer for Burning Man are intended to assist you in the preparation and organization of your Burn.

We do not offer on-site concierge services.

In any case we sell the Burning Man Experience. It is a unique personal experience, and is made possible only through your participation and understanding of the ten principles.

“Scan Burning Man’s Ten Principles, and you will not find radical equality among them. This is because our city has always been a place where old and young, and rich and poor, can live on common ground. The word for this is fellowship, as in the fellowship of a club or lodge whose members, however diverse, are united by common values and a sense of shared experience. But common ground is not a level playing field, and should not be interpreted as mandating equal living conditions.”

> Larry Harvey (Burning Man co-founder) : Equality, Inequity, Iniquity : Concierge Culture

The services, which are all provided by BLM-Licensed Outside Services Contractors, include:

ACCOMMODATIONS

ON-SITE RV SERVICES

TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM BURNING MAN

PLUG AND PLAY CAMP PLACEMENT

MUTANT VEHICLE (ART CAR) PRODUCTION AND RENTAL

SEGWAY AND ELECTRIC SKATEBOARD RENTAL

BIKE AND DECORATION

COSTUME DESIGN AND PERSONNAL SHOPER

[Update 5/21/1 6:09pm PST]

Take a look at this. Big thanks to Anonymous Burner for sharing this. BMOrg has already known about this for almost 3 weeks, and the site is still up. And why wouldn’t it be? They are conforming to the rules. They only deal with licensed vendors who give the Feds a percentage of their sales.

The trolls have come out for us very swiftly after this post. Did we hit some sort of nerve?

Within an hour of me posting this story, James of San Diego appeared on our web page, saying:

Burners XXX of burners.me spends years talking shit and dishing out hate then gets called out and identified by Danger Ranger. Then BurnersXXX cries and whines cause he can’t take the criticism. Trolls don’t let your mouth write a check your ass can’t cash…Although many long term Eplayans are way bigger assholes and are anonymous.

For anyone that doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or is open minded enough to judge for themselves the definition of “cries and whines”, you can read my previous response on this matter. There’s no doubt that one thing this commenter is saying is true: the officially sanctioned BMOrg forums on ePlaya suffer from low traffic, and high trolls. It’s not just that trolls are allowed to be there, abusing and bullying others, with support piled on from paid BMOrg employees: some of them think they have so many of the “suck up points” required to game the system, that they feel completely backed by the Org whenever they want to let their personal fancies assault the lives of others.

When you see someone on the Internet saying “so and so’s a troll”, you should wonder if really it is the person named by the attack – or is it the nay-sayer accusing others of not conforming to their desired way of being.

If you haven’t read it yet (and even if you have it’s worth a refresher) please check out our post How To Spot An Online Troll. Thanks to Jan Irvin at Gnostic Media for some of the key parts of that article which are his writing and insights.

Spring is here and troll season has begun once more. The Ministers of Propagandas (of those organizations that employ them) are looking for things to do, victims to cyber-bully, and misinformation to sow…

Badger then came over to www.burners.me to tell us:

I can’t believe you stooges have fallen for this faux site.

I can’t believe there are any stooges left who are drinking the Kool Aid so much that they’d think “Larry & Co would never allow private concierges at Burning Man”…when Larry himself writes a lengthy blog post entitled “Concierge Culture” and explaining why wealth divisions have never been a problem and rich people should be allowed to ignore Radical Self Reliance if they can afford to.

Source: Voices of Burning Man

PDR agreed with Badger, that Festival Concierge Services is not a real web site.

These are the same people as last year. They were in touch with us then, and they’re in touch with us now. The New York Times already wrote about it (quoting Burners.Me as a trusted source). The Key Group, private concierge service out of Luxembourg, has a highly desirable existing customer base of Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals. A-list Hollywood stars, princes and princesses, Billionaire’s Row, Mega-Sparkle Ponies, political pundits, the DEA, FBI BLM and other unnamed alphabet agencies, experimental Google technologies, even now frikking cartoon characters…this is Burning Man 2.0. Everyone requires a handler, for their Radical Self Reliance. If you handle yourself, you’re doing it wrong.

Personally I think we should be giving FCS some props for adjusting their pitch to better suit our culture, after last year’s feedback – almost 100 comments and 1000 shares just at this site, not to mention Larry’s loqacious diatribe against Marxism. Isn’t that what we want – we complain, they listen, they remove the things we were complaining about, and from then on they conform to the rules. Is that what we’re trying to achieve? Making Burners conform to rules? Or “teach them a lesson”, is that the purpose of all this?

I am neither endorsing nor condemning Burning Man concierges. People who’ve never had access to a concierge before probably think it’s something special. Like most VIP sections, it’s really not.

However, when Larry & Co promote it by writing blog posts justifying it, it’s hard to rail against it very much. Go with the flow, I say…

This is much more of a problem to me.

Legitimate Burners lucky enough to win tickets, get them snatched away by the bureaucracy…and yet, the Concierge Commodification Camps seem to have tickets not only for their guests and entourages, but also for the sherpas, Mistresses of Merriment, and other staff.

Every year, they make it harder and harder for Veteran Burners to get tickets. “Oh it’s a numbers game. It’s supply and demand. There’s no possible way to fix it”. I call Bravo Sierra. Problems can be solved, if there is a desire to. There’s certainly enough brainpower amongst the million-strong online Burner community.

[Update 5/21/15 7:07pm]

Thanks to FIGJAM for sharing this over at ePlaya. The latest from Answer Girl and the full complement of the 2015 Placement Team. There is no such thing as Commodification Camps – all camps are the same, regardless of how much they charge per hotel room or how many sherpas they employ. It’s just a spectrum, and everyone in the spectrum is welcome. Plug-n-plays are welcome, as long as they have an interactive component on offer to other camps. Like popsicles.

The Placement Team is up and running at full complement and the Burning Man Headquarters team is fully operational.We made some changes to our Theme Camp and Placement policies following events in 2014 involving TurnKey camps, and we wanted to inform you of them so you can plan accordingly.Definitions:TurnKey is a category of camps along a spectrum. At one end of the continuum are camps that depend on supported infrastructure to create on playa projects. At the other end are camps providing vacation type experience packages for campmates with no specific requirement for contribution.In 2014 Burning Man placed 12 TurnKey camps all of whom indicated they would offer an interactive aspect to be enjoyed by the entire Burning Man community.For 2015, all Placed Camps (other than infrastructure support camps) will be held to the same standards in order to receive placement, early arrival passes and access to the Directed Group Sale.

Theme Camp Placement Criteria / Standards:

Other than event infrastructure camps, all camps will be held to the same standards of inclusion and participation regardless of how the camp is structured. All Theme Camps requesting placement will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

1. Theme Camps should be visually stimulating, have an inviting design and a plan for bike parking and crowd management.

2. Theme Camps must be interactive. They should include activities, events or services within their camps that must be available to the entire Burning Man community.

3. Theme Camps must be neighbourly. This includes keeping sound within set limits, controlling where camp generators vent exhaust, and easily resolving any boundary disputes that may arise.

4. Theme Camps must have a good previous MOOP record (for returning camps).

5. Theme Camps must follow safety protocols designed by the organization (this includes traffic management on the streets, proper handling of fuels, and any other areas defined by the organization’s production team including alternatives to RV lined streets).

Entering BRC with Early Arrival passes:

Only Theme Camps meeting all of the above criteria and receiving Placement, will be given Early Arrival Passes from the Placement team for entry to BRC for pre-event set up

Post-event evaluation, Theme Camp Standing and access to the Directed Group Sale (DGS):

Post event, all placed Theme Camps will be reviewed on the criteria above, as well as:

1. MOOP score. If a camp receives a yellow or red MOOP score, the Placement team expects the camp to be proactive in addressing the issue.

2. Strain on resources. This refers to whether a camp requires extra BRC infrastructure support, which could include undue communication or interactions with Placement, Rangers, DPW or the playa restoration team. This could also include the processing of negative feedback from other departments. If a Theme Camp attracts negative attention by violating principles and cultural norms, this will similarly strain resources.

If a Theme Camp meets all of the criteria they remain in “good standing” and may be eligible to receive access to the DGS. Exemplary camps are the most likely to be invited to the following year’s DGS.

Good standing is of benefit as it will affect future placement.

Camps not in good standing will be contacted and will be expected to make substantial changes to their submitted camp plans to qualify for future placement of the DGS for the following year.

For most of you, this information is familiar and reflects what you are already doing. For some of you, this information means you are going to need to increase your interactivity and upgrade your public facing spaces to reflect the spirit of radical inclusion.

We are here to support all of you create an amazing and interactive city for everyone at Burning Man to enjoy.

For more information about this and other topics you can watch the Theme Camp Forum. We recorded the March 21 event.

Fuze Meeting link: https://www.fuzemeeting.com/replay_meet … e9/7113130

[Update 5/22/15 10:51am PST]

Thanks to Pooh Bear for bringing this to our attention. BMOrg are openly promoting one of the oldest tourist packages, Green Tortoise, which is about $1000 per head. Many major camps charge much less in dues, I am curious to know how this pricing sits with everyone.

The price of the tour is not so important. It’s nonsense to say “this is great at $1000 because they funded some art and gave people rides on their bus to Gerlach, but it sucks at $16,000 because they funded some art and gave people rides on their art car”. BMOrg have decided “it’s a spectrum” which makes all things welcome. If any Burners thought Commodification Camps would be shut down, I hope now you realize that despite whatever words were said, and however many feedback forms were filled out, that isn’t what actually happened.

The Voices of Burning Man has an official response, from “Burning Man” – yes, the symbol now speaks.

http://blog.burningman.com/2015/05/news/kicking-concierge-caboose-in-black-rock-city/

YMMV on how much actual caboose actually got kicked, and with what level of force.

They’ve said they’re trying to stop it. Even though FCS aren’t actually doing business at Burning Man…what’s next, any TaskRabbit services for Burning Man get banned? No more trunk shows?

We have contacted Festivals Concierge Services yet again, reminding them that they can’t offer “Burning Man concierge services” or use our IP to promote their business. We’re also taking a number of other steps to protect our principles and our stance on this issue:

Notifying participants in our Outside Services (OSS) program not to do business or subcontract with concierge companies like FCS or their clients.
Revisiting and revising the overall OSS program structure so companies like this can’t exploit the system.
Notifying BLM that FCS will not have a contract with Burning Man and should not receive a BLM Special Recreation Permit to operate its concierge business on public land.
Coordinating with DMV and Placement to ask Mutant Vehicle operators and theme camp organizers not to provide services or camping to FCS or their clients.
Working with our Ticketing Team to prevent FCS staff from acquiring event tickets for resale to their clients.
Communicating with YOU, our community, to keep you informed about these activities, and to solicit your help with combating the packaging and sale of our culture now and in the future.

Can anyone explain to me how BMOrg could possibly think the Ticketing Team might be involved with FCS acquiring event tickets for resale? Isn’t the event sold out, there are no more tickets?

The messages seem mixed to me. Concierge culture is OK (says Larry), and then it’s forbidden (says “Burning Man”). Shouldn’t we be focused on bringing more beautiful art into the world, rather than what things can They stop that They were previously promoting a few months back?

[5/22/15 9:35am PST]

Some hilarious commentary from some of the usual crew of haters on the official BM Facebook page, suggesting that we are lying about this story. Well, just click the links people, you can go to the web site yourself. It is very real, despite whatever “caboose kicking” is being talked about, there they are: still in business. With even burningman.org advertising their offering now. That is, if any Burners have any kind of anti-authoritarian, rebellious spirit in them…

And don’t think FCS are the only ones offering this service – they are just facing the wrath of Burnier-Than-Thous because they were brave enough to “stick their heads above the parapet” as Ross Asselstine describes it. They visibly tried to conform to the rules and promote the Ten Principles, after receiving community feedback last year. Most other concierge services aren’t doing anything remotely like that – that we can see, anyway…instead of “great, thank you, we asked you to make some changes and you did that”, they will face attacks from Burnier-Than-Thous and factions within the Org. All in the name of…what, exactly? Are they going to ban First Camp and Board Members Camps from having concierges? Paid staff? Nope, nothing’s changed, just more hot air, diversions, distractions, smokescreens. All part of the carnival, the hucksters, the chumps and suckers and rubes, making the spectacle for the ringmasters.

[Update 5/27/15 2:26am PST]

FCS has updated us with the statement below (emphasis ours).

Despite BMOrg’s claims, they were well aware of FCS, who have been in contact with them and trying to do the right thing for months now. There are many other concierge, catering, and event planning services operating at Burning Man – and it seems like the ones that DIDN’T try to do the right thing in dialog with BMOrg will still be operating on the Playa. Perhaps under the radar, perhaps with a “wink wink nudge nudge” tolerance, or perhaps with official support and free advertising (like the Green Tortoise tourist packages).

If BMOrg really wanted to put an end to concierges at Burning Man, then they shouldn’t have got their founder and philosophical head to write a lengthy blog post accepting and justifying them.

According to FCS, BMOrg may even be breaking some laws by trying to dictate who licensed OSS vendors can and can’t do business with. Isn’t their Vendor License with the Bureau of Land Management? Or is there a second contract also?

From Festivals Concierge Service:

A few days ago Burning Man posted an article on their blog about our company stating that concierge services did not exist at Burning Man and that they will do everything possible to prevent us from working on this event. Which is a total nonsense and in conflict with Larry Harvey‘s post of last December and even with our long discussions with BMorg.

Who will believe that BMorg just discovered that there are some wealthy Burners and they spend their money on services and organisation during the event?

After our last year mistake thus receiving a lot of community feedback, we agreed not to propose any direct on-site services and to only propose services through official Burning Man Outside Service Program suppliers (who refund 3% of their Burning Man business income to Burning Man organisation), and to respect the use of the Burning Man’s IP. April 20, 2015, a Counsel of BMorg even replied, “In the spirit of Radical Self-Expression, please use your own words to explain the Burning Man event to your clients.” Now BMOrg is stating publicly that we never tried to find a way to work with them, which is for the record totally false.

It seems that the Burning Man organization is influenced by opinions emerging from group of Burners who have an distaste for wealthy individuals and refuse changes to « their » event. Although their actions violate the first of the ten principles they claim to defend: Radical Inclusion. As Larry Harvey, Burning Man co-funder wrote recently “Scan Burning Man’s Ten Principles, and you will not find radical equality among them.”

Concierge culture existed at Burning Man early before we started any business there. Larry Harvey even confirmed it himself on his December 3, 2014 post on Voices of Burning Man: “Equality, Inequity, Iniquity : Concierge Culture”. As explain by Marian Goodell (Burning Man CEO) at the Global Leadership Conference, BMorg highly supports this business by its OSS program, and even takes financial advantage of this system. The near to 100 outside services companies who are supporting the Plug and Play camps are a most important part of the new business model of Burning Man, they are not going away, despite most of the Burner’s community dislike of them. The BMOrg personally deals with the outside services companies, towards satisfying the desires of the Concierge Camps, and of the Plug and Play Camps.

After trying to be recognized as a Burning Man Outside Service Program (OSS) official provider, Burning Man organisation finally replied us that they refuse to add concierge services to their program. We have therefore decided to propose a page on our website, clearly explaining that the services we offer for the Burning Man event are only intended to help our clients with preparation and organization, and the we didn’t offer any kind of package of the type BMOrg are trying to describe, or any other kind of unauthorized on-site services.

We are probably the only one type of concierge company who tried to do it in the official way, who tried to conform to the rules, who accepted to participate by paying the OSS contribution, who promoted the ten principles and who do our best to educate our clients to the Burning Man culture. Despite that Burning Man decided to lie and slander us publicly. This attitude is unacceptable.

The plug and play camps are increasingly numerous each year, and they do not relate anymore only to the wealthy Burners. There are some beautiful tunrkey camps starting from $500 for the week, including food, showers and electricity. These camps mostly host a large majority of campers, and RV’s are a minority. Some observers suppose that in a few years the Plug and Play Camps will represent more than 50% of the event, in accordance with the new business model of Burning Man.

Even if it displeases some Burners, the event evolves over time and we clearly are on the way to a Burning Man 2.0 with increasingly Virgins and wealthy Burners: people with annual income up to $150K grew from 5.8% of the population in 2010 to 10.4% in 2014 and newbies from 21% in 2010 to 39,99% in 2013 (cfr. BRC Census).
http://burningman.org/culture/history/brc-history/afterburn/2014-afterburn-report/brc-2014-census/

This craze causes an obvious shortage of tickets that causes so much hatred from some Burners who have no more access to “their” event.

Also, by saying that they will notifying Outside Services (OSS) applicants and Air Carrier Services (ACS) programs that if they learn that they are doing business or subcontracting with us or our clients, they will deny access to the OSS and ACS programs, BMorg is asking OSS applicants to violate the U.S. Anti-Discrimination Laws and also the first Burning Man principle: Radical Inclusion

About this ticket problem, all our clients are already in possession of their own tickets. FCS does not have the task of verifying networks used by our clients to obtain their tickets. But we still allow doubting the good faith of BMorg when we know that they sells themselves a large amount of tickets to most of the Plug and Play camps.

We will continue to offer our services to help our clients organize and prepare their Burning Man experience. In any case BMorg may not oppose us from doing business outside of the event. We never claim to sell the Burning Man Experience, and even we really do our best to educate our clients to the Burning Man spirit. We also tried to create an art foundation (Art on Playa) to help our clients to sponsor art at Burning Man, but we met so many obstacles when we explained that we request financial transparency on projects that we wanted to support that we finally preferred to suspend this project. It seems that no one wants us to have a look on how they spend OUR money on their project. At least many of our “wealthy clients” continue to financially support art at Burning Man and by their actions, let all the community enjoy their gifts…

Dec 17 2014

JT Finally Speaks

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):

A Statement from Jim Tananbaum

Posted by Burning Man

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.

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?

Sep 23 2014

Comfortably Commodified

Trends-hunter has hunted out the latest trend for the ultra-rich: Commodification Camps at Burning Man. They have interviewed a personal “festival concierge” who gives us the low-down on the 10 or so “Super Luxury” Sherpa Safari camps that charged up to $25,000 per person.

(note: just because an image appears in Trends Hunter’s story, doesn’t mean Burners.Me is accusing that person/camp of being about Commodification. Readers, please understand blogging, it is a technology to discuss what people are saying at other sites on the Internet. When we quote someone, it’s them saying it, not us).

from trends-hunter.com:

Burning Man 2014 the playground for young billionaires

For the past 5 years the most influential men of the Silicon Valley have elected Burning Man to be there new playground, investing millions of $ in extremely conformable camps, Art Cars and grandiose musical stages. Burning Man has become the must-attend event for the the young billionaires of the Fortune 500 companies…The pioneer of these luxury camps was the Robot heart camp which was setup by a hip New York based radio station, it has now become the place to be for sunrise after parties in the Burning Man desert, inviting great names such as Diplo, Skrillex, …

Once again this year Burning Man has shown it is a true representation of modern day society, with novelties in terms of outrageousness well illustrated by the White Ocean camp launched by the young russian billionaire Timur Sardarov and his friend Paul Oakenfold the well known New York DJ. The budget of the camp was far above $1 million with entry fees at $25,000 a head. About ten or so of these camps were grouped together at 10 o’clock at the extreme end of Black Rock City, and challenged each other with amazing DJ sets to the great pleasure of the rest of the Burners community. These self-financed camps by the participants have invested over the past years tens of millions of $ in the event. Burning Man has become a certain piece of the show-up for these young billionaires, [whose] means are unlimited.

When the sun sets on the playa we find the Art Cars of the biggest camps, some of them can even take aboard over a hundred passengers on three levels, cruising along, throwing flames, laser and light shows in an ongoing hubbub of raging decibels. With one objective in mind surpass your neighbour in size and creativity. These vehicles are straight out of Mad Max, Star Wars or even Disney…The arrival of these billionaires has created some unrest amongst the events traditionalists. As they setup their camps on very high comfort levels to satisfy their needs for services in a somewhat awkward setting. This is why we [find] ultra luxurious camping cars, countless sherpas, cooks, make up artists, masseuses, costume makers, mechanics, sound engineers, body painters and even luxury concierges to satisfy their needs and coordinate and guide these very wealthy burners. And obviously guarantee they enjoy the experience with maximum comfort.

[Trends-Hunter] were lucky to hook up with THE luxury concierge who is a specialist in this event and it’s Project Manager “AS”

What is a luxury concierge for an event such as Burning Man?

Our objective is to guarantee a high level of confort for our clients, that will allow them to enjoy the festival in ideal conditions.

One should not forget that the festival is set in a desert at an altitude of 2’000m that day temperature easily rise to 40°C and drop to 10°C at night. There is no running water, no electricity no cell-phone network, add to that the occasional mini sand storm, they are truly rough conditions, and it takes precise preparation to accommodate the confort required by our clients. This is precisely where our expertise in this event comes in to cater our services to our clients.

After a one to one briefing with each one of our clients we define their needs depending on the way they want to experience the Burn. It is truly a unique experience that every person likes to live in his or her personal way, we don’t want to interfere or influence the way they want to experience the Burning Man festival. We simply come in to set up the infrastructure they require. Once on-site our clients are like all other burners and are on their own. We happily assist them if needed but in no ways do we babysit them.

Whatever the level of confort you are in Burning Man remains a tough experience on an emotional and a physical level for every person that lives it.

How do you arrive at the BM?

Originally everyone arrived by the road that comes from Reno, but because of the sheer size of the festival the traffic can become a serious issue and the last 100km can take from 8 up to 16 hours to reach the festival.

For the past few years the festival has set up an airport and therefore we recommend our clients to arrive by the air, private plane or helicopter. By the way the sky view of Black Rock City when arriving is truly stunning.

What are the living conditions in the camps?

The ten or so comfort type camps you find at Burning Man offer many different services to make the lives of their members easier, but they all carefully select their members to avoid having “tourists” amongst them and to make sure they keep a good atmosphere.

Most of the camps are equipped with RV, more or less luxurious and some of them are very large with many people aboard…The camps also provide running water, electricity, and waste water treatment facilities to guarantee the renters a high level of comfort in their new “home”. The vast majority of the RVs on the festival site don’t having these services and thus are only used for lodging purposes…

These camps also provide cooks, with for some true gastronomical chefs. Having a warm meal at Bruning Man is a real plus to keep a high level of energy. The majority of the big camps have a bar which is obviously free for the camps members and their visitors. Again all this depends on the each camp, in most extreme cases we will find sushi chefs and sometimes…. Caviar!

In some very geeky camps often setup by members from Silicon Valley they setup very expensive Satellite internet networks which they generously share with there new neighbours.

There are also more personalised services. Some rich burners require Sherpas, masseuses, make up artists and hairdressers and even personal coaches. The services are truly endless some get their RVs regularly cleaned and the same for their clothes.

What is luxury in the desert?

Judging by the fact that there is no water or electricity, that temperatures range from 40-45°C at day and 10°C at night with sand storms, and that there are no stores closer than a 3 hour drive… an RV can already be considered a luxury…

Therefore the above mentioned services are to be classified in the category of “super” luxury.

And the costumes? Who was the most beautiful?

A good wardrobe for burning man has to be made up of at least three costumes for the day and the same for the night. For daytime something light is great but a pair of goggles and respiratory filter can come in handy due to the frequent sand storms that kick up the Dust (really thin sand haze).

At night time indian costumes and fur coats are very trendy. Many female burners wear very edgy lace, latex and leather costumes which is very fetish style. All means are permitted to highlight the often siliconed physique of the female clubbers with amazing bodies.

It is key though to have something that doesn’t look like a dress up costume, and very often the ensembles are made to measure and one should set aside between 1000-2000 $ for a nice costume.

If I would like to come, how should I proceed? what is the minimum budget?

First and foremost get your hands on a one of the very rare 70,000 tickets. this year they were sold out in less than 30 min. You really need to be lucky to be amongst the happy few. Otherwise you will have to rely on the secondary market and prices can easily quadruple.

The minimum budget to go to Burning Man from Europe is 3’000EUR but that is going it roots style. You will need to spend 5’000 EUR to share a small RV with 4 people and in a camp with basic confort level. This for me is the minimum level to enjoy the festival.

On the upside there are no limits, budgets can easily surpass 50’000 EUR per week.

If you want more info, you can check www.festivalsconcierge.com.

– Read the full story at: trends-hunter.com

Burners.Me: Me, Burners and The Man

Snarky. Cheeky. Grumpy. Dopey. Never Bashful.

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