Rockstar Librarian 2018 – A Great Way To Help With Communal Effort, Gifting,and Radical Self-Expression

If it was up to BMorg, Burning Man would have no music and would be 100% transformational blowjob workshops. Fortunately we have about 1000 stages, 10,000+ DJs, and RockStar Librarian to help us ignore their foolish ideals.

This year, Rockstar Librarian wants to make the world a better place with music. Support her – if you like music at Burning Man, you will appreciate her guide which comes from a team of volunteers every year. Thank you so much to Rockstar Librarian and her team, and thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all the DJs, art cars, and sound stages that have ever played at Burning Man – it’s you who makes the party.

If you’re going to support any art project this year, support the music.

Check out our collection of mixes from previous Burning Mans at our Music page.

 

Here’s Our Chance to Leave A Legacy

In order for an angel investor to fund the 2018 RSL Music Guide, we need to raise $11,000 for Josie’s Well/Water Access Now, a non-profit to build a safe water well in Ghana.

We have until August 15th to raise the funds and still get the Music Guide produced and to the playa.

So let’s work together to create the music guide, create lasting change in Ghana, and leave a legacy.

I’ve also streamlined my RSL contacts database so everyone gets the chance to get the Music Guide and notices.

The Why: The Story

I didn’t realize how powerful leaving a legacy was until I attended AfrikaBurn in 2017.

It was in the wee hours of the morning sunrise, sitting under the DMV’s red beduin tent while sipping South African boxes wine, that I engaged in philosophical conversations with AfrikaBurn founders Paul Fletcher, Paul Jorgensen and Robert Weinek.

In those wee hours we discussed, “What comes next, from Leave No Trace?”

These beautiful, gritty influencers had an intention: Leave a Legacy.

For AfrikaBurn it looked like this: save plywood from dismantled camps and build outbuildings for a local school; leftover non-perishable food to stock an orphanage’s pantry. “We have so much,” they all agreed.

Then earlier this summer I met an eleven year old girl named Josie, from Seattle, Washington area, who at age nine, raised the money to build her first well in Ghana.

She created her own non-profit, Josie’s Well, in partnership with the local non-profit Water Access Now, and now at age eleven, Josie has realized her vision threefold!

I recently shared both stories with a Burner friend of mine and Music Guide supporter. And on the spot he proposed a challenge:

If we rally the Burner community to raise $11,000 to build a well in Ghana, he’d fund the entire 2018 RSL Music Guide. 

If Josie can do it, WE can do this!
 

The HOW:

Your simple way of participating is key to making this happen.

* Make a tax deductible donation to Burn for Water: Leave a Legacy GoFundMe page
* Forward this email to tribes of Burner friends, campmates, and community
* If you have a following, please send this email to your email list
* Share the Burn for Water: Leave a Legacy GoFundMe Page on your social media

Let’s leave a legacy together!

Big Dusty Hugs,

Kate Houston,
the Rock Star Librarian
Share this message on your social media & forward in email:

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PS. I have answers to your questions. So ask them!

  • Josie’s Well and Water Access Now are volunteer run and committed to transparency, passing donations directly onto building wells in Ghana.
  • Water Access Now has a sustainability plan in place so that wells don’t just get built and left in nonfunctional disrepair, and it includes community & civic investment & involvement.Your tax deductible donation goes directly to the charity.
Burn for Water: Leave a Legacy!

Gifting For Permanent Art [Update]

disorient 1

photo by Liz Hafalia, SF Chronicle

photo by Liz Hafalia, SF Chronicle

At least we know there’s one BMP Director who gets it. Leo Villareal has been a Burner since 1994, and is the founder of Disorient. If there is a “spectrum of camps” like BMOrg says, then Disorient is clearly on the good end of the spectrum. They provide a major sound stage with many DJs, as well as several areas of their camp that are open to all Burners. They bring multiple art cars, which give rides to the public; and they gift an Art Car Wash every year which every art car can participate in. Everyone who camps with Disorient is expected to volunteer some of their time at the burn in multiple shifts, to give back to the community. While they charge dues, it is in the hundreds of dollars, not tens of thousands, and no-one in the camp is trying to make a profit. Those who stay longer to break down and pack up get a discount on their dues, but even those hard workers still pay to be a part of a camp.

Leo is also an accomplished artist. He’s the first Burning Man artist to have an exhibition of his interactive works at a major art museum (the San Jose Museum of Art).

Wikipedia:

Villareal has permanent installations at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, as well as in the private collections of contemporary art collectors CJ Follini. His work has also been on display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Madison Square Park in New York City, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the PS 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Oh, and if you’ve been anywhere near San Francisco in the last couple of years, you’ve probably seen one other little piece he’s done: an $8 million commission he got to build the largest electronic sculpture in the world, The Bay Lights.

image: Illuminate The Arts

image: James Ewing/Illuminate The Arts

The Bay Lights were only ever intended to be temporary, and have already lasted longer than the original plan. They have become a beloved feature of the San Francsico skyline, and have had a measured boost on the city’s tourism and the trade of businesses along the Embarcadero waterfront.

Good news, Burners! The Bay Lights could be here to stay. Thanks to the generosity of a number of donors, if the project can raise another $293,000 before the end of the year, Caltrans has agreed to pick up the maintenance tab and keep the installation on the Bay Bridge – permanently.

Illuminate The Arts CEO Ben Davis says:

Dear Bay Lights Lovers,

There’s good news and even better news.

The Good News: If we raise four million dollars in gifts and pledges by the end of this year, we keep The Bay Lights forever.

This is a one-time raise of $4m, made possible by Illuminate The Arts’ break-through agreement with Bay Bridge officials. With that money, ITA will install a new set of LEDs – expressly engineered to withstand the harsh environment of the San Francisco Bay. 

We would then gift these new lights to the Bay Area Toll Authority and Caltrans, in exchange for their on-going stewardship. The Bay Lights would become a permanent fixture of the Bay Bridge, just as the 50th Anniversary necklace lights did in 1989.

This means, Leo Villareal’s temporary masterpiece will become a permanent work of public art, establishing a global icon that lets the Bay Area shine around the world in perpetuity.

The Even Better News: Thanks to a $2 million challenge grant from Bay Area philanthropist Tad Taube, every new dollar raised will be matched until the $4 million goal is reached. Tad’s inspiring gift has already helped spur another $1.7m in private gifts. That means we have only $293,000 left to raise.

If you love The Bay Lights, now is the time act. 
 

MAKE A TAX-FREE DONATION NOW

Here are some other recent media highlights: 

  • Featured in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, ‘”Bay Lights” get offer of permanence from bridge officials” Read Here 
  • San Jose Mercury News features “Bay Bridge light sculpture to shine on with big donation” Read Here  
  • San Francisco Chronicle Editorial, “Keep the Bay Bridge lights Shining” Read Here
Thank you for your continued brilliance,
 

Ben Davis
Founder and CEO, Illuminate the Arts

Tad-Taube


Tad Taube is an 83-year old former USAF officer, who escaped the Nazis and became a real estate and tech magnate and major philanthropist. He is connected to the Koret sportswear empire that was sold to Levi Strauss, and runs charitable foundations worth more than $500 million that gave away $26 million in 2012. He’s challenged the community to match his gift to the Bay Lights, many other donors have stepped up, and we’re almost there.

Every little bit helps – a mere $4 from everyone who went to Burning Man this year, would be enough to keep the Bay Lights going forever. Click here to donate.

Why doesn’t the Burning Man Project step up too, and provide a financial contribution to support the biggest and most famous piece of Burner Art being shared with the world forever? Seems like giving $10,000 to this would be more directly relevant to their mission of spreading Burner culture than $10,000 to the Exploratorium.

If Burners want to donate to help promote the art and culture of Burning Man worldwide, making this amazing installation permanent seems like incredible bang for our buck. It’s permanent, internationally renowned, and has already been enjoyed by more than 25 million people. The Bay Lights puts a permanent Burner stamp on the city’s skyline.

The documentary Impossible Light, about the dream that led to the Bay Lights’ Creation, makes a nice Christmas stocking stuffer for your Burner friends.

[Update 12/17/14 10:00pm]

The Bay Lights has met its funding goal, and will be staying permanently:

From SFGate:

There will be permanent, artistic lights at the end of the tunnel — the westbound tunnel of the Bay Bridge leading into San Francisco, that is — come 2016.

After a two-month campaign, the nonprofit Illuminate the Arts announced Wednesday that it had raised the needed $4 million to reinstall the “Bay Lights” as a permanent fixture on the western end of the bridge.

Billed as the world’s largest light sculpture, the display of 25,000 LED lights turns the 1.8-mile San Francisco portion of the span into a nightly show of constantly changing abstract images.

It was first announced as a temporary two-year installation to be taken down in March 2015. Now, after some cable maintenance and repainting, it’s to be replaced with a sturdier set of lights that will begin glowing in time for Super Bowl 50, scheduled for February 2016 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

“This is a great moment for public art and a great gift of the holiday season for the people of the Bay Area,” said Ben Davis, founder of Illuminate the Arts.

Donation Tickets: Here To Stay

caravansary ticket 2

A number of readers have brought to our attention BMOrg’s latest job posting. They are looking for someone to “manage” their tickets, despite paying about half a million dollars a year to an external firm for ticketing.

Significantly, in the wording of the ad is this:

Manages Locals, Lifetime, Alumni, & Charitable donation ticket programs. 

Lifetime tickets?

Alumni tickets?

We have heard that discounted tickets are available for Gerlach locals.

“Charitable donation tickets” would be the “VIP Tickets” that were sold to select camps for $650 all year-long, without regard to the event being sold out. The $250 above face value is a donation to the Burning Man Project. If Burners sell tickets above face value, it’s “against Burning Man’s Principles”, if BMOrg does it, it’s “saving the world”.  Now that the chumps and suckers and hucksters are magically the same, and Decommodification has become an ironic prank on the community, maybe it’s OK for Burners to re-sell their tickets at market price.

Perhaps if you donate enough money to their charity, you become one of BMOrg’s Alumni.

Missing from the list of duties? Putting stamps on envelopes and mailing tickets to the 20% of Burners who come from other countries. There is no incentive to shorten the Will Crawl line, which is reminiscent of the way nightclubs like to have long lines at their entrances.

image: Donovan Beeson/Flickr (Creative Commons)

image: Donovan Beeson/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Proficiency in maths is required, which will be helpful given their predecessor accidentally forgot to count $1.3 million of ticket sales a couple of years back.


 

From theresumator.com:

Ticketing Associate

Location: San Francisco, CA

Department: Ticketing

Type: Full Time

Min. Experience: Mid Level

JOB SUMMARY

Burning Man’s Ticketing Associate manages specific ticketing programs throughout the year and is the point person for all outward-facing ticketing communications, including architechting participant support. This role also participates in year-round planning for Box Office operations, and on playa acts as one of two Box Office Co-Operations Managers.

This is a full-time, regular position eligible for benefits in our San Francisco office.
DUTIES & ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

Year-round Ticketing Operations:
* Oversees day-to-day participant support including creation of support macros, coordinating with the ticket vendor’s support team, ensuring consistency of messages across all support platforms.

* Maintains accuracy of content in all public-facing channels.

* Monitors and pursues ticket resale activity on the secondary market, including managing a volunteer resale tracking team.

Special Programs:
* Manages Locals, Lifetime, Alumni, & Charitable donation ticket programs.

* Reviews and processes Low Income applications.

* Reviews and processes post-event refund requests.

* Manages interdepartmental BMID process and production and oversees on-playa BMID office operations.

* Assists in creation of all training materials & conducting trainings.

* Acts as Box Office lead for Community Events as needed.

* Manages internal ticket QA process and is responsible for all inventory tracking.

* Responsible for coordinating all internal TRS training and supporting materials.

* Manages internal ticket fulfillment.

* Produces post-event departmental ticket use summaries.

* Manages early on-site staff credentialing & coordinates with the Gerlach Office

* On playa acts as one of two Box Office Co-Operations Managers.

Other:
* Attend meetings as needed.

* Support current ticket policies.

* Assist with research as requested by the Legal team.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

* Bachelor’s degree or higher

* Must be extremely detail-oriented

* Excellent project management skills

* Exceptional customer service skills

* Strong analytical skills

* Ability to work with sensitive information discreetly

* Ability to follow directions accurately and efficiently

* Working knowledge of Salesforce, FileMaker Pro, MS office suite, internet browers, and email clients.

* Comfortable learning new technologies and their applications.

* Experience managing databases

* Confortable with and proficient in math

* Must be adept at prioritizing competing tasks

* Must possess outstanding verbal and written communication skills

* Participant of Burning Man

* Confident & effective working independently

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

* Box Office experience

* experience managing volunteers

* experience creating data-driven infographics

* working knowledge of graphics programs

Burning Man is an equal-opportunity employer.