Post by Edd on Dec 5, 2014 8:37:35 GMT -8
Burning Man broke Caravancicle.
"Danger Ranger
BURNING MAN BROKE CARAVANSICLE
Burning Man is the ultimate testing ground. Your best design for shelter will be tested by the playa and the playa almost always wins. If you come to your first burn as a couple, don't count on leaving with the same person. Whatever psychological baggage you bring to the event will be destroyed within a few days. Even getting tickets to the event can be fraught with drama and intrigue. However elaborate, your plans for a giant camp involving scores of other burners will be tested to the limit by the time the Man burns. The lifetime of a theme camp and the personal relationships of those involved may be one year or several, beyond which it may break apart and/or mutate into something else. In addition to impact from the environment, the cohesion and longevity of large camps can be affected by external pressures, such as public outrage over plug and play camps. There is a long history of crash and burn at Burning Man.
This year, there were apparently several camps which approached the point of meltdown as indicated by the resultant moop left on playa, which has sparked much a broader debate about the nature and character of large, well-funded "plug & play" luxury camps at Burning Man. The post-burn forensics of this internet-fuled drama of rumors on top of rumors has been challenging and time consuming. The first rule of Rangers is do nothing because what you think you see may not be what is actually occurring. And sometimes there are broader implications to a note posted on a bulletin board. We are now at a point where there is enough information to answer some of the questions that have arisen. Larry, always the consummate lucubrationist, has posted to the Burning Man blog about this issue. I have also conducted my own personal investigation into this matter and have come up with answers that may be more specific than some of those presented thus far.
My conclusion is that Burning Man broke Caravansicle. I might add that the individual who profited from Caravansicle will not be allowed back into Burning Man.
When I was finally able to confront Mr Tananbaum face-to-face, my first words to him were; "You really stepped in some shit." I believe that he truly regrets the wreckage in the wake of his camp. Mr Tananbaum started out with the best of intentions. Caravansicle was not intended to be commercial in nature. His goal was to fund and produce a large camp for friends and associates, much like the camps that he had done in the two previous years. But this year it was going to be grander and larger. His first mistake was to hire a professional camp producer from the commercial EDM world with no Burning Man experience. This is what brought in the sherpas and wristbands. His second mistake was having a bar so big and so public that it ran out of liquor. Nothing is worse than a half-drunk lynch mob. And I'm sure that the professional camp producer was surprised to discover no trash dumpsters at Burning Man. None-the-less, the camp producer took the money and ran.
The truth is that Mr Tananbaum lost tens of thousands of dollars on this failed project. That is not to say that the captain does not carry ultimate responsibility for his ship. While he has been quite capable of amassing a fortune in the world of venture capital, it does call into question if he is ready and able to help navigate the Burning Man ship. Then again, there is nothing like failure to add to ones experience. I think that having an 18-person board of directors is good in that it allows a larger pool to maintain overall management and guidance, which is certainly an improvement over the past when there were only 6 board members. I don't know what the outcome of all this be, but the rules of conduct for board members are spelled out in this document:
z9hbb3mwou383x1930ve0ugl.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/BMP-Restated-Bylaws-July-24-2014.pdf
Gypsy Flower Power was another failed camp this year. It was doomed from the start because it was a scam operated by Jonathan Nutter (jonnymoonshine12), a serial ripoff artist with a history of doing this at multiple events. This year, he bilked a bunch of first-time europeans by charging them for tickets, food and accommodations, which he never delivered. He also had no plan for (or intention to) clean-up after the event.
Bmorg is instituting new procedures/policies next year, which will bring all non-infrastructure plug-and-play camps under the theme camp registration process and hold them to the same standards.
Things on the internet are not always what they claim to be. The troll behind burners.me is a lone individual who made $50 million in the tech field. Steve Outtrim (KingZos) owns several expensive homes in Australia, Europe & California. His private plane flies him into Burning Man each year where his big RV is waiting for him. He has no problem with hiring professional trolls like Otis Beard to mount sock puppet attacks. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
The transition of Burning Man from tontine to non-profit organization has taken more that six years. Thru all of this, no one in the organization is getting rich off of Burning Man. That will become apparent after the numbers for the non-profit are published. It's been a very complex process with many moving pieces, some of them not quite in place. The sole purpose of Decommodification LLC is to protect the Burning Man name and I've programmed it to automatically dissolve after its mission is completed. My primary responsibility is to the community of Burning Man and that has not wavered.
In the early days, Burning Man was like a lemur; small, agile, hiding from the authorities way out in the deep playa. Our nest was a Temporary Autonomous Zone. Today Burning Man is an eight hundred thousand ton gorilla with many mouths to feed. It's a network of departments and people, sometimes with competing interests. It's still evolving. It has lost much of its agility, but there are some advantages to size. We are now having an impact on the world at large and we have the power to change that world for the better."
"Danger Ranger
BURNING MAN BROKE CARAVANSICLE
Burning Man is the ultimate testing ground. Your best design for shelter will be tested by the playa and the playa almost always wins. If you come to your first burn as a couple, don't count on leaving with the same person. Whatever psychological baggage you bring to the event will be destroyed within a few days. Even getting tickets to the event can be fraught with drama and intrigue. However elaborate, your plans for a giant camp involving scores of other burners will be tested to the limit by the time the Man burns. The lifetime of a theme camp and the personal relationships of those involved may be one year or several, beyond which it may break apart and/or mutate into something else. In addition to impact from the environment, the cohesion and longevity of large camps can be affected by external pressures, such as public outrage over plug and play camps. There is a long history of crash and burn at Burning Man.
This year, there were apparently several camps which approached the point of meltdown as indicated by the resultant moop left on playa, which has sparked much a broader debate about the nature and character of large, well-funded "plug & play" luxury camps at Burning Man. The post-burn forensics of this internet-fuled drama of rumors on top of rumors has been challenging and time consuming. The first rule of Rangers is do nothing because what you think you see may not be what is actually occurring. And sometimes there are broader implications to a note posted on a bulletin board. We are now at a point where there is enough information to answer some of the questions that have arisen. Larry, always the consummate lucubrationist, has posted to the Burning Man blog about this issue. I have also conducted my own personal investigation into this matter and have come up with answers that may be more specific than some of those presented thus far.
My conclusion is that Burning Man broke Caravansicle. I might add that the individual who profited from Caravansicle will not be allowed back into Burning Man.
When I was finally able to confront Mr Tananbaum face-to-face, my first words to him were; "You really stepped in some shit." I believe that he truly regrets the wreckage in the wake of his camp. Mr Tananbaum started out with the best of intentions. Caravansicle was not intended to be commercial in nature. His goal was to fund and produce a large camp for friends and associates, much like the camps that he had done in the two previous years. But this year it was going to be grander and larger. His first mistake was to hire a professional camp producer from the commercial EDM world with no Burning Man experience. This is what brought in the sherpas and wristbands. His second mistake was having a bar so big and so public that it ran out of liquor. Nothing is worse than a half-drunk lynch mob. And I'm sure that the professional camp producer was surprised to discover no trash dumpsters at Burning Man. None-the-less, the camp producer took the money and ran.
The truth is that Mr Tananbaum lost tens of thousands of dollars on this failed project. That is not to say that the captain does not carry ultimate responsibility for his ship. While he has been quite capable of amassing a fortune in the world of venture capital, it does call into question if he is ready and able to help navigate the Burning Man ship. Then again, there is nothing like failure to add to ones experience. I think that having an 18-person board of directors is good in that it allows a larger pool to maintain overall management and guidance, which is certainly an improvement over the past when there were only 6 board members. I don't know what the outcome of all this be, but the rules of conduct for board members are spelled out in this document:
z9hbb3mwou383x1930ve0ugl.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/BMP-Restated-Bylaws-July-24-2014.pdf
Gypsy Flower Power was another failed camp this year. It was doomed from the start because it was a scam operated by Jonathan Nutter (jonnymoonshine12), a serial ripoff artist with a history of doing this at multiple events. This year, he bilked a bunch of first-time europeans by charging them for tickets, food and accommodations, which he never delivered. He also had no plan for (or intention to) clean-up after the event.
Bmorg is instituting new procedures/policies next year, which will bring all non-infrastructure plug-and-play camps under the theme camp registration process and hold them to the same standards.
Things on the internet are not always what they claim to be. The troll behind burners.me is a lone individual who made $50 million in the tech field. Steve Outtrim (KingZos) owns several expensive homes in Australia, Europe & California. His private plane flies him into Burning Man each year where his big RV is waiting for him. He has no problem with hiring professional trolls like Otis Beard to mount sock puppet attacks. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
The transition of Burning Man from tontine to non-profit organization has taken more that six years. Thru all of this, no one in the organization is getting rich off of Burning Man. That will become apparent after the numbers for the non-profit are published. It's been a very complex process with many moving pieces, some of them not quite in place. The sole purpose of Decommodification LLC is to protect the Burning Man name and I've programmed it to automatically dissolve after its mission is completed. My primary responsibility is to the community of Burning Man and that has not wavered.
In the early days, Burning Man was like a lemur; small, agile, hiding from the authorities way out in the deep playa. Our nest was a Temporary Autonomous Zone. Today Burning Man is an eight hundred thousand ton gorilla with many mouths to feed. It's a network of departments and people, sometimes with competing interests. It's still evolving. It has lost much of its agility, but there are some advantages to size. We are now having an impact on the world at large and we have the power to change that world for the better."