Media Mecca, back in the day (photo by Playarazzi)

For the last six years, it has been my privilege to meet and work with the most extraordinary people as part of Burning Man’s media team.

No more.  As of this month, I have resigned my commission as Volunteer Coordinator for Media Mecca in order to spend more time with my family.

(Okay, fine:  that’s a lie.  To even claim I’ll be spending more time with my family is technically in violation of a court order.)

This will not affect your life at all.

But it has reminded me that I’ve always meant to write a post explaining Burning Man’s often opaque volunteer system to people who are thinking about trying it on for themselves.  It was obvious to me, as I waded through my first few hundred volunteer applications, that a hell of a lot of people have no idea how the system works.

This is that post.

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From Hurricane Sandy relief to empowering marginalized street-living youth through the MotoMoto Circus project in Kenya, Burners Without Borders has supported innovative disaster relief programs and community initiatives that have a positive lasting impact since 2005.

Tomorrow, Burners Without Borders invites you to join their tele-salon and select their next grant recipient! Their new Walk the Walk Grant program seeks to fund innovative community projects within the Burning Man Global Network.

Four finalists will each have 10 minutes to pitch their project during the call. How does the project embody the 10 Principles, creatively address local challenges and produce direct actions and collaboration? Join the tele-salon and find out tomorrow. Read more »

In San Francisco Burner circles, close to the source, I often hear the Burner’s Dream expressed thusly: Our dream is to bring the principles we embody out on the playa back to the default world.

We want to be as awesome as we are at Burning Man all the time, and we want our cities and towns and neighborhoods to be that awesome as well.

This June, a bunch of San Francisco Burners fell into the opportunity to take over a 14,000-square-foot SOMA warehouse for $1 and turn it into [freespace], a three-story blank canvas for artists, hackers, farmers, builders, and whoever else wanders in, meant to be a staging ground for inspired experiments in hacking on the meaning of urban space.

Sounds like that Burner’s Dream come to life, right? Naturally, Burning Man got involved. But what does that even mean? Who is this “Burning Man?” Is it the Burning Man organization? is it the fledgling non-profit Burning Man Project? Is it Burning Man participants acting of their own accord?

Yes.

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Larry Harvey in conversation with Loic Le Meur at LeWeb 2013

Burning Man Co-Founder Larry Harvey was invited to speak at the LeWeb conference in London on the topic of the Sharing Economy. While he was there, he had the opportunity to interview with a few different news outlets, and each conversation bubbled up interesting ideas and thoughts about Burning Man as a gift economy, the tech culture’s relationship to Burning Man, and what that all means in terms of societal potential. We’ve collected them for you here.

Here’s video of Larry’s full talk at LeWeb, in conversation with LeWeb organizer Loic Le Meur.

TechCrunch‘s Mike Butcher interviewed Larry together with Grateful Dead lyricist, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) founder (and Burner) John Perry Barlow.

Larry also sat down with Bloomberg TV to talk about the spark that created the Burning Man Festival, followed by an interview on Bloomberg Radio.

Finally, Julian Blake of Tech City Insider interviewed Larry on the subject of how Burners and technology come together.

Tales From The Playa are dreams and memories of events that took place at Burning Man, as told by its participants.

Talking philosophy(me, king of segues), I was sauntering along, minding nobody’s business when I spy this forlorn phone booth with nothing close to it. “Black Rock City Phone Co., Talk to God.” Really? Except for Abraham, Saul, Moses, or Donald Trump, how often does one get a chance to do this? I picked up the receiver.

“Hi, this is God.”

“Hello, God. I imagine that if I were actually talking with God, I’d let Him do most of the talking.”

“That’s o. k. . . . [pause]”

“Oh, there would be so many questions. Why’s there pain and suffering on Earth? Was there a JFK assassination conspiracy? Will my sons be happy?”

Silence.

“Sorry to bother you. It’s rather a stranger in a strange land to be talking with God.”

He replied with the standard BM greeting, “Are you having a good burn?”

“WOW! I’ll be integrating this experience the rest of my life. I suppose I should let you go. You have more important things to do than chat with me.” Inspired, I asked, “Would you forgive me my sins?”

SILENCE.

Yao! Yao Ming! Perhaps “God” didn’t hear me, so I repeated, “Would you just say, ‘I forgive you.’” [God going deaf would be weird, and S/He theoretically could read my mind.]

“I don’t feel comfortable doing that.”

“I suppose since we all have God within us, I can forgive myself. Thanks.” Oh, well. Nice try, Mr. Mellow. I left the confessional booth, and the next person picked up the receiver. She had a different approach.

“Hi, God! How ya doing?”

Significance of the Water, by Alexander Spivak. (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License)

Where’d all the fun people go?

A recent San Francisco newspaper article was ostensibly about a book – the newly published history of the Cacophony Society.  But its headline asked a very pertinent question:  “Whither the tricksters?”

San Francisco used to be full of mischief makers who played extraordinary pranks on normal society – or at least as normal as it gets in SF, a city where phone apps for vegan bicyclists are considered a literary form.  But many of their greatest feats have been institutionalized (Santacon … runners in salmon costumes “swimming” upstream during a major race between the ocean and the bay), and new public activities seen to have just … disappeared.

What happened?

There are many answers, but one of the big ones is that Burning Man sucked all the air out of the city.

That’s not intended as a hostile comment – and indeed there’s quite a bit of truth to it.  Burning Man became a San Francisco Cacophony Society event early in its history, turned into the definitive Cacophony event in the mid-90s, and soon a small army of whimsical geniuses who otherwise would be setting up rappel lines between corporate rooftops were working on art cars, theme camps, and port-a-pottie logistics for the annual trip to the desert.

Even for the high-energy aesthetic dissident of means, there are only so many costume parties and conceptual mind-fucks you can come up with in a year.  Those of us who have to work for a living have even less time to spend in gorilla suits.  At some level yes, Burning Man took all the time and inspiration that otherwise would have been spent doing Cacophony events in San Francisco.

What are we to make of this?

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Governor Sandoval signing AB374 into law. Seated: Gov. Brian Sandoval
Standing from left to right: Adam Belsky, Counsel for BRC LLC; Robert Shirley; Tom Clark, Lobbyist for BRC LLC; Shannon Hogan, Lobbyist for BRC LLC; Jim Shirley, District Attorney for Pershing County; Sen. David Parks; Assemblyman & bill sponsor David Bobzien; Marian Goodell, Founder, BRC LLC; Raymond Allen, Government Affairs Representative for BRC LLC

CARSON CITY, NEV., June 5, 2013 — Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval today signed AB374 into law, a bill sponsored by Assemblyman David Bobzien that streamlines the permitting process for events like Burning Man held on federal lands.

“This is a huge victory for the Burning Man event,” said Raymond Allen, Government Affairs Representative for Black Rock City, LLC. “The law ensures local permitting requirements won’t infringe upon the First Amendment rights of Burning Man participants. It also ensures the continued right of assembly for the entire event.”

The new law gives counties the right to opt out of state permitting requirements for events held on federal land that already undergo a comprehensive federal permitting process. As a result of collaborative negotiations involving Burning Man representatives, Pershing County officials and the Nevada Association of Counties, Pershing County commissioners already passed a resolution exempting Burning Man from county permitting requirements in perpetuity.

“It’s a win-win for everyone and a testament to the benefit of collaboration,” Allen said. “Our goal has always been to adequately compensate Pershing County for the services it provides to our event. This law ensures compensation occurs through a contract with the County per the requirements of our Bureau of Land Management permit.”

The bill passed unanimously in the Nevada Assembly and Senate, and goes into effect on July 1st.

Cool logo, BurnerHack.

Burners will be gathering at FreeSpace — a 14,000 sq ft warehouse in San Francisco’s SOMA district hosting a month-long pop-up community center focused on hacking the civic experience – this weekend for BurnerHack. BurnerHack is an opportunity to learn, share and teach a wide variety of skills to help one prepare for the playa (or wherever you want to take them!).

The offerings include such things as hacking arduino software, working with LEDs, making costumes, soldering el-wire, building shelters, Mutant Vehicle modifications and more. Take a look at the full listing of projects so far, and add yours into the mix on the BurnerHack website.

Burning Blogger Jon Mitchell will be attending and will report on both BurnerHack and the FreeSpace concept for us after the weekend. If you plan to attend, and would like to hook up with him while you’re there, ping him on Twitter at @ablaze.

FreeSpace is located at 1131 Mission Street, San Francisco.