The Urban Stoop by Craig Cooper and James Dufour, Photo by Jay Faulconer

Burning Man’s Secure Ticket Exchange Program (STEP) launches this week. STEP is an online system that facilitates the safe resale of tickets that have been purchased directly from Burning Man, and is designed to provide a hassle-free, secure way of buying and selling Burning Man tickets while avoiding scammers, counterfeits and scalpers.

We’ve created a comprehensive FAQ about STEP that will answer any questions you may have about the program … but we wanted to let you know how it’s going to roll out this week so you can plan accordingly. Here’s how it will go:

On Wednesday, February 29 at 12 noon PST, STEP will be opened to those who have tickets they want to sell. We’ll be emailing everybody who bought tickets through our Pre-Sale or Main Sale in the next two days, inviting you to sell your extra tickets into STEP. If you’re one of these people, watch your inbox for that email (if you don’t get an email by Thursday, visit http://tickets2.burningman.com/contact.php and select “Missing STEP email” from the drop down menu). People selling tickets into STEP will be credited the face value of the ticket and any delivery fees, but not the original service fees; Burning Man will cover the credit card merchant fees for the refund. You’ll be able to sell your tickets into STEP anytime until August 7, 2012 (if they are being held at Will Call), after which STEP will be closed.

On Friday, March 2 at 12 noon PST, we’ll open up STEP to those wanting tickets, inviting those who registered for the Pre-Sale and Main Sale but did not receive tickets to join the “want tickets” queue, on a first-come first-served basis. If you are one of those people, watch your inbox for an email containing sign up information in the next few days (if you don’t get an email by Thursday, visit http://tickets2.burningman.com/contact.php and select “Missing STEP email” from the drop down menu). When you opt to turn your original Pre-Sale or Main Sale registration into a sign up for the “want tickets” list, you will be signed up as requesting the same number of tickets through STEP as you originally requested.

When a ticket becomes available through STEP, the person at the front of the queue will be sent an email giving them an opportunity to purchase the ticket(s). Tickets will be sold at face value of the original ticket, plus service ($6/ticket + $1/order) and Will Call delivery fees ($12/order). You will only be offered the next ticket(s) available; unfortunately, we’re not able to maintain three queues for three separate ticket price points, so you will only have the option of whatever price point comes up next in the queue. If you decline the ticket(s) or don’t purchase them within 72 hours of their becoming available, the next person in the queue will be given the opportunity to purchase them. If you decline a ticket, you will lose your place in the queue and will not be able to sign up again.

All tickets purchased through STEP are non-transferable, and will be held at Will Call for pick up. If you purchase a ticket through STEP but then decide you cannot attend the event, you can sell it back into STEP for somebody else to purchase, as long as you do it before August 7, 2012.

If you have any questions, please review our FAQ.

Photo by Gina Hansen

Last week we announced (in “Rebuilding Black Rock City 2012”) changes to the sales process for Burning Man 2012 tickets, including adjustments to the Secure Ticket Exchange Program (STEP). At that time we announced a policy of allowing people to purchase only one (1) non-transferable ticket per person through STEP.

However, after further consideration and much feedback from you, we’ve decided that this policy is unfair to people who originally registered for two tickets in the Main Sale, one for themselves and one for their significant other, family member, friend, or campmate.

We hear you, and we’re listening. That’s why we’re adjusting this policy to allow people who originally registered for two tickets in the Main Sale to request a maximum of two tickets per person through STEP. (If our records show that you originally registered for only one ticket in the Main Sale, you can only request one ticket through STEP.) All tickets purchased through STEP are non-transferable, and will be held at Will Call only. These tickets should be for you (or you and an identified guest).

Also, it’s important to note that STEP will have only as many tickets available as there are people who sell their tickets into it. We believe that people will also be selling/giving tickets within their immediate circle of friends and local community- and we aren’t trying to change that. It’s likely that few will find themselves holding “extra” tickets without already having a friend or camp mate in need, so we don’t anticipate STEP will have a high, regular flow of tickets; we anticipate an early influx and then a trickle as people’s plans develop, though we’d be happy to be proven wrong on this. We also know that in any typical year, there is a fair amount of summertime turnover as the event gets closer and life events cause Burners’ plans to change. We encourage you to first seek out tickets from your immediate community of friends and cohorts, as well as any other avenues for acquiring face-value, legitimate tickets as you can find, without patronizing scalpers.

If you are eligible to participate in STEP, you’ll be receiving an email at the end of February with information about how to sign up. For more information about Burning Man tickets and STEP, please see our ticket page.

[UPDATED: 2/23/12] Burning Man will be staffing up the on-playa Box Office to accommodate however many tickets are being held at Will Call in order to keep wait times to a minimum.

Marian Goodell is a Founding Board Member of Black Rock City LLC, and Burning Man’s Director of Business and Communications.

PARAGRAPH UPDATES (2) below: 2/15/12: 9:15 PM PST

THE CHALLENGE WE FACE: DEMAND OUTSTRIPS SUPPLY

We promised we would get back to you by February 15th with our plans to resolve the ticket situation for Burning Man 2012. We all know there aren’t enough tickets for everyone who wants to participate in Black Rock City. However, it’s clear that the current situation has created holes in our social fabric. Many of the core volunteers, major interactive camps, art car projects, performance groups, and funded and unfunded art projects do not have enough tickets to bring their works to the playa. Here’s how we will remedy these challenges as fairly as we believe possible:

1. Burning Man organizers and staff will issue tickets to major theme camps and art projects using a process outlined below.
2. We will launch the STEP program on February 29th. Only those who registered and did not receive confirmation of tickets will be given access to STEP.
3. Low Income ticket applications will be accepted beginning February 29th.

There’s no way to sugarcoat this: the hard truth is that there are a lot of you who want to come to Black Rock City to celebrate your participation in the Burning Man culture this year, but not everyone will be able to attend. That sentence is about as painful to write as it is for you to read. We dearly wish we could just welcome everyone who feels drawn to Black Rock City. But, as we have explained in Andie Grace’s blog post: “Radical Inclusion, Meet the Other Nine,” it’s not possible to simply increase the number of tickets available for Burning Man 2012.

And unfortunately, the random draw of the Main Sale left inordinately large numbers of our core contributors — art teams, theme camp creators, mutant vehicle builders, performers, and Burning Man volunteers — without tickets. In fact, the ratio was so unexpectedly large it has punched significant holes in Black Rock City’s artistic, civic and functional infrastructure, putting the integrity of the event itself at risk. If we let market forces play out as they could with the remaining available tickets, it’s likely that Black Rock City would be functionally untenable for many of the collaborations that comprise our desert event. Read more »

First things first:

For all the frustration, anxiety, stress, and heartache this year’s ticket lottery has caused, please accept another humble apology.

Photo by John Curley

This is no time for issuing statements or putting a spin on anything. The system may have worked, but the cultural outcome sure didn’t, and even though some of you saw that coming and said so, we didn’t, and for that we are sorry.

The current trajectory is not acceptable. Even people who did get tickets aren’t cheering right now, since so many of their camps and friends are standing out in the cold. Entire groups are worried they’ll have to scrap all their plans. Burning Man is a participatory and collaborative event, and many collaborations are perilously close to falling apart.

Clearly we must reevaluate, but first we want to say more about what we’ve heard, how we got here, and what our next steps will be.

Read more »

Marian Goodell is a Founding Board Member of Black Rock City LLC, and Burning Man’s Director of Business and Communications.

[UPDATE: The last paragraph of this post was updated on February 6, 2012.]

Participants, friends, Burners, community:

The Burning Man organization recognizes that the ticket registration and random drawing process has caused many participants frustration and concern over whether they can attend the event this year.

Black Rock City 2011, Photo by Luke Szczepanski

A team of Burning Man staff and organizers, who have been working on the ticketing process since August 2011, met Thursday to review what happened and what can be done moving forward.

The organization is looking at short term fixes and long term solutions to improve the ticketing process to make it work as well as possible for as many people as possible.

Following phone conversations with major theme camp and art group organizers, we determined that only 20%-25% of the key people needed to bring those projects to the playa had received notifications for tickets. A number of people also told us they’d used multiple credit cards and asked friends to register for them as a way to increase their chances of getting tickets. Those who received more tickets than they need said they are considering how to redistribute them.

We believe we need two weeks to let the dust settle to see how much redistribution happens. Even with that redistribution we know that key people and projects may not get confirmations in time to move forward with their plans. We are looking at options to keep that from happening.

Burning Man’s most important priority is to make sure the community stays intact in the face of the current challenges. Combining what we learned from the phone conversations and what we’ve heard from the Burner community, we’ve come up with some ideas to address the short term issues. We will continue to gather information and listen to your feedback as we work towards announcing our plans within two weeks.

In the meantime we urge our community not to buy from scalpers or from large resale sites. We will have the Secure Ticket Exchange Program (STEP) activated on February 22. This is the most secure and hassle free way to enter the re-sale system. Please use it.

Those registrants who received rejection letters should keep an eye on your email as information about STEP and any other options will be made to you first.

Not everyone who wants a ticket this year will get one, that is clear — the demand clearly exceeds supply. But we are going to do everything we can in the coming days to ensure that we preserve and respect the community that supports and creates this event both in the short term and long term.

We will be reaching out to you and working with you to make that happen. We recognize that we have work to do to repair the faith in the organization. We are very sorry for the frustration, anxiety and deep disappointment this year’s ticketing experience has caused for so many citizens of Black Rock City.

Sincerely,

All of us here at the Burning Man Organization