Community Meeting Transcript

Daniel T: [Music playing]

Michael M: Perfect.

Raffaella: Can you see it?

Michael M: Just take a closer look.

Raffaella: You know what?

Daniel T: Hello. Happy—

Curious Creatures: Raffaella, can you please mute yourself? Thank you.

Raffaella: Ah, sorry. Thank you.

Ellen K: Are we all good? Is the song done yet? The song is done. Let’s start then. We’re six minutes past. So, we’re one minute late. Hi, I’m Ellen. I’m Dr. Plant for those who haven’t met me. I’ll be leading this call and it’s like in the spirit of having more new people leading the call. So Daniel doesn’t do what he told me he does, hovering creepily over things. So if you want to lead the call, do it. You’ll see this time that I’m much less good at it than previous people. And so then you’ll feel at ease to take the lead. We’ve got a pretty packed agenda today.

Ellen K: We’ll start with the sexiest stuff, which is the GDPR update. I can’t think of anything sexier than that. I have been told that Pepe will do this update. Do we have a Pepe?

Daniel T: I don’t see Pepe, but I think Aaron is—

Pablo V: He told me he was going somewhere else. So—

Ellen K: Ah.

Pablo V: Either we have Aaron or I can do it.

Aaron R: I’m happy to do it. Hi all. So I just wanted to give you a quick update on a GDPR issue that we had about a week ago that tested our systems and tested our processes. What happened was that we had a data leak. Now the ins and outs of it were that it was ultimately my fault. I was writing to the low-income applicants who were successful. We added them to a group on our system and the system had inherited permissions. That meant that the group that they were added to had access to more information than they should.

Aaron R: Now, as always, there are many many different faults to this and many learnings that we can take. It was a contained leak in that everybody who had access to that data was already part of the humans platform and had already signed the policy. There were 47 people. We knew who they are and we knew exactly what they viewed. So we were able to write to them really quickly but we kicked into action with the DPO which is Pepe who’s our data protection officer. We wrote an issue statement and we had some calls between all of us to make sure that we were on top of it — communicating with those affected as well as filling in all the processes that we had to for the legal requirements in the country. So the AEPD is the local information committee office in Spain and we had to submit to them within 72 hours exactly what had happened and I’m really pleased to say that everyone got behind this. We got there before the deadline. The AEPD also received the information and then immediately told us that they had all the information that they needed and that from their point of view the case was closed.

Aaron R: So that’s not where it stops for us because as I say we have lots of learning. So already we’ve changed the human system. Thank you very much to Peter for that. For now those big alerts whenever anybody’s doing something that gives other people access. We will continue to improve the service. So one of the other faults was that we had information on that drive that we shouldn’t really have because we shouldn’t have many people accessing. It’s things like when we have a local resident, we need to validate the local resident. So, we store some of that information. Ultimately, that will all be on our humans platform. So, it’ll be encrypted and on a need-to-know basis. So we’re learning, we’re improving. Thank you to everyone who did that. And if anyone’s got any questions, please let me know. I should finally say that all people who were affected have been written to. So, if you haven’t heard anything, then don’t worry about it.

Aaron R: If you have, I think we’ve closed all that off but if you’ve got any further questions don’t hesitate to contact me, Peter, or Pepe.

Ellen K: I really love that the GDPR update — maybe not the sexiest topic — but it’s being given to us from this extremely scenic location. It does look like the entrepreneur journalist vibes. That is the way to communicate GDPR information, I agree. Sounds like you did everything we were supposed to.

Aaron R: It wasn’t intentional. I was a bit slower walking up the hill than I expected. So, I’m now going to ski down. And I’m hoping you’re going to give me at least 25 minutes before we get to the ticketing update so that I will be able to do that off of my skis.

Ellen K: Oh my god, who knew? We planned this meeting so perfectly. He gets to ski down the hill before we get back to him. That’s amazing. We’ll move on from GDPR.

Ellen K: Move on from GDPR with some much sexier things. There is a point about an ambassador that could have a spot at Africa Burn. And I don’t know everything about this, but I think maybe we have the person who’s meant to be talking about this on this call. Do we know? Let’s see. Let’s give them a moment.

Daniel T: Waving around.

Sakolo S: Yeah. Right here.

Ellen K: Ah. Wonderful. Do you want to give us the news?

Sakolo S: Yeah. How you doing, folks? So if any of you have been monitoring the ambassador’s channel, I put forward the idea that we should try to reach out to other like-minded events that are at different times and would make sense to establish a relationship that already exists. I think there’s a good number of Africa burners who have gone to Nowhere.

Sakolo S: If there’s anyone who knows census data from the past offhand or names — is anyone on the call from South Africa going to Africa Burn? Speak up if you are. But if not, we need to get those people back, right? In any case, I’m going and they had a camp that does a bus from Cape Town to the event and they were doing a contest, giving away a ticket to the event and a roundtrip ticket on their bus which is a long ride. It’s like six hours. Half of it’s on rough roads and it costs probably over a hundred euros for the round trip and the ticket to the event isn’t that expensive. Anyway, I entered and I won the contest. So, I had already bought an event ticket and my bus ticket.

Sakolo S: So, I have an extra one now of each. So if any of you are serious about putting some effort into this ambassador role, outreach effort, get on a plane and come down. That’s all it’s going to cost you. I have a free camp and then the event ticket and the bus ticket are free. Accommodation in Cape Town’s not that expensive. So the offer is there, but there’s not a lot of time. The event starts on the 27th of April, and you really want to get to Cape Town by the 24th at the latest, probably the 25th. I think the buses go on the 25th and 26th. So that’s what you’re looking at. If anyone wants to step up, say so this week — in the next couple days. Tell me today. And if anyone knows anyone who is already down in South Africa or like Kenya or something who is on this crew, get in touch with them if they’re not seeing this because conceivably maybe one of you doesn’t have enough money or time to fly down all the way from Europe, but maybe someone’s already down there.

Sakolo S: And if not, the guy who runs the place is the former leader captain of the airports at Black Rock City and at Africa Burn and he regularly sponsors local African folks who don’t have the money to go — sponsors them to go to the event. So he probably has a roster of people that are local and could use the free ticket. But the point is we’ve got to — you know, my view of this whole organization that you folks are doing is awesome on all these organizational details but very insular. That’s just my opinion and I think there needs to be some effort to reach out and not reach out with just an email campaign only. So that’s that. I also wanted to say that there’s other events that were proposed such as Waking Life and other events that may be in Europe before ours. I was intending to perhaps join that, but I’ve had a contingency kind of come up in my life.

Sakolo S: I have this art car-like vehicle that I use regularly in Miami and I haven’t been able to find an off-ramp for it. So, most likely I’m going to be coming back in June for the World Cup matches and using it during that to sort of make some money and hopefully sell it. So, for those weeks before our event in Spain, I won’t be available to help out much. So, that’s the reason. And just wanted to put that out there. And if we can find other people to head up an ambassador effort for Waking Life and any other places and also like Flamingalo in Portugal, you know, we should have people going there and talking up what Elsewhere is all about, what we’re trying to achieve, what’s coming next. And also, I suggest that someone in comms should try to finalize some sort of media presentation of Elsewhere for this year soon. So that if I can have an approved flyer to give out during Africa Burn that would be great.

Sakolo S: It’s just got to be ready in two or three weeks. And there should be also some sort of an agreed basis of what we say about Elsewhere so it’s consistent between people. I shouldn’t be going through one camp saying this thing about Elsewhere and then someone else is going to a different camp and saying something different. So some sort of consistency that you all can agree upon — how you want to put your foot forward for Elsewhere. I think some attention needs to be paid to the fact that it’s called Elsewhere this year. A lot of us weren’t happy with how it ended up being Elsewhere. There’s a good chance it’s going to be something else next year. So some visibility on that would be great as well that you all in the brain trust can agree upon, because I don’t want to be representing the event in one way and then have it be that you wanted it to be something else.

Sakolo S: Okay. So, I hope that’s all clear. I will put my email in the chat. Yeah, better — I don’t go into Discord much anymore. I had to create a whole new account because the old one was just filled with garbage. So, I’ll give you an email and then email is going to be the primary way of engaging to get the ticket and also to get into our camp. If you want to be in our camp, you don’t have to be, but my camp’s basically free. A lot of the camps at Africa Burn, they’re charging a lot of money so they can build stuff and bring in sound systems — it’s kind of a waste of money unless you’re a DJ in my opinion. So, okay, that’s that. I don’t think I need to put in too much more about this. Any further details I’ll put on the ambassador channel in our Discord, and I’ll put my email in the chat right now.

Sakolo S: And you can get in touch with me this week hopefully if you want that spot. Okay. That’s it. Thanks everyone.

Ellen K: Excellent. That’s a very golden opportunity. That’s awesome to hear that.

Sakolo S: Yes. And okay, so one other thing. Sorry. The group that gave me these tickets is the group that runs the bus and they are a distinct camp. They are not the central Africa Burn organization. If you called up one of them today and asked them about this, they wouldn’t know a thing. So, to some degree, this is not official yet. It’s just something that I suggested to the bus group. And part of the reason why they gave it to me was because I mentioned this sort of setting up of a sister relationship between our burn and theirs. So to some degree we need to follow up with something real in that regard.

Sakolo S: Otherwise I just made up some bait so I could win the contest and then there’s no follow through. Doesn’t look good. So if no one comes with me, that’s not great. We should at least get someone who’s down in South Africa who believes and comes to Elsewhere. So if no one can come from Europe or wherever else, it would be great if someone came who was somewhat aligned with us. If not, I don’t think it’s the end of the world, but it’s not a good look. Okay, so that’s it. Please get looking on it and start looking at flights. I think the best flights are from Amsterdam. So, if you can get to Amsterdam somehow easily, you do one less flight.

Ellen K: Maybe I’ll leave you to do logistics between the people, but you’ll leave your email in the chat. So, anyone who wants to reach out should reach out by email rather than by Discord.

Sakolo S: Yes. Great.

Ellen K: There’s a raised hand from Michael.

Michael M: Yes. Hello. Just a quick one, Sakolo. I love your energy, man. I love that you’re pushing this. Very sadly, one of our production leads from Nowhere used to be part of the core crew that built Africa Burn, but sadly she passed away a few years ago. One of the things that came up with us when we were discussing the benefits or downsides of a fallow year was in fact reaching out. We’re really keen to try and reach out to other organizations that have other events and kind of share our processes. We’re not the only event that’s scrambling to put together a ticketing system. We’re not the only event that’s trying to provide on-site safety.

Michael M: So, I think this has a really good scope — especially after the event — for some of our projects to be able to reach out to other teams and share skills and learn from each other. We have a lot to teach. They have a lot to learn. And as they say in South Africa, each one teach one. But kudos to you, man. I’m loving your energy. Speaking as a broke person, I can’t be going to South Africa this year, but it’s great.

Sakolo S: Yeah. And check the ambassador’s channel. They did a really wicked golden ticket type of thing à la Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It’s really impressive. Anyway, that’s that. Thanks. I appreciate the appreciation and hopefully someone can join me. All right. But yeah, please, people in comms and you folks who are feeding info to comms, please try to get something together.

Sakolo S: I mean, if you have a flyer already, I’ll print some and bring them. But I’m flying in a week. I’m going early. I’m going a week early. And then I’m also going in early on a WAP. So I’ll be leaving the States in a week. So my time to do those sorts of things is limited. I mean I might be able to find a place to print them in Cape Town. That’s totally possible. Okay. All right.

Ellen K: That’s excellent. Thank you so much. It’ll be quite — going to Cayce who’s got the latest for barrios. I imagine there’s quite a few people from barrios here. So there’s going to be a few updates on what Barrio Support is doing. You are muted, Cayce — can’t hear you.

Cayce: Amazing. Good note. Thank you. All right, folks. So yeah, a few points to rattle through. Where there’s links or anything or contact details, if I can, Dr. P, if I can just get you to drop them in the chat. It’s just like how to get in touch with Barrio Support and things. Okay, so first point — barrio registration closing soon. By this meeting next week, you will not be able to register a barrio. Last chance to do it is next Tuesday, that is the 14th of April, at a minute to midnight. And I believe that is European time. Someone keep me honest on that. But do not try to register a barrio next Wednesday. You will not be able to. Please get your applications in soon. If in doubt, register a barrio. Ordering system for barrios — this is your ice, your water, your gas, your pallets, everything you need to have a good time and survive the desert. That will be done via Humans. That is coming soon. We’re working on that. I don’t know if Peter, you’ve got a sense of timing on that at the moment or if it’s just sort of in a stack somewhere.

Peter D: Something after Elsewhere but relatively soon. Yeah, hopefully the end of April. Before the end of April.

Cayce: All right. So, we have plenty of time, folks. You can work out what you’re going to need. We may be able to give you some earlier visibility than that on prices working with production but we will keep you all posted. Third point and I will let Dr. Plant talk to this one in a bit more detail. We’re going to be hosting a barrio flag rally / banner rally which is basically speed dating for barrios. So most of the barrios who are coming this year are accepting new members. You may have seen some of the posts on Discord or on Facebook giving a brief description of “here’s who we are, here’s what we do, here’s the sort of people we’re looking for.” We’re essentially talking about putting something together where barrios who are interested can give you a sense of who they are.

Cayce: So any barrios who are interested in being involved in that, Dr. Plant will drop the email to contact us in the chat. But get in touch with us and we will put you on the list and set something up. Next — anyone who isn’t aware, the barrio guide is out. I believe that’s gone to all our registered barrio leads and it is also available on the website. I’m just going to pause. I see a hand up. Daniel?

Daniel T: I was just wondering if barrios that aren’t coming this year should also register on the barrios section on the Humans app.

Cayce: So I believe that you can register and select an option that basically says, “Look, here’s who we are, but we’re not coming this year.” If there’s any confusion, then wait till this time next week. If you’re not coming, wait till this time next week, then register your barrio. Then you know you’re not accidentally signing up to come this year. It would be really really great from our perspective if we could get everyone who’s active — in the sense of you’ve got containers in storage, we’re still talking to you year on year — it would be great if we could get all of those folks registered as well and just listed as not coming this year.

Cayce: So yeah, if that’s you and you have the time and the energy to get your barrio registered just so we’ve got you in the broader stable of stuff and you’re still getting all the comms and everything. I think we’ve done a pretty comprehensive job of getting barrio leads’ contacts from previous years, but there’s always a chance we’ve missed people. So if that’s you, again, let us know. I see another hand up.

Imanol U L: Yeah, where would the barrios need to register if we were interested on—

Cayce: So Dr. Plant can drop the direct link to that in the chat but that is via the Humans app. You need to register yourself on Humans first, get your burner profile set up, etc., and then if you go to barrios—

Imanol U L: I was talking about for the speed dating thing that you mentioned, not for registering the barrio.

Cayce: Oh, right. Okay. Yep. Just email us directly. Dr. Plant will drop the email in the chat. I think that’s barrios at nobodies. And then final point from me just to rattle through quickly. We’ve had some good response on volunteering so far. We do still need more people, particularly for the physical side of build. So if you feel moved to go around barrios meeting people and drilling holes in the ground for their posts, sticking their grounding rods in for tall structures — so you know, we keep hippies safe from being electrocuted — it’s hard physical work. It’s also a nice way of getting around and meeting people. If that’s your cup of tea, give us a shout, let us know. Register your interest on the shifts on Humans. We particularly need people on the more admin side to help us with strike and checkout which for Barrio Support includes the Sunday that’s still technically event because a lot of barrios will start tearing down, returning things, etc., on that Sunday.

Cayce: So if you’re there with a barrio whose strike lasts longer and they can spare you for a half day on Sunday, that’s a couple of shifts that we’d really appreciate a bit of help with. Otherwise, it will be me after four weeks on site sitting there looking very very tired and trying to do it all. So yeah, give us a shout on that. And the last thing that we are looking for is a second on-site lead to join me who’s able to be there from Barrio Build through the end of Barrio Strike basically. So that is the Wednesday before event through the Wednesday after event. Again, get in touch with us or the volunteer coordinators if that’s something that you think you’d be interested in joining us for. So, any questions? Shout. And if not, that is our update for the week, I believe.

Ellen K: That is excellent. I can continue in that vein just to flesh out a little bit more about barrio speed dating. Basically we had requests both from barrios and from participants — barrios saying “we need to recruit” and participants saying “we don’t really know who to reach out to.”

Ellen K: We don’t have a face to every barrio. So the idea is to just replace one of these community calls — maybe in a week, maybe in two weeks, depending on availability of everyone — with anyone who can make it and who wants to recruit from barrios giving a two-three minute presentation, just giving some background on who you’re looking for, what you’re looking for, what you’re all about. And that just helps people give a little bit more of a personal touch so it’s easier to actually reach out rather than click this impersonal “apply for a barrio” button. So if anyone is interested in doing that, just reach out and we’ll put you on the list and we’ll figure out a date. We have some more things going. We have one more thing barrio-wise which is a city planning update which is all the interesting stuff about maps. I can see Melody’s here.

Premaill M: Yeah, I’m here. Oops.

Ellen K: Do you want to give us an update about how city planning is going?

Premaill M: So, yes, sure. City planning is going great and barrio self-placement is going to open soon just after barrio registration closes. So we are not 100% sure when it will be exactly — it’s next week that it’s going to open. So we think Thursday or Friday. We’ll keep you updated quickly. And we have two things to share with you — the new layout for the map. The map designer made a really beautiful new map and we have the self-placement app that has been updated and improved and now it’s on Humans. And I will let the people who actually worked on it — the map designer and the app designer — talk about it. If you want to share the screen—

David N: We can do that. So maybe Danny, you want to present the new layout and I show it on my screen — maybe you want to comment?

Premaill M: Oh, Danny is not here.

Daniel M S: I am here. I think you cannot see me. My camera is not working.

Premaill M: Oh, yeah. I’ll leave you to present it because you created it.

Daniel M S: Well, I created it with Sandrino. I’m not sure if Sandrino is on the call, but since this year we are going to Elsewhere instead of Nowhere, we decided to do something a little bit different. The area is a bit smaller than last year because we expect that maybe we have less participants but yeah, as you can see, we’re trying to do a strong different concept with different ellipses and we still have the color zones like last year — blue to the bottom right, red to the top left. And yeah, I’m not really sure what is what today — it’s still in progress. We still have to work more on it, but this is like the first draft that we have.

Premaill M: Yeah. And a reminder for barrios to register again if you haven’t and to fill in the required size that you want because it helps us to have enough space for everyone and to make sure everyone will fit.

David N: And to show you a really quick demo — because it’s going to be a new event as you say, different than last year. It’s also better permission-wise. For example, here I’m connected as the barrio one lead. I will be able to draw my barrio on the map and people will only be able to edit their barrio, not others’ barrios. That will hopefully prevent some kind of issues. And of course everything will be tracked. So we will see what has been done. So no worries if anyone makes a mistake moving a barrio. And maybe you can take questions now on both the layout and the app if there are any.

Ellen K: I saw there was a question about the free camp, right?

Daniel M S: Yeah, the free camp will be — so the front of playa will be for barrios and then in the north side, which is white, that will be free camping. In the bottom part which is yellow, that will be free camping — it’s like the second line after the barrios. That would be free camping.

Premaill M: Yeah. And there will be free camp in the south as well.

Ellen K: So, at the moment, this map is just for placement for barrios, right? But there could be a map where it’s clear that it’s free camp outside later on, right? This is the kind of barrio placement map. It looks amazing. It looks incredible.

Daniel M S: Yeah, we just finished this layout this week and we put it in the app so we could show it today to you guys. But this is only the beginning.

Daniel M S: We have a lot more work to do on it.

Imanol U L: So, just thinking — yeah, sorry, there was another one before me. If there was, I missed it. Sorry. I’m thinking about the toilet placement and everything. How would it work? So, if I follow this map, will the toilets be outside of the free camp? So if you are in the center of playa, you need to cross the barrio and cross the free campers to reach there. Is there a thought in this map on how all the other things that are not barrios or free campers are going to work?

Daniel M S: That’s a very good question and I think we still have to think about that.

Pablo V: Just a small question if I can. Are you guys also factoring things like sound and sound conflicts and doing placements?

Daniel M S: We do have the sound zones like last year. That’s what you mean?

Pablo V: Yeah.

Daniel M S: Yeah. So, we do have the sound zones.

Imanol U L: Yeah, but I think — I’m not sure if what you meant, Pablo, is that the courses are very close. So there are going to be barrios facing each other. So probably from a sound engineering perspective, that’s also something to take into account — how all the sounds of those barrios are going to interact. Also for the bread and tomato installation that usually is kind of in the middle outside of those areas — where would it be placed? I’m not sure if that was what you meant, Pablo.

Pablo V: Yeah, it is. And there was an idea floating around of what if the camps would take turns in their sound — controversial idea. But I wonder if placement says, “Hey, we could improve this massively if maybe there would be sound alternating between some camps and others.” Maybe it’s an idea to discuss with the camps as well.

Daniel M S: I don’t think I understood what you mean — your idea.

Pablo V: Well, sorry. It’s more of a question that sometimes in festivals — in burns — you have dance floors that are half empty, right? So sometimes people have said, “Hey, why don’t we take turns and have slots?” So these three camps play this night and these other two camps play the other night. And my question for you doing placement is if you’re analyzing the way that sound should be placed, maybe that’s a conversation that could start happening with barrios. Or maybe we prefer anarchy. But if there’s some sort of order where group A plays some nights and group B plays other nights, that might make sense because maybe we can have tighter placement or maybe there’s some advantage to it. I don’t know.

Daniel M S: I guess that’s something that can be discussed but we didn’t think about that either. Also, so we will have an open time for barrio placement like last year — we will have some time where camps can discuss with each other where they want to be placed. Maybe that’s the time for camps to negotiate or talk about this or alternating sound areas or dancing areas among themselves. I’m not sure placement can decide when is who is playing music and when.

Pablo V: I will maybe make a little comment on the city planning area — if that’s the right channel — and we can have the conversation there.

Ellen K: Yeah, maybe there’s scope for a channel on Discord where those people who are not barrios but who might have other important needs — I saw there was a question about the water project — where they kind of fit into the map. Maybe there’s scope for opening up a channel for that kind of important information because it also is quite — I mean it makes sense that city planning can’t have everything in their minds at the same time, right?

Daniel M S: Yeah, this is just a first draft. Definitely have to have changes on it.

Premaill M: But yeah, for the water truck, the roads are big enough for it to go all around. I’m seeing the question. Yeah, and it can be bigger for 2,500 persons. I don’t know what the other questions are.

Ellen K: So, there was a question about the water project and the shower placement for that because that takes a bit of space. And then the toilet question — the question of toilets always being too far away.

Premaill M: Yeah, for the water project, I think they have some space where they can go in this layout. We haven’t placed the main structure either. So it will move a little but I’m confident that everything will fit in the right place.

Daniel M S: Regarding the trucks, the road will be 12 metres wide. So there will be enough space for the trucks.

Ellen K: I see one more hand up. Do we want to hear from Michael before we round off city planning?

Michael M: Yeah, it was just a comment. The camps at the event and the placement team do an excellent job on sound and really try and balance being fair to everyone. The challenge is when you’ve got mobile sound systems and art pieces that have sound systems attached, but that’s outside the scope of this discussion.

Ellen K: Now that is excellent. I mean that’s really exciting news actually. Placement app looks really cool. I mean comparing that to the kind of screenshots we have from the old layout in the barrio guide — this looks so advanced. It looks amazing. There’s maybe one more question. Do we have—

Fadija Camp: I wonder — how is it going to be that we are going to choose where we want to go as barrios? Is it going to be first come first serve? Is it going to be some other way?

Premaill M: No. So when the placement opens, we are also going to open a special thread in Discord and once a week — I cannot tell you the exact day — we are going to open a time where city planning members are going to be here and the barrios can join and we can talk and you can negotiate with the neighbours. But the idea is no first come first serve.

Fadija Camp: Okay, great. Thank you.

Ellen K: Are we good on city planning? In which case, I’d like to thank you for this update. Thank you for showing what it looks like. It’s getting me hyped. Actually, I’ve spent all my day sewing a shade in the sun, so now I’m getting really hyped.

Ellen K: If we’re done with placement, then I’d like to shift over to shifts. We have a wonderful person who’s looking over where our needs are greatest and what our most understaffed areas are. And I’m hoping there can be a call to action to sign up for shifts. Do we have Nick?

Michael M: Yes, it’s me and Frank. Frank’s been looking at the early part of the event and the first bit. If you’re happy to speak about that, Frank?

Frank F: Sure. Yeah. So yeah, the biggest kind of concern at the moment is that we don’t have enough people for the early beginning start. So we need people who want to come and do infrastructure, people who want to come and do container unloading and various other things. All of those shifts are available — if you go to /shifts on the Humans page you can see them all. But it’s really critical that we get those people in. I mean, proportionally we’ve sold a decent amount of tickets, which I’m sure there’ll be an update about soon, but on volunteers we’re really lagging behind.

Frank F: There’s some communications going out soon. And we’re going to be pushing it more through various channels. But for people who are already on this call and you know who you are — if you’ve signed up, find somebody who hasn’t signed up and ask them to do that. Because only we ourselves can make sure this event happens. That’s it.

Michael M: Yeah, I think collectively there was a big push and a decision to try and host the event this year and we’re smashing it and so much stuff is getting done. But just crunching the numbers — only 8% of all of the city planning work is filled up with volunteers. Building infrastructure has about 10%. Cantina has about 20%. LMT 9%. Barrios are at 49%. I don’t know what they’re doing over there, but we might need to break up that racket in the near future. And that’s even before we look at the event time where Gates have got about a quarter of their stuff filled already.

Michael M: MALF is at 12%, Welfare 6%, Interpreters 3%. And then strike — I think it’s a huge amount to get this event up and running. And as Frank says, that first week on site emptying containers — if you’ve got 20 people getting that core stuff done, it goes a lot faster than if there’s 10. And likewise, strike at the end of the event. Preaching to the choir here. This is the pool of the most committed people. We’re already doing so much. You’re banging out 15, 20 hours worth of emails a week. But this is just a general check-in as to where we are at the event. We’ll get lots of people signing up at the gate and signing up for individual shifts during the event, but it is that core thrust for the first two weeks to get everything done and a week to get everything packed away. We have 64 days till we hit site. So, I’m hopeful. But yeah, and as Frank said, if we haven’t registered or put ourselves down on Humans for the work that we know we’re already doing, then we look like we’re not coming.

Michael M: So, get cracking. Tell your friends. We’re not a cult, but we should act like one a little bit more. Tell people it’s going to come. It’s going to change their lives. Get them to join, and then never let them leave. But we’re not a cult.

Ellen K: Definitely not a cult. Can we also — so, I’ve had this question when I’ve been trying to get people on board to come early. One of the questions I’ve had is that people who have time and capacity don’t necessarily have transport. And I believe you have some transport options for people who want to come really early. The last mile I’m talking about.

Michael M: Oh yeah, there is a bus. We do pickups from town. So from Sariña every day we do a pickup at the train station for the 4:30 train. We’re going to get the ride-share boards up and running. So yeah, we’ll get people to and from there. And then post-event, every year we’ve tried to be pragmatic and flexible.

Michael M: We’re thinking about trying to do some shuttle runs post-event because trust me, I’ve been the last person there on site for quite a few years. And your options are jump in a van and go have a wonderful time in Babylonia with your friends or get stuck on site until Saturday. So, we’re looking to see if there’s some way to offer shuttle runs off site on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, possibly even trips to Barcelona. And I think just as for a lot of post-event, it’s not that you have to stay one day or you’re stuck till the bitter end. We’re going to try and be flexible about it. Put out some information and yeah, I think it’s just encouraging people that that extra day helps. But trust me, after 3 weeks on site with most of my friends 24/7, I’m as ready to leave as the next person. So I definitely get why people can’t stay. And we’ve got to go back to jobs and get money that pays for all the fun stuff.

Michael M: So, it’s tricky. We do what we can.

Ellen K: Excellent update. Thank you for sharing. I mean, yeah, as you say, many of the people on this call have probably already signed up for shifts and are probably already doing triple shifts. We have a question. Let’s let in a question before I move on. Can we have Sakolo?

Sakolo S: Has the bus stuff been covered in the past weeks? I missed the last couple weeks of calls, so perhaps it has. Sorry.

Ellen K: Do you mean buses for the event or do you mean buses for build and strike?

Sakolo S: For both actually. I don’t actually happen to know how you do buses for the crew or how it’s been done in the past.

Michael M: So for people coming to volunteer, like I said, we get a ride-share. People tend to link up. It’s relatively easy to get to Sariña, the town. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but there is a train. You can get there from Barcelona and we’ll do a pickup every day.

Michael M: I know in the past that we have had a bus that arrived pre-event for a lot of barrio members. I’m looking at the details with that. But yeah, I think that is something — that’s a valid point. The quicker we get these things up online the easier people start to think it is to come. So I can make a note and check in with comms as to bus updates.

Sakolo S: Yeah. I mean, the bus transport thing as an outward-facing element of the event is one of the first things that people see and start to set up when they’re doing their actual travel logistics. And I personally have to thread the needle a little bit this year myself because I’ve got this World Cup stuff here in the States and then I’m going to zip to Barcelona. So, I need to start thinking about those dates. So, I’m actually personally interested, but also I think in general the dates and times of when the buses are going — both for building crew stuff and general attendance — would be appreciated sooner rather than later.

Michael M: Sounds like that might be something useful to be on the ticket page. So if somebody’s browsing and curious, we want to tap into that impulse purchase. There’s no point pretending that we’re far away in the middle of nowhere in the desert and painting a picture that it’s too hard to get to us. Yeah, we can ask about that. Is it possible to get bus info on the ticket side as well?

Aaron R: We’re just waiting for confirmation and we believe that the bus schedule will be very similar to last year. And as soon as that is confirmed and locked in, we will be publishing the schedule and selling tickets. And the prices will be the same as last year as well.

Sakolo S: Okay. But I don’t know who was in charge of that last year. Who is in charge of that within your crew?

Aaron R: Yeah. So there’s someone looking after it and I’m in touch. So we will come back — expect an answer within the next few days on that one.

Sakolo S: Yeah, perhaps maybe we set up a Discord channel for transport also. I don’t think—

Aaron R: I think that might be beyond scope and I’m worried about the number of Discord channels that we’ve got already. But there will be information online as to the tickets that are available for buses and obviously I think it might be useful for a transport Discord channel for anyone who wants to participate in it. But I don’t think that’ll be the formal avenue for us for the buses.

Sakolo S: Yeah. Just keep in mind sometimes people are going to be like, “Oh, where do I go for info on transport?” And then they want to see some sort of a bucket of transport info. So yeah.

Aaron R: The nobodies.team website is the definitive answer for that over the next couple of weeks.

Sakolo S: Okay. Gotcha. Thank you.

Ellen K: That is excellent. It’s really good to see you back, Aaron. You’ve skied down. How was the slope?

Aaron R: Crusty I think is the right term and a little bit dark by the time I got down. But although I’m very glad that this has only got vision on it and not smell-o-vision because I don’t think it would be very pleasant for everyone.

Ellen K: That’s okay. Just getting us ready. Do you want to take a ticketing update while you’re here? And then I’ll do a very short secret update at the end.

Aaron R: Oh, secret update. That sounds much more exciting. How come I get the boring stuff? Actually, that’s not true. Ticketing is far from boring. We’re actually on track to sell out all of the Wave 1 tickets before the deadline. So, as you heard earlier from Barrio Support, the important date you’re hearing today is the 14th of April.

Aaron R: That is the time that you need to register your barrio. It’s also the time that you need to have purchased your ticket if you want one for €275. After the 14th of April — in fact, at 23:59 — that flips over and it gets €20 more expensive. So, we’re on Wave 2 ticketing there and that’s €295. We were potentially going to cut them off when we hit the number that we had allocated. But it’s getting very close. So we’ll let that run. 23:59 on the 14th of April is the time that you will need to book your tickets by. Now I expect that everybody on this call has already bought their tickets. However, there are some interesting stats that we’re looking at. One of which is that we’ve still got hundreds of people who have registered for Humans but haven’t actually bought a ticket. Now, the chances are they’re not the people on this call. So, please pass on the message in your own barrio chats.

Aaron R: Whatever you’ve got — that people need to buy this Wave 1 ticket by the 14th of April. And whilst everyone on this call is conscious of our Discord channels and the various threads and communications that we’ve got, I think it’s fair to say there’s a lot of people who are not in the loop. And we still get those communications almost every day saying, “Oh, we missed the low-income date” or “We weren’t aware that the tickets were being sold.” So overcommunicate. And I think there’s something you can really do which is be a lot more liberal in your communication than necessarily the NCA can about the dynamic of this event versus previous ones. So you can be very direct and say that this is happening in a way that perhaps our official communications can’t. So, I’d encourage all of you to please reach out to members of your barrio, getting them in before the 14th of April, primarily because we really don’t want to be dealing with all the inevitable emails going, “Oh, we missed the deadline. We didn’t know about it.

Aaron R: Please, can we have it for the Wave 1 ticket pricing?” The bottom line is no, you can’t. Because the admin involved in that is just too great. So come 23:59 CET on the 14th of April the pricing will flip. Low income — everybody should have, if you applied for low income before the cutoff date, you should have now received an email. It’ll be one of three different emails. It will be either “Granted, low-income ticket, here’s your code,” or it’ll be “Great, you’ve succeeded in getting a low-income ticket, but you didn’t register on Humans and follow the instructions. So, you need to do that before we send you the code.” And there’s a couple of manual steps that we have to do then. Now we’re still waiting for 17 people in that category. So, please, if you have got that email, please do respond to it. Or you received an email saying that you were unsuccessful in low income and we’re really, really sorry about that. There is a small category of people who are in that fine line and if we’ve got some people who don’t take advantage of their low-income ticket, we will write to them.

Aaron R: So we’ve spoken to a few people and said, “Don’t buy a ticket just yet because we want to see if we’ve run out of all the low incomes. We might be able to issue you one.” They will hear from us and they all know who they are. So if you’ve got any questions around low income that don’t fit into that group, either ask them now or do send us a message. I’m afraid that if you missed the deadline, it’s very clear that you cannot now apply for low income. So, I’m sorry about that. We’ve got a hand up. Should I just take that one?

Fadija Camp: Yeah. Hi. Thanks for all the work. First things first — I have been told, or there was some conversation in the ticketing thread on Discord, where they were talking about a possible second wave of low-income tickets as the second wave of tickets come up. Is that true?

Aaron R: So the answer to that is it’s above my pay grade.

Aaron R: I think that’s a very difficult thing to actually do. Because obviously people have already bought tickets. So if we’ve said to people that they haven’t got low-income tickets and then they’ve gone and bought one, it would have to do a refund and there’s a level of complexity. So I personally think we are probably not going to do that. What we do have is — if some of the original successful applicants don’t take their ticket, we’ve got the ability to give it to the next in line. As I say, it’s above my pay grade. Low income is looked after by a different team. There may be more updates for that, but I haven’t got any information for you at the moment.

Fadija Camp: Okay, thank you.

Aaron R: I would buy a ticket. Couple of other things. If we keep going at this rate of sales, we will actually hit last year’s number. Which is a bit of a surprise. I don’t know if we’re going to continue at this sales rate.

Aaron R: But I hope we will. And I’m looking forward to those. So, it’s great that the message is getting out there. I think there’s also going to be lots of discussion as we get close to that break-even point. The break-even point obviously is really important for the event, but also as we go past that break-even point, it gets even more exciting because that then gets onto the ability for us to give out more art grants and the ability for us to have that little bit of contingency. Plus, as you’ve heard, it comes back to volunteers. So Michael made that point really clear. We want the volunteers there. The more that we have coming, the more volunteers we’ve got, the better experience for everybody. So please, as I said, not a cult, but do spread the message of the festival. It’s not a festival. Not a cult.

Ellen K: Is that the end of the ticketing update?

Ellen K: Spread the word. Amen. Hallelujah.

Aaron R: I think I’ve spoken far too much on this call as it is.

Ellen K: Skied too little, spoken too much. There was a question: “Is there an effort exchange for getting a low-income ticket?” And I think we can answer that as a no. I mean this is just a judgement that has been put into place over years of what your resources are and if you fit that bill, no matter how much you can participate, then you are awarded a low-income ticket. Is that correct? Let’s go ahead.

Aaron R: So I don’t know if anyone from the low-income team is here. If they’re not, I’m happy to give you what I’ve seen from the transparent communications, which is basically there is a scoring matrix. There is obviously an element of subjectivity but it’s consistently applied across the whole thing. We don’t actually publish exactly what that criteria is because then we could end up in a situation where certain people are trying to game it.

Aaron R: So it is a secret sauce. But that secret sauce has been established for a very long time. And it seems to be very robust in how we do that. But it isn’t about effort coming back. This is about those who can least afford it being subsidized by the rest of the community for their attendance because of the value that they bring as well. And obviously what we want to see is effort from everybody. Doesn’t matter whether you’re buying your ticket, whether you’ve bought a voluntary inflated price ticket — and I’m so pleased to see that we’ve had so many of those purchased as well. So these are people who perhaps have got deeper pockets or money that’s burning a hole, who overpay for their tickets. They don’t get any benefits and those who get the lower discounted tickets don’t have to do any extra work. So it’s all a wonderful community.

Ellen K: Excellent. But not a cult.

Ellen K: Let’s — we have actually got two and a half minutes until we hit the hour mark. Which is excellent because that means I can give a forwarded update — secret last minute update — from Cat and the art team who says that we should be on the lookout for the big fencing project. Does everyone remember idiot tape? Red and white sticky plastic disgusting idiot tape. We need that in some areas of our beautiful playa, but other areas we don’t need it. Especially between barrios, for example, and behind the barrios, we might not need it. And for those places, Cat is launching an effort to have motivated people design some new fencing. It could be bunting, it could be recyclables strung together. But I am told there will be a tour of the great fences of the playa and there will be prizes. So, look out for that. Idiot tape is indeed an important part of the event. I’m seeing in the chat there will be idiot tape. It will remain. But we can think further — we can think like moron tape or any other synonyms you like.

Ellen K: So yeah, look out for fencing. And that is in fact everything I have on the agenda. I mean, you could build a new fence out of any amount of idiot tape you want. You could double, triple idiot tape it if you wanted to. I think the rules are free. It’s everything I’ve got on the agenda. Which means we have reached one hour minus one minute and I can see Daniel is here to hover above us so that we feel at home for the last minute of this call. Go ahead, Daniel.

Daniel T: There might be other people having questions as well, possibly. I just wanted — I mean, I do enjoy playing all the tunes that I made back like eight years ago or something. But I’m almost out. I have like one more I can play next week. It’s actually quite an angry tune. So if you want a sort of really pounding techno track, jump in next week, assuming we have a call next week.

Daniel T: But it would be nice to hear other people’s tunes. There were some contributions from Jam Camp. There was somebody else who contributed some psytrance. Maybe we can have other people’s cool music. The key requirement is just that it’s not something that’s going to get the video taken down from YouTube if it’s posted. So not copyrighted music that’s got automatic DMCA takedowns and stuff like that. Just get in touch with me on Discord and send me the link to the track — whether it’s SoundCloud or an MP3 or whatever — and then everyone can hear your track on this call. 43 people today — it’s a pretty good dance floor. And I mean looking at the people at the beginning of the call there’s definitely some people who are enjoying the tune. So, open invitation.

Ellen K: Excellent. More music. Do we have any more questions? There are tunes in the chat. So, anyone with tunes, should they just reach out to you, Daniel?

Daniel T: Reach out on Discord, not on here because I will not keep track. And just the name and stuff is not super helpful. Ping me on Discord, send me a link to the file or the track — send me the MP3, do something to help me collect this piece of music and then I will play it at the beginning of the next community call.

Ellen K: And your Discord handle is in the chat.

Daniel T: Oh, it’s Swombat on Discord. Sorry.

Ellen K: In case anyone had missed the ever-present Swombat. Are there any questions before we round off? We’re almost at an hour — one hour one minute. We’re almost timely. Last call for questions. I’m guessing no. I’m guessing everyone’s questions have been answered thoroughly and if not, go to the Discord. That’s where people hang out who answer questions. And to round off, I mean, thank you to everyone for your work.

Ellen K: Thank you for organizing this. I mean we’ll cry before the end but it’s going to happen. We will post on the Discord.

Pablo V: Thank you.

Ellen K: Yeah sure. Next time — anyone who wants to host, now you’ve seen that someone other than Daniel can do it. So go ahead, reach out. And bye for tonight.

Imanol U L: Thank you everyone.

Daniel M S: Bye. Thank you.

Pablo V: Good night. See you on Discord.

Daniel T: You can find all the links on nobodies.team. If you don’t know the link to Discord or to whatever—

Michael M: Nicely facilitated, Ellen. Well done.

Ellen K: Hey, thank you.

Curious Creatures: Bye-bye. We’re already making art. Look, it’s very busy.

Michael M: Oh, nice one.

Curious Creatures: This is a small one. We’re making it super big.

Ellen K: That is so cool. Wait, what is this workshop? Oh my god, that is so cool.

Curious Creatures: Welcome to the Curious Creatures workshop and maker space.

Ellen K: I want to see. Okay, now I want to have a maker space tour of everyone’s maker spaces, but that’s for next time.

Curious Creatures: Yes, next time.

Ellen K: Bye.

Stefan: Bye guys.