Community Meeting Transcript

Speaker A: Have some music in a moment. (paper rustling) Uh, (footsteps thudding) (electronic music) Can anyone confirm that the music’s playing now? The music? Yeah? Okay. I’m just gonna restart it. (electronic music)

Speaker B: Can you hear it? Tell me.

Speaker A: That, that worked, yeah?

Speaker B: Well, yeah. But I usually can’t hear it, actually.

Speaker A: You, you what, sorry?

Speaker B: I usually can’t hear it—

Speaker A: Yeah. So, uh—

Speaker B: … in other weeks, so—

Speaker A: Right. Yeah, last week it didn’t work. I… ‘Cause I was trying to play it from Google Meet—

Speaker B: Yeah, I remember you said. Yeah.

Speaker A: … Google Me— from Google to Google to Google and I think that didn’t work nice from playing from Safari. So, I’m gonna start the recording and then I’m gonna start the music. Woo. (electronic music)

Co-host: Hello, loves. (electronic music)

Host: (electronic music) Well, welcome, peeps. Uh, we’re like one minute away from, uh, grace period so that, eh, we can let more people join. And—

Speaker A: You can carry on beatboxing for the last minute if you want. Boom, cha, cha, boom, cha, cha, boom. No, it’s good.

Host: Yeah, well, not, not one of my greatest skills.

Speaker A: That was—

Host: Yeah. I, I’ll spare everyone. Um, so I’ll, I’ll be your host for today, um. Well, um, we have a few topics on the agenda, uh, a bit more updates as things keep moving forward. Uh, I see we have a few less people than on, uh, Barrio speed dating last week. Uh, though, well, more people are bound to join. Uh, as punctuality, I don’t think is our strongest suit. Um, ah, oh, yeah, there’s that too. Yeah, tomorrow’s a holiday. (laughs) And so our first topic on the agenda is the assets situation, and, uh, for that, I think Ben is gonna give us an update.

Ben: Who Ben? Me Ben?

Host: And…

Ben: Yes. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. Uh, the update is, uh, we have the containers. Um, we, uh, successfully concluded the, um, the legal agreement, uh, everybody signed. Uh, that happened, uh, middle of last week. Uh, and it followed a really nice, um, in person get together at the, um, the Burning Man European Leadership Summit a couple of weeks ago in the Netherlands, where, uh, we were all able to, um, get together from, uh, NCA board and, um, from NORG leadership as well, um, and have a, yeah, like proper constructive in-person discussion about everything. So that was really helpful. Um, so, yeah, uh, headline is containers are secure. We will… We have the stuff and we will be using the stuff for the event. So, um, next steps there, uh, is we’re hoping to be able to continue to, um, transfer further assets, non-physical assets. So, uh, particularly the NORG mailing list, uh, we’ve been talking about potentially, uh, getting access to the NORG mailing list, and, uh, potentially as well the, um, old, like, materials from the drive. Uh, so all the old, uh, documentation process protocols and all that sort of stuff. Uh, but that’s just what we’ve been talking about on the board. That’s not, that’s not really a discussion that we’ve, like, actually, uh, properly started. So, so we’ll be, um, yeah, exploring that, um, in the, uh, in the coming days and weeks. Consider yourselves updated.

Host: Nice. Well, uh, thanks for, uh, the update on… Uh, well, don’t see any questions. Uh, we can move on to the next one, and if there’s questions at the end, we can always come back. Uh, so now for ticketing update, I think Pablo is gonna give us some news.

Pablo V: Is that… So I think Aaron is not here. If you are here, speak up. But, uh, ticketing is going well. Um, just reading here to not get it wrong, but, uh, I think there’s certainty that we will reach break even, uh, which is amazing. That means, uh, that with all the plans that we have, all the things we wanna do, we think this will not be running at a loss. Uh, that’s great considering how late we started compared to other years. Uh, we are headed towards a range that feels exciting, uh, but we cannot make, um… Cannot make a point prediction because right now we’re right after the first wave, and maybe what was great about this wave system… is that there was an incredible rush of sales, uh, right before the price increased. So even a small thing in the calendar, just like this €20 increase, made a lot of people buy tickets. I think we s… we sold even more than after opening tickets. Um, now we’re two weeks away from that second wave. So once we have that second wave, I think we’ll have a really good idea of how many… how many people we’ll end up with at the event. We also have quite a bit of time. But so far, um, yes, we don’t have to worry about it financially. Um, it’s not technically ticketing, but I do wanna say that there’s a big part of ticketing missing, which is that when somebody finishes the ticket, we should have a much easier sign-up for, for shifts. So, uh, Peter and I and Laura are looking into how to improve that flow. Um, having a thank you page. You know when you buy a Ryanair flight, and then you have to book your hotel, book your car? I, I think we should be sending people to book their shifts. That’s not there. Uh, there’s a little bit of friction. There’s… Some of that has been removed since yesterday by Peter, but we’re gonna make it a lot easier, I think. So big, uh, big thing we need to do. Um, stay tuned. I don’t know if we put the buses. Is anybody gonna talk about buses?

Speaker G: Uh, I mean, but you can go ahead.

Pablo V: Oh, sorry. I didn’t see it in the agenda. Okay, then I leave it for you.

Daniela M S: Today, we added—

Pablo V: Uh, that’s ticketing.

Daniela M S: … lots of words but you can do it.

Pablo V: Okay. Well, I don’t know the details (laughs) so maybe we, we go to Daniela on this? (laughs)

Daniela M S: Okay.

Co-host: Well, so yeah, Daniela is gonna give us this bus and general websites update. Go ahead, Daniela.

Daniela M S: Yeah, so you can go to the website now and find the information for the buses. Tickets will go on sale, uh, on Monday, which is great news. You can find all the information about that and how to get to Knowwhere, uh, to elsewhere there. And also on the website, you can find Barrio’s information. I think, uh, Pablo can put the links in the, in the, in the, in the comments so you can go and check them out. Uh, yeah, there it is. It’s looking very pretty. You can go to Event and then you find the links and then you go there and you can find all the information that you need. Um, and also on the website updates, I think that was it because I think Pablo said the other thing, right? What you just said about…

Pablo V: Sorry. Uh, I said that we’re gonna make a flow for people to join volunteering a bit easier, ‘cause right now, uh, there’s… like, there’s a few things you need to do, and we’re gonna simplify that. But yeah, new sections are Join a Barrio, Bus Tickets, Survival Guide should be coming in a couple weeks. But yeah, it’s starting—

Daniela M S: Mm-hmm.

Pablo V: … to be much more complete.

Daniela M S: And in that link where it says Event Volunteers, very soon it’s gonna be also the information for Werkhaus. Uh, right now, you can go to Discord and, uh, to the Werkhaus channel and find the link to apply. That is already open, um, but that will be there very soon. And also very important, the travel reimbursement, uh, for people coming early to set up, uh, or staying through the end of strike, that is also open. So if you are one of these people, uh, that can use some support and are coming to help us from the very, very beginning until the very, very end, uh, you can apply to that travel reimbursement and you will find all the information also there in the website soon. You can also write to travelclaims@nobodies.team and we will get back to you with information.

Co-host: Okay. Uh, is that all for you, Daniela?

Daniela M S: Yes.

Co-host: Uh, okay. So now Frank is gonna update us on coordinators.

Frank F: More like on volunteers, but, uh, yes. Um, let me share my screen quickly. So I’m gonna present in a format that is called a shit sandwich, where you’ll have something good, something not so good, and something good again. We’ll start with the good part. We’ve had a redesign of the pages, if some of you have seen it, to make it easier for people. Laura and Peter have been working on this. Um, everything is smooth, you… comes on with everything by default looking into this. Um, very nice. Thank you for the work. Um, hoping this will make it easier for people to sign up and understand what deficits we have the most. Another good news is that there has been a lot of activity. We’ve been having, on average, 30 to 100 new shift signups. I mean, there is, you know, a caveat that some people are signing up to two weeks of build and some people are signing up to a three-hour shift. However, it’s still nice to have to know that people are engaging and coming through. For example, today, I think we had 53 signups. Um… (laughs) Um, so yeah, the process is happening and it is going. Now, the middle layer, the favorite layer, uh, of some is that the numbers don’t look very good. Um, we do need a lo— well, quite a big push. So for example, uh, this is… So slot is a single shift, right? So keep that in mind, but however, you can see that we have those numbers, 42% for setup, 23% for the event, strike 12%, and this is across the department. So not a lot of departments have over 50% capacity. Um, and the most critical is that we have big gaps in infrastructure, specifically early build infrastructure. Um, you can see the red ones are the ones that filled in. The gray, gray ones are still missing. Uh, we need quite, like, another 15-ish people during the early builds that can commit themselves, and we’ve had some people stepping up already, which is great. Um, and then, obviously, we needed f— you know, more people for the rest of it. I’m not going to go into each department. The… There’s going to be some more emails coming through. You’ve been receiving some emails. But I just wanted you to bring attention that, look, these are the numbers. Um, you can see them. I’ll… I’m working on the fa— fact that all the leads are able to have visibility on this, to be aware of what ev— what’s happening around them. Um, and, uh, yeah, trying… The next part is going to be that we have a plan. We have a plan how to approach this, how to measure when is the critical level, um, which will be talked about by Pablo.

Pablo V: Perfect. Um, there’s that, if I can find it. (laughs) Here we go. So, um, the key thing that we were talking about in a meeting yesterday is this: not every shift is equally needed. Um, although they’re all, they’re all very valued. But some of them are critical, and we try to separate what are the needs from each department and do what is critical, and that means without this, the event is off. Like, we’re canceling because the event will be unsafe. It will not be viable. It will be absolutely not fun. Um, there’s things that they’re our base expectation. They make a good event. We’ve always had it. They live up to our principles. That’s what we aim to have, at the very least. And there are some things that are nice-to-have. They improve safety, they reduce workloads, they bring joy, they build about— towards a better event next year, so all these future-looking or glitter things, right? So this is not complete. We just prepared it yesterday. But what we’re going to… What we’re asking coordinators to do is, if you could list what are the things that are critical, whether… what’s your critical thing, right, if you don’t have resources. Well, for infrastructure, there’s some things like toilets, Red Cross, minimal gate, perimeter, mile fare, work house. The base expectation is that we have full gate, that we have no info, that we have middle, middle elsewhere, uh, Ohana house. Um, and we’re trying to get this format to all coordinators. If you’re a coordinator, please fill this out. The link is in the coordinator channel. And what we’re pairing that with is, “Okay, what do we need?” Do we need this many volunteers for this week? Um, something else. Because that will allow us to see if we need to cut down anything, what are things we can do without, and what are the things that are absolutely critical. Uh, so we’re at the beginning of this. Right now, if you’re a coordinator, please fill this out or give some feedback on this format. And after that, I think we all need to meet and make some trade-offs, saying, “Look, if we get to 100%, amazing, everything gets done. If not, maybe even in humans. Maybe in humans, there should be, like… Maybe we should only start showing these nice-to-haves once we’ve met the critical and base expectations.” So this is a conversation that needs to happen, but we felt like this would be a good structure to look at, ‘cause there’s so much happening. It doesn’t fit on a single person’s head, unless, unless you’re Daniela. So, that’s the update thing.

Speaker I: Mm-hmm.

Co-host: Uh, okay. Uh, well, last item on the agenda was some final comments from Ben.

Ben: Well, that was quick.

Pablo V: (laughs)

Ben: (laughs) Um, so, yeah. So, um, I, I, I was just asked to share, um, some of the thoughts that emerged also in the sense check meeting, uh, that we had, uh, yesterday with the board and the coordinators. Um, because I think there is a feeling, um, among some of us, uh, basically a feeling of pressure to, uh, live up to a particular vision of what, uh, the event has to be. Uh, and so, um, you know, that can create a kind of strain when we think about, like, uh, having enough volunteers and, and having enough participants, and, and will it be exactly like we remember, exactly like we’re used, what we’re used to, and, um, all the rest of it. So, uh, one of the ideas that was spoken about yesterday, or at least one of my perspectives that I, that I spoke to, uh, was that, uh, I think, you know, this year is, is, is really something of a reset. Um, and that also means that it’s really a chance for us to get back to, uh, really the core of what a burn can be about, right, which really is that just core, uh, spirit of radical participation and, and community, um, the community coming together to build something. And, you know, how that looks in the end is, is, in my mind, actually just secondary to the process of us all coming together, uh, however many we are, uh, whoever we are, whatever we can do, uh, and just building something together, right? So, um, it was really just to say… And, and what was said yesterday was, like, the priority for, for all of us on the board and among the coordinators is just making sure that this process of community, collaboration, and building, uh, goes as well as possible. The priority is not to achieve some kind of, uh, you know, particular standard of, of, of event experience or something like that. So, yeah, it’s, it’s, for, for, for me, it’s kind of an exciting experience to see, like, what we’re capable of when, when, when we really have to start figuring it out. And, and so, um, yeah, that was, that was just kind of the sentiment. Like, let’s, let’s go, um, really, like, bring that kind of creativity and openness to it, and, uh, and really see what we can build together. That’s all, really. Michael, you want to jump in?

Host: Oh, yeah, thanks, Ben.

Ben: Nice.

Host: Michael raised his hand. Go ahead, Michael.

Michael M: Yeah, just to piggyback off that. I echo Ben. You know, I think we don’t have to deliver some sort of super special, best burn, best Nowhere ever, to people. I think just part of the pressure that I think I’m feeling, I’ll just speak for myself, I won’t project outwards, uh, but I know Peter has had similar feelings, is the desire to make sure that the, the standard that we’re delivering to our volunteers is of a… Yeah, ‘cause this is a, this is a new event, and it’s a new thing, and it’s a new journey. But I think also just making sure that… I think the pressure is tending to come from the standard of the experience that we’re delivering to our volunteers, that when they come on site, and they come to step up, and, you know, I think that’s, that’s the most amazing thing every year, is that you just get new people come who are like, “I’ve never done this before. I’m not just gonna volunteer. I’m gonna be a manager in some sort of weird, dysfunctional, dirt rave, gay orgy, human resources bureaucracy.” And I think it’s just making sure that people are supported. That’s the cornerstone. So, if at four o’clock in the morning, someone says, “Do you know what? I’m really willing to be the Spanish medical interpreter,” or somebody says that at nine o’clock in the morning on Sunday, “We’re gonna make sure that we can sell ice sales.” The cornerstone for me is just that people are okay. If someone’s orgy doesn’t deliver what they deserve, meh. Someone doesn’t like their music, meh. But I think that’s just, that’s just the key, and that’s just where the pressure as a circle, circles in a little bit, if, you know… Are people safe, and can we keep it fun? ‘Cause I think that’s the cornerstone. Like, Nowhere’s actually a very unpleasant place. Every single thing about it is fucking unpleasant, unless you’re having fun. If you’re having fun, and you’re feeling rewarded, it’s the most amazing thing. Otherwise, it’s just the worst job in the world in 40-degree heat, and you’ve been sleeping on the dirt on a pile of rags for five, six days. So, I think, yeah, that’s the, that’s just the cornerstone. And I think you’re right, Ben. We can shed the expectations of this having to be the best burn ever. Um, but yeah, just keeping that cornerstone of the people as to what we do, ‘cause that’s, that’s the only place I feel pressure is. Are people safe? Are people appreciated? And have we asked people to step forward and done something and met our commitment to them? Which I get the sense everybody is really trying to do, so hope there’s no issues there.

Host: Um, thanks, Luis. Um, we have Ellen, uh, want to give, uh, a couple updates. And—

Ellen: Sure, I can give an update from Barrios support. Um, yeah, I think building onto this point of what do we do this year, I think this is also a year where Barrios can, can have that space of participating fully, of having their volunteers sign up for more shifts and pushing that. And now, we have a new function on Humans, thanks to our wonderful Peter, which is that Barrios can sign up their leads. So, the leads are looking a little different, but mostly the same as last year. Uh, there’s a lead for the Shift Ninjas. Uh, we’re asking Barrios to sign up for a, a shift for the total access period, uh, so our accessible toilets. We’ve got a lead for consent, a lead for wellbeing. And there’s… We’re also asking Barrios to sign up someone who can be a point of contact for build or for setup, uh, as well as a technical lead. So, you can go onto Humans, and you can sign up who is the person on Humans from your Barrio who will be responsible for that, and that just makes it super easy for us to reach out to whoever we need to reach out to. And that’s it.

Host: Cool. Uh, thanks, Ellen. Pablo, you wanted, uh, to say something else?

Pablo V: Yeah, I— I just wanted to share that, um, we spoke to Borderland, and they’re gonna help us out as well by sending a dedicated newsletter next week. So, I wanted to invite people. Uh, basically, they’re gonna send a newsletter where it says, “Look, here’s our friends from elsewhere. They’re in the desert. If you don’t know them, here’s all their channels. Get a ticket, maybe check it out. If you don’t know them, maybe come back.” Um, so it’s a little newsletter, but I’m sharing this because these are the people we want to be reaching. That will go to 11,000 people. So, if we’re connected to any other people in other burns, um, in whatever country, regional, whatever, I think little messages like this can, can go a long way because people are now planning their summer, and I think we’re at the sweet spot of getting, getting those next participants we’re looking for. And that will improve volunteers and make everything more fun. And, uh, it, it cascades down, right? So, let’s, let’s not forget to keep putting the word out.

Host: Well, yeah, that’s great. Uh, even though, like, our ticket sales are sur— surpassing expectations, I’m sure that we can, uh, we’ll look for every par— participant we can get, um, and, well, thanks for all the Borderland crowd for doing this for us. Uh, so, I understand that we’re at the end of our agenda. Uh, I didn’t see any unanswered questions in the chat or anyone else they want to say anything else, but if I missed anything, um— This is your time to raise your hand and say something. Otherwise, yeah, we’re wrapping up, uh, a pretty short meeting. It’s nice. Yeah, everyone’s off to their, um—

Co-host: (laughs)

Host: … long weekend.

Pablo V: Thank you, Johan.

Host: Well, thanks, everyone. Um, that’s it. I don’t know if we leave this open so people can chit-chat a little bit, or would you like to just wrap it up and…

Pablo V: I think it’s a long weekend, it’s Friday, kind of. (laughs)

Host: (laughs) Well, okay. Vokao is going to do the chat over a Discord. So, yeah, thanks, everyone. See you next week— Thank you. … or before with Discord, um, one of the other groups. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye, people.

Co-host: See you soon.

Host: Mm.

Speaker L: Bye.

Co-host: Same. Bye-bye.