Community Meeting Transcript

Daniel T: Sorry, no music. [chuckles] [clears throat] For those just joining, we're gonna wait until just five minutes after the hour and start the meeting at that point as we usually do. There's a lot of people there.

Daniela S: A lot of people.

Daniel T: Mm-hmm.

Daniela S: Oh, no one's writing to me.

Daniel T: [clears throat] Just a couple of more minutes, and then we'll get started. Wow, loads of people. Almost five past. [chuckles] [clears throat] All right. It is five past. [chuckles] We can get started. Yay! Uh, welcome, everybody. Wow, amazing. So many, so many people here. Like, it's so great to see so much energy, uh, still in July. Like, [chuckles] we're still in the same month that we had the event, and there's so many people here. Uh, that's, that's awesome. Uh, so happy to see you all, uh, and Pablo's Cucumber. Um, and, um, [chuckles] Cucumber, right? It's not courgette, is it? No. Okay. Um, w- uh, we have a kind of loose agenda, um, which we might shift around depending on when people are here. In particular, I don't think Kate is here right now, but when Kate joins, I know that she can only be here for 20 minutes, so when she joins, we might switch to her. Uh, anyway, uh, the first item is gonna be about, uh, Elsewhere 26, which just happened. Now, we don't have all the full information about things. It's still like, uh, still unpacking the finances, figuring out what's going on. Uh, but obviously the event happened. Uh, nobody died. Um, we didn't get canceled. There was no f- nobody-- Like the, the, we didn't get evacuated for fire reasons and stuff. It was pretty close. Uh, I think people had a good time. There was a big horse, and many, many things happened. Uh, Daniela, do you wanna say a few things? And then maybe we can hold space for, uh, any coordinators who want to jump in and give a bit of a sense of what happened from their perspective. And we don't wanna spend too long doing that, so please keep it to, like, a few minutes each. But, like, you know, it's good to look back as well sometimes, like right after the event. Daniela?

Daniela S: Yeah. Hi. Um, well, yeah, from a production perspective, I'm quite happy. I think we did a massive, uh, massive work as a community to get this event to happen, and it was quite a success. Uh, I think the premise of a lot of things is good enough is good enough. And like you said, we had a permit, uh, we had an event, we were not evacuated, and we, um... Nobody died, and we had a great time. Uh, [clears throat] I'm looking forward to doing like a round of feedback. I wanna have a chat with all coordinators so we can check on all of the things that we did. [clears throat] I still have dust in my lungs. Uh, yeah. So, uh, so well, we can check in on what happened, what went well, what are our learnings, what do we wanna improve, what do we wanna do for next time. And, um, uh, yeah. So this, I, I came back this week. I'm re- I'm coming back to life this week. I was away after the last week of strike. And, uh, yeah, so right now it's currently a bunch of invoices, payments, and stuff. Uh, expect some emails around that. If you have expense reports to put in, we will have that ready potentially by Monday next week. You will know y- because we will put it out in all the comms that we have. Currently, we're not ready for that, so hold your invoices until then. Um, but yeah, the next couple of weeks is wrapping up, getting everything sorted together, doing reports, doing financial reports, uh, so we have a better picture of how everything went and where we're currently at and what we have for the future. Yeah.

Daniel T: Cool. Thank you very much. And I see Ant has raised his hand. So Ant, would you like to, uh, share something?

Ant H: Hey, guys. Can you hear me?

Daniel T: Yep.

Ant H: Uh, I just wanted to, to sort of let everybody know how amazing the early build was and the first, I guess, the first couple of weeks of build, uh, overall. We-- Uh, in, in the end, after all this, I mean, we did, you know, it was justifi- we were justifiably stressing about the number of volunteers we were gonna get. But in the end, we had the right number of people, and we had some chaos with containers arriving late, broken cranes that delayed us a wee bit, and of course Mon falling apart as they tried to put it up. Um, but the team was amazing. Everybody worked together really well. Uh, you know, there was very little stress, even though there was a stre- a lot of s- you know, a lot of stressful shit to do. No, I'm really proud of everybody and, um, lots of p- new people, uh, actually had a good time and would come back. So like, uh, during... I, I, the main comment I wanna say mostly is that, that something that we thought was gonna be potentially miserable and stressful actually was really good. You know, it was, there was a lot of hard work. Uh, there was qu- there was a lot to do. Uh, but I thought it was really fantastic. And I'm really, like I say, I'm really proud of everything that we did early and the team. And, uh, that's, uh, yeah, that's pretty much everything, I think. Yeah. Sorry, that's everything.

Daniel T: Cool. Yeah. Cool. Um, let's pa- uh, pass over to, uh, Ellen.

Ellen: Sure. I'd have a very quick thing. Anyone from Barrios who is waiting for refunds on ice tokens, water vouchers, any rented equipment, w- we will get to you. We are not there yet, but we will get there. My objective is to be done with admin in August. Uh, and let's hope that works out. So messages will get to you.

Daniel T: Cool. So functional updates there. Um, is there any other coordinator who wants to, uh, step in and do, uh, an- Uh, who was the other person? Oh, Shitshow. Uh, go for it. Uh, where are you? Where can I pin you? Oh, there you go. There you are.

Shitshow: Yeah. Here I am. Hello, everybody. LMT in the house. Um, I just wanted to say, uh, from what I've heard this year, uh, thanks to Dani and Toytoy and Frambo and the, the amazing LMT team, we had a pretty good, um, toilet experience from what I heard. Uh, I actually also started a little survey about the squatting toilets. I will, uh, put in, uh, the link in the chat right now. So if you happen to have used one of the two, uh, squatting urinals or both, please fill that in to give us feedback. Um, other than that, from what I heard also, the recycling worked quite well. I mean, as usual, um, information has to be passed out and doesn't always get to everybody. But, um-

Shitshow** *(diarisation split — Scribe opened a new speaker label mid-sentence; this continues the previous turn)*: Overall, I think it w- went quite well. So, um, we tried to improve upon that, but, uh, uh, I think we were quite happy. Thank you. **Daniel T: Fantastic. Um, not to put you on the spot, but Nurse, I think you're on the call. Oh, no, sorry. First of all, uh, B- Benoit, I think. Uh, no, is it Benoit? No, sorry. Scientist, uh, do you wanna speak? I got your name wrong. Jonathan.

Scientist: Hey. Um, so I'm from Safer Space, uh, also known as Jonathan. Um, and I just wanted to say that this year was, uh, pretty intense for me as a first-time coordinator. Um, but things generally went really well. We had a really great team of, uh, passionate people. Um, and one of the things I'm doing right now is I wanna, uh, debrief, uh, people that are interested in contributing, uh, next year. Um, so if anyone here on the call, uh, has some feedback, um, I will just put an email address in the chat, uh, saferspace@nobodies.team. Um, actually, no, that would be bad 'cause that would go to everybody. Uh, I'll put my email address in the, in the, in the chat. And, um, so just if you have any feedback, uh, if you heard anything about Safer Space, uh, in that sense, um, I'd love to hear it, and, uh, then we can, uh, add that to our ideas for next year.

Daniel T: Fantastic. Thank you very much. Uh, is there anybody else who wants to step in with a, uh, some, like another coordinator to talk about the event that just happened? I'm not gonna put anybody on the spot. Um, I'll mention a census was sent. If you haven't answered the census, please answer the census. It's quite useful to get a sense of, um... That was not meant to be a pun. Uh, to get a sense of what's going on, uh, like who's going, who's coming, what they care about, and so on. Um, and there might be some other surveys coming, but, uh, the census has already gone out, so please try and fill it out. I don't know if t- when's the deadline? Does anybody know the deadline for the census? Okay. Uh, if somebody knows the deadline, please post it on the chat. Um, [clears throat] then, um, if, uh... Yeah, like let's talk about the, the next event. Um, so one of the things that's, uh, uh, important, uh, about this next event is, uh, when we're going to have it. And, uh, as people might have noticed, um, there were, there are fires going on in the world, in Europe, in Spain. Um, those who were-- Like we... It was an amazing... Like I was there for early build of the garden, and it was an amazing experience, and so on. And like there literally was a fire about an hour's drive away that was blowing towards us, and we had ash falling on the build site while, like while doing the build. Um, and luckily, they got that fire under control 'cause there weren't too many fires going on in the region. But I think it is a matter of luck at this point. Like my, my sense is that it's a matter of luck at this point that we didn't get canceled because of a fire. And like we, um, like it's, this is not a decision that a s- a small group of people or the board or something is going to make, but it's [notification sound] a decision that we n- do need to make as a community about when we want to have the event. Now, we had some dates pre-announced possibly for next year, but it's, it's going to be worth really considering what those dates are. There will be more information coming about this, um, over the coming weeks, and there will be a vote. Uh, we have just, uh, had a board vote to call a general assembly for 3rd of September, uh, in just over 30 days. Um, and that would be one of the items on the vote, uh, is which, which date do we have the event? Which we could vote to keep it on the same date, but we'll provide more detailed information, um, uh, to help inform the vote and so on. Um, but that is something that we're gonna need to decide pretty soon because obviously we can't change dates, um, you know, halfway through planning the event. We need people to have as much notice as possible, so we're hoping to make that the very first decision that the general assembly makes. Um, uh, P- uh, Pierre, uh, Peter, do you wanna add something?

Speaker F** *(unmapped — sound effect only)*: [notification sound] **Pierre K: Uh, yeah, just on the subject of changing the date. We are aware that there are other events and that we might be clashing with other European burns. We're very aware of the fact. Please don't that, don't let that stop you from voting on the date you would like for, uh, Nowhere or elsewhere in the future, because we're gonna talk to them. We're gonna coordinate with them. Uh, what's happening is there's about 14 European events right now, and there's not that many months available. So it, it's unavoidable that we're gonna have some burns in Europe on the same date. Don't let that be a hang-up. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna be civilized. We're gonna talk with the other burns. We're gonna coordinate. Uh, I think it would be also really fun to have some cultural exchange and embassies. [notification sound] Um, I know there's Camp Rudé mid-May in France. I know there's Where the Sheeps Lead. There's two burns in Portugal right now, which seems a bit greedy. Um, you know, there's two Austrian burns, et cetera. There's, there's more than 14 official burns, and then if you count the unofficial ones, there's more than 20. So we're aware, and we will coordinate between burns.

Daniel T: Daniella, do you wanna add something?

Daniela S: Yeah, I just wanted to add that, [clears throat] um, we... There was [coughs] quite big, like so much work, uh, done to keep us on l- on site safely, uh, and to have a bunch of the restrictions. Like if it felt restricted, that was like- A compromise of all of the things that we're su- like actually wanting to do from the authorities. The authorities have also stressed the point of changing the date to outside of the fire risks, uh, because it becomes very difficult operationally to, to do this, just so everyone knows.

Daniel T: Yeah. I'm told there were some very tense conversations with the... It was the government of Aragon specifically, right? Um-

Daniela S: Yeah. I had so many, so, so many meetings and so, so many talks, uh, with local and regional and like all of the beyond the Ayuntamiento and the Comarca. It's also like the Gobierno de Aragón and all of the institutions that have to do with environment and safety and fire. So yeah.

Daniel T: Thank you. Uh, Helen?

Ellen: Yes. Just bringing up two questions from the chat. Uh, my own, which is kind of who is working on this at the moment to make a few suggestions, and Anker, who's asking, uh, who gets to vote in the general assembly?

Daniel T: Okay. So, uh, answering the second question first. General assembly, uh, is a formal thing described in the statutes, and, uh, that is the members, like the asociados, get to vote in the general assembly. Uh, this doesn't mean we won't ask anybody other than the, the, the members. We can do a broader poll that, that can also inform the vote of the members. But the, the ones with the legal binding authority is the members voting in the general assembly. That's called according to the statutes, which you can consult on the website, and so on. Um, the-- In terms of who's working on this, um, we just literally voted to, uh, call this assembly like, uh, about 40 minutes ago. Um, there is some work, and I'll be talking about this a little bit later as w- like just after this agenda point about, uh, governance. Um, the-- maybe the governance team will start preparing that as a kind of first, like the-- or the working group that's kind of assembled to try and think about governance might try to prepare that as a first proposal, or maybe the board will. Uh, that's not quite decided yet. Uh, but yeah, obviously we will be researching, preparing the options, documenting them, making sure that we, um, um, like, you know, m- allow people to make an informed choice. Uh, like for example, listing possible clashes and so on, and benefits of each of the, the weeks and, and all that kind of stuff. Um, it probably won't be perfect, but we'll try and, you know, make it a c- an informed... It's not gonna be a, a, a Brexit vote, [chuckles] like no information. Um, any other questions about this? I know it's a quite contentious-- Well, it's quite, it's quite an important topic to get alignment on. It's not necessarily contentious, but... [notification sound] Uh, yeah. Romy?

Romy B: Yeah. Um, I'm just wondering in terms of the discussion before the vote, if people, let's say they're non-members, but they wanna join a discussion around it, where would that take place? Is there a specific Discord channel, for example, where people can talk about the date and make suggestions and such?

Daniel T: So there isn't yet, but it does sound like something that could use a, a Discord channel, so we probably will create a Discord channel. Um, any kind of multi-way conversation usually happens on Discord. We had to pick a platform. Uh, we've mentioned this in previous calls. We had to pick a platform. We settled on Discord as the multi-way, uh, platform. Uh, if that needs to change then, you know, that can be a, a, a decision that, uh, is made via some governance, uh, process. But for now it's Discord, so that's gonna be the place where those conversations happen. [notification sound] Uh, Pablo.

Pablo V: Um, I'd say that for the first assembly, my personal feeling is that we should, because it will be the first time we do something like this, that we clarify things like who's a member, what's the voting process. We'll probably send an email with instructions of like, "Here's where we are. Here's things that we don't have yet, but several people have suggested." And the very democratic mechanism of how we decide also has the meta of how do we decide how we decide. That's also encoded in our statutes, and we had to choose a starting point at the very beginning, but that's probably off in some ways. So the idea is that we iterate towards it. I think it's important to make the first decision quickly because it's about dates. I think in the future these things get more consolidated to once or twice a year max, 'cause we don't wanna, uh, I don't want to overload people. Maybe, maybe people want to vote very often, but we'll see. It's conversations we need to have. For now, just count that we will send like an email with info or some communications, and it will become more clear with answers to all this.

Daniel T: Cool. Um, um, I think we can move to, um, a next item, which actually is, but I don't think-- Oh, no, Kate, you are here. Kate, would you like to talk about like... Sorry, I, I didn't notice you were there. Would you like to talk about governance? Is that okay? Or do you... Yeah. Cool. I'll ping you.

Kate B: Hi, everyone. Um, in the last week, a bunch of people have ki- uh, self-assembled, I guess, into, or reassembled into the governance working group. There was kind of a proto working group that formed at the beginning of the year to help with the go/no go decision or process. Um, we've come back together now that the, um, the burn is over to figure out these-- help figure out some of these questions. Like specifically, how do we wanna decide? Um, and then flowing on from that will be like, uh, using which decision type, like how do we figure out which decisions belong in a general assembly, and there's very, very clear rules on that in the s- uh, the statutes for the Spanish Association. There may be things that don't so clearly fit in the general assembly. What do we wanna do with them? How do we enact and live our principles of duocracy, where we let the people closest to the action with the most information still decide? Because we do wanna avoid like a lot of bureaucracy, I think. Um, we are super committed, and I think we've seen it so far this year, like to decentralization and to like really hearing community input and, yeah, taking that into account on everything. So basically, this working group is not deciding how governance is done. It's like getting the input from the community and helping us decide together. Um, so we have j- we're just like reforming now, and we don't have, um, everything defined. Um, if you want to... But our goal is to kind of propose a framework that makes this all really clear and also makes it really accessible for people, because I think that would be not, not optimal if like it's super complicated for anyone to, yeah, get the information to participate in this, to understand how it works. So one of the goals would be to make it really accessible, visual, not drown people in information. So all like super fun, easy work. Um, we are currently, um, yeah, s- s- self-organized. If you want to contribute to this work, the best place to like put your name forth is on the Discord channel on, uh, the governance channel in Discord. I think we need a few more people, but also I think it's important to-- we need people with specific skill sets. Like if you're experienced in like volunteer-led organizations, networks, decentralized governance, um, Spanish law, please join us. Um, we want, we want to like make a 20-person working group because that would be inefficient. So that's the update for now, and we will, yeah, seek to help votes take place in a very, um, transparent but also effective way.

Daniel T: Thank you, Kate. Does anybody have any questions for Kate or... No? Okay. Um, lots of people getting very excited in the, in the chat. Um, so next is actually a really exciting topic, which is the new site. Um, and Pablo, maybe you can take this one on and also, uh, introduce, uh, Tank's idea about the temple as part of this. Would that make sense? No? Okay, then maybe Tank talks about the temple, and then Pablo talks about the new site. Tank, why don't you tell us-

Tancredi T: All right

Daniel T: ... about this temple idea.

Tancredi T: Oof. Okay. I can, uh-

Daniel T: Some people might have seen, but like, yeah.

Tancredi T: Uh, can you hear me well? Yeah. Sweet. All right. Um, I'm not much of a public speaker. So, uh, anyway, uh, temple idea. Temple mound. So I think-- I'm not sure how many people like, uh, have been to other burns with temples, but I feel like everyone that did, uh, regardless of how silly we burn or how naked we burn or randomly we burn, which are sort of, uh, the things I like to do, um, I have appreciated the sort of opportunity it gives you and the sort of like tightening o- on, on, of the experience and the narrative throughout the week. Uh, this year we felt the lack of, I think, of an opening ceremony. Uh, it was brilliant by the way, the, the whole burn. But for me, uh, even though I'm probably the silliest, stupidest burner ever, having a temple, uh, in other burns was maybe the first time I sort of was forced into a different sort of experience throughout the week and was allowed to... Yes, go on, I guess. [chuckles]

Daniel T: I, I think maybe Nurse wants to talk afterwards, but-

Tancredi T: Okay. Yeah. Um, well, anyway, it was incredibly important to me to have that, that sort of moment through the week in which you're sort of forced to a pilgrimage, to a quiet space, to write your thoughts, share them, um, often about the people you lost, and to ritualize collectively, uh, said loss. And, uh, it has been incredibly, incredibly important for me and other people I know. For many, this is like the closest thing to religion or having a spiritual moment or a collective ritual, uh, that we're gonna have in, in, in our lives or, uh, in our routine. So I was thinking that even though every year I feel like there's a, there's a group, uh, sort of trying to, trying to make a temple and make an amazing building or structure, um, to do this. Well, we have some limitations. First, we tend to not organize amazingly, uh, around, uh, big, large scale projects or high budget projects. Uh, this is the European burn, obviously. It's the mañana mañana burn, and we love it for what it is. It's canceled workshop, do it yourself. And secondly, this is, uh, a burn without a burn. We can't wait to have permits. Uh, it happened in the past. It went incredibly poorly. Uh, but we seem to have this sort of idea that, uh, you cannot have a temple without fire for some reason, or you cannot have the ritual without fire. So I thought, you know, because I love the peculiarities of our burn and what makes a difference, uh, from the big burns, Burning Man, Africa Burn and whatnot, uh, I thought, why not sort of construct an idea that is, uh, non-exclusive to other temple burns or sort of ritual, uh, constructs, uh, but sets up a basis, especially as we're going in the new sites, where we do it differently and we create our own tradition. So, uh, I'm gonna try to be a little brief. There's a document on Discord that I shared on a channel that is created for the temple discussion, and I'm gonna share screen real quick. Um, but yeah, I was thinking about it. Uh, I was inspired by sort of these places that were very magical to visit, some of them, I didn't visit all of them, uh, especially in, in Ireland, which are, uh, burial mounds. Some of them have very little architecture at the bottom of them or very little, um, around the burial. And they basically consisted in everyone bringing a lot of stones on a burial site, and through the years constantly adding stones until, you know, you build a little mountain, a land- a landmark. Um, it's done by sort of tiny human gestures, um, constructing this landmark by just fighting nature ever so slightly and, uh, uh, being worn down by, you know, by the elements and through the years growing, uh, just little by little by people remembering. Uh, as you can see, it's like the most low-tech thing we could do, and my idea is to do a very MVP thing where we set this up in a location that is a little bit more remote, more intimate than the event, away from the party and the loudness. So you do have the sort of pilgrimage, um, through the week where you go alone or with a friend in silence and, uh, connect with other people mourning and write on pieces of biodegradable paper that we provide, uh, your memories or whatever you want to leave behind in this burn or get over. And instead of burning in the end of the week... So these are some obviously AI renderings [chuckles] of more or less the idea. This is the most minimal build you can sort of do. Obviously, it's not gonna be this pretty. It doesn't need to be this pretty, by the way. Uh, but the idea is to have some simple kiosks in, um, and shaded areas where you can write your thoughts, um, and read other people's thoughts and things they're leaving behind. And then the closing ceremony, instead of a burn, would start with water. So instead of fire, we start with water and dissolving the messages together and whatever is in them or a ritual element that is similar to that. Uh, mostly for the functional idea of making them stick to the ground and not fly with the wind. Uh, but also for the magic of sort of the ink dissolving and, uh, starting to merge together and dissipating. And the idea of the ritual, uh, after that is, uh, we use earth, and there's a bunch of shovels, and people are sitting around in silence like every temple burn. Uh, and everyone gets one shoveling, uh, moving ground from the edges, creating a trench, to the center, creating the mound. The idea is, uh, to leave a landmark that is fixed on our f- on our site, uh, in which every year people can obviously add art around or build cooler temples. But this provides th- that fixed location and the sort of assurance that this happens with the very minimal build. 'Cause I think the ritual itself and the moment of togetherness and closing ceremony is way more important than having like a cool building, um, and yada yada. So, you know, whatever. Obviously, fire is super cool. Uh, we all fucking love a burn and the other elements. But I think it would be amazing to have something similar to this just to make sure that while we sort of plan for an amazing idea that might be high budget or high org, uh, we do this, which is a simple collective gesture and does the bare minimum for us to celebrate together the, the, the closing, uh, of, of our week and have a moment to, you know, do that simple gesture of mourning, uh, all together. So this is, uh, not Burning Man, but it's maybe Burying Man. Um, for some that really love a fire, this is boring, man. Uh, but I'm incredibly excited about it. And if enough people like it, I think this is gonna be the lowest possible budget, um, temple, uh, ritual, uh, in the history of burns. And it's not gonna take a massive effort other than the spontaneous like volunteering of a few templars and a tiny build and a tiny strike before the ritual. So if you're excited about this and interested in joining, um, get on Discord on the temple channel or text me, et cetera, et cetera. And that's, uh, my short presentation, and I'm very gassed about this. So yeah, cheers.

Daniel T: Thank you so much, Tank. That's so awesome. Um, I guess we'll have a, a little round of questions if anybody has questions or maybe we have the questions afterwards. Um, uh, Nurse, you've had your hand up for a bit. Would you like to speak?

Michael M: Yeah. Thanks for that, Tank. That's a really inspiring and, and good proposal. I'm not one much for the, for the ritual aspect of the temple myself, but I have noticed quite a shift in the event in the past few years. Like the burials during this very hard strike on Sunday is a really interesting vibe shift in the event. Like strike this year was really good. Everyone had a really nice time. Like having, [coughs] having five, six, seven days to close down, wind down, say goodbye to the event was really powerful. And actually, in the past few years, it's just so happened that on Sunday, burials get their camp mates up early, everyone strikes their stuff, and there's a very odd energy toward the end of the event. There's this perception on Friday that everyone is doing a particular substance, which is not necessarily true. And yeah, I've noticed just the shift in the past few years from Sunday being a day of closure. We have had closing ceremonies. We have had mass dinners at middle of nowhere. It's been a very nice, slow end to the event where people get to spend time and do stuff. And now there's this really strange push from Barrios that they make their campers get up, they have to strike, and people kind of lose a day to just spend some time, say goodbye, see other people. And that's a shift that's happened over the past few years. Like even three, four years ago, when we'd be doing strike, quite a few of us were still on site on Monday evening. Uh, Swiss camp would host a big fondue. So I think it is really important to try and get some breaks. Like just the energy when people come down on Friday and they leave Saturday that the event is done. This year, obviously, the dust storms made it really strange. So I think making Sunday, yeah, a reflective day where we're still on site, people do get a chance to say goodbye, wind down to decompress rather than this-- And, you know, I've spoken to people in the camps who left on Sunday, and they rushed out versus people who then came back to help us during strike. They really appreciated that slower chance to disconnect. So yeah, I think it's important that we try and curate. People can still leave if they want. People can still strike if they want. But I think just the idea that everything just abruptly ends on Sunday is not so helpful for the event. And what Frank is suggesting is a, is a powerful thing. People have the choice, and if you want to stay, there is still some stuff on site. You can say goodbye to people and say goodbye to the event for another year.

Tancredi T: Hundred percent. I'd put that down on Saturday temporarily because I think the vibes are also quite down on Saturday, but Sunday sounds like a great day. Yeah, I'm not fixing any elements, uh, and that's written a little willy-nilly, of course. Uh, thank you.

Daniel T: Um, I think we can move on to talking about the new site. Pablo, you'd like to take this?

Pablo V: Let's do it. So there's been a lot of ideas floating around. I tried to consolidate them, and I'm just gonna share like the current thinking for feedback. Um, we have an event behind, um, it worked better than I could have dreamed of. And the topic from before of owning our land is still very active, I think more than ever. So I'm proposing today, after talking to some people to form a working group, I propose a name like El Site or El Sitio because it's Els and because it has a site or sitio. Um, this will be a working group that will be independent from NCA. A lot of people from NCA may be work-- part of it. But our goal here is not to have NCA purchase land, but to have a land available to NCA that they can rent. And I will explain a little how that works. But basically, we want to own long-term land for elsewhere. Um, we have found one. It feels feasible. We've done a lot of work on this. There are risks that we still want to like work through. Um, we want to find a level of acceptable risk, and we have a series of steps that will get us there. Where we are today is soon as August. For August and September, we're looking to the feasibility. We want to lock in the plot prices. We are already working on the permit with Comarca. So yes, we never stop. Um, we have a blocker, which is the finances for this year. Um, I just got food delivery. [laughs] Um, we got the blocker, the finances, um, and one thing we're thinking of doing is, uh, running a micro run. Why? Because it would get-- we could get excited, we could try a lot of things on site. So we're thinking of the running a hype racer event. Um, this would be quite cool because we could actually have a party to, to the hundred people, the five hundred people where we are. Uh, some people like, yes, Fiasco, Bread and Tomato, maybe Curious Creatures, maybe you say My Barrio also wants to come, are interested. What we will be testing, and I will share all this, is sound. Can I just get the food? [laughs] Daniela, can you come up with some interesting things?

Daniela S: Go get the food. Go get the food.

Daniel T: Don't die on us. Like, take care of yourselves.

Pablo V: Thanks. [laughs]

Daniel T: You know, feed yourselves. It's important to drink lots of water-

Pablo V: Hello

Daniel T: ... eat lots of food.

Daniela S: [laughs] Um-

Pablo V: Okay. I mean, I can say, I mean, well, um, the idea is that we would have fun taking a series of steps that would reduce the risk. Um, let me see if I can keep sharing.

Daniela S: Yeah.

Pablo V: Since I have quite an audience. Um, so-

Daniel T: No pressure.

Pablo V: Here we go. Yeah, the idea is, uh, it would be great to have an event that, uh, we have fun with, that we use to validate before buying. This will be renting. Um, things we want to learn is about sound, rain and flood, access roads. We would need to get a full permit, and Daniela can expand on this a little bit, but-

Daniela S: Yep

Pablo V: ... um, production already knows what we need. Um, maybe I will just give the over-- the overhead, like, um, general things. But some questions that we have are, okay, when do we have that? Uh, I think it could be connected to ALM, could be a little bit before, a little bit after, could be at. We'll talk after about the surveys that we'll be sending. Well, where the risking is, what are the unknowns? You know, safety, sound, are we bothering neighbors? But we also want to build momentum for the fundraise. After that, this working group would propose if they like that to head on. Yay. Thank you.

Unidentified community member: Yeah.

Pablo V: Cheers. Alex. Good security. Um, there will be a vote, um, where what we, what we will propose as working group is, "Hey, we're, we want to do this entity to take some loans from the community and buy this place. Would NCA rent it long-term?" And that would be, in my thinking, and we will refine this, a rental contract over 10 to maybe 10 to 20 years, where the terms are really clear and the money is used to pay b- people back. I have a feeling that we could pay people back in 5 to 10 years, but, you know, we probably wanna do it open, and this will be one of the really big decisions we make as, as a community. Why? Because owning land means we might do some things differently. We might want to test out versus our principles. We might want to see, you know, what kind of investments we prioritize in the site. But basically, after this vote, if we say yes, either we do the fundraise before or after. But the fundraise will happen in November, December, when people are home, there's not that much to do. We will actually purchase it in January, if everything goes well. And then between March and June, we prepare at first elsewhere. We need to decide the dates that we have. But the gate here is that if we have the new place and it's ready, perfect, we just use that one. But in the meantime, we keep the option to use the site that we use this year. So yeah, um, several people have proposed that we have a separate build event. Um, the current proposal from what I heard is that it's better to just do build on a full first elsewhere. We need to think about things like scale, infra costs, uh, capacity, and yeah, over 5 to 10 years, I think we'll be paying back from ticket prices and, you know, whatever savings we can have, and eventually we would own a place. So big questions here are on the legal, tax, and production, um, areas. I think we have incredible teams that are very knowledgeable about finance, legal, construction risks, and so on. So right now, with your feedback, my proposal would be that we start a working group. It's independent, and our goal is that it joins the organization again once the decision is super clear and we voted on it. So that's a little bit, um, the thoughts. Um, I'm gonna turn off the sharing and happy to answer questions. Yes, Je- Jason?

Scientist: Um, yeah, I just had a-- I noticed in the, on the site you showed that it said, uh, like El Site SL. Um-

Pablo V: Mm-hmm

Scientist: ... and I remember there was sort of this discussion about, hmm, is this, like, the s- the right structure? Could you just explain, like, why that would be the preferred structure?

Pablo V: Yeah. So my current thinking, and this might change, is that an SL, because of the operation structure, if we end up selling or renting parts of the land, uh, according to our law-- to our tax lawyers, they said that it's better to have an SL, a for-profit organization. Now, nobody here wants to run something or profit from it. So Pepe has suggested a few ways that even though you have an SL, that SL is somehow subordinated to NCA or connected in a way that's completely, um, there. I think the only position you will be able to take here is you're either operationally involved, but don't-- cannot profit from it, or you are a lender, which you will get your money back, but you're also, like, taking some risk. Um, but we will not look at the figure of an investor, if that makes sense. Pierre?

Pierre K: Sorry, my legal name is on there, but for those who don't know me, I'm Peter K. I've been around for so long, there's photos that look like me at Nowhere. Um, two things. Uh, we had all the problems we had last year because the Spanish government really, really doesn't like hippies doing SLs. So let's be very, very careful if we do an SL. We need to really air gap from Nowhere operations, and we cannot use the word volunteer. Uh, they came after us last year because very simply, very long story short, they said SLs cannot have volunteers. That's illegal, period. So let's be very careful. I'm not saying let's not use an SL. I'm saying let's be super careful. Uh, secondly, um, I've been waiting for a really long time for us to get our own land. Uh, I used to be build lead. Uh, I think a lot about build design at Nowhere. It's one of my hobby horses. Let's really take this chance to do some really good landscaping, some really good structure design. Think about the sound zone. Think about how the water flows. And I would rather take a bit more time before to really design it and shape it than try to fix it later. L- you know, if it means taking two more months to shape it, or if it means maybe, maybe we don't do Next Nowhere on the new site. Maybe we have one more year on the old site, but we shape the new site. Let's think about it because once it's done, it's done, and we can really enjoy it. And so part of the things I would like to see on the new site, one, shaping the sound zone, like literally using earth and earth movers and earth mounds to shape the sound zone, physically separate the sound zone. That's one thing. The same works can be used for water flow, water control. There's a barranco, which means like a small canyon that goes right through the site. Uh, that wasn't made by elves and fairies. That was made by water. It means we have some very fucking serious water flows through the site. Let's be very careful. Let's think about this. Also, um, we've been running on diesel generators for years. Let's bring in solar. Let's bring in wind power. The French burners introduced, they make their own wind power. They make wind turbines. We have so much knowledge in this community. If we put our heads together, we can set up solar, wind power. Um, you don't even need to use solar panels if you want to do something like heating water with the sun. You can just do black containers. And there's so many things we can do. Let's bring back compost toilets. Let's do all these things to make the event greener, more sustainable. Um, let's do it because now, now is our chance, and if we think about it a bit more before we move to the new site, we can enjoy the new site even more. Also, by the way, if anyone needs the same bullshit in French, just message me, I'll repeat it in French. Um, in the community, we have all this talent. Andromeda joined us recently. Andromeda is literally a build manager. We're so lucky to have people like that. The French burners know how to make wind power. The Dutch burners know how to do solar power. They've been doing solar power nowhere forever. Thank you, Dutch burners. We have everything we need. Let's put our heads together and do something really cool on the new site. We could be a lot greener. Uh, we, we could do things a lot better. We could learn from Boom how they grow a lot of their own food. And also, I've worked in water recycling, so let's, let's recycle gray water. Let's save water. Let's do water capture, et cetera. There's a lot we can do. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Pablo V: [laughs] No, a-absolutely, and I, I agree. We have really professional and experienced people in, in every possible thing. What we-- what, what I have tried in this organization is to find the, the things that are least controversial, highest impact, and more feasible. Uh, resounding number one was compost toilets, uh, and maybe tied, on-site storage. So each of those would be fifty to seventy K. We will update this once we have the numbers from this year. But everything else you're saying, it makes sense. I think we just need to start thinking long term. Like, now if we have five years, where do we put each part of it? But this is super exciting. So maybe we take more questions, and then I can, I can propose a few next steps to anybody who wants to get involved. So we have, um, B-Bernard?

Benoit F: Sure. Just real, real short, similar to the question about, um, you know, making sure we don't get in trouble with the government on the volunteer side. But, like, similarly, I know we want to have kind of a separate ownership org from NCA so that we reduce the risk if something goes wrong. Um, but I would also want to make sure we think about, like, what happens if there is drama at some point, and now we have these two separate organizations, and, and NCA doesn't actually own or have access to the land. So I, I guess, like, that's where you were going with, like, the long-term, very clear rental contract. But just to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where, you know, we do all this work as a community and build all of this great stuff, and then we don't have access to it suddenly.

Pablo V: Yeah, absolutely. That's something that Peter and I looked, uh, like Peter and Jair, the treasurer, uh, and I looked into, and I'm sure the more we share it, the better insights we'll get. But the reason for an SL is because it's a good holding vehicle. It has ring fencing, so if something is lost, we can just rent it to another company, uh, or association. Uh, it could also be an association, but I don't wanna bore people here with the details. This will all come in a memo that combines both legal and tax. But basically, you sell it. We have to resell parts. That's why an SL is important, if we resell. If we don't need to resell, it's less important. But then there's a d- rental with acceleration clauses, with a payment schedule that if you miss, only if you miss, there's some protections. So basically, it would be a little bit like a mortgage where there's very few options to deviate, and as long as the mortgage is paid, everyone's good. And i-if it's not paid, then there's, like, some emergency cases. But I think the idea that this becomes as predictable as possible and with no, with no room for disagreements. It's, it's got answer. So let's go to Daniela.

Daniela S: Um, I just wanted to go over a little bit of the things we have already advanced on, um, to maybe give a feel of, um, make it, like, h- more real. So during this, uh, year's set up event and strike, we have already advanced in some of the things in parallel because it requires a lot of paperwork because it's Spain. And, um, a lot of the things are advanced. So for a first, like, event, Me Curve or Burn or whatever we decide to do this year, uh, we don't need to have everything ready. We just need to have some of the things in place, and that event can allow us to test, uh, some of the things that we need to know, especially regarding sound, regarding land, regarding the rain behavior, regarding everything that, uh, Peter mentioned. Um, so a lot of that work, uh, is already advanced. Uh, some documents n-need to be sent, uh, which I'll, will do tomorrow. But we have already done a lot of the work there. We went physically in person, uh, with both the people that give us the permit. So the person that basically approves the permit and the person that does the documentation that allows for the permit to happen, uh, we were there in person, uh, pinning down, like, these, uh, can be the roads. Uh, this is a space where we will do this first event. These are the things that, the minimal things that we need. So Just to let everyone know that a lot of this work has been done already. Uh, we've been doing a lot of the things in parallel because, well, we wanted to think of having the event next year in Atlanta. Uh, and that means that that timeline started actually in June. So just so everyone knows that, like, a lot of that stuff has been advancing. Um, it's a little bit, like, boring stuff, so I'm not gonna bore you with it. But just so you know that that's kind of, like, already moving. Like, uh, Pablo said, we are still, like, locked on some of the finance stuff, which is currently what we're working on. But once we have that and we have some of also, like, the things that we would need for that tiny event, then we can also, like, talk a bit more of how it becomes real. Um, and I just wanted to make a comment on what Peter was saying. Like, there's so many things that we want to do, and so many people have so many ideas. We have a great community of really talented people. And, uh, there are so many things that we can start doing, like, little by little. Like, I think thinking long term is great, and also, like, anchoring things in the now and what-- how we can start is also, like, very important. So yeah, that's it.

Pablo V: Yeah, absolutely. So this is the first time we're sharing. Trust that this has been going on for more than a year. Um, I think I'm gonna use the channel on Discord for next steps. Um, yeah. Uh, yeah, I guess what we are needing now is-

Speaker P** *(unmapped — sound effect only; Pablo V's connection dropping)*: [audio glitching] **Pablo V: Your sound, your sound's gone. Your sound's, your sound's gone, Pablo. Well, maybe a call for-- press working call. Like, um, and we can make it site-specific.

Speaker P** *(unmapped — sound effect only; Pablo V's connection dropping)*: [audio glitching] **Daniel T: Cool. Amazing. Does anybody have questions about this or about, uh, anything that we've talked about or anything that we've not talked about that we should have talked about? Um, any questions at all? We've still got about 34 minutes scheduled. We don't have to use up the whole time.

Pablo V: Uh, sorry, my-- I lost the audio, but what I was saying is we're gonna continue feasibility, and once we have the, the first blocker is cleared, we will call for a call. So expect maybe a couple weeks before we open this a bit more.

Daniel T: All right. Thank you, Pablo. Amazing work. Nurse.

Michael M: [clears throat] Yeah, fucking amazing, actually. There's a huge amount to work on into it. I think it's incredibly impressive. I think the point that people made about long term is a really good one to think on. You know, and especially when we start to think about being-- If we're thinking about the next five, 10 years, I think we should be open-minded about what next year looks like in terms of having an event. We managed to rush everything and get everything done this year, and we managed to put on events. I guess there's certain systemic or structural things that we don't always have a chance to talk about and think about. Um, you know, in particular, there's the question of we are an event with declining ticket sales from a peak of about three and a half thousand a few years ago. So it's good to be thinking about how do we long-term support the event to grow and understanding on a structural level how to make things better. Also looking at land while also thinking about an event next year. I think if we rush into January or if we're fixed on the idea now that we are going to put on another full event exactly as we did this year, then it's a huge extra rod for our back. We're in charge. We can decide what we want to do, and I just think it's important to be open-minded going into this year. I'm very positive. I think the land's gonna be great, and I think, uh, you know, being able to come back with no-- with, with Nowhere. I do hope we get the name back, by the way, 100%. But, you know, a slower period getting this set up and then suddenly having our own lands. There's thousands of thousands of people who've been to this event in the past who now no longer come, and being able to relaunch, as it were, with new lands and invite people back would be amazing. But yeah, I think it's thinking long term. I just think that we should be really open-minded about what next year looks like event-wise, um, overall, because, you know, we could have land for decades, and that's a pretty powerful, amazing thing. That's it.

Pablo V: And just as a person involved in this project, that's the kind of stuff that I would like to think about in a micro burn. 'Cause I feel like if we're there, we can think, "Oh, this seems really feasible, really exciting, or really hard." And it's, it's hard from everything I've seen. I've visited a few times, but it's hard without feeling it, without being there. So I think we just need to put some time on site.

Daniel T: Uh, there's a question there. Well, sort of a question from Ellen about how many people we need to make economics feasible for new land. Um, I don't think we can fully answer that, but, um... Oh, Pablo, do you want to take that?

Pablo V: Yeah. There's two parts to that. One is how much from the fundraise do we have left over to invest in projects? Because some of them we can do earlier and kind of, uh, take the fundraise as an investment. That's another choice we need to make. But the other one, hopefully we can do some modeling with the financial reports, which should be finished a bit later this-- like, in, in August. So we, we are looking to make a model of that.

Daniel T: Does anyone have any other questions? I'm trying to read through the chat. Uh, so Shisho, I think, uh, we did cover the NCA features. Uh, Kate spoke and I spoke as well. Um, but if you have any more questions, feel free to ask them.

Shitshow: Just, uh, um, there were more, more things on Discord like, uh, about the communication channels. We don't have to talk about this right now. I just thought, uh, maybe someone wanted to say something about, about this because it's, uh, on the Discord list.

Daniel T: You mean like Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, and so on, and the website?

Shitshow: Yes. I mean, someone put it there, so maybe someone has something to say about this.

Daniel T: Yeah. I think, I think, I think Pablo had originally written, uh, written this and, um, [chuckles] like I, I don't have much to say a-about it. I think like there is gonna be a conversation as a community. Like, you know, when we started, when we did this in January and February, we need to put something together and make some decisions to get things moving, and we couldn't, you know, spend ages arguing about which communication channel we use. So we picked Discord and, you know, WhatsApp and Telegram as broadcast channels, and, uh, then the comms team owned those channels. And then there was lots of discussion about whether the comms team should be on Facebook, uh, which I don't think... Well, I think somebo-somebody eventually volunteered to like do things on Facebook and help the comms team. Um, but uh, we promised, and that is true, that like that will be open to the, to the community to decide. And right now the state is that Discord is the place where we have the conversations. But, um, talking about governance, like if you read the statutes, you'll see that anybody can propose, can make a proposal. I mean, I'm not sure if which channel we use for communication would be a governance proposal, but, uh, you can also join the comms team. That's another way you can like, uh, influence this. Um, if you, if you, if you're wondering whether this should be a governance proposal, maybe like chat to Kate, uh, join the governance, uh, channel on, on Discord, ironically, um, and, uh, and help figure out is that the channel that we use for conversation or something else. Like we need to define a process for making those decisions. We need to define a process for which decisions get made by vote of the general assembly, which decisions are operational decisions, which decisions are personal decisions. For example, I don't think the general assembly should be voting on how Daniela takes her coffee in the morning. Um, [clears throat] even if there is a binding vote, she's still gonna have her coffee however she wants. Uh, and operational decisions probably are the remit of whoever is doing whatever bit of operations, uh, they are doing. But then there could be elections to select who's doing operations. Uh, this is a, a great fun topic of, uh, of governance. It's, uh, interesting to bootstrap from, uh, from where we are. Luckily, there is something in the statutes to enable us to move forwards. Um, but if you're interested in this topic, please, uh, please jump in and get involved. I'm not sure if that answers your question, uh, [chuckles] but it was my attempt. Pablo, did you have your hand raised deliberately?

Pablo V: Yeah. I just wanted to say that Discord is a source of truth, but we want to copy things that are important. So the idea is that everything goes there, so for discussion, but then we copy to every other channel. So yeah, Facebook is the only one that's a question mark, but everywhere else we're trying to replicate the source of truth that is Discord. And we can change that, of course, but th-this works reasonably well.

Daniel T: Yeah. And, and, you know, for the website, for example, it is a static HTML website. If somebody wants to take on converting that to a CMS for reasons, they can, but you upload-- It updates pretty easily. I think, uh, Daniela's been happy using Claude to update the website and other people as well, and I think that works. But if somebody else wants to do it better, then they can. Um, it's a, it is a kind of a duocracy type thing. Um, when we started NCA, there was a discussion about female representation on the board. Any new ideas about this? Yeah. I mean, we've stated from like, uh, about a month and a half in that, uh, we would love there to be a more diverse representation on the board, and we would happily hold an election, uh, as soon as there are candidates who apply. No one has applied, therefore, I mean, there's no point in us holding an election without candidates. But if you are thinking that you'd like to apply, please make yourselves known somehow and, like, we will happily hold an election as quickly as possible. I think there's a delay of 45 days we have to announce the election, but we'd be happy to hold an election as soon as there's somebody to elect. Um, but there's no point in us announcing an election and then having nobody in the election. Um, [chuckles] so that's why we haven't done it. But yes, please jump in. Do, do you wanna speak more, uh, about that, Pablo?

Pablo V: Uh, I just wanna say that, yeah, anybody-- Not only you can be a candidate, but you can also think something like this matters and create a working group and propose it. Uh, I think we can call for extraordinary elections. That's not a problem. Um, so yeah, if, if anybody cares enough about a topic like this to make it happen, let's make it happen. In the past, it has been suggested that there, there should be like a pre-selection or encouraging group that, uh, goes to people to, to make sure that people who would otherwise not apply, like take that step, and I, I think it's a good idea. We've just honestly been so busy with event and everything that, uh, that we left it for after the event. But yeah, maybe it's a topic that we can start prioritizing now. The proxy workload is we met twice a week until the event, uh, sometimes more because those were only the board meetings. But now the goal is that we do it once a week or every other week, uh, until we go into production mode. Probably now that we've done one production, I think for the, the board will be less and less involved in production because we have a really good structure. I think initially we just had the placeholder of everything that didn't have a job, like a role, but we want to go more and more towards intentional organizational design.

Daniel T: Franbie.

Fosfobit F: Um, I've been reading like the, the estatutos. Uh, theor- theorically, theoretically, uh, we have to do elections like next year, I think, even if we select the same board. So, I mean, if someone is like worried about that, every two years we have to elect someone, even if it's the same people. So that has to be made, uh, just like a remark.

Daniel T: Y- yeah, and at the same time, we'd really like to have more di- a more diverse board earlier, uh, than that. Um, so if, uh, like we said, we can organize an election sooner than that. And there are also term limits, uh, so we will have to at some point have, uh, uh, other people joining the board, uh, because there are term limits in the, in the statutes. Um, in t- uh, I wanna say in terms of the time, like it was very intense early on 'cause we had so much stuff to bootstrap, and it was, um, uh, like, uh, like the board was doing a lot of operational stuff. I've been very keen to try and, and remove the board from executive, uh, like operational matters as much as possible and try and have departments holding these rather than the board. And bef- by the, like about a month and a half before the event, we did manage to reduce the frequency of board meetings to once a week, typically. And sometimes we had some- an extraordinary meeting because there was a kind of urgent matter that needed some attention. Um, so it did decrease a little bit once we got closer to the event. Um, so I think it, it is something that can be, uh, stressful, but... And it can take a bit of time, but I think the biggest bulk of time has-- was like for the first four months or so. It, like I, I hope it's not gonna go through a period that takes up that much time again. But, uh, obviously you can't predict, like crisis happens. Um, but for the event, it's the community that organize the event, and so the departments and stuff, the coordinators and so on. Yeah.

Scientist: Yeah, I think, um, kind of one of the things that's going on in the chat right now is like also this discussion of accessibility, that it's, it seems like a lot of work, like thinking once or twice a week for something like this year-round. Um, I don't wanna like try to propose any solutions in the room right now, but just to maybe like bring to the forefront in people's minds this concept of like, okay, how do we make this workload as a board me- board member more accessible to more people, um, so that they can be informed if we have like, for example, a working group that tries to like recruit people, uh, from non-cis men, uh, genders, for example, um, that they can give them the proper information so they can kind of like see like, okay, how much work is this gonna be? Um, but how can we reduce that total workload for people who, I mean, from all areas of life, students, people with families, just people with a lot of hobbies, that it's, it's more accessible.

Daniel T: Yeah, I mean, and one of, one of my goals, which was in my application originally, was to try and make the, the board meetings, uh, sort of like less mysterious and more boring and less, less... So have less excitement and less load so that it can be more easily taken on by, by somebody. It doesn't have to be-- Like it can be more diverse. Uh, we're not quite there yet, but we, but we g- we made good progress on that, I think. It is less, less complicated than it was at the beginning of the year, uh, I think. Um, somebody asked about, uh, liability, the legal responsibilities. Um, the, the a- we like researched that quite a bit. The association is the, the entity that's responsible for, like that's legally responsible for the event and so on. There is insurance also for the directors. The directors are responsible if they, uh, do fraud and, you know, like, you know, basically like act malevolently, uh, in fairly obvious ways. And they're responsible if they act in a, in um, a negligent way. So if they don't bother reading things and they just, you know, "Well, yeah, whatever, just do it," and stuff. Um, and um, I think there was a third thing. Um, uh, if they, yeah, if they like basically breach the statutes, like, you know, like don't, don't, don't, like, like let, like basically usurp the, the authority of the, the general assembly. Otherwise, it's the, the, the, it's the, the association that's legally responsible, and the members are also protected. So there is no like, oh, you're, um, uh, on the board of director of the association, something happens, you're now suddenly liable for a million pounds or something, or a million euros. Um, unless you've done very bad things, that, that's not gonna happen, basically. I hope that answers that question from Doreen. Uh, the question, can-- So can we say pay for baby citizens similar, as in can that be a board member expense? Is that the question? Um, my answer is I don't know. There is a line in the statutes that says that, uh, board members cannot receive remuneration. Um, we'd have to ask lawyers to see if that would include, um, uh, babysitter coverage. I don't know, but we can ask the lawyers that. And seems like worth asking and worth clearing that up. So let's make a note of that and, and ask that.

Pablo V: Yeah. I think in general, if anybody's considering being a board member, the-- what it looks like is Mondays and Thursdays are blocked. It's always at this time, it's usually at 7:00 or 8:00. Everything happens in, uh, either a WhatsApp or a Discord. There's very few things. Almost everything happens outside the board channels. Usually, we come with a half-empty agenda, but there's always some point that needs some decision. But it's not that hard. You get a lot of advice. Everything's digital. Uh, we use AI extensively, and usually the solution is quite clear. Um, what it usually needs is a bit of initiative, like somebody needs to own a topic. Um, you can also learn a lot by being part of the board. I think you get access to a lot of different topics. It would be great to have a more diverse board. It would be great to have more Spanish people as well. Um, yeah. Um, if anybody wants to talk more, I'm really happy to do a one-on-one call. It's... Yeah. Sometimes also we struggle with quorum, so it's also important to not have a board that's huge because sometimes we cannot get enough people in the room to decide, and, uh, that has blocked us at times from making decisions. So there's also a question of practicality, and sometimes having a huge board is not, is not great for speed 'cause it's hard to keep everybody like, uh, with the right context in hard decisions.

Daniel T: Uh, Catherine asked what are the requirements for requisites to be a board member. There aren't any as far as I know. Um, you need to be elected by the community. Uh, that's the main requirement. Um, so yeah, we could probably make a written board-- a written job description for like... Yeah. So the-- if-- It's worth noting there's four-- so there's four roles that have a specific responsibility. There's president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary, and then there's vocales that don't have a specific responsibility other than participating in the board meetings, um, and, you know, voting on things. Um, and so the, the, that, that, uh, last category, like, uh, doesn't, doesn't have any other responsibilities other than that, you know, being interested and wanting to be involved in the decision-making. They do not need to be Asociados already, but they will, I think, become Asociados automatically by being board members. Sounds like we need to do a proper Q&A about this. Yeah, so there's a lot of ideas there. I'm, uh, I'm gonna try and copy and paste all this because there's a-- I think it's lost otherwise.

Pablo V: Do we have any board member that wants to own this? Because we, we could send like a little email with info and so on. I want to focus on the site, but maybe Daniel or Victor or if some-- any other board member here wants to send a little info of what it looks like, how to apply, what, you know, answer questions. Okay. Victor offered to draft something. Um, we could post it in Discord in general or send an email or yeah, let's, let's figure it out. But yeah, we can, we can share some more info, I guess.

Daniel T: Um, yeah, the requirements to be an Asociado are-- they are, they are on the website. They're in the FAQ, I think. Um, but if somebody who is in the community wants to apply to be a board member, I think we could, uh, vote to... Like, I, I don't know, like we need to discuss this as a board to figure that out, but we probably could figure something out if they don't quite meet the criteria to be an Asociado. Yeah, the vocale is just somebody who is, um, um, participating in board meetings and, um, gets a vote on board meeting decisions. Um, there's like-- So you turn up at board meetings, um, and you inform yourself of what is going on, so you care enough to inform yourself, so you make a, a, a diligent vote. Um, and yeah, like that's, that's the requirement for vocale.

Pablo V: Uh, maybe to clarify, because it was not so clear to me, a vocale is a board member.

Daniel T: Yes.

Pablo V: It's just that you don't have the special power of a treasurer or the special responsibility, I would say, because we don't-- it's not power, but we have more responsibilities. You don't have the special responsibility of the secretary who takes notes and, uh, certificates, treasurer who d-does finance, and president and vi-presi- vice president who have like a little bit more responsibility or po- or power in case of, uh, certain situations. But yeah-

Daniel T: Mostly president means that we can sign things, that's all.

Pablo V: Yeah. In practice, it's very flat. Like we don't distinguish except for maybe finance and secretary.

Daniel T: Um, if you have more questions, feel free to ask them on, on Discord or, or like, you know, ping one of us on WhatsApp or Telegram or something like that. We're, I think, all happy, very happy to answer questions, um, either publicly or privately. So feel free to, uh, to ask. It seems like it's an interesting topic. So, um, Victor will draft something. Do we wanna talk more about this, or is there something else that somebody wants to bring up?

Pablo V: Uh, I, I realize we don't sound super enthusiastic about this because we hadn't prepared it, but, uh, [laughs] we are enthusiastic about people joining the board. [laughs] It's just like, uh, you know, it, it's not so interesting the day-to-day. That's, that's why. But we would love to have people step up and have, like, hot elections and so on.

Daniel T: Okay. Does anybody else want to bring something up? Otherwise, maybe in a couple of minutes we'll bring the call to a close.

Scientist: There was some discussion in chat going on about, uh, what's the difference between coordinators and meta leads. And, um, I think it's-- to some people it would be obvious that a coordinator coordinates. But okay, what does that mean? And I remember-- or at least I know this from, um, other Burn events, that meta leads are actually really just leads of leads. Like, they just coordinate the leads team, and the leads coordinate the volunteers. Um, I just know that, okay, maybe safer space was a bit weird, but I definitely had a lot of close coordination with the-- each individual volunteer on that level as well. Um, so just to kind of like give an example of, like, coordination might have less to do with the day-to-day going-ons of, like, how the role is actually played out. Maybe it's more about, like, shift scheduling now that we have humans as a massive tool. Actually using humans in the background. This, for example, is something I'm thinking about in the background for safer space next year. Uh, because I was like-- I was kind of like a single point failure for anything that happened on humans, and I want-- don't want that to happen. Uh, so that's kind of like more of a coordinator thing maybe than a lead who would make sure, like, everybody's on shift, for example. Just as a side note from the chat.

Daniela S: Um, yeah. Um, so I wanted to add to that. So basically, the coordinators this year, we just, uh... So, so we took on the structure we already knew and had, and we are working with that. So what was previously a meta lead, we collectively decided to call them coordinators because it's basically the person that coordinates a department. We have specific departments with, um, a lot of roles. We have year-round roles that work the whole year to put up the event. And then we have, um, event, uh, specific, um, shifts and, and leads that are, like, from a specific area. So I think it's a good moment also to think about the structure and how we wanna go about it. I think a lot of us have a lot of learnings from this year. Um, [clears throat] for example, I've talked about this during the event and to multiple people, but I think my current role, uh, that it's a lot of, a lot of things that are centralized in this role I think could, could benefit from more people. And I would like to move towards a project-based, uh, type of role, uh, rather than just a coordination of a massive area and a lot of stuff. That way, not only you don't have a single point failure, but al-also you can distribute the load better and, um, have more people involved and more voices. So I think currently we're at a moment that-- I don't know if this is part of the conversations on going on in the working groups for governance, but we have had some conversations during the event and setup and strike, and it could be a good moment to just when we think about the feedback of the event we just had and how it went, we can also think about in which ways we wanna organize this. Uh, some of the roles have a lot of responsibilities, and then it becomes overwhelming. And a lot of us wear multiple hats. Um, so maybe we can collectively think about this and the best ways in which we can do this and start defining them and putting names and roles and descriptions and tasks in a way that is manageable, uh, to be done in a volunteer basis for everyone.

Daniel T: Yeah. Thank you, Daniela. Um, and thank you also to all the coordinators who really stepped up. Like, there was huge amounts of work. Like, some people did absolutely incredible amounts of work to make the event happen. Um, yeah. Um, so wow. Th-there's, there was a lot of coordination happening. [laughs] Okay. So unless there is one more statement or question that somebody wants to make, maybe we can co- draw this to a close. Um, as I mentioned, there'll be an announcement about, um, a vote, a general assembly, uh, in about a month. Uh, look for it in your inboxes in the next few days. Um, and, uh, we-- I th-think we probably will have another... I, I don't know if we... Like, okay, we, we need to figure out whether we're having another community call next week or what's the rhythm for these. But, um, we will be ar- we are around. We are working on this. We're available. Feel free to jump in the Discord, et cetera, and, uh, get engaged, getting started to, uh, plan the new land, the n- the next year's event, and so on. Uh, your energy is really welcome. Thank you all. All right. Have a lovely rest of your evening. Bye-bye.