We’re hosting the 8th annual Burning Man Global Leadership Conference from April 3-6, and we’d like to invite YOU to follow along as we report out from the proceedings.
Over 300 Burning Man community leaders from around the world will gather in San Francisco to connect, share ideas and get inspired about spreading Burning Man values in their local communities — and we’ve assembled a crack team of reporters to keep you in the mix.
They’ll be covering the GLC here on the Burning Blog (tag: BMGLC14), and tweeting to @BurningManGLC … follow along there. We’ll also do our best to answer any questions you may have, too.
Will Chase is Burning Man's former Minister of Propaganda, working on global communications strategy. He was the editor-in-chief for the Jackrabbit Speaks newsletter and the Burning Man Journal, and content manager for Burning Man’s web properties. He also oversaw the ePlaya BBS and Burning Man’s social media presence. Will first attended Burning Man in 2001. He volunteered as the Operations Manager for the ARTery (Black Rock City’s art HQ) and was on the Burning Man Art Council from 2003-2008. He was Web Team Project Manager and Webmaster from 2004 until he transitioned to the Communications Department in 2009.
7 Comments on “Burning Man’s 8th Annual Global Leadership Conference”
What are Burning Man’s values? Are these the same as the 10 principles… ‘clean up after yourself’ kind of thing? I’m not sure.
Moreover, it seems the primary model of Burning Man is volunteerism, or the free labor model, used to achieve profits for the company. Spreading that model out to the real world is fine. The volunteer receives intangible benefits (rather than financial compensation) for their free labor, such as a feeling of belonging to the community, social acceptance, social upward mobility, spiritual enlightenment, and that good feeling that comes from giving.
This model of doing business is viral in a way. Although it promises more than it ultimately delivers, otherwise the volunteers would continue donating their time, effort, money and supplies to the organization for many many years. The average life-span of a Burners is about 5 years. Their participation usually comes to an end when their resources do, or when they are ostracized for having opinions that are divergent from the community. I’m afraid there are no parting gifts. But it’s good for businesses.
Hmm, this would have been my 5th year. But I’m not going. Both my wife and I have volunteered for multiple years.
You may be on to something here. I can no longer justify spending over a thousand dollars just to volunteer. It seems kind of senseless to do so in these times of employers cutting back, taking away benefits etc. That has a direct impact on what I do. Therefore I cannot continue.
Isn’t that trickle down economics?
I am a member of a few stone-soup organizations, where their existence is entirely the result of the volunteer effort of the dues-paying members. And we do good work, literally saving the planet and culture. But we never have any of our meetings without a formal agenda. This is not only from a practical sense, but to enfranchise anyone with interest.
It is curious that I have not been offered or found an agenda and list of speakers for this event. With these, we could do some research into the speakers and presentation material, and certainly have a framework to get value and meaning from the event. Absent these, it appears that the BOrg wants to cast “the rest of us,” the uninvited, into the role of mindless followers, a mass-media audience, commodified if you will. Certainly not seeking to involve us, to radically include us, but going so far as to keep us from deriving anything useful from the event beyond what is tweeted or blogged.
This BOrg experience has shown me that my other stone-soup organizations have been walking most of the “10 principles” walk for decades. And we have, quite literally, made a difference. Sure, there are lessons to be learned from the Burning Man experience, but not needed as badly as the BOrg needs to learn them themselves.
To toby and Dogknee: yeah, it was about 5 years for me. Maybe that is the half-life of being Wile E Coyote running off the edge of the cliff until gravity takes over. When the stone-soup operation is more transparent, draws planning and management from the bottom up instead of the top down, and engages the world openly to do good, you can hang in there a lot longer.
And you certainly do get that volunteer community feeling when you get together and collaborate on your tasks. You look forward to seeing them at every annual meeting, coming home of you will, to move forward on your goals, and making a difference.
I had replied to the email calling for volunteers, as I would have liked to participate. I’m fluent in French, speak passable Spanish (or so I’m told), have lived in 7 countries… a cosmopolitan event such as this is right up my alley.
But I was instructed to fill out a volunteer questionnaire …again. I got to the question, what would your name be if you were a sparkle pony? The question took me aback, I broke off and would give it some thought. Then I got ticked off at having to fill out this questionnaire every time I volunteer.
Hint:if someone replies to an email sent to your volunteers list, it might be redundant to make them fill out your survey over and over and over
Is there a published agenda and list of speakers?
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What are Burning Man’s values? Are these the same as the 10 principles… ‘clean up after yourself’ kind of thing? I’m not sure.
Moreover, it seems the primary model of Burning Man is volunteerism, or the free labor model, used to achieve profits for the company. Spreading that model out to the real world is fine. The volunteer receives intangible benefits (rather than financial compensation) for their free labor, such as a feeling of belonging to the community, social acceptance, social upward mobility, spiritual enlightenment, and that good feeling that comes from giving.
This model of doing business is viral in a way. Although it promises more than it ultimately delivers, otherwise the volunteers would continue donating their time, effort, money and supplies to the organization for many many years. The average life-span of a Burners is about 5 years. Their participation usually comes to an end when their resources do, or when they are ostracized for having opinions that are divergent from the community. I’m afraid there are no parting gifts. But it’s good for businesses.
Report comment
To Toby,
Hmm, this would have been my 5th year. But I’m not going. Both my wife and I have volunteered for multiple years.
You may be on to something here. I can no longer justify spending over a thousand dollars just to volunteer. It seems kind of senseless to do so in these times of employers cutting back, taking away benefits etc. That has a direct impact on what I do. Therefore I cannot continue.
Isn’t that trickle down economics?
Report comment
I am a member of a few stone-soup organizations, where their existence is entirely the result of the volunteer effort of the dues-paying members. And we do good work, literally saving the planet and culture. But we never have any of our meetings without a formal agenda. This is not only from a practical sense, but to enfranchise anyone with interest.
It is curious that I have not been offered or found an agenda and list of speakers for this event. With these, we could do some research into the speakers and presentation material, and certainly have a framework to get value and meaning from the event. Absent these, it appears that the BOrg wants to cast “the rest of us,” the uninvited, into the role of mindless followers, a mass-media audience, commodified if you will. Certainly not seeking to involve us, to radically include us, but going so far as to keep us from deriving anything useful from the event beyond what is tweeted or blogged.
This BOrg experience has shown me that my other stone-soup organizations have been walking most of the “10 principles” walk for decades. And we have, quite literally, made a difference. Sure, there are lessons to be learned from the Burning Man experience, but not needed as badly as the BOrg needs to learn them themselves.
Report comment
To toby and Dogknee: yeah, it was about 5 years for me. Maybe that is the half-life of being Wile E Coyote running off the edge of the cliff until gravity takes over. When the stone-soup operation is more transparent, draws planning and management from the bottom up instead of the top down, and engages the world openly to do good, you can hang in there a lot longer.
And you certainly do get that volunteer community feeling when you get together and collaborate on your tasks. You look forward to seeing them at every annual meeting, coming home of you will, to move forward on your goals, and making a difference.
Report comment
For as much money as this event makes it seems greedy that the organization doesn’t pay everyone for their participation.
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I had replied to the email calling for volunteers, as I would have liked to participate. I’m fluent in French, speak passable Spanish (or so I’m told), have lived in 7 countries… a cosmopolitan event such as this is right up my alley.
But I was instructed to fill out a volunteer questionnaire …again. I got to the question, what would your name be if you were a sparkle pony? The question took me aback, I broke off and would give it some thought. Then I got ticked off at having to fill out this questionnaire every time I volunteer.
Hint:if someone replies to an email sent to your volunteers list, it might be redundant to make them fill out your survey over and over and over
Report comment
Comments are closed.