Who plans on submitting tickets into STEP program?

[Meyoukey]

I don't know anyone who has more tickets than they originally needed. Only ONE couple I know received tickets.

[usurpedus]

definitely more people I know did not get tickets, than those that got tickets. thats why I think STEP is a pipe dream.. and a poor bandaid to gigantic F-UP

[Finxiekins]

I hope to see a lot of tickets in STEP - My husband and I are lacking the 3 tickets we need altogether. I've made a lot of friends on eplaya and already have an offer to help with tickets. I really want to encourage people to befriend others on eplaya - It turns out that the strangers on the internet are the most invested in helping me get a ticket. I love it.

[litlaur]

I'm guessing that real burners (as opposed to scalpers) who got extra tickets will probably redistribute to others in their camp rather than submit them to STEP, which is totally understandable. If I somehow got extra tickets, I would offer them to fellow campmates first. Unfortunately, none of the fellow campmates who did get tickets have extras as far as I know or they're already spoken for.

[usurpedus]

STEP=false hope

[MrBeardy]

February 22nd is way to early for people with extra tickets to think about putting their extras into the STEP program. if will fail to live up to expectations, as anyone with an extra ticket would be nuts to give up an extra ticket this early, and instead they will save them till the last minute to ensure any lazy friends and whoever can go if need be. I hope I'm wrong though, so we have an opportunity for tickets, although all the negative feedback post lottery, makes me feel like it doesn't really matter. Last year there was defiantely a different feel since it sold out, and I imagine it will only be worse this year. Sad to say but I think it's time for a new event. Anyone been to the Afrikan burn?

[hotmess]

If I were lucky and won or had extra tickets I would first see if any other camp mates needed tickets. Based on how many people I know from our camp who did not get tickets they would probably be gone. Second to that I would submit them to the STEP program.

I appreciate the enthusiasm. I have not given up all hope. Would have been nice to have my ticket for me and BF in the bag but i guess that is not the way it is going to roll this year. The worst part is that after six years out there I finally convinced my long time boyfriend to join me. I was hoping that this was the year I could share so many of the amazing experiences on the playa with the person I love. Now that there is no guarantee to get a ticket, let alone two makes me nervous.

Regardless, i have not given up hope. I know there is someone out there with 2 tickets that will allow me to have this incredible experience with the person I love one more time.

[Mosquitopilate]

I really hope this is not what is out there beyond this message board cause it does not give real hope to see voting results that are here I know this is a small % of burners but the overall attitude is the same out there as in here,It just seems like there will be some tickets on feb 22 but the majority will wait and see what options they have to make more money..I hope not I am in need of one ticket I am driving from Pittsburgh to the Playa by myself but if and I have said this before someone helps me you get paid and drink for free just tell me wht to bring I will bring it

[usurpedus]

exactly

[elKay]

What is the cost of submitting into the step program? I mean, we are planning to USE our tickets, but if something did come up and we couldn't, we would want to sell them for the full amount that we paid for them. The confirmation email mentioned a "restocking fee", but does not say how much.

[Kranster]

True burners know way too many people without a ticket to put them back into a generic STEP when they can make friends overjoyed. The newbie and the one-week-a-year-burner will be (more than) tempted to sell at a profit, and surely not pay a "restocking fee" (WTF BMorg!). What does that leave for STEP? True burner types, without friends that need tickets?

I have my one ticket. If I had 25 extra tickets, they would be gone to my desperate burner friends yesterday. If I had 100 extra tickets I would start to take care of friends of friends. If I had 2000 extra tickets, I would open an application process to vet and back-fill theme camps, art projects and help international burners. I trust I would get them to 100% burners, whereas STEP can and will go to more newbies and scalpers. On eplaya we all know we can do a better job personally than STEP. There are about 20 people I have come to know from reading on this board in the last few days - I would love to get them a ticket directly before I went to STEP. You probably would too, that is what burners do.

I think BMorg forgot that newbies still live in the default world, not the burner community. Burner rules don't yet apply, default profit motive probably does. How many times have I heard "$1600 BM tickets on Craigslist" from non-burners? All of them. Every time. $1600 is a meme now.

[Arcticcircle]

Yeah... If I *had* a ticket, it would never go to STEP. I know about 30 people offhand to whom I'd absolutely love to hand a ticket at face value. And if I happened to have some massive surplus of tickets, why in the world would I participate in the Borg's scalper paradise, enabling others to nab face value tix which they could mark up and resell? I'd sell my own 1600 dollar tickets and buy a bunch of burners something cool on-playa, rather than let it go to some random jackass.

[ZaphodBurner]

Does the ORG or anyone really believe that if somebody has an extra ticket that they will sell it back to the STEP system for face value? Not gonna happen, they will sell it for way over the face value and put that money in their pocket. DUH.

In all the years my friends and I have bought tickets indirectly, from other burners, we've never been charged more than the face value.

What kind of people do you hang out with?

[This Woman]

I din't vote because my No seems like the wrong question and could skew results. Because there are probably tons of people who won't submit tickets because they don't have tickets to submit. It's the people that have tickets but won't submit them that you are targeting, no?

Anyway, I don't have a ticket, so I might seek one on STEP, but it would be last resort. If an extra ticket came my way though, I wouldn't use STEP to get rid of it. But I can see where it would make some individuals feel safer in getting their unwanted ticket to someone they want to have it. Last year, I got rid of two tickets at face value on eplaya, but my first priority would be to camp members.

[Kranster]

I think BMorg forgot that newbies still live in the default world, not the burner community. Burner rules don't yet apply, default profit motive probably does. How many times have I heard "$1600 BM tickets on Craigslist" from non-burners? All of them. Every time. $1600 is a meme now.

I think I need to correct myself here. Burning Man is a hometown event in Reno, so my experience of people who have never been to a Burning Man but are buying tickets for profit to sell on Craigslist may be localized here and not widespread. Also, their success rate at buying tickets is likely to also be at the 1/3rd level. As such they may be trivial in the big picture. Meantime I see more information suggesting professional scalpers may have been hugely successful in cornering tickets that they will dole out slowly.

[Saguache]

24 votes and not a single person has voted yes on any tickets going into STEP? Geez.

Geez what? The vast majority of ticket holders do not visit ePlaya, and even fewer will even see this thread.

Anyway, it's February 1st. The lottery just ended. Have some patience.

I swear, most ePlayans can't see anything beyond their nose.

Geez BBadger, WTF are you getting all worked up about? You've got the whole BBS system to troll, aren't there people in the Preparation category you can belittle? Is there some special reason you can't stand the implementation of a poll thread? Do you think the rest of us might be aware of the blatantly obvious facts you like to point out as deficits to anyone asking questions?

Mellow out, none of these attempts to gather information hurt you.

[mshaman]

24 votes and not a single person has voted yes on any tickets going into STEP? Geez.

Geez what? The vast majority of ticket holders do not visit ePlaya, and even fewer will even see this thread.

Anyway, it's February 1st. The lottery just ended. Have some patience.

I swear, most ePlayans can't see anything beyond their nose.

BBadger, I'm disappointed with how judgmentally your post reads. Disagreeing is fine, but it landed more like a flame, to me.

Certainly, if you are an individual contributor, you can afford to have some patience. But many on the boards are part of art collectives and theme camps that need people, money, and time to plan and implement.

If I see beyond my own nose, I see a profound increase in ticket demand created by the social media burners are so eager to commemorate themselves with. I also see that Lottery+transferable tickets = scalping+hoarding. But you know what? I don't see anyone in the community who is sitting on tickets. ANYWHERE. I don't need to wait until the bitter end to know that the 30 theme camps and hundreds of burners I've checked in on don't even possess any tickets to put into STEP, just as I didn't need to wait until tickets were awarded to know that the community would be absolutely enraged by the results of the haphazard implementation of a lottery system. Anyone who could see beyond their own nose could have predicted it, I did, and I wrote a protest letter to the Borg within minutes of the announcement. Every prediction I made came true not because I'm smart, or wise, or special, but because the consequences were obvious to anyone who took a moment to reflect on it.

If I see beyond my own nose, I see trends, big sweeping trends, and they don't bode well for STEP, which doesn't bode well for camps. The number of STEP tickets compared to demand will likely be inconsequential, given the current indicators. Having patience and hoping for a miracle won't get a theme camp or an art collective to the playa. They need to know who has tickets NOW so they can align their troops, do their work, and field their entry. My camp is doing damage control, scaling back, selling off non-essential equipment NOW, so that we can reach the burn AT ALL. For a camp of any size, patience won't cut it. We need ANSWERS, we need them NOW, and we're not going to get them until June at best. Too late. Better luck next year. This situation has dragged me onto the boards, forced me to be an activist, forced me to be vocal, because it requires remedy. I want to see giant, spectacular art, vehicles, and camps... if I look beyond my own nose, I see that if we're fortunate, we may get some back by around 2014.

[lemur]

24 votes and not a single person has voted yes on any tickets going into STEP? Geez.

Geez what? The vast majority of ticket holders do not visit ePlaya, and even fewer will even see this thread.

Anyway, it's February 1st. The lottery just ended. Have some patience.

I swear, most ePlayans can't see anything beyond their nose.

Geez BBadger, WTF are you getting all worked up about? You've got the whole BBS system to troll, aren't there people in the Preparation category you can belittle? Is there some special reason you can't stand the implementation of a poll thread? Do you think the rest of us might be aware of the blatantly obvious facts you like to point out as deficits to anyone asking questions?

Mellow out, none of these attempts to gather information hurt you.

i see no evidence that BBadger is exasperated

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

[BlackRockCityPimp]

Our group of 30 wound up with 6 extras due to the fact that we purchased at highest tier. Originally we were going to gift the tickets and or release to STEP but now that alot of themecamps and art cars got jammed up they are allocated for other people who need workers to get their camp setup. In fact so many camps got jammed by trying for lower tiers that if we have any cacellations between now and June thos tickets are spoken for.

[usurpedus]

sweet!

out of 69 people

2 will donate to STEP

50 will not donate to STEP

16 might donate to STEP

man I cant wait to get into that queue on the 29th!!

[BBadger]

BBadger, I'm disappointed with how judgmentally your post reads. Disagreeing is fine, but it landed more like a flame, to me.

Certainly, if you are an individual contributor, you can afford to have some patience. But many on the boards are part of art collectives and theme camps that need people, money, and time to plan and implement.

No, I think my response was very justified. After all, it was directed at the unfounded exasperation due to results of a flawed poll made a single day after the main sale results, from a weak sample set of ePlayans-who-even-visit-this-forum voting. Have some perspective right?

Do you think everyone has their ticket plans set in stone the moment after getting their tickets? People are planning too; it's not like there is a glut of people on this board with spare tickets anyway.

sweet!

out of 69 people

2 will donate to STEP

50 will not donate to STEP

16 might donate to STEP

man I cant wait to get into that queue on the 29th!!

The poll is flawed as it doesn't cover all cases. Even if someone would be willing to submit tickets to STEP, there may be no need or ability to do so. People were probably trying to see where their intent and ability fit into the options, and as such the poll results--as few as they are--is misrepresentative of actual demand or STEP utilization.

[mshaman]

@BBadger, a lot of your post was justified, I was taking issue with the part about people not being "able to see beyond their own nose".

I've gathered that you are a Ranger; with this you can indeed afford to have patience, because the BMOrg will make sure they have enough rangers, and thus the rangers can plan around a certain staff level. My camp, however, was dealt a critical blow by all of this crap where we don't have a final answer on tickets until a few weeks before the burn. We're adapting by inviting current ticket-holders into the camp because aspiring ticket-holders appear to be out in the cold, now more than ever before with the policy that BMorg would hand pick the camps that got the remaining 10,000. Mine wasn't' one of the chosen camps.

[bradtem]

A number of folks have said they would return tickets to STEP if they had extras.

Would you? You don't have anybody in your social networks who needs a ticket? It strikes me that even in the days before sellouts, the majority of tickets found their way to people with a connection to the seller, either a friend or campmate or a friend of a friend or campmate. Sometimes people didn't get takers and put their tickets up on eplaya or craigslist or even ebay, but that was in an era when all the people who were planning to go had an easy way to get tickets directly because they weren't sold out, so it was much more likely that when you asked around your camp if anybody needed tickets, the answer came back that everybody had them. Usually you did it in the summer, when somebody realized they weren't going, and the only takers would be people who were deciding to go at the last minute, not more serious burners who had been planning for months.

Now it's the reverse. Every camp has somebody who needs tickets, and they need them now, not in the summer. Those who have extra also know now that they have extra, though others will appear in the summer who abort plans. So it's hard to predict just what will happen.

[EspressoDude]

In previous years folks had ACTUAL TICKETS to sell or give to others. People buying tickets actually got a TICKET in the transaction.

Now all folks have is a receipt and 'promise of delivery' in June/July. Would you give someone $300+ for a receipt, and a promise to deliver this summer. There is an incredible amount of trust in that. The seller may get a better offer, spent your money, be out of town when the actual TICKET arrives...

[bradtem]

Good question. Unless I was early on the STEP waiting list, I would trust a friend promising a ticket now over waiting for STEP, though I might do both knowing there is little risk in taking the friend's ticket. I see your point that you might not do it for a friend of a campmate. But that's a a hard question. You want to go to BM. You see an offer from a friend of a campmate for a spare ticket. You can also join STEP (no risk) but your position is not good. Are you willing to wait for STEP and not bother to try to cut a deal with the friend(campmate)? So much so that people who offer tickets to their camp mailing list will get no takers?

[falk]

If I knew things were going to work out this way I would have tried to get more tickets to donate back to the STEP program. Unfortunately, the only tickets I will be receiving are going to be used by my husband and I... makes me feel bad for even having tickets in the first place *sigh*

I feel the same way a bit. I guess it's sort of like survivor's guilt. However, we've done nothing wrong. We entered the lottery in good faith and only asked for the tickets we actually need. I won't be returning any to STEP because I don't have any spares to return.

I guess if for some reason I can't go, I'll check among my friends first, then return them to STEP.

I'm guessing that the main reason for the fiasco is that people gamed the lottery and entered multiple times to make sure they won. It would have been nice for the lottery system to have a simple "no thanks, don't need them after all" button, but for some reason they didn't do that.

But that's just a guess. Has anybody done the research yet to find out where all the tickets went? Huge influx of newbies? Gaming the lottery to make sure they win? Scalpers?

[falk]

I'm guessing that real burners (as opposed to scalpers) who got extra tickets will probably redistribute to others in their camp rather than submit them to STEP, which is totally understandable. If I somehow got extra tickets, I would offer them to fellow campmates first. Unfortunately, none of the fellow campmates who did get tickets have extras as far as I know or they're already spoken for.

I think this is what most people will be doing. At this point, I think the only way to get in is to know somebody.

[BBadger]

It'll still be some time in June before those tickets can actually be sold/transferred to the other camp mates. Between then and now those camp mates may be able to obtain tickets through STEP without relying on other camp mates. I only mention this because selling stuff to friends/camp mates can be a pain (just like loaning money to friends); it might be in the interest of both parties to get a ticket through the STEP program if possible.

[Doriangrey]

Why isn't BMorg not asking for the extra tickets now so they have some idea of how many tickets will be available. IF someone were to get a STEP ticket how soon would they be notified?

[BBadger]

Because they're still making sure the system works correctly. They already pushed it back to the 29th from the 22nd to get it right.