Party mess on deep playa, art?

[Simon of the Playa]

However, God informed Gideon that the men he had gathered were too many – with so many men, there would be reason for the Israelites to claim the victory as their own instead of acknowledging that God had saved them. God first instructed Gideon to send home those men who were afraid. Gideon then allowed any man who wanted to leave, to leave; 22,000 men returned home and 10,000 remained. Yet the number was still too many, according to God:

But the Lord said to Gideon, "There are still too many men. Take them down to the water, and I will sift them for you there. If I say, 'This one shall go with you, he shall go; but if I say, this one shall not go with you, he shall not go." 5 So Gideon took the men down to the water. There the Lord told him, "Separate those who lap the water with their tongues like a dog from those who kneel down to drink." 6Three hundred men lapped with their hands to their mouths. All the rest got down on their knees to drink. 7 The Lord said to Gideon, "With the 300 men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the other men go, each to his own place.

[Bob]

Guess this is where I split with a lot of you people -- I'd take a look at a membership setup and community <drink> ownership. Works for the Green Bay Packers. Thirteen championships, and now they just won the Mirror Ball Trophy. Buy a cornfield out in the San Joaquin Valley, talk Caltrans into building ten-mile exit ramps on I-5 to handle the traffic, and Bob's your uncle.

[theCryptofishist]

Next year, please make it harder to do the lottery signup, maybe requiring a written page on how you plan to do "radical self-survival" and what you have contributed to TTITD in terms of volunteering on or off playa, art, art cars, camp volunteering, ... That would cut the number of clueless lottery entries down dramatically and allow more of our friends to make it to the playa.

It takes the low-income team what, a couple months?, to get through the 4,000 or so written applications to decide who gets one. Are you willing to wait 6 or 7 months for Ticketing to read through 60 or 70 thousand applications before you find out if you get a ticket? Yeah, didn't think so.

Besides, everybody, even you, was a virgin once and your plan cuts them out completely so your friends can come back- personally that sounds like a plan for stagnation to me.

Hell, just making people put down $100 refundable deposit would cut out a lot of "maybe"'s. No need to make people prove they fit some ideological Burner Master Race category.

Darn! There goes my lucrative side-line writing people's entry essays for them...

[jkisha]

@jkisha - nothing about that article has me up in arms in particular, it's another perfect example of what they do (parrot other peoples' blogs or news articles without really adding anything to the story.

And this is different from buzzfeed.com mashable.com how? Or do you feel the same way about those sights? At the very least it gets people reading and not watching the Kardashians et.al.

I'm not especially defending HP, just don't know why there is such a distaste for HP. Hell, how many people have managed to do what Arianna has done?

[theCryptofishist]

I admit that it's not a lot of women who marry a closeted man, urge him into running for Senator as a republican, lose the race, let him out of the closet, get a divorce, reinvent herself as a leftist, and publish 4 or more books with what appear to me much plagerisation. And then put up a website.

To me, she comes across as someone who wants to be a mover and a shaker. And as someone who's oddly cluless. I don't read the HuffPo enough to really have an opinion on it, but Arianna ... um...
Wanna ride bikes?

[jkisha]

I admit that it's not a lot of women who marry a closeted man, urge him into running for Senator as a republican, lose the race, let him out of the closet, get a divorce, reinvent herself as a leftist, and publish 4 or more books with what appear to me much plagerisation. And then put up a website.

To me, she comes across as someone who wants to be a mover and a shaker. And as someone who's oddly cluless. I don't read the HuffPo enough to really have an opinion on it, but Arianna ... um...
Wanna ride bikes?

And how much did AOL pay her for HuffPo?! You've got to give her credit.

I don't read HuffPo either except if someone sends me a link to an article or posts one on Facebook that sounds interesting.

[theCryptofishist]

As the slow motion collapse of facebook is showing us, it is a pretty savvy person who manages to actually make money on a web-based business.

[BeachBum]

Next year, please make it harder to do the lottery signup, maybe requiring a written page on how you plan to do "radical self-survival" and what you have contributed to TTITD in terms of volunteering on or off playa, art, art cars, camp volunteering, ... That would cut the number of clueless lottery entries down dramatically and allow more of our friends to make it to the playa.

It takes the low-income team what, a couple months?, to get through the 4,000 or so written applications to decide who gets one. Are you willing to wait 6 or 7 months for Ticketing to read through 60 or 70 thousand applications before you find out if you get a ticket? Yeah, didn't think so.

Besides, everybody, even you, was a virgin once and your plan cuts them out completely so your friends can come back- personally that sounds like a plan for stagnation to me.

Hell, just making people put down $100 refundable deposit would cut out a lot of "maybe"'s. No need to make people prove they fit some ideological Burner Master Race category.

Eric,

I realize there is great organizational inertia to making any changes. But if no changes are made for next year, there are going to be well over 150K lottery entrants for 50K spots. If you think that there was outrage this year over the ticketing fiasco, wait till next year to see real outrage if so many people who self-identify with TTITD and contribute are excluded again.

There needs to be some "cost" in terms of time and effort needed for someone to put in a lottery application, otherwise 2013 is going to be a worse fiasco. Requiring some "cost" as mentioned above in terms of time and effort doesn't cut out virgins in the least, just virgins who aren't willing to spend the time to understand the event and what it takes to make it to the playa and survive the nasty environment. As well as others who aren't willing to spend a bit of time to write up a page. It has absolutely nothing to do with "... fit some Burner Master Race category".

The people in the org are very intelligent, same as most people who attend the event, according to the annual census. They can figure out some way of implementing a non-monetary "cost" to put in a lottery application without blowing up their own cost.

I realize it's impossible to put any specific ideas out on eplaya. But there needs to be some emotional empathy felt towards the pain and frustration people are going through, as well as significant changes made for ticketing next year.

@trilobyte - I respect the people who made the video, that really is a good video, congrats to them. BTW, relating to your belief that this video blew up the number of lottery applications: If this is the case, the geographic distribution of lottery applicants would be very, very significantly more distributed nationally and internationally than in the past. Is this the case?

[lemur]

If you think that there was outrage this year over the ticketing fiasco, wait till next year to see real outrage if so many people who self-identify with TTITD and contribute are excluded again.

ZOMG LARRY IS EXCLUDING ME FROM PLUG N PLAYAPALOOZA!!

[jkisha]

As the slow motion collapse of facebook is showing us, it is a pretty savvy person who manages to actually make money on a web-based business.

Are you basing this on the less than stellar IPO? If not, I'd be curious to know what you are basing your assertion.

[lemur]

ok lets not get distracted people.

remember this is the FUCK KRUG thread?! and uhhh MAYBE fuck ZOO CAMP who might have been involved in the nastiness


KRUG BUTT PLUG, FOR THOSE WHO HAVE BAD TASTE

[theCryptofishist]

But if no changes are made for next year, there are going to be well over 150K lottery entrants for 50K spots.

Where are you getting this information?
And, um, how much more are you willing to pay in order for the llc to hire enough people to read 150,000 thousand pages?
And isn't it futile to have an essay question because the next service of plug and play will be essay for ticket hire?

[Nipple]

Well, you take the world population...

If only a trivial amount want to go to Burning Man, say... half a percent: 35,000,000 people will be trying to get tickets next year.

[BeachBum]

But if no changes are made for next year, there are going to be well over 150K lottery entrants for 50K spots.

Where are you getting this information?
And, um, how much more are you willing to pay in order for the llc to hire enough people to read 150,000 thousand pages?
And isn't it futile to have an essay question because the next service of plug and play will be essay for ticket hire?

Cryptofishist,

The org said that there were 120K ticket applications for this year. Do the extrapolation.

The people in the org are very intelligent. It's fairly easy to implement a software check of written pages with some keywords, semantics rules, subjects rules, and non-plagiarism checks to minimize cost. This is already done on a number of college courses and admissions essays. Adding a "cost" of time and effort required by each applicant to submit a lottery application would significantly cut down on the number of lottery ticket applications. My take is that this extra effort needed would take the number of lottery applications down to much closer to the actual number of tickets available. People on eplaya have suggested this written page be done, similar to how the Dead required this for some of their concert tickets way back when.

[theCryptofishist]

The org said that there were 120K ticket applications for this year.

I never saw this, where did they say it?

[5280MeV]

The other issue with applications is that the people who hire people to wipe their asses for them will also likely pay to have applications written.

This is likely to be an all inclusive package, you get your ass wiped (triple-ply or moist towel - the neck of a goose is extra), and they customize an application for you.

I know that many people feel that there are too many rules already, but what if we required people to give their ass-wiper a week off in the spirit of radical self-reliance?

Think of how much they will learn about themselves as they do this on their own!

[Bob]

Simon, this isn't about Krug, it's about the buhrnurz who enabled everything to do with what happened. People for whom the characters in "Mad Men" are role models, not object lessons.

[BeachBum]

The other issue with applications is that the people who hire people to wipe their asses for them will also likely pay to have applications written.
This is likely to be an all inclusive package, you get your ass wiped (triple-ply or moist towel - the neck of a goose is extra), and they customize an application for you.
I know that many people feel that there are too many rules already, but what if we required people to give their ass-wiper a week off in the spirit of radical self-reliance?
Think of how much they will learn about themselves as they do this on their own!

@Crytofish - The Burning Man blog.

@5280MeV - It's impossible to mention any specifics on eplaya, and expect a reasonable conversation. But, delving into this a touch further. Everyone submits their own application. There may need to be a limited amount of time for people to actually submit an application. And, yes, tickets may need to be matched to a name for this to work. The people at the org are intelligent, they can work through the details. Doing the tickets in a non-fiasco manner would reduce the cost to the organization in terms of time spent and pain endured from what occurred this year.

[Eric]

Doing the tickets in a non-fiasco manner would reduce the cost to the organization in terms of time spent and pain endured from what occurred this year.

While I agree that they need changes for next year, the idea of a "non-fiasco" is impossible as long as more people want to attend than the BLM will allow on the playa. It's really as simple as demand being much higher than supply and we've reached a point where there will be people who can't attend, regardless of how much they want to. As long as those people exist any "solution" will be considered a fiasco.

As for having a computer check for keywords on a written entry: Burners are a smart bunch, it would be just as easy to make a program to ensure those keywords were in your application. There are always loopholes, good people will always get left out in the crush. I don't like it, I'm just realistic enough to view the bigger picture of where the Events at right now.

Don't think that just because I don't agree with your specific ideas that it means that you're not getting a "reasonable conversation"; you're just not getting unquestioning agreement. I personally think your idea depends on too many impossible & expensive variables (everyone being honest, a new computer program to scan the documents, no false documents... ) to be effective, and it doesn't deal with the demand being greater than the number of tickets at all.

Fishy- the Burning Blog said something along the lines of the demand being 3 times greater than the number of tickets, 40,000 tickets were in the lottery so roughly 120,000 were requested.

[theCryptofishist]

Fishy- the Burning Blog said something along the lines of the demand being 3 times greater than the number of tickets, 40,000 tickets were in the lottery so roughly 120,000 were requested.

See that's what I remember. But airliy assuming that that means 150,000 would be requested next year didn't come across as a very thought out place from which to start declaiming how the process should work next year. If someone is going to insist on his or her solution, I feel he or she has to show his/her work.

Mathematician's daughter, what are you going to do?

[5280MeV]

I do agree with BeachBum in some spirit I think regarding self-survival, not that everyone needs to explain how they are going to do it - or even have a particularly good plan - but that a *lack* of even considering one's own survival is somehow at the heart of the problem. I think that this is a bigger issue than the commodification issue or MOOP.

The fact of the matter is that Burning Man was featured in Town and Country. Forget the advertising, forget the product placement. Burning Man was featured in Town and Country. It has been removed, but you can see it here:

http://burners.me/2012/05/03/look-daaah ... d-country/

It is worth a read. This is not just some ad, this is an actual reality. For more people than one might expect, this is Burning Man.

If you read pre-2005 Burning Man literature you can piece together many of the principles, and if you read the blogs and reports of these campers you can piece together a list of asserted principles of these people: Love, non-judgement, self-expression, and not turning a profit.

For some people, a company is a thing that you own, and if you bring it, at cost, then you have done no wrong according to the principles of the champagne toddler.

The biggest core difference to me is that rather than relying on yourself or your immediate friends, you rely on your staff.


I don't really care if your plan for self-preservation is not so good. The point is that one is thrust into a very hot desert with nothing except a pile of gear and maybe a few friends - for a week. That can be very humbling. No money, no connections, no communication, nothing going. Just a giant tent city of crazy people lighting up a truly alien environment at night, having a blast, and then helping you out when your plans all fall apart. Suddenly the camp mates that you just met become your best friends, because it is hot, dusty, maybe even a little bit scary - and the immediate people around you are all that you have. The social boundaries you know are gone, your subconscious ability to judge who is desirable, wealthy, important, or part of your type of crowd falls apart. The desert turns you into nobody except yourself.

[jkisha]

Your story reminded me of one from my very first burn. I went late, arriving at the airport on Wednesday. While waiting for the bio bus, all I saw were people frantically trying to buy tickets to fly the hell out of there or rent a car or whatever would make their escape easier. The most memorable were an Israeli couple--I thought she would have a breakdown if her husband wasn't able to secure tickets out of there and back to Israel. Scarry, actually. I guess there must have been an over abundance of dust storms or heat or whatever that year.

[theCryptofishist]

Well, 5280MeV, I don't think that that's going to have much of an effect on those sheltered campers either. I simply see them as having the best access to ghost-writing services. IF you're paying $20,000 to be pampered, are you really going to balk at a few hundred more for an essay?

Also, some of the people who build the best stuff might also have less than sterling verbal skills. A problem with an essay is that it gives people who can write a better chance than they may "deserve". So, I see it as something that makes things more complicated without solving the problem.
If of course we define the problem as being that we want people who can build big, burnable art at the desert.

And yes, my broad brush once again.

[BeachBum]

Doing the tickets in a non-fiasco manner would reduce the cost to the organization in terms of time spent and pain endured from what occurred this year.

While I agree that they need changes for next year, the idea of a "non-fiasco" is impossible as long as more people want to attend than the BLM will allow on the playa. It's really as simple as demand being much higher than supply and we've reached a point where there will be people who can't attend, regardless of how much they want to. As long as those people exist any "solution" will be considered a fiasco.

As for having a computer check for keywords on a written entry: Burners are a smart bunch, it would be just as easy to make a program to ensure those keywords were in your application. There are always loopholes, good people will always get left out in the crush. I don't like it, I'm just realistic enough to view the bigger picture of where the Events at right now.

Don't think that just because I don't agree with your specific ideas that it means that you're not getting a "reasonable conversation"; you're just not getting unquestioning agreement. I personally think your idea depends on too many impossible & expensive variables (everyone being honest, a new computer program to scan the documents, no false documents... ) to be effective, and it doesn't deal with the demand being greater than the number of tickets at all.

Please don't chalk it up to demand being much higher than supply, and give up on ticket sales next year not being a fiasco without trying to get the tickets to the people who want them the most.

From Econ 101, if supply exceeds demand at a certain cost, you increase the cost to balance supply and demand. What I am saying is that, instead of increasing costs in monetary terms, increase the "costs" to a person submitting a lottery entry by increasing the time and effort needed to submit the lottery entry. I'm not suggesting anything impossible & expensive, this method is used on college essays, admittance essays, and simulation grading programs on SAT essays everyday. I'm not saying that people will be honest, just that if they don't care enough to submit a semi-competent written page with their lottery entry that they won't be included in the lottery. This will reduce a lot of the excess demand right there.

Fishy: It's prob/stats and basic estimation. If you wait till the fiasco happens again next year when you'll have the actual data, it'll be too late. Just like it was this year.

In terms of the 'reasonable conversation", I'm referring to the few people who aggressively shot down those of us who were warning in late 2011 and early 2012 of the looming 2012 ticket fiasco. You now see how right the few people were in shooting down all the people providing this warning and who tried in vain to provide ideas to avoid this fiasco. The same thing is happening to anyone trying to provide competent suggestions for 2013 ticket distribution.

5280MeV: love your post!

[lemur]

don't chalk it up to demand being much higher than supply, and give up on ticket sales next year not being a fiasco without trying to get the tickets to the people who want them the most.

From Econ 101,

YOU FAILED

..im glad we are diggging this stuff back up!

we get to relive the joy of people bringing up some 101 class that 17 year olds take! woo hoo

if a 17 year old can run burning man ticketing worth millions ... surely larry can.. whats up larry?! why ya keep fuckin it up!?

[trilobyte]

It *is* a function of demand that was far greater than supply. Describing it as something else is just a little delusional.

But as has been covered in a few blog posts (and discussed in the tickets forum), the event is and should be open to anyone. No essay test, no multiple choice, no burnier than thou litmus… you're just as worthy of being able to go as I am, or as somebody who's never been or knows very little about the event. On that note, i'll put on the mod hat for a minute and point out that discussion about tickets (and ideas for future ticket schemes) should head on over to the Tickets Discussion board. Aside from getting back on topic with this thread, it also ensures a much greater likelihood that whatever ideas are put forth will be given consideration by the folks looking at changes for future events.

[lemur]

clearly the people who want tickets the most are those willing to spend $10,000 on a DELUXE KRUG package flying in on a private jet sleeping in a 40 foot RV/bus and being pampered all week.

you just want to come in and sleep in a tent?! too bad.


you building an "art project" on the playa? too bad.

the guys in the luxury plug and play camp have 40 mutant vehicles and have "activities" all week.. clearly they are giving more back to the community than you..

[Bob]

Another way to put it:

The org's media dept's incessant marketing exceeded the community's capacity for fulfillment.


<drink>

[jkisha]

Another way to put it:

The org's media dept's incessant marketing exceeded the community's capacity for fulfillment.


<drink>

I'll drink to that!

[theCryptofishist]

(darn, now I can't mention the overseas burners with limited english composition skills.)