Category: Combustion-chamber minutes

COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016

FACILITATOR:  Prost

STACK:  Turtlebunnie

SCRIBE:  Chim-Chim

ATTENDEES:  Prost, Clover, Commander Awesomepants, Cooper, Problem, Blister, Rabbitt, Rabbitfoot, Babbage, Izzi, Henry, Turtlebunnie, Hawk, Breezy, Wrinn, Decibel, Pixie, Monkey, Psyche, Crash

TOPICS:  Review of Flipside; Event length

RESOLUTIONS AND ACTION ITEMS

MOTION: Fall TH—raise awareness to add artist resources as topic for Fall TH; MOTION PASSED

7:49pm MEETING BEGINS

7:52pm LLC UPDATE (Blister)

• 2,783 tickets sold; 2,547 past gate; no show 6%; one ambulance run to hospital and one participant who went to hospital in a personally operated vehicle—both returned to the event; had 1 law enforcement incident involved inside gate, but no arrests; no gate crasher incidents reported; Event went smoothly despite rain; Most ppl came prepared; Traffic managed; Landowner did not recover any stuck vehicles; All done internally; No major incidents; Recycling unstaffed on Monday; Understaffed for picking up; Load in day after cleanup understaffed; site sign-off said few camps were yellow if were to moop map; For more info, contact Blister
• Tix sold in initial release: under 2,500
• Sat-Mon: Recycling; Are we going to have recycling next year? It’s a Flipside department; Cut down on operation? Recycling not seen anywhere outside BRC
• Looking to recruit at least one new AF for 2017

8:04pm ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Leads appreciation Saturday
• AF meeting Sunday

AF UPDATE (Wrinn)

• AFs remind Leads to clean up and put stuff away
• CC can let ppl know if they have anything at warehouse, needs to get taken home; Expiration date; Pile by overhead doors; Community pickup day

8:06pm REGIONAL UPDATE (St. Tiki)

• Burning Man Europe, targeting 1000 ppl; the event itself will be called “Where the Sheep Sleep”; organized by “Burning Man Netherlands”
• Lakes of Fire drowning
• San Antonio mixer last Friday night; Looking for proposed location within 45mins of San Antonio; Instead of placement camps, will be genres/areas for ppl to choose; Forming LLC; Do fundraising; 250 ppl for first Burn
• Mid-Burn 6,000; AfricaBurn 10,000
• Beachside in 3 weeks
• Burnt Soup is getting ramped up
• Potential timing for San Antonio (December) looking at private campground
• Fly Ranch (near BRC), which BMORG just bought, is 3,800 acres—desire to have some type of cool Burner retreat
• Implication of housing at Fly Ranch (j/k)

8:21pm TOPIC: Flipside Review

• Liked the City mail; Glad to see Kit sell straw; Seemed like volunteerism was working pretty well for recycling; Concerns: 2nd phase ticket process was kludgy
• What a difference a year makes; Not a big problem with fireworks this year
• Volunteer Assistance Squad may need tweaking
• Traffic flow was much better this year
• 2nd round tickets: Consider tickets online; Advantage—do everything like everybody else does; When you do, you get free stuff; When there is reason to choose to do differently, that’s great; Not ticket process, but process to sell the additional 238 tickets
• AAR has ability to sell tix after window; Critical volunteer tix; Manual process
• Kludgy means cumbersome
• Adaptations to city layout went smoothly; Poorly-raining, muddy; Wasn’t last year; Camps moved around; Plus slightly cooler
• Liked figure 8; Straw works wonders!
• Camps better prepared; A lot left earlier on Monday; Affected us with no late volunteers; Towing was not an imposition; Cleanup—limited number of volunteers post-event
• Tix: Put effort in tix that no one really sees
• Site Ops: This year was best; Had half new leads; Volunteer towing good; Pickup weekend;
• MOOP map coming out this year: Statistical type MOOP map
• 2 things seen: ticketing different; no higher tier; One big burn instead of multiple nights of burns; no exit survey; Org doesn’t give art grants—someone else does it; up to ppl to bring art they want to burn
• Idea of having new department for towing
• Setup of safety HQ was off
• Email Wrinn for recycling ideas/opinions; Not against towing, but problem is liability

8:54pm TOPIC: Event Length

• Move to start on Wednesday?
• Lengthier event = consider changing dates
• Event length: Signaling art/scope of art; for five day event, most don’t take more than one day to setup; If looking for non-sponsored project, hard-pressed to do in a day; If you want ppl to do art on that level, 5 days is not enough; Big advantages to both of them
• Tried to have longer event at one point; Sound complaints before Sound Marshall was there; Scaled down; not setup when focused on party; big difference Tues to Tues operationally when dealing with clients on Wednesday; If open for 10 days, ppl will be partying for 10 days; All art is self-funded; 2 days longer would be horrible for staff
• Main burn Saturday; Temple Burn Sunday
• May be able to do if at 5,000 ppl; Balance between amount of ability to support it/more money, but important thing about extending event is whether or not we want to have Flipside as ability to build great things; Volunteers; more, stupid, longer
• If longer, look at safety teams
• Suggestion: Determine number in each camp; Bigger camps more likely to build bigger things; need extra day; add another day to early entry for those
• Day early; Don’t strive for full week; baby steps if on list
• Volunteer count?
• Use weekend before, have campers bring stuff early; Weather concern; Open
• Most theme camps ready by time of event; early entry is awkward with privilege; labor-intensive; early entry an issue regarding questions
• More of the ppl than the time; Stats are random
• Expanding early entry is a reasonable experiment; Safety teams would have to happen earlier; Insurance gets expensive when event is extended
• Wednesday early entry not so much an issue
• If we extend early entry, do you deserve it? Weekend before is good; Weatherproof art project
• 80% ppl check box for early entry
• Emphasis on communicating needs; VR training?
• How much safety volunteer base must we have? Setup
• Are we contributing to volunteer burnout?
• Early entry is meant for working; Even if you are a significant other, you are expected to be doing something; Contributing to volunteer burnout is watching those get early entry and sit and drink beer and do nothing
• Week before dropoff? Ppl are liable for their own stuff; Needs to be left there in such a way that space appears unoccupied for insurance purposes
• You get early entry through volunteering; You do not volunteer to get early entry; Having been on DAFT crew—became us vs them mentality; In addition to dropping art off on Saturday, org drops off art on Saturday; Truck was half-full at most

MOTION: Fall TH—raise awareness to add artist resources as topic for Fall TH; MOTION PASSED

10:04pm OLD BUSINESS

• Process in handbook
• Picture day: July 11
• Discussing mixer and add periodic mixer; Do one in September
• If you left mixer with ideas with topics, discuss after meeting, ready for next mixer

NEXT MEETING:  Monday, July 11, 2016

FACILITATOR:  Clover

STACK:  Pixie

SCRIBE:  Chim-Chim

TOPICS:  Calendaring up to December; Town Hall prep; CC membership; Date for CC retreat (Setup for October/November); Picture day

10:13pm MEETING ADJOURNED

COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016

FACILITATOR: Cooper

STACK: Breezy

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

ATTENDEES: Adam, Princess, Problem, Izzi, Turtlebunnie, Maria, Whim, Chim-Chim, Clover, Breezy, Dahling, Hawk, Clovis, Private Bear, Kat, Monkey, Wrinn, Commander Awesomepants, Notfunnyatall, Cooper, Pixie, Prost, Henry, Rose, Xander, Bonobo, Samantha

TOPICS: Volunteer Panic (Dahling); Leave No Trace (Wrinn)

RESOLUTIONS AND ACTION ITEMS

MOTION: CC recommends to LLC to either change the names for Earth Guardians or Guardians; BLOCKED

7:42pm AAR/LLC UPDATE

• Warehouse is not a donation site for furniture; Do not leave furniture; Contact warehouse manager before dropping off
• Preliminary map will be available May 1st; Gate crew will go over dry run
• AFs will have discussion for Leads All Hands this week

AF UPDATE

• There will be a discussion over volunteering at the work weekend coming up
• Safetyside went well. Ended early for flood warning
• Leads All Hands this week
• There is more work to be done at work weekend
• There will be a new traffic pattern; A figure-8 around effigy

7:57pm TOPIC: Volunteer Panic (Dahling)

• 70% staffed minus Safety teams
• Ice is almost full
• Sanctuary is full
• Biggest area needed is Parking and Guardians
• Volunteer assistant Squad 60% full; Job description: Taxi service for volunteers; On-site volunteer recruitment; Tech stuff
• Earth Guardians needs help
• Need ppl for after Tuesday to load trucks for Recycling
• Shaven Apes needs more ppl
• Last day help with DAFT
• Volunteer roulette online

8:03pm REGIONAL UPDATE (Clovis)

• Applied for status for this year
• Lots of regionals coming up; Soak, Mid-Burn, Saguaro Man, AfricaBurn

8:05pm TOPIC: Leave No Trace (Wrinn)

• Reasons: Before FS, read threads from BM, and the hypocrisy of pollution; After FS, we didn’t do the best job cleaning up; Unsafe; Grass too high; What are our feelings on LNT? Tactics—cigarette butts; Should we expend an effort; Intangible—Carbon emissions; Have an accountability principle; How accountable does community want us to be?
• We do leave carbon; After every burn, plant trees; Using generators and burning effigies; Planting a tree wouldn’t hurt the environment; LNT also involves not messing with animals; Someone took an animal off land last year; Call game warden before taking an animal home to rehab if you feel the animal is in danger
• Whatever you take out there, you take home
• Did we handle aftermath of Floodside effectively? We didn’t harm reputation with landowner; We have high standards and he appreciates that
• Less carbon-neutral weekend, then no trace; How did it shift to carbon-neutral week? Discussion over principles; Is this a formal goal for the organization? What level are we looking for?
• Ideas: Camps coordinating on carbon diesel engines; Solar—ppl who know about solar rigs, and a workshop would be cool to build for camp; Do around mid-winter; IF ONLY WE HAD A WORKSHOP HERE :p
• Cleaned up things from other events; Twinkles to Shortcake!
• Carbon footprints: Challenge theme camps to think about own carbon footprint; Approach is smaller and more manageable
• Do you want ticket money spent on planting trees? Tree folks has a calculator
• Single box with marine battery and inverter; Battery is solar-charged; More ac/dc power for lighting; It’s doable and can be scaled up to theme-sized unit; Can have workshop
• Making event carbon-neutral: Don’t know how to have event if we cant drive out there; Can work on efficiency; Limit to how carbon neutral we can be; More of a long-term, incremental thing
• Even in the best of years—talk about education—there is moop left behind; Question—What do we do for those who don’t get education
• LNT is internally inconsistent idea: Can’t possibly be clear and consistent; We leave footprints; Disturb plants; Release emissions into trees; Chemtrails over effigy; Fair amount of heat into soil; We make changes to things; Can’t go there at all on a work weekend without making any changes; What we are talking about is—We have decided as a community that LNT is important to us, so what do we want to say; It’s something some ppl do sometimes and some don’t; Only going to get a community consensus
• Part of question is HOW? Against using ticket money on LNT; Love idea of empowering each other; If ppl arguing about being carbon-neutral event; In exchange to not living with so many rules, we have to live up to a higher standard
• Would not recommend spending money on resources; We don’t fund art
• Being better to not have things handed down from on high; Individual convos help
• Having donation checkbox to help plant trees; Choose to leave more or less; Not saying using ticket money should be used
• Recycling: Strain on volunteers, and lots of work; How does recycling fits into LNT philosophy; Ppl who come from out of town; Recycle Camp?
• Checkboxes: Checkbox for art goes to org within community; We don’t have a separate org in the burnerverse to do that; Now we’re burdened with who’s the best org to give it to; Can discuss standards
• Bring up to CC whether we should to continue Recycling; Didn’t have enough resources as a camp, so it went full-on
• Some resources go to LNT, but at what level?
• Half the goal is to convert assholes by talking to ppl, or publicly shaming on FB
• Volunteers for Recycling show it’s a community-supportive event
• How do we empower each other individually; Stressing how serious LNT is
• Answer—whatever the AF feels is an acceptable amount of work; As long as community can agree operational ppl are accountable for what is acceptable; WHATEVER WRINN THINKS IS ACCEPTABLE
• Education is still the main thing
• Leave No Trace existed before Burning Man; Individual/Camp/Community principle that we don’t need to kill our volunteers with
• Pro-tip: Contractor bags labeled with red or green
• LNT: Leave it better
• When we get feedback as to how we did, we can be communicators in being source of education; Earth Guardians is low on volunteers
• Every year we do great; Try to top ourselves every year; Try to evolve, eventually bring carbon;

MOTION: CC recommends to LLC to either change the names for Earth Guardians or Guardians; (Restoration); BLOCKED; LLC doesn’t tell departments to change their names

9:13pm OLD BUSINESS

• Change TH date again? TH date to be in a super position of states;
• Respect discussion: Unofficial; Posted on-site on sign;
• Scribe nominations: Mer’s responsibility to find Scribe? Who vets? Names given, then interviewed; Put community call-out; Message in handbook?
• Pictures: To be taken at mixer; All CC members invited; Clovis will take AI
• Mixer: Next meeting, May 9; Informal as fuck; Bring enough for yourself to drink; Listen to what you guys want to talk about; Bring your favorite beverage; Burning Topics; If you can’t make it to the mixer, if you see us at Flipside, talk to us; Need sticky notes; Name tags for CC members; Wear orange cones on our heads
• Burners without Borders (BWB): Success; 4 groups in total hauled out 20ft dumpster; Full moon tide brought up waste; Listed on Rideshare; Considered an official event

NEXT MEETING: Monday, June 20, 2016

FACILITATOR: Prost

STACK: Turtlebunnie

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

9:25pm MEETING ADJOURNED

COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2016

FACILITATOR: Cooper

STACK: Decibel

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

ATTENDEES (21): Tasha, Pippa, Cooper, Princess, Problem, Kat, Thomas, Chim-Chim, Adam, Monkey, Turtlebunnie, Breezy, Beth, Prost, Decibel, Notfunnyatall, Clovis, Wrinn, Bonobo, Breezy, Henry

TOPICS: Fireworks (Prost); Social Media (Monkey)

RESOLUTIONS AND ACTION ITEMS

ACTION ITEM (Prost): Put into the Flipside Flame: You can buy fireworks; No you cant take it to Flipside; It’s everybody’s responsibility; Prost will write a blurb

MOTION: Suggest that the Social Media team review the original Social Media Plan; MOTION PASSES

MOTION: Move Fall Town Hall to Sept. 24; MOTION PASSES

ACTION ITEM (Cooper): Contact Mer and request to start Scribe nominations process

ACTION ITEM (Kat & Beth): Kat will make FB event page and post on website for the CC Mixer; 7:42pm; Beth will post event

7:52pm MEETING BEGINS

7:58pm AAR/LLC UPDATE (Adam, Thomas, Problem, Princess)

• Contract signed—WE HAVE LAND!!!
• Safetyside is this weekend; Bad news—IT’S GONNA RAIN!
• Global Leadership Conference occurred last week
• Met with AFs; Everything proceeding as planned
• Scheduling Fall Town Hall: Set for October 1; Discuss in OLD BUSINESS

8:05pm REGIONAL UPDATE (Clovis)

• GLC
• Cheyne McClaskey meta regional contacts admin;
• Everyman stepped down (previous admin)
• Meta-regional representative for Austin: Scott Claskey
• Schedule time to get together and discuss GLC; Wrinn, Russell, FTC, Serious, Jimmie
• Serious, Ghost did panel

8:11pm AREA FACILITATOR UPDATE (Clovis)

• Had work weekend this past weekend; Additional 13 loads at site; Placed 7-8; Filled potholes; Found more infrastructure that had floated downstream (mesh green flooring); Cleaned up along 428 outside (6 bags of trash; Pallets); Lots learned how to use a bobcat; Main field was plowed six times and cleaned; Lots of screws, towels, keys found in cleaning process
• Safetyside this weekend; Orders are in for everything

8:16pm TOPIC: Fireworks (Prost)

• Why LLC loathes fireworks so much; Fireworks policy in SG is clear; They are PROHIBITED; Reason to bring this up—fireworks sales laws in Texas have changed; You can now buy fireworks; for Memorial Day; On a county-by-county basis; Must approve each vendor selling; Now have situation where someone driving to Flipside may see the sights of fireworks stands
• Survival Guide states it is also grounds for ejection; Cannot get insurance if ppl setting off fireworks; Don’t have Flipside if ppl set fireworks off; Motion to keep it the same
• How to communicate it to the community, and what’s our last line of defense in the event, and what are we gonna do in this situation
• Last line of defense: Gate; Can ask Gate to ask about fireworks; Once in the event, it’s harder to deal with those who have fireworks
• NO fireworks sign? NO. Also, need NO firearms sign; Start telling people (operational issue)
• Fireworks policy is reaffirmed; If insurance situation changes, re-discuss

ACTION ITEM: Put into the Flipside Flame: You can buy fireworks; No you cant take it to Flipside; It’s everybody’s responsibility; Prost will write a blurb

8:28pm TOPIC: Social media (Monkey)

• Have Social Media Lead (St. Tiki); How we address social media; 2 categories; 1) How we as an org use social media, whether we are using the right things, and doing it in the best way; 2) Whether or not it is responsibility of org to take on maintaining communities social media
  • 1) Do we Tweet, yo?
  • 2) Flipizens page?
• Majority are on Burning Flipside Flipizens group page; Community created/Community-run group; Should org take hand in moderating community for group
• Assessment of current social media we use: There is competing problem with #1; When we started social media thing, there have been a couple of starts and didn’t know exactly what to say; People need to know there is a burningflipside.com website; Don’t pay FB; As a point of information on this convo, may need to be discuss; Original plan—put images, news blurbs, etc into fb page that direct back to website; Ppl look and share those posts; Whoever is subscribed to page will upvote the visibility/reach of message; Have some traction; Gets more fun on #2 side; Official plan—let ppl REACH
• Twitter is something we’ve had for several years;
• Who are we most concerned about reaching? 2 groups: Detailed/complex info to veteran/highly engaged ppl; Or, less-engaged ppl, or, new ppl? Require entirely set of focus; FB is excellent spot to reach ppl you don’t necessarily know at all; Which area of social media are we most worried we are not doing well?
• Communication is a two-way streak; Have official Flipside page; People are asking that they should be asking organization on Flipizens group
• You have to know the system in order to game the system
• Using Instagram and Kickk; Getting ahead of social media thing
• Kate Ludlow and St. Michelle do good job of pointing ppl in the right direction
• Although we should do more outreach, we have to come up with the message; Message matters, or maybe it doesn’t; Always have had barrier to entry to get into Flipside
• Recruiting not so much the issue, but it is establishing/creating dynamic culture with certain expectations; Need effective strategy; Medium is the message; Need something more deliberate
• Need prescence; Getting ppl to pay attention to you is expensive; It’s always been repetition; Cost of medium has become cheaper, but doesn’t necessarily mean overall communication costs; Traditional advertising doesn’t work anymore; Have to craft content to get ppl to hear it; It’s EXPENSIVE; Going to cost us many volunteers
• Expensive in tickets; Best that could be done would be 40% reach; Kickk has similar stuff now; Group posts are the only thing that don’t have limits
• Reluctant to put resources into doing social media; Has to be measurable; Must know message/goals
• We should declare FB a secret society, and we’ll be fine; Make it harder to go to Flipside; What we want from social media is EDJUMICATION; Put a strategy together
• Not trying to grow brand, but grow culture/volunteer base, and this is how we should use social media; As CC body, need to figure out how we use social media

• 2nd DISCUSSION: Community-Branding vs Whether we care about our brand; Poll—How many ppl believe we have a severe weakness that needs to be addressed in regards to social media? One and a half voted; Flipside the org has a weakness regarding official messaging; Now, four votes!

MOTION: To bring to the attention of social media and communications that cc believes there are weaknesses in strategies; BLOCKED (2x)

• Social media is trying to be improved; Should revisit original social media plan five years ago to meet the needs of 2016; CC suggesting that organization revisiting five-year plan…; Communications—George said, let’s do social media; Time to revisit operationally; We’re allowing them to re-visit their fucking policy

MOTION (Revised): Recommend that the Social Media team review the original Social Media Plan; MOTION PASSES

• 2ND DISCUSSION (again): Burning Flipside Flipizens on Facebook; Question—nature of community-building as it relates to our social media use; Issues—It’s useless, misleading, mean, full of jerks, trolls, problematic assholes; Our community is not that different from other communities; Discuss taking hand in community management
• Scope of community management: Actions that admins on page would do to maintain community space; Scope is within Facebook page; Managing what happens in that sand
• Flipizens are regional Burn that are snarky
• Don’t want org to take responsibility on convos on FB; We would have to police with level of rigor; Can’t have contingency plan for every detailed situation; Must be prepared; Not only Flipside-related group
• How can we form opinion when we need to revisit strategy? Starting point—What do we want to accomplish with social media
• Issues: Misinformation, trolls, lies—don’t care; Biggest concern—When someone misses the point, and we nudge them back in the right direction to the point of where screenshots are reposted after conversation was deleted; If there’s not a certain amount of moderation or self-moderation on part of flipizens, then trolls win empirically; community suffers as result; Spills over into real community as proxy; What do we do? We are nicer at Flipside than we are online;
• Important to not be in role where we are limiting self-expression no matter how unpleasant that may be; What do we need now? We have to let it play out
• Policing the page is difficult
• Question—Are the bastards winning? Are we looking at Flipizens where it’s not good anymore? Are we talking about shitheads taking over? It’s not worse than what it was; Is it causing direct problems? Ppl have left community; Ppl who could’ve been—Majority say it’s not worth trying to look at the Flipizens page; What can we do? Why should we try to fix it? Yes, there are things happening that cause ppl to leave community; General feeling that it is not a positive part of community; There is no fixing that because it’s not meant to be fixed; It was created for a certain reason; Historically set up by a person—Has anyone told him? Because of personalities involved, it’s suggested that he deleted it; Point is, it can be re-done. Mailing lists are mailing lists, and we get to have them
• Discussion over codes of conduct in other web forums

9:59pm OLD BUSINESS

• TOWN HALL DATE
  • Oct. 1 conflict; several CC and AAR members have a conflict on Oct. 1 that would limit or prevent their Town Hall participation that day

MOTION: Move to Sept. 24, as previous discussion has focused the date to one of either Oct 1 or Sept 24, on the (not serious) condition that Kate Ludlow MCs the event; MOTION PASSES

• RESPECT
  • Chat session during burn at Spin Camp; Unofficial Flipside event
  • Open to those who missed last discussion
• SCRIBE NOMINATIONS
  • Need to start scribe nomination process

ACTION ITEM: (Cooper) contact Mer and request to start Scribe nominations process

• PICTURE DATE
  • On Doodle; Patrick has volunteered to take pictures; Taking pics before Flipside means ppl can know who ppl are; Best day thus far is Monday, April 25th, 10pm; 4 ppl who are happy with their picture; Does not cover most of the AFs

• Q&A MIXER
  • May 9th: Get topics; tell community so ppl can show up

ACTION ITEM: (Kat & Beth): Kat will make FB event page and post on website; CC mixer (meeting); 7:42pm; Beth will post event

NEXT MEETING: MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2016

TOPICS: Leave No Trace (LNT), Volunteer panic

FACILITATOR: Cooper

STACK: Breezy

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

10:24pm MEETING ADJOURNED

COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2016

FACILITATOR: Prost

STACK: Henry

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

ATTENDEES: Notfunnyatall, Hawk, Pixie, Izzi, Problem, Thomas, Beth, Adam, Clover, Breezy, Chim-Chim, Prost, Turtlebunnie, Princess, St. Tiki, Clovis, Wrinn, Decibel, Monkey, Bonobo

TOPICS: Review CC nominations messages (All); Increasing Community Engagement (Beth)

RESOLUTIONS AND ACTION ITEMS

MOTION: To have Q&A mixer on May 9th where we let community members field questions to the CC; MOTION PASSES

MOTION: Calendar meetings into mixers; MOTION TABLED

8:04pm AAR/LLC UPDATE (Adam/Problem)

• Work weekend happened this past weekend; Good turnout; Many ppl who have never been to FS or work weekend; Bobcat was out there; Land is in pretty good shape; Main field was plowed six times to be leveled out; Mostly all dirt now; Most down trees have been dealt with; Island beach is too high; Killed poison ivy; Patching spots on road
• Signing contract to have Flipside
• Tix: Some secondary tix will be available
• Safetyside is April 15-17th
• Discussion over whether Burning Flipside will eventually be called a Burning Man regional; Reasonable, equitable agreement?
•  Ticket sales/requests: Tix set aside—under 3000; 200 less requests than last year; 100 less; General participant interest is down a little; Previous was soft lottery; General number: Requests for 2901 tickets; Request number was lower; what is trend for one vs two requests; comprehensive report still being worked on

8:23pm AREA FACILITATOR UPDATE (Clovis/Wrinn)

• Meeting next week
• Had two TH road shows
• Few theme camps showed up for safety thirdside

8:25pm REGIONAL UPDATE (Clovis/St. Tiki)

• GLC Thursday through Sunday this week
• BM meetup at Beau’s Sekrit Theater
• BM going through a lot of changes
• Negotiating regional agreement
• Houston had their regional event; 185 attended; Not a Burn, but a production company + core ppl; LLC does not have enough info to produce report
• Giant ear gathering in SF—Discussion over how to handle natural disaster event; Did not have hard time getting ppl for lead positions; Rains were more causative; Hard data will be more available near Safetyside; Expect smaller event
• No real systemic issues this year; Volunteer recruitment is still going; Same with Lead recruitment;
• Last year’s Flipside was already hard with 3 key volunteers dropping out before the event; Not many ppl were personally affected by flood; Lots affected by general rain/mud
• Do good job in recognizing volunteer life cycle; Many have disengaged for many years and at some point, come back in; We do a good job at succession planning, lieutenants, sharing, etc.; Weather—No control, and a learning experience; Update on Regionals—San Antonio regional in the works

8:48pm TOPIC: Increasing Community Engagement (Beth)

• Encouraging community engagement; Community not engaging with CC; How we can ask community? Brainstorming session of what do we change, how do we change, what are we missing?
• How to reach out to ppl and get them to talk about what they wanna talk about?
• In terms of basic outreach, there are bits of info; What is it you’re trying to do? Valve for politics, but decisions are made in person, and focus is on interpersonal relationships in person; If you aren’t engaged enough, then get engaged
• Throw mud at the wall and see what sticks; Everyone working on trying new social media; Part of job is being a safety valve for the community;
• Can look at interest of community as a funnel where only certain ppl are interested; Getting a good proportion; If it were easy, we would market as product; Ethics on communication; Most efficient use of communication?
• Why does CC exist, and what is it for? Came to existence through addressing issues; Both regionally and socially, those groups have changed and expanded; Want to reach out and at least let them know where to go
• There is no welcoming committee here; If you work hard with ppl, you’ll find connections
• CC communications; Meeting annnouncements put out in more than one medium; CC is supposed to represent a broad cross-section of the community; CC is a bunch of individuals; If you feel the way CC is lacking in its communications, start by individual level
• I think we’re doing fine; When there are issues, we discuss; Get meetings as such to where we get off topic
• Focusing ppl to using the web; Talk to certain groups; Having consistent place to direct ppl for info
• Reach more ppl than we think; Talk more about CC than community; If you want community to be engaged, do something that community cares about
• Should sequester CC business and focus; Have one CC meeting a month focusing on issue; We control the agenda; No reason why we have to do engagement; Operational components of CC are only of interests to us; We have reached the point of overdoing it; Community topic of the month?; There are enough issues on list of topics to change scenario
• Reason why adamant in having topic separate from social media was because we didn’t have adequate number of topics in the past; Feel like we’re not doing our job somehow; Used to have things to fill in calendar, but now we don’t. Where are we failing? How to get those topics so we aren’t discussing CC operations
• Had several gangbuster CC meetings with good attendance
• Operational capacity of CC and comm of community are unrelated; Discussions of TH are distraction from mission; Discussion of comm things are distraction from TH; Fifth of meetings are about TH; 20% discussion over internal business
• Love idea of protecting space just for community engagement; Pin ourselves to corner if you have to wait to announce
• Open forum where we tell community, LLC, AF, CC member; Bring topic or put on agenda item; if it’s operational, will be discussed
• Start with dedicated meeting (Flipside Q&A) and see what we get

MOTION: Schedule in near future a CC meeting specifically on open Q&A that includes LLC

• Amend that we make this May 9 for pre-Flipside topic;
• Call it a mixer rather than a meeting cuz a meeting sounds like it sucks
• Let community know in advance in as many mediums
• Do more than just one meeting; Dedicate time at every meeting to discuss what everyone wants to talk about; Went on tangent in GLC convo; Free-form conversation; Own topic for certain amount of time; Figure out what needs to be actual CC conversations
• Mixer instead of calendaring meeting
• As calendaring mixer, it’s a good idea cuz it gives opportunity to bring ppl back in

MOTION (Revised): To have Q&A mixer on May 9th where we let community members field questions to the CC; MOTION PASSES

MOTION: Calendar meetings into mixers; MOTION TABLED

• Back on original stack: Listen and learn luau; More interaction in street than in meetings
• Conversation that TH—Differing evaluation of TH; Best characterization of interest to FS is through TH; Encourage CC to think about having possibilities at TH; They’re already there; What is the measure of success that we are looking for? Perrenial convos are important
• LLC/AF/REGIONAL UPDATE are useless? I disagree. This is only place you can hear info on things such as regional burns and MGP;
• Amount of communication nowadays is multichanneled that it’s hard for anyone to communicate effectively; Attention span has degraded (tl; dr); Need to do Cliff Notes version; Now we are headline writers!
• Challenges: Business update sections can be long
• Opening aspect is good for transparency; Not marketing, but branding of CC; Brand issue; Brand recognition not there

9:55pm OLD BUSINESS

• Doodle
• Review CC nomination email: TABLED
• CC Scribe nomination process: Get ppl at mixer
• SUBTOPIC: Streaming CC Meetings
  • How long to wait?
  • Privacy issues?
  • Create secure wait to interact
  • Hardware is inexpensive; Certain infrastructure involved
  • Logistically, we tried Google hangouts; Need to look at WebX as solution, means stream to server, they stream out more; Ticketing; Transparently non-transparent; Talking at GLC easier to talk in person; Stack on WebX? Would change our meetings
  • Things to look at if given options: Perceived burden on those who live near; Does have some benefits, but has limitations
  • Philosophical comment: Decide who can be at meeting through streaming; Only CC members; Community attends actual meeting; Philosophy is what matters; Don’t worry about technology
  • 3 points: Who would participate first? Just CC? AFs? Or public? It squelches conversation; Screen Captcha? Only CC members can attend; Certain topics shouldn’t be necessarily discussed further outside of room
  • Have had meetings in past recorded without consent; It’s not impossible to have these recorded now; How much do we trust; Logistical nightmare; Philosophically, not immune to it; POI: Legal to record; Not legal to publish elsewhere
  • 17 CC members; If we all attended, we would have much longer meetings; When you are remote, potential for distraction
  • Remote: May take away from participation
  • Terms of service to offer to community? Would have to have thorough review; Phone teleconferencing might be best way; Video streaming is more restrictive to openness and honesty; It’s the lube that keeps the organization going; How to get community to teleconference
  • Problems with streaming: Any time you call in to meeting, you are already considered 2nd class in convo; $1000/yr for 14 ppl total; Where does line end?
  • Leveraging participants discussion; Proposal is trying streaming once; Limitations in execution (first 5 ppl); Number of hot topics are limited, therefore do ‘in-person’ only; There should be some kind of middle ground; Bridge to greater participation
  • Presented with unique situation
  • Not all CC members live in Austin; Community members cannot participate unless in person; Only St. Tiki can participate?
  • Extend CC membership to outside realms outside of Austin; Wouldn’t be fair to only have St. Tiki participate in streaming; Non-disclosure agreement not to release/rebroadcast to community; Have to be willing to take seriously; How to establish level of commitment and trust? Can’t change community perception
  • Do we want to go into corporate culture? More immediate and less corporate; What makes a CC member and deserving of this privilege? Where do we draw that line? If 20 community members and 10 cc members, how does that make us look?
  • Currently seeing 3-4 ppl that cannot participate; Monitor and revisit
  • Limitations: If kids are involved, you won’t be able to make call; Place for people to meet in person
• CC Scribe nomination process: Mer makes call for nominations

NEXT MEETING: MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2016

FACILITATOR: Cooper

STACK: Decibel

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

TOPICS: Fireworks, Social Media

10:45pm MEETING ADJOURNED

COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016

FACILITATOR: Notfunnyatall

STACK: Pixie

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

ATTENDEES: Notfunnyatall, Pixie, Prost, Problem, Adam, Chim-Chim, Beth, Henry, Princess, Katrina, Anthony, Stash, Private Bear, Charlie, Zack, Breezy, Judge, Apple, Kat, Cooper, Mer, Monkey, Decibel, T-Rey, Samantha, Clovis, Bruce, Bonobo, Scott, Wrinn, Donut (in spirit)

TOPICS: Art and Consequences (Monkey); Firearms at Flipside/Warehouse (Clovis)

RESOLUTIONS AND ACTION ITEMS

MOTION: Reschedule Fall Town Hall for Sept 24, 2016; MOTION FAILED

7:53pm AAR/LLC UPDATE (Adam)

• Ticket opening this past weekend; No lottery!
• Houston road show this Saturday; Dallas road show the following weekend
• Mass Gathering Permit approved

7:55pm AREA FACILITATOR UPDATE (All)

• AF/LLC meeting on Thursday; Meetings every first Thursday of the month

7:56pm TOPIC: Art and Consequences (Monkey)

• Context: Community that has expressed often over the years that we appreciate art; Occasionally we run into boundary issues where someone’s art runs into someone’s experience; Ends up into issues; Discussion about role of art with respect to consequences that may be offensive; Community has placed value on that sort of art than what is outside of community; As a result, we should address; To frame discussion, not looking for policy suggestion, but talking about art and consequences and its effect; Safety = emotional, physical, safety for community in having ability to have event at site or in state; No should feel harmed or injured
• Issues: When someone has worked hard on art piece and someone comes up and tags it; How to address someone who does that
• Philosophical things: Consequences is a curious word for the community; Ex. All local/state laws apply (theft, vandalism, etc.); When it comes to other forms of policing—that could also include things that could deem as pornography that affects sustainability of event; Beyond those things, what does consequences mean? Answer—the police of community is everyone who runs it/buys a ticket; Make sure art has certain consequences; What drives us to the point of consequences? How do consequences come about?
• Tagging—Policy in SG that expresses not open tagging that supports actions artist may have
• Ordinarily, the only thing open for tagging is the effigy; Personal art projects shouldn’t be considered open season; Only bring things to flipside you are prepared to lose
• Ex. – Piece of art that would not be at Flipside; Performance artist where she set out objects on table; Audience was allowed to experience anything; One of objects was a gun; She was not sure she was going to die; Gets to issues about boundary and consent; There is inflammatory art that has drawn the lines; It’s because of potential for consequences for art; Where do we see our norms about what community accepts
• Tend to have two kinds of art and consequences: Conflict of sound; Sound camps next to each other; Prime principle is cooperation—expect camps to get together and work it out; Physical safety issues—things with effigy that we had to deny due to safety; When do we step in? Everyone is responsible for other people’s safety
• Does it matter if its actually art or not? Why are we discussing (as art) how consequences of your actions intersect with other people; Does inherent value of art matter? – Who owns the consequences of the art? Who owns decision that your art is out of control? Comes down to AAR member on duty, depending on input from safety teams/artists; Holistic/specific one-on-one decisions; What are the consequences of “no art”?
• Good to know where lines are drawn; What about art that doesn’t violates someone’s safety but requires consequences; Concerns over people planning on doing something racist; What types of consequences would it illicit? Community does not dictate who we want to be; If we want to be predators or racist a-holes, can set it up if we wanted to; It’s up to find a way that values self-expression but also safety
• Sound, in general, touches on topics; Ex. Camp set up on main field with semi-loud sound system yelling at people; Got called by Rangers; By policy laid out for event, they were not violating policies of event, but were clearly upsetting people; Raised interesting question on duty, but also raised question; Recommendation would be to just confront them; Didn’t feel right to shut them off; What if it’s a guy with a megaphone? Should that be handled by community? People with official responsibilities should be doing something about that
• Is this specifically about art? Substitute art with self-expression; Looking at how we can maintain self-expression without trampling over it; Looking to support all three principles
• Self-expression: Genuineness; Honesty of artist’s intent; Accountability and cooperation; If piece upsets, can take responsibility; Expect people aren’t going to cross my boundaries constantly
• Not feeling comfortable to shut down sound; Maybe there ought to be bare minimum; Have to use individual judgment; People’s art was interacting with other people in a way they kept asking to stop; Harassment? If you’re not being cooperative with someone else’s request, that’s a problem. If community can’t handle it, then maybe people should step in – No art? Is it too safe, or not enough?
• As performance artists, we have opportunity because of nature of art where you have to intrude; Biggest issue—Need to know when it’s time to break character and have conversation with Rangers; Can’t be in character all weekend—you’re just being an asshole; Can’t do these things without compromising
• Racist/Sexist: When introduced to discussion, usually end of discussion; Is it the ethic of community? It’s the middle
• Notion of offensiveness vs obnoxiousness; (CO-STACK!); Art is causing me pain; If art is keeping you up at night, where is that line? Responding to neighborly conversations; What are grounds for shutting down art?
• Obnoxious art; music so obnoxious that it’s cock-blocked me in my tent! Notion of community enforcement; Allowed to be a critic;
• Don’t want me to be art critic enforcer at Flipside; If art that is bugging you, view it as opportunity to do something; Big exception—theme camp over sound limit even if nobody is complaining about it, becomes threat to event’s sustainability; Everybody pays for it
• Consequences of your art, and how do those consequences fit with the principles; Situations that might occur; How do you lubricate cooperative process that’s going to happen? Think about consequences beforehand
• Confrontation is hard; At event, can be hard to separate; Part is growth opportunity to have discussion with artist to put in perspective; Appreciation and needs
• Fine line: Usually, there’s not; If you bring something provocative but not capable of having conversation, will be shut down quickly; Call to arms or not arms to enable people to discuss; May take away experience
• Have ongoing series where we are discussing respect/racism issues;
• Opportunity—Flipside is opportunity to be out of comfort zone and deal with that; Lessons in life are born of hardship; Intentional hurt; Painful—our choice to determine how powerful that pain is; Less regulation of art; Safety—conflating safety in terms of physical with emotional; Important to distinguish between the two; Exaggerative, far out examples; What can happen if we’re not careful; Taking responsibility for your experience
• Reasons to bring discussion up: Difficulty in talking with people in community where that’s my art/you can’t tell me what to do; That’s true; Situations to find a way to express people they are being hurtful without telling them; Want art to have consequences; Some are positive/some are negative; Want people to understand art has social/cultural consequences; Can make an art project and lose friends; Organization is not going to pretend to protect you; How can we have conversations with people who throw around excuse, and how do we get to express to allow; If you do those things, you may not be welcome; Understanding that there are subtle and far-reaching consequences
• None of the principles live in a vacuum; Accountability; Confrontation is hard; Only way we cooperate; Depends on form; Have to step up at some point to say something; Org not here to babysit you; Rangers there to mediate conflict
• Community—Most understand this; New artists need to be aware; Community is self-policing; City will correct itself; If out of line, city has tendency to fix problem before Rangers get involved
• Talking to people as things go along: By time discussion ensues, several others have already discussed; Physical injury—How often does piece of art hurt someone before someone intervenes; Suggestion—Fighting art with art is best way; Art Response Team (ART); If having problem, call team, and they’ll deal with situation – More conversation—dialogue as part of culture; Very individual thing
• Consequence of art: Supporting the artist; Concern—Artists not feeling supported/getting a project over their heads; Resent energy at event; As much a consequence for artist as for people who engage; Don’t see big enough net for those people
• Consequences to artist; Consequences to community for art that crosses lines; If let too far, then consequence to community; If art is lighting crosses all night, that is not art, that is a threat; Harassing women as art? There are consequences that will hurt community
• Art ends when assault begins; Cannot be mixed with art/performance art
• Can request artist and participants have dialogue with each other; Can request artist to participate with community
• We are all in a privileged position; Confrontations about one’s feelings have discussions; We are doing a good thing; If offensive, have conversation
• Start up next door for theme camps!
• Art ending where assault begins: Interaction between self-expression and cooperation; Phrasings of this construction—all miss point—you can’t create art at FS that has no impact on anything; Would be very hard; Every bit of self-expression is to express in community; Idea is being part of community; Can’t have self-expression without influencing another; Question is HOW; Impact on other people; What conversations are you having? Art should not have a ‘get out of jail free’ card; Juxtaposition—Artists and participants—Artists are not participants, just leaving it out there to absolve themselves; Fuck the binary
• Recommendation: All laws apply; Wherever you draw that line, always someone wanting to be on this side of it; Lets engage other people’s art; Notion of racism, sexism, consent has changed because of conversation; About listening or inviting conversation; Will be powerful through initiation with theme camp

9:13pm REGIONAL UPDATE (Clovis)

• BM meet and greet 6-8pm Sunday afternoon; Sekret Theater
• Art fundraiser?
• Semi-official Flipside function tagging to this?
• Art project: Uni-tea
• Facebook event for UNI-TEA: Starts at 8pm
• Tomorrow is deadline for submission
• Low income tickets for BM March 3
• Regional event coming up March 17-20 in Houston
• Burning Man Global Leadership Conference coming up; in San Francisco

9:17pm TOPIC: Firearms at Flipside/Warehouse (Clovis)

• Current policy at warehouse is don’t be a dumbass; Conversation with community
• Both event and here are private property; Gives right to determine who is trespassing; No signage needed
• Weapons at the event: No firearms or firearm analogs
• Members active in making other spaces not open carry spaces; If we said no guns at warehouse, some people would be upset;
• 3 P’s: Problem, Princess, and Prost

9:23pm OLD BUSINESS

• REVIEWING CC ANNOUNCEMENT (all)
  • Put agenda on top
  • Date, Agenda
  • Discussion over wording and placement of CC announcement
  • You’re invited to a Combustion Chamber Meeting [date]
  • FAQ link to website
  • Link to Combustion Chamber
  • Link to AAR/LLC

9:51pm OLD BUSINESS from Trello

• Fall Town Hall: Sept 24 vs Oct 1; Discussed Oct 1 conflict with ACL and Myschevia work weekend; Also question of having Town Hall too early

MOTION: Reschedule Fall Town Hall for Sept 24; No second – MOTION FAILED

• Start Scribe nomination process
• Picture day: Doodle poorly responded to; CC members need to answer Doodle; Resend and put deadline for Friday; Please respond by then
• Have conversation over streaming CC meetings—calendar discussion

9:48pm NEW BUSINESS

• Streaming for CC meetings (dovetail into that; put on topic description)

NEXT MEETING: MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2016

FACILITATOR: Cooper

STACK: Kat

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

TOPICS: Review CC nominations messages (all); CC communication with the community (Beth)

10:12pm MEETING ADJOURNED

COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2016

FACILITATOR: Clovis

STACK: Prost

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

ATTENDEES (15): Adam, Problem, Beth, Clovis, Decibel, Hawk, Bonobo,  Turtlebunnie, Prost, Clover, Henry, Pixie, Chim-Chim, St. Tiki, Psyche

TOPICS: Town Hall Recap (All); Combustion Chamber Operations (All)

RESOLUTIONS AND ACTION ITEMS

ACTION ITEM (Clovis):  November 30 minutes will be out by Tuesday, February 16

MOTION: If it is a CC sponsored event, the producer needs to have a save the date announcement at least six weeks prior and definitive announcement at least two weeks prior; MOTION PASSED

MOTION: Facilitator will go and gather old business and keep track of what’s on Trello and Memory (to look at topic list); MOTION PASSED

7:51pm LLC UPDATE (Adam)

• Met with civil attorney last week; Good shape; Surveying changes/accumulate questions throughout year, and discussed;
• Solicit feedback from all AFs; Any change in law that we need to reflect?
• No section on flood safety in Survival Guide
• Introducing child waiver for warehouse (under 18); Changing language on existing waiver
• Ordered for DAFT today
• Mass Gather Permit hearing on next Tuesday
• Waivers available for work weekend
• Forms end April 1 TC; April 20 Art; May 15 Art cars;

7:56pm AF UPDATE (Clovis)

• Work weekend this weekend
• City planning is working

7:58pm REGIONAL REPORT (Clovis)

• Burning Man’s Global Leadership Conference coming up March 31-April 3
• Burning Man ticket dates coming up March 23
• Houston Burn March 17-20
• Apogaea call for Leads
• Louisiana found land for future Burns
• Montreal will be organizing a Burn

8:01pm TOPIC: Town Hall Recap (All)

• Sign for CC booth needed
• Use passports as ‘Thank You’ cards
• Having incentive to use passports
• A few ppl that came by site sign-off were pleased; More traffic than last year
• Sound system lower than it has been in the past; Raise volume
• Passports are fun, but real goal is sign-ups which occurred more this year
• Enjoyed the new format; Shorter meetings GOOD
• Paper/pen topic box system/list

8:10pm TOPIC: CC OPERATIONS (Clovis)

• Scribe
• November 30 minutes will be out by Tuesday, February 16
• 72 hours good enough time frame to review
• Review of CC Operations flipchart from 2014 retreat—how many are open items?
  • Identify Producers early
  • Define mission statement for motions/events
  • Broader engagement for CC
  • Who should recruit event vols?
  • Appoint a task master
  • Review old biz @ meeting
  • Volunteer instead of voluntold
  • Document guidelines, goals, roles, instance
  • Trello/task mgmt. tool
  • Review annual calendar
  • VC can help find vols, but does not manage
• SCRIBE minutes discussion
  • November 30 minutes will be out by Tuesday, February 16
  • 72 hours good enough time frame to review
• Task master discussion
  • Does Trello work for everyone?
  • Google calendar bad for tracking action items (i.e. things that happened yesterday); Bad tool if you miss anything
• Identify producers early: TH; CC/LLC—who’s in charge rotation in booth; Having CC members contact AFs; Parking issues
• Agreement at CC retreat ; Topics one week after calendaring require descriptions
• Theme selection TH—have some kind of carpooling; To be discussed for next Town Hall
• Memory, Trello, Calendar, CC list—Trello is task manager; Memory document repositories; Updating calendar regarding CC things
• PARKING: Next door may be available for next Town Hall
• Future topics not yet calendared list on CC board on Trello; List topics on there
• CC sponsored events: Need timeline to post about event; If producing, promote at least two weeks before event (save the date); Order-of-operations? In past, Content lead posts CC topics
• Deadlines/Guidelines for messaging; Should have a save the date
• Announce: Piece-meal info; Would get moderated through or not; Flame made community business sent out mid-month; Announce would be company business (CC mtgs, safetyside); Form on website for submitting to announce or flame under contact menu; Compiled into roundup
• Short-failings: No hard date set for RESPECT topic
• Difference between Announce and Flame: Format; Flame not sent to Announce mailing list
• Why Announce changed: Things being sent out; Limit to 1-2/month
• Discussion: If producer of event, must be responsible for putting out word

MOTION: If it is a CC sponsored event, the producer needs to have a save the date announcement at least six weeks prior and definitive announcement at least two weeks prior

• Can sent specific notification and will fail with someone; Bring back phone trees!!! As soon as date gets picked, it goes out there; Any time we have important topic for community

MOTION PASSED

• Discussion of technical details: Form for Announce to Susan, Website, Facebook/Twitter, Austin-List; Each announcement message is posted onto website
• Communications waterfall for CC handbook
• General process for how CC posts things; How does CC post as CC without going through Announce (web page, CC blog, monthly announcements?) NOPE
• Put in CC handbook: If producing event, here are guidelines

REVIEW OLD BUSINESS

• Put out to Event coordinator; Let Mer know; Important to avoid ACL; Contact Mer; Let her know we will contact her Lead; Discuss date for proper protocol
• Scribe nominations: Fewer ppl to wrangle is best
• Picture day: AI—poll to determine CC and AFs availability to take photos (BEST DATES and dates to cover everybody)
• Town Hall announcement and how to make it better
• Flipside has Twitter @burningflipside
• Format question: This is CC announcement for TH or (Topic)
• Review TH meeting announcement; Facilitator for next meeting, check Trello/Memory – Announcement—Postpone TH announcement to determine date

MOTION: Facilitator will go and gather old business and keep track of what’s on Trello and Memory (to look at topic list)

• CC business/new business—review announcement; On Memory; Not community topic; Facilitator sends out internal message

MOTION PASSED

• Trello is reminders for what needs to be updated

TOPIC: Flipside Town Hall Road Shows

• Talk to Mer: Run by agenda; MCs Safety Thirdside scheduled March 12; Also inviting tc leads to

NEXT MEETING: Monday, February 29, 2016, 7:42pm

FACILITATOR: Doug

STACK: Pixie

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

TOPICS: Firearms (Clovis/Henry); Art and its consequences (Monkey)

10:00pm MEETING ADJOURNED

COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2016

FACILITATOR: Clover

STACK: Kat

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

ATTENDEES (16): Clover, Turtlebunnie, Kat, Chim-Chim, Henry, Nobody, Breezy, Princess, Adam, Problem, Hellkitty, Hawk, Thomas, Decibel, Notfunnyatall, Clovis

TOPICS: Town Hall prep (All); CC operations (Turtlebunnie)

7:58pm MEETING BEGINS

LLC UPDATE (Adam)

• Nothing to discuss at this time

8:00pm TOPICS: CC operations (Turtlebunnie)

• Discussion of individual CC member participation in TH preparation in the past vs. desired level of participation.
• MOTION to table topic until next CC ops topic: PASSED; (Producing TH; Task accountability)

8:03pm TOPICS: Town Hall prep (Hawk)

• Reviewed passport cards; Setup for Town Hall is at 10am

8:15pm REGIONAL UPDATE (St. Tiki)

• Tickets aren’t out yet
• Global Leadership Conference (GLC) coming up
• Beginning to ramp up art deadlines
• Houston Regional Burn “Broken Spring” in Liberty County; Contact Stephen or Andrew; March 17-20
• Successful cleanup at Burners Without Borders Corpus Christi

8:24pm OLD BUSINESS

• Henry requested to open warehouse on Saturday at 10am; Lurko, Gallows, and Rocky are the warehouse managers

COMBUSTION CHAMBER

Monday, January 25, 2016

FACILITATOR: Turtlebunnie

STACK: Hawk, Clover

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

ATTENDEES: Mizu, Izzi, Hawk, Chim-Chim, Turtlebunnie, Clover, Kat, Monkey, Prost, Problem, Adam, Thomas, Henry, Pixie, Decibel, Collin, Notfunnyatall, Clovis, St. Tiki, Bonobo

7:55pm MEETING BEGINS

7:59pm LLC UPDATE (Adam)

• AAR had annual retreat; Discussed long-term topics
• Mass Gathering Permit turned in
• Ticket window is closed; Will try to plan event and number of attendees based on number of factors; MGP; Max head count will be established; May be lottery to keep numbers same

8:05pm TOPIC: TOWN HALL (Hawk)

• Saturday, February 6
• Decibel will be doing sound
• Count on containers
• Need port-o-potties
• Warehouse cleanup this Saturday, 11am
• Doing passports again this year
• Sending out agenda to be updated; LLC 10mins; CC- Respect discussion notice; DAFT (Caleb)—make announcement at TH; CC talk to someone on Tinderbox; Safetyside and Safety are going to co-table (Safety Third)—Short presentation;
• Julie—Genesis AF; Needs shade structure and table next to volunteers
• Chairs will be set up inside; BYOC
• Shortcake—Site prep AF
• Sharing 3 things to a shade structure
• Thursday—send message to ping neighbors about Town Hall
• Passports: Encourage people to go chat with AFs
• 10am setup; noon-tailgate; 2:30pm meeting starts; 4:56pm breakdown

8:19pm TOPIC: Children at Flipside (Hawk)

• Looking at FS for what needs to be done; Red flags/safety issues to be generally aware of children and families; How children are part of Flipside
• What are perceptions of parents/fears of way event is going now, and what do you want to change/where do you want this to go?
• Is it still FS if there were no kids?
• Some places like the red zones should be contained; Kids need to learn our values somewhere; Procedure to deal with parents who fall down on job;
• Flipside is fun! It’s better than homework.” Calvin
• People who prefer children not at Flipside: Some Burns simply don’t have children; Children are first and last the responsibility of the parents; Make responsibility more explicit to all parties; Lost parent/lost child protocol a part of FS; In sense of staging an event; Are we throwing a party, or are we building a community?
• Lost parent: Handled on case-by-case basis
• Liability on nudity with children? By letter of law, yes. Several levels of standards and discretion applied; Community standards; Leo discretion; perception of situation; Keep track of the context; Context matters (and how); Dependent on LEO; You are responsible for the situation
• Members of red zone are more terrified of kids being there than vice versa
• If camp is well-organized, there is a parent in charge; Assigned babysitter parent; Don’t want our presence to change FS; Nice to make buffer zone
• Difficulty is that even if parents are present, if I’m doing something law doesn’t allow, I’m still liable; Should be careful in communicating that, including placement; Good to have red zone; Good to communicate you are responsible; 23-yr old may not be aware of that
• Discussion of having minor on CC; Implications of 15-17 yr olds at FS;
• Having above 13yr old on CC wouldn’t be a big deal; Community standards and norms apply to us as well
• This is a big issue, and you might want to freak out! Should emphasize people’s responsibility; Good to communicate to community that they should take full responsibility; Impacts everyone involved; Issue—dealing with older minors; Campaign about carding minors; More individual bars and alcohol distribution be aware about everything about TABC applies
• Welcome teenager as member of CC; There are legal frameworks that have to work; CC is an advisory board legally sanctioned; Social media communication has another set of standards that limit to 14-yr olds and above;
• Can’t have a safe zone at FS; Can be harmed; When it comes to children at FS, need to be extra aware. They don’t know the risks; Risk of arrest discussion
• Concerns of kink community/red zone: As mechanism (teenagers) (18 and under/13 and under); Brings greater liability/responsibility on organization; Would rather leave that to parents; Wristbands put more liability on us, and don’t protect anyone at all; If teen kids get a hold of wristbands, would be in more trouble; FS does not have a formal red-zone; Most kink camps want to be together
• MOTION: To re-confirm our commitment to include families with children, and keep this a community event; Burning Flipside is a community event; Don’t want to say we are a family event; We are a community event and we value our community members of all ages or families with kids; MOTION PASSED
• Every year, we should look for a reason to change the topic of the conversation; Reason why we are here is because it’s dangerous, hard; Children at FS is like children of the USA; Follow up with family values follows liberty
• Concerned with hurting kids: Issue: Not a sustainable community if we are not talking as if children are part of our community
• Reoccurring conversation—will go over wristbands; Every time convo comes up—kink camps were integral to infrastructure ops and getting FS off the ground

9:27pm REGIONAL UPDATE (Clovis, St. Tiki)

• GLC taking place March 31-April 3
• Still haven’t announced ticket prices; Negotiating impact of tax
• Litigation with BC Canada over trademark issues
• Apogaea secured land in southwestern Colorado; Having issues trying to find EMS, Rangers, Fire; Two weeks after Flipside; Near Trinidad; Board reorganized

9:33pm AF UPDATE (Clovis)

• AF meeting Thursday, February 4
• Gearing up for Town Hall, Flipside, etc.
• Project Manager for Bureau of Land Management for Burning Man; Apply now through February 8^th

9:40pm OLD BUSINESS (All)

• CC meeting scheduled for final day of Myschievia; Move from Oct 10 to Oct 17; PASSED
• Tentative date: Fall Town Hall on 1^st weekend of Oct. (ACL weekend); REVISIT and put on TRELLO
• TOPIC: Consent—What topic you wanted it to be; Topics to cover; 2hrs with 15-min break in between; ageism, racism; Check with Doug; Idea of privilege; Intersection of realities; Sexism, ageism, racism;
• Scope/Size?
• CC promised the RESPECT 2.0 discussion at old warehouse; A lot of framing/restarting the conversation; If we want to change the answer, CC needs to own it and decides what it wants to do; Doug is instrumental in framing discussion; Want to identify the series/decide what it’s going to be; Recommend to do it in such a way that regional coordinators can bring this to other places; Can do what community needs and communicate; Important for us to lead
• Having general respect discussion with smaller group discussions to speak about specific issues; Set up tentative dates
• Announcement will be before Town Hall; AI: Have set date, time, etc. to send out on February 2; Put together before TH; 3 tentative dates
• Website, official FB page, Announcement; Austin lists; Blurb will be sent on CC list
• Suggestions for titling and wording: A respect discussion: How to talk about race and other things
• Important to consider giving time to CC and LLC and other bodies—Set aside time to make sure to revisit topic and get everyone on the same page; What are we doing, and why? Need to have primer to discuss leadership; What are we saying? What are we agreeing on? CC should at least agree on what we are doing; Invite them to be part of the discussion; “Common definition of discussion”
• CC PICTURES: Volunteerism; Org might need to take pics of other AFs; Email, time, calendar, date; Put on old business for next Monday; Beer and cider budget added with photographs

NEXT MEETING: Monday, February 1

TOPICS: Town Hall prep (All); CC operations (Turtlebunnie)

FACILITATOR: Clover

STACK: Kat

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

10:13pm MEETING ADJOURNED

COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, JANUARY 4, 2016

FACILITATOR: Beth

STACK: Thomas

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

TOPICS: Volunteer recruitment (Dahling); Calendaring (All)

ATTENDEES (23): Breezy, Henry, Chim-Chim, Monkey, Hawk, Thomas, Mizu, Problem, Adam, Izzi, Decibel, Dahling, Pixie, Garrett, Sogo, Notfunnyatall, Princess, St. Tiki, Wrinn, Clovis, Cooper, Lance, Commander Awesomepants

7:53pm MEETING BEGINS

7:57pm LLC UPDATE (Problem)

• New waivers; New laws
• Open carry; Warehouse host can ask anyone to leave if they feel it is disruptive; Still policy regarding law; If community input, can discuss changing policy ,would make actions less flexible;
• Land recon this coming weekend; cc members invited; look at land; see how things are; figure out work weekends; Saturday; Shortcake will let everyone know;
• AF meeting this week as well; LLC retreat before next CC meeting

8:01pm REGIONAL UPDATE (Dahling)

• Leads went out this past weekend; 6 leads open Parking/Sanitation most significant; Leads need lieutenants; Meeting this Thursday at a disclosed location

8:02pm Parking

• Actively looking to do something different; Would like perspective of parking lead; www.burningflipside.com;
  https://www.burningflipside.com/contact

8:05pm REGIONAL CONTACT (St. Tiki)

• GLC coming up
• Nevada premium tax?
• Regional contacts with Burning Man are St.Tiki, Cheyne Maclaskey, cLovis

8:09pm TOPIC: Distribution of tasks

TOPIC: Volunteer recruitment (Dahling)

• Leads and departments that need to be filled with volunteers
• Town Hall will be involved
• How to get people to show up
• Absenteeism w/ having empty shifts
• More participation with THEME CAMPS?
• How to stop burnout? Reasons people do stuff without jeopardizing themselves; what can we do to help that? How to communicate consequences?
• For past several years, when we talk about volunteering, still talk like we’re being talked to; Shift that needs to happen without burnout; connect people with particular gifts; Need to explore spending more energy, not in just one position, but for us to talk about it differently; deeper participation; Introverts love perimeter, and tell people to go away;
• Undercurrent—Engagement resentment; Will be communicated non-verbally with folks walking through doors for town hall; how to make community events engaging in pushing effort/hangover of last Flipside; Where can you participate/volunteer;
• Engagement key to burnout; Engagement also excellent cure for burnout; burnout happens when you start diminishing your engagement; Lots of people got burnout for different reasons; As a volunteer event, volunteering is a privilege—you GET to volunteer, do these things; You don’t get to do that job if someone else has been doing that forever; Not just default of people doing position; Don’t manage interactions with other people; Are we making an environment that’s hard to get done? Bottom part of curve is as critical; Haven’t heard/thought of volunteering;
• Culture shift about attendees; Need to figure how to engage people; Making announcements; Discuss acculturation; Participate besides making your own art;
• Not enough gratitude to those who give few shifts; Most volunteering that happens are people who do straight up shift work;
• Engagement with the event = Volunteering
• Several notions usurped by other events/festivals/business interests employing independent contractors like BM to—people are purposely burned out; Festival/event/arts and music/community—is volunteering one of them? Can we see helping? Changing verbs PR/propaganda campaign?; ‘MAKE IT GO’ may have leverage
• Participant-run event when I first started
• People that don’t care of message being sent; Barriers to volunteering; Where we are at odds with rest of culture: Biggest problem; Huge confidence issue with new people; Hard to get people in door; not from sense of entitlement, lazy, selfish—lots of reasons for them to volunteer;
• Keep greeter shifts open for random people; Keeping a couple of slots open to filter in new people; Does this look like fun? Here are some open slots
• Safetyside: What does safetyside for volunteers look like? Flipside volunteer training; Can we do more of that? How does that look like?
• Looks like Town Hall; Offer training on heavy equipment; Site ops rodeo
• Theme camps to host newbie happy hour;
• Burner Charm school; Sunday after Town Hall, host second general discussion for community;
• All of this started at Flipside; Start at home; Town hall serves for—what does this organization do? Already is a ton of info;
• What am I good at? All volunteers have to have overhead to do training; Positive feedback loop exists; Dahling/Doug/Thomas

8:58pm CALENDARING (All)

• Town Hall business:
• Adopt AF CC;
• Volunteer retention

AF – CC member; Assist in preparing for Town Hall for booth setups; learn from them for needs they have so they can communicate that

POSITION AREA FACILITATOR CC MEMBER ASSIGNED

Site Ops Clovis Hawk

Volunteer Coordinator Dahling Decibel

360 Mer Beth

Site Sign-off Wrinn Breezy

Art .E Henry

Site Prep Shortcake Pixie

Communications Russ George

Genesis Julie Turtlebunnie

Safety Serious Clovis

City Planning Stephy Cooper

CALENDARING

2/1 Town Hall prep; CC ops

2/15 Town Hall recap; CC ops redux

2/29 Firearms (Clovis/Henry); Review CC announcement to see if we can make it more friendly; Art and its consequences (Monkey)

3/14

3/28 Review cc nominations messages; TBD; CC Comm with community (Beth)

4/11 Fireworks (Prost); FS use of social media (Monkey)

4/25 Leave No Trace (Pixie); tbd; Volunteering panic (Dahling)

5/9 TBD

6/20 Flipside recap, Event links; CC members (review cc membership/consider growth)

7/11 Fall Town Hall prep, calendaring

7/25

8/6

8/22

9/12

9/26

10/10

10/29

11/7

11/21

12/5

12/19

1/9

1/30

2/13

2/27

Fireworks

Communications

CC operations

Event links

Leave No trace

Firearms at event

LIST TOPICS, ATTENDEES, DATES,

Contact for volunteerism; Theme camp registration/placement;

Community soapbox

• Other issues of respect beyond racism
• Art

FS social media presence; How it has been handled

Ways to encourage carpooling (TH topic)

After spring Town Hall; theme camp registration; subscribe to announce list

Ticket window is 1/7-1/22

In announce email; ticket prices $111 $111 $33 $0

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

NEXT COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING: Monday, January 18, 2016

TOPICS: Kids, families, policies, and culture, safety (Bonobo); Leave No Trace—What does it mean to us? (Wrinn)

Note: Anyone who owns a topic at this meeting is required to have a topic description posted one week after the calendaring date

FACILITATOR: Turtlebunnie

STACK: Hawk

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

9:59pm MEETING ADJOURNED

COMBUSTION CHAMBER MEETING

MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2015

FACILITATOR: HAWK

STACK: CLOVER

SCRIBE: CHIM-CHIM

ATTENDEES (14): Hawk, Clover, Chim-Chim, Kat, Dahling, Izzi, Turtlebunnie, Problem, Adam, Beth, Decibel, Clovis, Bonobo, Prost

8:00pm MEETING BEGINS

8:01pm LLC UPDATE (Adam)

• Leads-All-Hands happened this past weekend; Most of the new Leads have been chosen; There are still holes to be filled; Contact Dahling or the AF’s to find out more information for which positions are open
• Tool Room build out/Small projects room: There will be people working on it this Wednesday and next Saturday; The small project area has been re-named to SPA
• LLC is planning to file for the Mass Gathering Permit (MGP) before the end of the year
• There will be a preliminary budget for the upcoming year to be handed out to the AF’s and Leads
• Registration and ticket purchase will occur within the same two-week window, from January 7-22

8:10pm AF UPDATE (Dahling)

• Leads are mostly filled, with 15-20 positions currently in progress; The updated list will be available soon
• For more information on volunteering, contact Dahling at
  https://www.burningflipside.com/contact
  

8:12pm TOPIC: Cultural Appropriation/-ism Discussion (Kat/Beth)

• RESPECT: Doug is working on outside facilitators to speak; There is a need to sketch out possible weekends
• 10’ x 20’ canopies can be set up next door to have a quieter space
• Two large meetings happened at the same time this past weekend at the warehouse; Question is: Should we do this discussion on the weekend?
• Background: Feedback from the first meeting—It would be helpful to have people mediate these types of discussions; Several people have been asked to find resources, but we keep finding dead ends; Then, Doug found some people
• There have been several ongoing conversations
• MOTION: Kat will contact Doug and come to us with a proposal: PASSED (Note: Kat already has material prepared to show at the CC retreat (the way we talk about things)
• Discussion over what date might be feasible, and whether this discussion should be a small versus large group; Discussion has not been enormous in the past; Possibility of limiting groups to 20, where Kat can offer a sign up sheet to close attendance; Or, she can do a lecture series
• In the past, we have previously discussed small groups, but it might devolve into a gripe-fest instead of an educational opportunity; Discussion will spread the word out a little more; Signing up ahead of time may not be what we’re looking for
• Determine format and date, and finish all the details at the CC retreat
• MOTION: To decide details at the CC retreat; PASSED

8:46pm REGIONAL UPDATE (Clovis)

• Dates for the Global Leadership Conference (GLC) have been posted
• There is a post on ticket prices, with inflated early bird tickets available (proceeds go to the non-profit); LET THEM EAT CAKE

8:48pm TOPIC: Cultural Appropriation (All)

• Question: Do we, as a CC, feel we need to do more, and is this topic in the hands of the organization? Last time we discussed this topic, it was decided that it is in the hands of the community; This does not go in the Survival Guide because its specific purpose is to cover liability issues which Cultural Appropriation does not fall into that
• Discussions with each other is the best way to handle Cultural Appropriation issues
• Other issues discussed: Ageism, Misogyny
• Rules are dumb. We don’t like them.

9:02pm ROUGH CC AGENDA (All)

• Beth and Hawk are the producers for Spring Town Hall
• List agenda items first, then set times
• Roundtable Royal Café: Covers more topics in a small amount of time; Utilizes separate meeting spaces, each with a specific topic
• Make agenda at midnight; Go over things on the Trello board; Review agenda on Friday; Discuss further on the CC list
• Start time: 10am (9:30am)
• Tentative CC retreat agenda topics:
  • Racism/Respect (afternoon) (2pm)
  • CC Comm standards; Blurbs; Review things we send out; Set regular pattern so we can review blurb; Calendar checkpoints
  • How often to revisit topics?
  • Annual Arc; Meeting dates for the year
  • Sabbatical
  • Review/Approve handbook (60mins)
  • Trello demonstration/Memory/Tools (30mins)
  • Who can propose Topics
  • Scribe
  • Town Hall – is our process working; CC operations (60mins)
  • Set Town Hall dates; Advance or Permanent? (30mins)
  • Review agenda/calendaring process
  • Where are we going, and are we on the right track vis a vis Burning Man (Friday night cocktail hour)
  • Saturday morning: Open with review of the 3 principles
  • Lunch will be 75mins
  • Attendance reports?
  • CC Retreat Facilitator: Prost

NEXT MEETING: MONDAY, JANUARY 4, 2016

FACILITATOR: Turtlebunnie

STACK: Beth

SCRIBE: Chim-Chim

TOPICS: Calendaring (All); Volunteer recruitment (Dahling)

10: 05pm MEETING ADJOURNED