@patriciaxlee.eth

This is the time of year when some offices in San Francisco get a bit quiet as people head to the dust. I’ve never been to Burning Man (haven’t felt compelled just yet). But I’ve spoken at length with the organization’s official historian, Stuart Mangrum. Stuart is the director of Burning Man’s philosophical center and was a long-time “co-conspirator” to the founder, Larry Harvey. Every year, an announcement is published of a unique theme to guide the artworks and community. Stuart is the one who writes these themes. Why did I speak with him when I’ve never been involved with Burning Man? Unexpected reason. The University of Oxford was building case studies of organizations for its business school. I wrote the one for Burning Man. The first thing I learned is how people who go to Burning Man distinguish between the overall community versus the Burning Man Project, the organization which handles ticket sales and now a multi-million dollar budget for creating a temporary city in the desert. There’s a love-hate relationship with that organization. Burning Man is an experiment in decentralization, but supporting the massive growth of the festival has required a certain degree of centralization. In the early days, there was no such thing as a ticket to Burning Man. The concept emerged in 1994 at $30 per ticket. Today, tickets start at over 16x that starting price. It is not unusual for people to spend thousands of dollars to attend the festival. Much of this was promoted by a need for safety. The first death of someone at the festival prompted a need for better safety, which costs money. I was very interested in how the “leadership” of the Burning Man Project viewed themselves through these changes. They remain vocally dedicated to decentralization and struck me as reluctant leaders, even if the organization’s corporateness now may not seem that way outwardly. After all, Burning Man started as a bonfire among friends on Baker Beach (even earlier roots go back to activities by anarchic societies in San Francisco). Nobody set out in the beginning with an ambition to manage an increasingly overpopulated city. But they do now. I see many parallels between Burning Man’s evolution and what I’m observing in the Farcaster community. One is a physical space, another is a virtual space. Both are trying to resist centralization as much as possible by principle, which is not easy to do through growth. If people here are interested in more of my musings on this topic, I’m happy to share bits of my conversation with Stuart. I’ve also been meaning to speak with him again for another project. So feel free to ask questions for him too. The photo is not mine. Couldn’t find the original source. But it’s a famous photo from 2022 when more than 70,000 people were departing Burning Man. It triggered a 9 hour, 14 lane traffic jam in the desert.

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