Basics

Burn After Meeting 2025 was held at the J Resort in Reno NV USA, Nov 22–23.

96 people representing at least 18 entities participated.

Ticketing

The ticketing process was the same as in 2024. There were two phases to it:

• A crowdfunding campaign to meet the conference’s basic funding goals. These tickets cost $150.
• General sales after the crowdfunding campaign ended. These tickets cost $185. Buyers could either purchase a ticket for themselves or vouchers for others.

The crowdfunding campaign ran from Feb 21 to Mar 23. The campaign’s target amount was $13,500; it raised $14,750 (not deducting the Indiegogo 8% fee), for 97 tickets (plus a very small amount in donations below the price of a ticket). The goal of the crowdfunding campaign was to meet the conference’s upfront costs in advance, and it succeeded in that, although contributions were off somewhat from 2024.

Backers of the crowdfunding campaign were sent vouchers that they could redeem for tickets. Vouchers were also available for sale during the general-sale period. There were a total of 113 vouchers (as opposed to tickets) sold, either during the crowdfunding campaign or regular sales. Of these, 83 were “group buy” tickets, where one person or (usually) organization bought multiple vouchers, anywhere from 2 to 10.

During general sales, an additional 20 tickets and an unknown number of vouchers were sold.

31 tickets or vouchers went unused. Some backers let us know that they were treating their ticket as a donation; some had purchased vouchers on spec for members of their organization, and then had trouble finding anyone who could use them. For the most part, we never heard from the no-shows.

About five tickets were transferred.

Four vouchers purchased during the crowdfunding campaign were later refunded, not counted in the numbers above.

Programming

Most of the programming was sessions proposed by participants; two roundtable talks were suggested by the BAM committee to people who had volunteered to facilitate roundtables, and two roundtables were led by members of the committee. Other than that, the organizers were mostly hands-off. BAM is like a burn in this regard: it is what its participants bring.

One presenter wound up having a default-world scheduling conflict, and had to swap time slots with another session after the program went to print.

The conference opened with brief remarks by Adam in the function room where people were having breakfast, followed by an icebreaking exercise. For this exercise, the participants rolled five 20-sided dice when they checked in, and were given five cards with those numbers. The reverse side of the card had a “human scavenger hunt” challenge (for example, “find someone who brought a parent to a burn.”) and participants were encouraged to find as many people as they could who fulfilled the challenge. The winner, with a score of 50, won a golden clipboard. This exercise generally seemed to be well-received, and grew out of a suggestion made by someone else who has run a local leadership event. But making up all the cards was time-consuming.

After that, Saturday had three sessions in parallel and three 85-minute time slots; Sunday was 3×4. There wound up being three holes in the schedule grid.

Unlike 2025, the sessions this year tended to be less operational and more abstract in nature, with topics focusing on volunteerism, inclusion, conflict, codes of conduct. Also unlike 2025, all of the rooms were set up for roundtable-style discussions, and there wasn’t an explicit distinction between presentations and roundtables. This seems like a better fit for BAM. The meeting rooms this year were more than big enough, but space has been tight in the past.

As in 2024 (and inspired by the ELS), we facilitated dine-around dinners. Apart from announcing that we would be facilitating them, there was no advance planning for these: people proposed topics at the event and collected signups at the registration table. These were well-received.

• Accepting less-than-perfect outcomes (late suggestion, zero people)
• When to move location of your burn (7 people)
• Event software for us by us (4 people)
• Sustainable budgets (6 people)
• Ethics of AI (7 people)
• BWB (4 people)
• Burn Medical; Good Samaritan vs duty to act (5 people)

Communications

Communications are largely unchanged since last year, so I will keep last year’s section intact below. The one notable change was adding an “extracurricular” channel to the BAM2025 category of channels; this was used very effectively to coordinate outings on the fly.

Pre-event communications between the organizers and participants were via e-mail.

The organizers set up a Discord server for use by the participants, with a general chat channel, a roomshare/rideshare channel, and separate channels for each session. None of these were used much before the conference, but they were used very intensively during the conference, to share documents mentioned during sessions, to share recordings that participants made of the sessions, to organize dinner outings, etc.

The organizers had a Signal group chat that was the primary medium for planning discussions.

Venue & location

We had each meeting room equipped by the hotel with a TV and whiteboard; in one of the meeting rooms, the presenters wound up using the built-in projector instead.

The J Resort is on the site of the former Sands, with guest rooms divided between three towers and the event space on the mezzanine of the middle tower; they are joined by the casino floor. The area surrounding it is somewhat desolate (it is being redeveloped), but there were some dining options within reasonable walking distance. It is not well-served by public transit, and an airport shuttle that it used to run has been shut down. But it’s not a very long ride to the airport, and one of the participants volunteered to act as a shuttle bus with her rental car.

One benefit of being at the J Resort was that we were right on the Neon Line, a series of Burning Man art installations that were bought by the hotel’s owner and installed along 4th St as public art. A member of our committee (Izzi) recruited a local burner guide, who gave us a walking tour of this as our Saturday-night extracurricular activity.

On Friday night, many of us went to The Generator, a burner/burner-adjacent makerspace which coincidentally was having a market that they host every month for their occupants.

On Sunday night, many of us went to the Potentialist Workshop, an experiential art installation that is also burner-adjacent.

Catering

The hotel catered breakfast and coffee both days of the conference. Breakfast was a buffet of granola, yogurt, fruit, and various baked goods. Heavy on carbs.

Participant Feedback Highlights

In a post-event survey, participants highlighted the value of connecting across regions, exchanging practical knowledge, and learning from one another’s challenges and successes. Many cited networking, shared problem-solving, and hearing diverse regional perspectives as the most valuable aspects of BAM.

Connection and Networking

• “Connection with other burns, to discuss our experiences, and be able to network for knowledge sharing and training.”
• “Many conversations and roundtables with regional organizers facing some of the same challenges as us.”
• “Connecting with other leaders, seeing the hierarchy of other organizations.”
• “Networking and resource sharing especially around safety and insurance.”
• “Connecting with other regional leaders and learning that our biggest challenges often overlap.”

Sharing Knowledge

• “Open sharing of knowledge and experiences from event leads of vastly different areas and backgrounds.”
• “Passionate people sharing their learnings and engaging in discussion on topics of interest”
• “Was amazing to see and hear from so many different regional perspectives”
• “Hearing potential solutions to problems we have.”
• “Realizing that we have many of the same challenges, and that we have a vast collective knowledge.”

Lessons Participants Will Bring Home

Participants reported leaving BAM 2025 with new tools, shared practices, and knowledge about common challenges.

Volunteerism, Community Support, and Engagement

• “Volunteer incentives, how other burns take care of theirs, also the Code of Conduct committee.”
• “More community events and leaning on other leadership for advice”
• “We need to ask our community for more help. Too few people are trying to do too much, and if we reach out to the community more, we’ll probably get more of what we need.”
• “New ideas for retaining/appreciating volunteers”

Shared Challenges

• “Energy and ideas for driving more activity year-round, confidence in our doing the right thing in a lot of areas, confirmation that some challenges (like an aging population are common), lots and lots of notes.”
• “That some of the issues we are experiencing are being felt globally and are not just unique our Org”
• “That there are many folks working on similar things and we can learn from them.”
• “We are all part of an important social construct. Our work at our regional burn has impacts beyond our event. This is important across the world”
• “Mostly that this stuff is really hard, and everyone struggles with the same thing (especially insurance, volunteerism, and land).”
• “The experiments and successes of other burns; don’t be afraid to build something, fail, tear it down and build again. Town Halls well before an event can be a good way of bringing in new energy and ideas, and getting the word out.”
• “New pitfalls to avoid from lessons learned elsewhere!”

Governance, Policy, and Conflict Resolution

• “New perspectives on planning, coaching, and making space to facilitate tough but necessary conversations.”
• “Reviewing our documentation procedures”
• “The most direct lessons are about insurance and “codes of conduct” (or whatever you want to call it) but getting a preview of what older / larger / more established burns are dealing with and their practices is equally valuable.”