Saturday
08:00–9:00
Breakfast & coffee
09:00–10:25
Plenary session: ground rules, get acquainted
10:30–11:55
Sustainability at Regional Events
A roundtable discussion exploring how Regional Events can engage in the work of the Burning Man 2030 Environmental Sustainability Roadmap. We’ll discuss a few frameworks from which we could engage in this work, such as Power, Water, Food, Waste, Structure and Transportation includding strategies to become zero waste, carbon negative, and to regenerative.
This session will give space to both – share your ideas and learn how you can make actionable steps towards greener events and what new practices we might see in the future. Regional Events have the opportunity to outpace and even beat Black Rock City to its own sustainability goals–let’s explore how we can do that work together.
Newbie Acculturation
For many burners, regional events are their first touchpoint with Burning Man. At SideBurn, we’ve noticed that we have a lot of newbies coming to our regional as their first burn that don’t know what to expect. How can we ensure that new burners are welcomed and understand how a burn is different from a commercial festival, and how can newbies be encouraged to fully participate?
We’ll talk about some strategies we’ve discussed and used – one of our board members led an amazing newbie tour, for example – but the majority of this session will be open discussion and a participant-driven brainstorm session.
Fire Safety: the View from 10,000 Feet
An abbreviated Powerpoint deck and Q&A as presented at the Burning Man GLC and SERT.
Starting with the basics of Tort Law (what are you actually liable for, and why?) then continuing on to techniques of Risk Management, and how to communicate your efforts to permitting agencies and insurers.
Regional Ranger Roundup
Presentation:
* Current Topics
* Building a new shared training & online training — a project to extract common elements from many ranger trainings for distribution out to regionals to lower the time commitment to making new trainings, and a project to create a recorded version of that training for Hive.
* ART of Regional Rangering — a project to make a document to make it easier for rangers to move between regionals.
* 25 to Thrive
* Vouching System — how we’re using the vouching system to help rangers move between regions.
Roundtable:
* How are folks’ ranger teams going?
* What resources should we work on together in the coming cycle?
* Talking about Incidents
Noon–13:55
14:00–15:25
Site Ops/DPW – Building the Canvas
Bulding the Canvas — Are you part of setting up infrastructure for your event, whether you call it DPW or Site Ops or any other name? Let’s talk about how we do it, how not to do it, vendor shenanigans — anything related to getting your burn up and running before it’s overrun with burners and torn down after the burners have had their time. What departments do you have set up? What kinds of infrastructure does your burn provide? What went right or wrong for you this year or last year? How do you acquire and retain your volunteers and leads? What are some special circumstances of your burn?
Come talk through your burn event prep with other Site Ops volunteers and leads and learn about best practices and how not to do it. Bring your event planning details to share!
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” — Carl Sagan
Rebuilding a Fractured Community: A Case Study and Discussion
Communities grow and change in ways that its members don’t always feel represents them. It is human nature that resentments and factions begin to form. What do we do as community leaders to address concerns? What if disagreements can’t be accommodated? There’s a lot that happens when humans human as hard as we do. We’ll do a case study of the San Diego Burner community which has been vibrant since the early 2000s and grew to a regional with over 3500 attendees. We’ll examine how a community in distress got smaller, redirected and is starting to flourish again.
Codes of conduct
This will be a panel discussion of the histories of codes of conduct at Lakes of Fire and AZ Burners, their processes, where they’re at now, and what challenges they still face. Also timelines for wrapping up cases, and how people who have been banned can make their way back. And also discussions on sharing information so that predators find it increasingly difficult to go from one regional to another.
15:30–17:00
Keeping the Experiment Alive
At FreezerBurn TX, we’ve tried to maintain a spirit of experimentation in how we do things. Not everything is a success, but that’s the point of experimenting! We’ll talk about a few of the things we’ve done and what worked that we kept doing. We can dig into particular experiments that y’all want more info on, but then want to hear what you’ve been doing and how it’s gone for you!
Volunteeripate – Burn data like you’ve never seen it
Dive Deep into Burn Data Like Never Before!
This year, Volunteeripate is unlocking the secrets of burn events on an unparalleled scale. Get ready for a look into anonymized data from participating organizations. We’ll be uncovering insights on:
The ticket sales secrets: What drives a burn to become a hot commodity?
Volunteer Engagement: See how burns utilize volunteer hours to drive their event.
The Event Ecosystem: Gain a holistic view of burn data, revealing the unseen connections that make burns thrive.
Join us and unveil the hidden patterns that make burns thrive!
From Flames to Claims: Navigating Insurance for Burning Events
We’ll define the terms and concepts you need to know and take an in depth look at two example policies, explain the key differences of each, and talk about what you need to know to reduce your liability. What coverage do you want to make sure you have based on real experiences? We’ll be joined by two veteran burner-brokers who have helped procured policies through Lloyds, Kinsale, and others for regional 10-principal events. Chances are good you’ve worked with one of them before. A 30-min presentation will be followed by a discussion / Q&A.
Bring Out the Best In Others
Bringing out the best in others is a crucial skill, as it fosters growth, confidence, and collaboration. By empowering people to reach their full potential, you not only improve performance but also enhance the overall success of a team or community. When individuals feel supported and valued, they are more likely to contribute creatively, take initiative, and work effectively with others. This workshop will teach strategies that encourage mindfulness and helping those around you.
Sunday
08:00–9:00
Breakfast & coffee
09:00–10:25
Mental Health First Aid at a burn. Are we doing it right?
Let’s gather and share notes about our burn’s CIT & Sanctuary programs. The landscape of mental health has been challenged since the pandemic and we should talk about it. By openly discussing our successes and failures, perhaps we (management) can all move forward with a little less stress.
Social Media, the Good, the Bad, and the Oh Hell No!
Join one of the Info_Bot leads from Lakes of Fire to discuss what works, what doesn’t, and what makes your skin crawl with regard to social media.
One of the biggest challenges for any event organizer is how to manage creating a community and space outside the burn and how to manage the chaos that it can sometimes bring when context is everything and posts on spaces like Facebook quickly spiral when not enough context is given. We want our communities to have a voice, but that often means being vigilant on social media yourself to ward off any issues that might arise.
This conversation will focus on the guidelines that each of us put in place, what works and what doesn’t, how to maintain and engage a community, and how to grow one if that is what you are hoping to do.
Mobility: everyone gets a burn
A short presentation on how a couple of unused golf carts at LoF DMV and frustration at watching folks struggle developed into a program that has been embraced by the community and grown beyond anything that could be imagined, except at a burn. Radical Self Reliance is also knowing when to accept and offer help. We are hoping to keep the presentation short to allow for Q/A and hearing about similar efforts at other regionals
10:30–11:55
How to Train Your Actual—Care and Feeding of Volunteer Leaders at all Stages
Silly title aside, we want to have a very real and frank conversation about the volunteer leadership lifecycle at burns and how we can keep our people-powered events truly sustainable. We’ll discuss: How can we introduce folks to the concept of leadership and organize leadership roles in a way that sets the right tone? Once folks are settled into their leadership roles, how can we make or keep the positions fulfilling and fight burnout? And, when folks are ready to step back into participant roles, how can we respect and support that while demonstrating that we value their contribuitions and knowledge?
Civic Responsibility and Community Engagement = Civic Engagement and Community Responsibility?
The 2023 State of the Regional Network Report stated that only 32% of regions reported conducting civic projects in 2023. Yet according to a survey conducted by Burning Man Project in 2024, 42% of respondents indicated that they wanted to see more civic projects in the Regional Network. With this much interest, why are there so few civic projects? Through this facilitated roundtable discussion, we’ll explore some specific past examples of recent projects and discuss the kind of projects you’d like to see in your own community and what it might take for those ideas to become reality.
Guerrilla Emergency Management
Burns come in all shapes and sizes with different needs when it comes to Emergency Preparedness. The task of keeping our Burns Safe is no small task regardless of the event size.
In this session we will discuss:
- Evaluating the needs of your Burn.
- Starting new safety related departments.
- Growing existing safety departments.
- Safety Related departments and how they work together. (Fire/EMS, fire art, Ranger, Gate, Radios, Information, BOD, etc.).
- Partnerships with other burns.
- Volunteer recruiting and retention.
- Leadership Chain development.
- … and putting it all together.
Documentation talk
In this session, I will discuss some general principles for writing and organizing documentation, focusing mostly on internal documentation for a burn org, and introduce a system based on open-source software for producing documentation that embodies these practices.
Noon–13:55
Break for lunch
14:00–15:25
Relationships between the board, event organizers, and departments
This session will be a facilitated discussion about different models regional burns use to define the powers and responsibilities of the board, event organizers, and departments. The goal is an open discussion about the challenges you face in these relationships, how those challenges were addressed, and how that went well, or did not. Additional areas of focus will include resolution of inter-departmental and inter-lead conflict, delegation of responsibility, maintaining continuity of leadership, and “Should this management proccess be a ThunderDome fight?”.
Safety volunteers
The issue at hand is the recruitment and retention of safety volunteers, that is, professionals in the safety area that make the waivers we sign at least minimally viable. How do we increase this specialized pool of volunteers when general volunteerism is down and how do we keep them engaged once we do.
Fun with Finance!
Accounting, finances, budgets…..these are an UN-fun, but necessary part of organized burning. Every burn has reporting requirements – be it to the community, BORG, taxing authorities or other. We’ll cover the basic structure of financial statements, including burn-specific considerations. We’ll also talk about setting and reporting on budgets. Bring your questions and thoughts for an interactive session. No financial or accounting knowledge necessary to attend! This session is all-inclusive for anyone interested in learning more. And we’ll make it FUN!
BRCvr presents BurnerSphere, update and Q&A
Join creators Athena Demos and Mike Heath for an engaging talk and Q&A about BurnerSphere, an official virtual Burning Man experience, the groundbreaking immersive app that brings the essence of Burning Man’s Black Rock City into virtual reality. In this session, you’ll not only learn how BurnerSphere allows users to explore interactive 3D environments and 360/180 video footage while socializing with friends, but also get an inside look at the process of capturing large-scale art at Burning Man and creating detailed 3D models using photogrammetry. Discover how your local burner community can participate and bring this unique digital experience to your events, fostering deeper connections with Burning Man culture year-round.
15:30–17:00
The Rent Is Too Damn High — Burns? In This Economy??
Economic inequality is growing. The tech sector is a mess. So, as community-experiment-minded event organizers, what are we going to do about it? Let’s talk! Our moderated, interactive group conversation will be sure to touch on the impact on both participants and on orgs.
What if Burning Man is a cult? What if that’s ok?
This moderated open discussion will focus on what the key markers are for the definition of a cult, whether Burning Man fits into that category (it does). As leaders, what does that make us? Are we cult leaders? Is that necessarily a bad thing? What should we do about it?
Can we embrace this definition and still promote the 10 principles, lead with integrity, and transparently ac-cult-urate new members?
Flame Effects Artist Guild
Flame effects artists are a huge part of the Burning Man and Regionals community, and we are at the forefront of a brand new art form! The newly formed non-profit Flame Effects Artist Guild seeks to create a community hub for these artists across the country, a place for networking, education, promotion, and more! We will discuss the structure and goals of the guild, benefits of membership, and the all-important topic of insurance coverage.