This year’s Burning Man really pushed the envelope of leadership and community. In 2017 we said goodbye to Christopher Kellison, husband, father, photographer, Cyberian. His sudden passing affected us in deep and profound ways – our community came together, in their own way, to help support his wife Amy, and their children. We were shocked and saddened…and the decor team (thank you Marta and India) creating a special shrine for Chris, and we requested to the BM org to place his name on the Rememberance plaque. We’d never dealt with the loss of someone in our community…someone so young and youthful with the most kick ass Burner outfit (to match his wife, Amy of course). We really miss ya Chris!

And in the midst of saying goodbye, we also welcomed several new Cyberians…some virgins and some veterans, some from the US and some from abroad…we were more eclectic than ever, all 100+ of us!

We were placed at Hallowed and 8:45 this year and not as a THEME CAMP, but as a MUTANT VEHICLE Camp. We didn’t even know such a thing existed, but we were absolutely grateful to be placed and in good standing with BMorg – especially given our troubles from last year. So how’d this year go?

Pros

Edden Ram, a virgin and amazing photographer gifted us a beautiful video, capturing Burning Man & Cyberia so very well

We had a local welder create two 5 foot long showers that became a total of 4 shower stalls and it was awesome because these things drained right into our grey water container without a leak!

Once again the decor crew beautified the camp with their amazing ideas and it made for a welcoming environment

VR prepped a year in advance to service all types of foodies – everyone stayed well-fed and we are completely grateful

We created two kitchens: communal kitchen for folks who just wanted to heat up some tea or who to cook something on their own – and we had the MAIN kitchen where all the big food prep went down – it made for a SAFER kitchen operation for everyone

We added a 125 gallon water monster water-tank and it was one of the best investments EVER – everyone had sufficient water throughout the week and we were super glad

We included a commercial refrigerator and it worked like a charm in the desert keep everything cold

We added classes like: sound bath healing, reiki and yoga, consent and sex, a lecture on duality, and safety; we continued with meditation, yoga, and belly dancing as well as ice-coffee gifts for the community

And, our preliminary MOOP rating was in the upwards of 97% green (well we’re eyeballing it and guessing that’s it). We’re happy and call this a pro because of last year’s fiasco – thing definitely WORKED in demooping this year and we’re confident we can fix the last bit for sure.

Cons

We ran out of extension cords and the lighting for camp at night fell way too short – we had plenty of lights though…

While we asked folks not to bring tents over 10 foot…it still happened…and we ran out of space (we contemplating charging for tents…yes…for real) so we’re shrinking the camp to get the number right so we can continue in our community-building efforts

Things were stolen in camp

Several people promised to stay on Monday to help deconstruct the camp, but selected to leave the day before instead – this left a small, embarrassingly small… 3 persons during the final 5 hours to clean up the camp – and that’s certainly not what we intended to happen (so we’ve radically changed EVERYTHING we’re doing pertaining to deconstruction)

Well, we were DENIED for our art car – and that was the biggest disappointment of all..

What’s in store for 2018? Well, we…

-will bring our ART CAR, POLARIS back to the playa

-reduce our numbers

-create teams and captains to streamline the deconstruction process

-change the time of our meditation and create a to a sunset-meditation

-ice-Coffee is going away and will likely be replaced with something cold like -RumChata and carrot cake or pickles…just kidding, we really don’t know what we’ll replace the ice coffee with

And how did we fare with last years’ goals?

No-required de-moop daylight parties

Yes-additional tools for de-mooping

No-cap our membership at 100

Yes-offer a communal kitchen (complete with pots, pans, utensils, stove, all snacks,) in addition to our regular kitchen

Yes-continue with class offerings: yoga, meditation, shibari, belly dancing

Yes-offer ice coffee

Yes-increase lighting for night time (LEDs)

Yes-use our power source more efficiently (refrigeration)

Yes-enhance shower structures

Yes-art car (plans are underway)