Come join the core team for 2020 and "share the love".

im am truly sorry if you feel troubled by my comments. that was not my intention. I guess i'm failing to understand as to what you think a respectful and transparent way is for the type of criticism i'm talking about under the current system. You said "I still feel the 'they said' thing is gossip so I won't respond" so apart from repeating the statement with the person's name in it, what else can i do ?

Personally I feel the lead roles should be paid. The amount of work and responsibility they take on is enormous. I feel it would be more fair, if the lead roles were financially compensated for doing the lions share of the work. If anything goes ‘seriously’ wrong at an event, the ‘blame’ will land on their shoulders. I feel that’s too much to ask of a volunteer.

thought I'd replied

Participating in burn events is defined, among other things, by everyone having to pay for a ticket, however much they are contributing. There are, for sure, negative as well as positive consequences of this: particularly with regards to the demographic of who can afford to work for free, and who wants to work for free for a fairly hedonistic cause. I feel your feel, and I think we have a reallly big duty to work on our governance to support those who take on lead roles to be both supported and accountable to others. We also have a duty to step up and have co-leads and mentors, so that taking on a lead role at a burn can be an experience that is rewarding, supported, empowering and safe rather than leading to burn out.
It is an option to pay for particular services: eg we pay for portaloos, waste disposal, medical and security, and when there aspects of work which can be outsourced, and doing so would relieve a significant burden from a volunteer and enable the event to function better, this is a decision to be made on a case by case basis.

If you want to have this discussion in more detail, maybe take it over into the Nest governance subgroup.

the issue of only being open to those who can afford to give so much time is a complex one with no easy solution, the best i've come up with in the past is finding ways to include people even at the highest level who can only give one hour a week. it ends up taking other peoples time to do it, but for people like me who feel full inclusion is more important than other concerns, i'm happy to put the extra time in to make that possible (in the case i'm talking about i send them summaries of what was going on each fortnight and they chose single things they could manage to take on when they could and where well enough, with no pressure to even stay in the loop when they weren't)

AfrikaBurn and Burning Man I get a free ticket for the work I do. Love Burn was going to give me a free ticket if I did 3 shifts, but I tagged out of that as I only wanted to do one shift. A lot of burns gift you a ticket based on the number of hours of work you do.

They're not really gifting you a ticket if it's an exchange for the work you put in. They're paying you with a ticket. I've never heard of this practice at Burns before and I doubt that it would have much popularity in the Nest community, for all kinds of reasons.

Pretty much most of the larger burns do this. As they have all found that most people are not willing to work throughout the burn otherwise, in enough numbers to give coverage to the city. People do it for a couple of years, burn out and go do something else. And yep, it won't have popularity in any of the European burns where it's not common practice. It's also a note that at Burning Man for example, 40% of attendees are virgins.

How would you feel about starting a subgroup for discussing interest in next year's roles?
(I'm up for doing this next week if you are up for it but don't have capacity)
Proposal:
1.start a sub group of Loomio 'Nest 2020 Roles'
2. Start a discussion thread for each role to be filled
Encourage people to express interest without committing, to seek co-lead collaborations, to ask questions for the community to answer about the remit of roles,

This might be really useful, or it might be of limited use, but would give a transparent way for the level of interest to be seen and for people to interact with others interested in the same role without it having to go through one person and create a big workload for that one person.

HI Bess, I've posted this thread entirely to get interest in lead roles. Loomio seems to encourage deviations of topics, but that the initial intention!

I feel that if we pay our core team, we’re also protecting future events, because if we relieve the financial and time burdens from our core team, they will be in better situation to deal with everything they need to do. I’m also aware that it may be difficult for the core team to say ‘I’d like to get paid’ to the community. But if we collectively, financially ease the burden of our core team, I feel we should. If that means ticket prices increase, I’m also happy about that. But if I’m missing a point or fact in someway, please let me know, and I’ll drop this subject 😊

introducing any monetary payment is against the principles in my view, I am still amazed burning man does it. The entire hackspace movement runs without payment successfully too. Instead of paying people who work lots, how about we share responsibilities out more instead? It upsets me every time i head a core team member saying how they work more than would make it easy for them, that is a failure in management structure in my view (and one i want to help address for next year)

Tom, the reason we get burnt out has little to do with the structure and more to do with the fact we struggle finding volunteers to join the team and share the load.

Hackspaces suffer too from the burnout problem. I don't know that paying is the answer, but it surely needs a better answer than we've found so far.

id argue that one causes the other. having spoken to a few people who have considered posts at nest and not done so, and my own personal experience as well I would say that the current structure is putting people off and that causes the scarcity of human resource of which you speak. specifically only opening roles once a year (ive been told twice when offering, wait until next year) and also the attitudes of some people being very top down / i'm lead you have to do what i say / your opinion is just inconvenient until after you have done X hours of work has also put people off in large numbers. Also the idea that a lead must take on so much work puts people off too. I would be putting out comms inviting people to take just part of a role if that is all they had time for. in my experience in recruiting volunteers, saying the position is to be part of a team who share a role gets as much as ten times the response. asking one person to be available all year round is a lot. another point is the excessive use of meetings which require people to be available at certain times, i've found many decisions are best made over a focused week of discussion rather than trying to get everyone online at the same time for example.

There's some merit, I think, in considering smaller roles. Personally, I'm unwilling to respond to pleading for core team people as I know I couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery and don't want to contribute to a major failure. If I can help, I'd rather do it as an ad-hoc volunteer when I can : I'm sure there's still a need for that, too.

However, isn't the essence of a team leader that they pull the team members together ? So if you split jobs up you create a need for an overarching leader to keep them aligned. Sure, if some lead roles have become unnecessarily linked for historical reasons and could be broken up usefully, that would be good. But let's not introduce an extra management layer. That would be bad in every possible way.

in the organisations which i helped shape only five people have signed up for full time availability, everyone else is ad hoc, and we manage a much bigger process than nest which operates year round. we did it by not breaking up roles into smaller roles, but by taking away fixed links between a person and a role. each person takes a task when they can, and even splitting up work into tasks is one of those tasks.

That sounds very helpful if the main problem is dealing with tasks.
I may be wrong, but I suspect that a very significant part of core team's work is being available to be contacted, and in that respect having a face or name rather than a role to look to is a huge help.

As an example, every time I go to my local medical practice (previously known as 'doctor'), I see a different face. Record-keeping retains some semblance of continuity but it's very much inferior to the model where I saw the same person every time. Efficiency isn't everything, and, I suspect, inclusion isn't either. Or at least, it has more than one aspect.

and if enough people apply and have time to do so that can be done! having a team of people deal with incoming requests with a preference for repeated connection to the same person is totally doable! but if you want it all year round your asking that role to be someone available 365, which we don't seem to get many volunteers for yet

To be franck if someone want to fill in before the event, i don t see the problem, if there is a lack of, people joining in last minute are a great addition (example the fnugging leads gemma and steve who sort it just a few weeks before the event) after for big and cumbersome task like logistic or comm, at one point in the year before the evnt, this task are on the roll and seeing something not really working in your sense calls for more tact and cannot be fired or totally replaced like that, reinventing the wheel just before the car goes out the industry will fuck up everything ... ok you can say that the car will be a little bit wanky at the end of the chain but at least you can after work on the process without totally the first draft.
This year, I m sure with your experience and point of view, tom , there will be some improvement liek with all the other people who will have the curiosity to jump in the shark tank.
And finally, this year loomio is way more active than the previous year and implementing this tools allows to have acces to more point of view which in itself is already an improvement.

Hi Sarah, it's true that a core lead role takes a lot of time and effort. I've been in core teams for a couple of burns, got burnt out, took some time off to recover, and am now in a position where I'm thinking about throwing my hat back into the ring.
Nest is a pretty small burn as things go, and there isn't much money behind it. We are also a participatory culture - everyone contributes in some way to the community. Some people within the community choose freely to offer up their professional skills to make the event happen - we see this as part of our civic responsibility to the community.
Sometimes the essential skills we need can't be found within the community. Nest pays for qualified security and a paramedic on call at all times for the event. But core role volunteering is a year round commitment. Not only would paying core leads break the budget, but it would also dilute the principle of civic responsibility.
To put this in perspective, Nowhere (which has about 4000 people) pays only 1 person (I think) to do a full-time job, which involves liaising with the local authorities in Sarinena. But they are a much larger event than Nest, and most of the Nowhere core team do not live in Spain or speak sufficient Spanish to do the far greater amount of paperwork and stakeholder management required.
Nest is made by us. As well as civic responsibility, our principles include gifting, decommodification, and communal effort. The core team gift their time, skills and emotional labour without expectation of financial compensation, and work together to make sure that the event happens year after year, and I appreciate the authenticity of that in our community.

Volunteering does make you sexy though! ;)

Fair enough Alison. I’ll stop posting that you guys need to be paid, if your all happy to do the job voluntarily, and it’s a part of Nest. 😊

getting paid will make it a job which also involves a larger responsability of result and like allison said, that s not really the spirit, if we do the job, it s because we want it not for the money. yes it s hard but that is also more rewarding at the end + if we burn out , people will step in instead or expecting the paid person to man/woman up becaue it s their job.
even if to be honest i get paid in memory and liquid cash (beers even if i provide also some salary in that case to the communal pot)

The way I see it, Burns are built on the principles of civic responsibility and decommodification. That is why core and project leads are largely unpaid. There is a certain commitment, a particular dynamic, an ineffable magic around throwing your hat in with no expectation of compensation that cannot be replicated within the extractive tit-for-tat model we take for granted because capitalism. Commodification is a slippery slope, and a principle to be held on to dearly. These decommodified spaces in our world are increasingly unique- the few other orgs that get it include Red Cross and couchsurfing. That being said, burning man communities tend to use social capital and perks to care for its core and project leads. That means folks participating heavily, lending skills, time and energy are cared for through targeted gifting. Food, showers, bottles of wine, cases of beer, trailers, bodywork, access to air conditioning or heat, special parties, stickers and other shwag, travel expenses coverage, and other lovely gifts that fluff leads can be provided by the “mystical they” (core team) or by anyone in the community who has resources. Desanka was a glorious manifestation of this ethos this year. The feeling of being looked after with omelettes after a graveyard shift has a quality you don’t get from a paycheck. These are the things that makes leading enjoyable and good self-care possible, preventing burn out. The community needs to look out for its leads, and there are lots of more fun ways of doing that than raising ticket prices and paying what is most likely not adequate compensation for the the amount of work it is anyway. :)

Hi Adele, I was an artist at Burning Man about 10 years ago and was treated like a demi god, it was so weird. We were obvious by our artist badge/dog tag (can't remember which!). However at Nest my experience has been completely different, I'm not even sure folks realise Im on the core team when they meet me onsite and thats fine by me. No special treatment for helping build an event we all enjoy. I will take gifting in excessive hugging though.

And defo agree, Desanka gifted a lovely experience to all who enjoyed their hospitality.

Well then, in the spirit of gifting, if anyone in the core team needs a weekend break, I have one spare bed , (can sleep two with one on the floor) near the beach ☀️Great restaurants, pubs, fishing, surfing...the usual stuff 😊 You’d be most welcome

That is a lovely offer Sarah. Thank you. xx

I’ll just give you a key and leave you to explore, or I can show you around? Just let me know in advance what days you want to come down, and l’ll cross my fingers for sunshine on those days Mandcathearder. Message me on messenger, and we’ll sort it out.x

Are all these roles open to application? Are some completely vacant? It's a bit unclear.

The only one blank is the LNT and Stacy our current Lead will complete it when she gets some time. All the rest are populated. What isn't clear?

I think what Daniel meant was how to know which roles are currently unfilled and which ones might already have someone lined up to do them?

Is this 2 roles or 4 or more?, greeter/gate department specifies "co-leads required" (plural) theme camp liaison specifies "co-lead required" (singular), doesn't mention if those two departments need leads or not.

we are looking at restructuring the existing "core" team to be more team focused, so the more the merrier within a team, may or may not have a lead/colead title, but youre still welcome to get involved and help the team do what needs to be done! x

Awesome. I like the idea of doing gate stuff (through ive not done a shift on it before, only ranger/welfare previously)

Just follow the info in the original post to register interest hun, i'm tracking applicants through emails only (just can't keep up with Loomio and fb!!!)

Will do, thanks.

All roles are vacant at the moment, if the current lead wants to reapply they can. We are still sorting out the process for mutiple applicants, but that will be publicised when we have confirmed. My personal view is that we want as many new folks to come into the core team (as it is named currently) and use the existing folk as mentors to ease the transition, but that is just dependent on whats happening within the team.

Hello! I am looking at roles listed in the website, it would be nice to have a brief description of responsibilities and main tasks under each of them, as well as possible subroles if people would like to work as a team. I have no idea of what Edge of Chaos do, for example!

Paula, if you click on the Get Involved section and scroll down to Be a lead part of the team for 2020, there is a "here" link that takes you through to all the completed role profiles with a summarised description and list of to do tasks through out the year. Thanks

This is all very exciting. Hello group contributers :)

I have emailed Mands, I hope I can help.x

Emailed back honey, I'm sure we can find something in a fab team, maybe decor? ;o)

So... sorry if this has been explained before. Is there just one person doing everything? I will be happy to participate in a team of people in charge of one of the areas even if I do not have the professional experience to back me up. and maybe that could take pressure off leads.

Its currently a core team, no way could one person do this! lol. read the original post again for directions on how to get involved in the organising team all year round.

@entropy currently there are leads overseeing each area, a 'meta-lead' if you will, then many leads within that area that focus on one thing, so for example there is a lead of the DPW area, but then also a build lead, lighting lead, strike lead, LNT lead, etc. Plus all meta leads have a co-lead and many other leads may have a co-lead as well.