Shipping camp infrastructure to the playa

[Lip Bomb]

Hello to you all.

As we near the 2015 burn, our camp infrastructure is starting to come together. As a first year camp and the sheer size of our footprint on the playa, we are reaching out to you camp veterans for suggestions on how to best transport and/or store our camp at the lowest possible cost. If you have any suggestions that may help us do this efficiently, please help a sister out. Thank you very much for all your input and have an amazing day!
PLUR

[trilobyte]

I'm giving this a nudge over to Transportation, since that's a better fit for questions/discussions about transportation logistics.

You have both my congratulations, and my condolences. Congrats on doing a theme camp, and condolences because I suspect that you'll be learning a few lessons the hard way. The first piece of advice I would give to anyone undertaking a theme camp is to start small. It's not that your idea wouldn't be any good, it's because everything ends up being both harder and more expensive than you think, and the bigger the operation the more tricky some of the logistics can get to be.

If you haven't already figured out the kind of storage and transportation needs your camp is going to have, DO THAT NOW! Get a ballpark estimate as quickly as you can, then pad that number and book a truck rental immediately. I've generally found the trucking companies start taking bookings 6 months out, an then the rates begin to escalate as the supply dwindles, so hurry up! Think the 10' truck is all you need? Book a 16 footer. Or if you think you'll need a 16' truck, book a 24. Taking a peek at the layout you have posted on your camp site, unless you've got other campmates hauling some of that infrastructure, you may need to book two trucks. You should also connect with other camps in your region to get a sense of what kind of fuel costs you can expect. It's going to be really high, and your mileage will definitely vary (literally... depending on the weight of what you're hauling versus what they've been carrying). Since you're doing this for the first time, for planning purposes always expect it to cost more. If you don't, Murphy's Law will cause some crazy scenario where gas prices jump a buck a gallon in the weeks before you depart (don't laugh, that's happened a few times).

Your camp's site suggests you're doing some kind of sound camp thing or have some event producers in the mix... put them to work immediately! Any event producer worth their salt should be able to handle show logistics, and planning a camp at Burning Man is very similar to producing a show. They may not realize it, but they already have some of the skills and experience needed to help solve those pieces of the puzzle, get them involved.

Year round storage that's not in the same city you are can be a double-edged sword. Without too much work you can look up and find lots of places in the Reno area to store gear for cheap, but the down side is you'll likely want or need to plan an extra day or two there coming into or going out of the playa to manage stuff like fixing, repairing (or replacing if something was completely broken) and then cleaning/packing gear up as you leave. If you've already got a core team of dependable rockstars that you can rely on to get 'er done, great... for a lot of camps, that can take a few years to achieve (it may surprise you to learn that people will flake on that stuff). Aside from that, from my experience you probably want to let your camp gel and mature a bit before you go storing stuff remotely, otherwise you run the risk of spending a bunch of money to store infrastructure that you end up not even using any more.

Going with freight carriers becomes even more complicated, because then you've got wrangle Outside Services and make sure that your freight carrier has got all their BLM permit stuff sorted out... it can be crazy. Burning Man has a storage container program, but it has a fairly lengthy wait and very high upfront costs, and then in the first year after you're finally in you still have to get all your stuff out there (and then see what will fit into the 8x20 box). It's something I'd recommend considering, but after you've had the chance to get a really good sense of what you want to lock in a box and not have access to until you're on the playa next year. My camp started doing the BRC container program last year, but that was after years of solidifying our infrastructure and being on the list for a year (and we're still nervous about how that'll work out).

Sorry for the ramble - I didn't mean to run on quite so much, but there are a lot of things to consider. Good luck!

[Lip Bomb]

Rambling on? Not at all. This is an amazing amount of information. My husband is in the music industry and will be dealing with the sound aspect of this so Im not really even dealing or thinking about that myself. Our biggest issues at this time are staging issues. Parts of the camp are being built and shipped in from across the US and the need for a location for said camp infrastructures to be sent to is the largest hurdle currently. I guess we need to locate a storage location closer to BRC. Uggg. This is already bigger than expected. Bigger headache as well.
Thank you again for your advise!!

[motskyroonmatick]

Ship to reliable people(vested camp mates) who have storage and loading help and the ability to rent and drive a big box truck. It's better to pay a little extra box truck rental and fuel than gambling on something iffy. Leave 20% of truck capacity open for packing errors and taking MOOP/trash out.

[Jovankat]

My husband is in the music industry and will be dealing with the sound aspect of this so Im not really even dealing or thinking about that myself

So are you guys going for 2 o'clock or 10 o'clock?

As for this;

Parts of the camp are being built and shipped in from across the US and the need for a location for said camp infrastructures to be sent to is the largest hurdle currently

.

Our storage place in reno was happy to take delivery of things for us and store it in our storage unit until we came to collect it just before the burn. It would mean paying for an extra month or two and depending on how big and bulky these items they might not be *that* happy about it but that's an option to look into.

Also Trilo is very right. My partner and I were second year burners last year and organised a 50 person camp. Apart from a few minor things like some of our campers being a bit messier than I would have liked and me being a bit more of a perfectionist than I should have been things on playa wen't pretty well. Our major issue was needing more people to step up and help with set up and pack down. That said though a. we were really really lucky, b. I am excellent* at organising, literally have a degree and 15 years experience producing events, was only working part time in the middle of last year and then took 10 weeks off work to prep for the burn while my partner took a month off and c. it genuinely nearly killed us. I'm not saying don't do it, just be prepared to break down in tears and give up at least a couple of times between now and burn night

And yes. We are doing it again this year.



*No seriously, I'm a little bit autistic and this is what I use my powers for.

[Lip Bomb]

So are you guys going for 2 o'clock or 10 o'clock?

We are not a full blown sound camp. Our music volume is less than the requirements set for sound camps. Its more of a chill deep house background. That may change. With that said, We would love to be placed 7-8:30 corner of A-C.

Thank you all for your suggestions.

[trilobyte]

Make sure you guys read the policy on sound systems, and communicate to placement the details of what kind of wattage you're looking at, as well as the approximate hours that you intend to be operating. It's important for them to have an idea of what you'll be doing, so they can work out an idea of what neighborhood you might work in (for the area you're looking at the posted limit is 300 watts). Camps that have achieved exceptions to the sound guidelines (ie Distrikt, Duck Pond) have done so through both years of neighborhood evolution and working with the placement team.

If you're doing different parts of your infrastructure in different parts of the country, yeah you've potentially made it a lot more complicated. Hopefully from a project management standpoint you can divide things up in ways that don't depend on each other (for example stage at site A, yurts at site B, etc), that way you don't need to worry so much about getting those components together at a staging area in advance. Communication is key though, keep in regular touch with the leads from each site and share pictures and progress reports with each other (a private FB group can work great for those purposes). It's important not only for you to feel like people are holding up their end, but it's important for the other people to feel that as well. Plus good comms gets people excited about the bigger picture.

If things aren't divided up quite so easily (for example part of a stage at site A and part at site B), then it does get a lot trickier. My advice is to have the secondary group deliver the goods to the camp's home base (or wherever the bulk of the project in question is being done). Assuming that once the components come together, there still may be more work that needs to be done, you'll want that to be at whatever you guys consider to be your full shop (where you'll have more tools etc). The alternative is to either find and rent some space to work in Reno, but that can get expensive and you're potentially away from your full shop, or to bring all your gear and materials you anticipate needing to the playa and working, but can be not only be tougher to do but extremely painful if you end up having to send people back out for additional supplies/materials.

I've been in camps that had project and production management issues, and would rather stick to doing something smaller well than something larger that turns into a clusterfuck. That can cause a ridiculous amount of stress and fracture even the best of friendships, I wouldn't wish that kind of anguish on anybody. For us, any project that isn't completely modular needs to come to our home base pre-event. Needless to say, as we've evolved over time as much as possible is completely modular. That, and for a number of our remote campmates (more than half come are coming from around the world), they make their plans to travel to the camp's home city for their final prep and work before departure.