Red Nose District:Established esplanade camp seeks new blood

[BBadger]

I was bewildered as anyone else here, but my understanding is this: A camp may need 30 people to assemble the structure and the infrastructure. The names of those workers may not be known when tickets are purchased. People who are willing to join and build the camp have an opportunity to purchase tickets that are in the hands of the camp organizers.

I think I have this right. It's starting to make sense.

This just further validates the fundamental issue here that these DGS tickets are being used for recruiting purposes.

If this is the case, and allowing DGS tickets to be used for recruiting purposes is the formal policy of BMORG, let BMORG be explicit about it.

This would seem to contradict the "policy" stated here:

• Remember, invitations to this sale are not transferable outside the group and may not be bought, sold, traded or offered as enticements to people outside the group it was issued to, and any exceptions should be approved by the group that issued them (placement, DMV, etc). Groups found to be abusing the system do run the risk of losing their 'good standing' status (affecting their eligibility to participate in future sales) or even having some/all of the group's tickets canceled.

Then of course there is that exception clause. Just ring up Placement, frame the story such that your "critical" members are still to be recruited and that these tickets maintain your "culture" (nevermind those "stone throwing" naysayers), and they'll extend you carte blanche. Just a formality, really.

I consider this bar pretty low. Placement ought to trust camps implicitly when they gave out DGS tickets. It's hard to imagine a scenario where the camps could not argue that they will find someone meeting qualifications, if not in the camp then outside it, to fulfill that fluid "critical" role. And hey, who would not want to completely take advantage of every one of those uncontested, reserved tickets, right?

Now what I'm wondering is: why even require all this in the first place? Just extend full faith and credit to the camps and drop the formalities.

[Simon of the Playa]

i can see both sides of the argument and can only offer this.

the perception of unfairness is even worse sometimes than the actual event.

as i stated, phrasing is everything.

the OP has admitted that maybe the wording was a bit off.

i agree.

i can also see how this has been misconstrued quite easily, and at a touchy time as all of the theme camps had just gone through the arduous process of jumping through DGS hoops.

exhausting by some accounts.

anyway, my original concern was one of discretion and the appearence of shenanigans.

if the org. has no problem with it, that is their call.

i for one, have my ticket by DGS, and am grateful.

scarcity has really made this whole journey so much more competitive, when many many moons ago it used to be cooperative.

this will be my twentieth, and have seen red nose grow over the years, its a great camp.

i too was under the impression that offering up tickets was kinda verboten, i guess i was wrong.

this is one of the reasons why i stay outside of the org.

it is a maze of byzantine proportions that i have no desire to get lost in.

[Elorrum]

So, we agree it's an awesome, worthy, by the rules camp. They just don't have at the moment enough committed core members to make it happen? That would be the number of dgs tickets they are allotted. They need people. Wow.. you can get Dgs for a great worthy plan.

[Captain Goddammit]

Yep... It's Placement that I've lost faith in now. There are a lot of Burning Man policies I don't like. This is another. But it's their party.
So sell me an $80 vehicle pass to convince me to only bring one truck, offer DGS tickets to camps that haven't even got the members to use them so they can offer them online as a recruiting incentive, let first-timer newbies decide what MVs get licensed, and all sorts of other stuff.
It's their party, their rules, when I don't like enough of them I'll stop supporting them. That's all you can really do. Burning Man is a commercial product and we are customers.

[TT120]

I guess the phrase "We have a cache of DGS tickets" threw me. That would imply more than 1 or 2 extra tickets as in Rocks scenario. Whatever. I got my DGS ticket through hard work which will continue through the burn and into next year. I'm fine with that. I feel good that I'm able to contribute and get a perk or two from it.

The OP still didn't answer my question though.....How much for an EA pass?

[zorro sings]

At the risk of beating the not quite dead horse....I think if the OP had it to do over again the portion concerning tickets may have read " we will work very hard, through our extensive network, to secure tickets for all worthy applicants ". Left unsaid is assuming that every invite of RND maxed out with two tickets there are sure to be some "extras".

The guaranteed DGS tickets have made the theme camp biz a whole new ball game. Now as a camp member in good standing you can relax and experience perhaps only a small tinge of schadenfreude while the mad scramble for even more limited general sale tickets commences. There is now a powerful incentive for the fortunate invites to keep this privilege and to help (work) make the camp even better. This in turn should should lead to a much better camp presentation and event. Nobody wants to lose those tickets!

[Elliot]

Agree on Sham and Rock, and Sham's one paragraph narrowed it down most concisely.

[gaminwench]

Um,

Go ShamRock???

sorry, not sorry

[Jackass]

Um,

Go ShamRock???

sorry, not sorry

Merely a coincidence you ask?...I think not

[Sham]

Um,

Go ShamRock???

sorry, not sorry

Now that's funny!

[Simon of the Playa]

this is the part of the thread where i demand to see some tits.

[lucky420]

this is the part of the thread where i demand to see some tits.

Quick Sham, pull your shirt up!

[TT120]

this is the part of the thread where i demand to see some tits.

Remember what happened when we did that to Fossa????

[Sham]

this is the part of the thread where i demand to see some tits.

Quick Sham, pull your shirt up!

Not again......

[lucky420]

this is the part of the thread where i demand to see some tits.

Remember what happened when we did that to Fossa????

yeah he got all sad like...

[tamarakay]

Dgs is based on last years performance. If parts of the camp left the village and are out on their own, those tickets should go to them, if they just left, then the village can give them out as needed to remain a viable placement worthy camp.

Placement and ea passes are based on what you submit on your questionnaire this year and also takes into account your past history (if you have a history). This gives new camps a chance to form, get placed, and shine. Thereby earning dgs for next year.

[BBadger]

Yes, yes, we can all extol the virtues of the DGS system all we want. Or how deserving the camps are and why they received their allotted DGS tickets. That's not in question.

The real unaddressed question here is:

Are DGS ticket are now permitted for recruitment purposes?

Because Placement has just made an explicit exception to the policies governing the permitted use of these tickets. Rules that the Red Nose District just assumed -- correctly it appears -- didn't apply to them.

So what are the real policies?

Or is this just a big arbitrary decision made by a capricious organization? Capricious decision-making is where the administrators of this event lose credibility.

[The Rod]

Well, the exception clause is right there in the rules....





You guys are funny.

[Simon of the Playa]

so it's pretty safe to assume they blew larry.


we all do at some point.

[trilobyte]

I've been holding off on replying, not only to let others weigh in ahead of me but also to try and see it from all sides and try to hear different sides of the story.

I totally understand why people would be upset when reading Triple_Threat's initial post. My initial reaction was shock and a little outrage, but I knew there had to be more to the story. Red Nose District has been around for a long time, and with very few exceptions my personal experience with the camp has been pretty positive. The climate of ticket scarcity that we've been in these last few years leads people to jump to conclusions or assume something isn't fair, or assume the worst.

On one hand, I'm pretty proud of the community response as people kept things pretty civil - a few years ago there'd be slinging of mud and arrows and things would have gotten a lot uglier. On the other hand, I can totally see why, when Triple_Threat came back to the thread after it had been restored to the site she may have taken all those negative responses a bit personally. We all know that just getting to Burning Man is hard, and building a camp is even harder. It's got to suck to work really hard for years on building your camp up over many years and then log on and see a lot of people knocking what the camp's doing. I'm bummed that she (or someone else from RND) didn't want to invest any more of her time engaging with the community and explaining what their plans are, but I understand why she'd want to shut down and withdraw. I hope that maybe she or someone from the group reads the thread and chimes in... I'm genuinely curious to hear about what they're up to. Not just with plans for bringing in new blood, but with PedalBump and all the other stuff they're planning to bring to the table.

I have been talking to Answergirl from the placement team, and believe her when she says she'd been in touch with the camp leader and that there's more to the story than what was written up in that first post, and that based on the conversations she's had with Red Nose District she's okay with what they're doing. I've known her and other placers for years, and consider several members of the team to be friends, and don't believe they play favorites. In my role as admin I've seen them come down on camps who abuse things like DGS or early arrivals, and I don't doubt that if she found RND was up to no good there would have been consequences.

I asked if she wanted to weigh in or draft some kind of statement, and she said she thought that her time would be best spent drafting a DGS policy that is very clear and straight forward about what DGS is for and how it can be used. In a reply she also said something I thought was brilliant, with her permission I'm quoting it below...

The DGS ticket process is really intended to get people that are willing to provide interactivity to the playa. It is our way to help, it is not a way to punish or isolate. We trust our community and we appreciate it when they have faith in us. We strive to uphold that trust and to continue to help build our city.

She also said that if people have more concerns, they can write to [email protected] and they will respond.

[BBadger]

Good to see that Placement is taking this seriously.

[maladroit]

A lot of people dislike DGS entirely, it's not surprising that controversy would appear if a camp seemed to be flaunting them.

I think that in order to do away with DGS, we'd also have to get rid of placed camps. If BMORG isn't expecting anything specific from your camp, then they don't have to ensure you succeed.

[BBadger]

To be perfectly clear, up until RND received permission/confirmation from Placement that they were allowed to use tickets to recruit members -- prompted by this thread -- they were in violation of the rules.

As for the DGS, I don't know whether we'd really have to get rid of placed camps to get rid of the DGS. The DGS was invented in response to the fragmentation caused by randomizing who received tickets in the main sale (the lottery). It was not because tickets managed to sell out in the first place. Returning to the old first-come, first-served system doesn't create quite the same equal distribution that the lottery did. It might still function well enough to ensure that people get enough tickets for their camps. Or not. The DGS might also prevent scalpers from having leverage on camps.

I doubt we'll ever find out. The DGS system is now thoroughly entrenched as a permanent institution because of the number of people who benefit from it.

One thing I want to know after the sale is just how many people manage to sign up in that 20-minute main sale window. If it's more than the total number of tickets being sold it'll be like the lottery again for the main sale.